385. Qualities of modern commerce. Certainty.—The changes in the instruments and objects of commerce, described in preceding chapters, have had far-reaching effects on commercial methods and organization, to which the reader is now asked to give his attention. As a partial summary of what has gone before, and a preparation for what is to follow, modern commerce may be said to have made great gains in four important qualities: certainty, regularity, economy, sensitiveness.

In former times a merchant who gave an order involving the transportation of goods over considerable distances took a leap in the dark. He was fortunate if he could estimate with some accuracy the expense of transportation; he was almost helpless in estimating the time that would be consumed. So dependent were men on wind and weather, heat and cold, war and peace, and all the manifold conditions of nature and man, that loss was frequent and delay was constant. The element of chance, great by nature, was heightened by man; carriers were emboldened to make the most of their opportunities and to extort from the merchant all that the difficulties of his position might force him to pay.

Contrast these conditions, as they existed in the period before 1800, with conditions at the present time. The modern system of transportation has been likened to clockwork. The modern merchant feels aggrieved if a telegram is delayed a few minutes, a train a few hours, a steamer a few days. His expectations, indeed, are seldom disappointed, and even then he is often informed of the probable duration of the delay, and is enabled to prepare for it. The rates of transportation now are relatively stable, and, for the most part, are a matter of public knowledge. We have not yet reached perfection in this respect, as is shown by the wide-spread complaints against American railroad managers, but we have approached nearer to it than would have been imagined possible a century ago.

386. Regularity.—Certainty brings with it regularity. Steamers which are sure to arrive within a certain period can be advertised to leave on certain days. Merchants and producers are encouraged to make their preparations, and the whole body of people is stimulated to new activity and efficiency. Consider the following example, which, however trivial in itself, is typical of the course of development in the nineteenth century. “Before the establishment of steam-vessels, the market at Cork was most irregularly supplied with eggs from the surrounding district; at certain seasons they were exceedingly abundant and cheap, but these seasons were sure to be followed by periods of scarcity and high prices, and at times it is said to have been difficult to purchase eggs at any price in the market. At the first opening of the improved channel of conveyance to England (the steamer), the residents of Cork had to complain of the constant high price of this and other articles of farm produce; but as a more extensive market was now permanently open to them, the farmers gave their attention to the rearing and keeping of poultry, and, at the present time (1838), eggs are procurable at all seasons in the market at Cork, not, it is true, at the extremely low rate at which they could formerly be sometimes bought, but still at much less than the average price of the year. A like result has followed the introduction of this great improvement in regard to the supply and cost of various other articles of produce.”

387. Economy.—As to the economy in the carriage of wares resulting from recent improvements much has already been said in other chapters, but the student may find in the following estimate, by a German author, a helpful summary. For $3 a hundred kilograms of wheat (220 pounds, a little less than 4 bushels) could be carried the following distances in kilometers (about five eights of a mile): on a common road 100, on a good road 400, on an early railroad 1,500, on a modern railroad 4,500, on an ocean steamer 25,000. There is little danger that the student will underestimate the advantage to commerce of this reduction in the cost of carriage, but he should note also the economy resulting from the speed and certainty of modern instruments of transportation. A considerable part of the world’s capital, a century ago, was locked up in goods in transit or in warehouse. These goods were of no use to anybody. Nowadays not only are goods put where they are wanted, they are put there with such speed and certainty that merchants do not need to keep a large stock on hand, and the stock in transit is relatively small. In the India trade, for instance, when a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope took a good part of a year, and the time of arrival could not be calculated within a month or two, India merchants had to keep great stocks to meet the varying demand. Now that steamers make the trip by the Suez Canal in a month, and the time of their arrival is exact to a day, dealers order goods as they are needed, and the great India warehouses have been rendered in large part useless for their original purpose.

388. Sensitiveness.—The modern commercial organization has been likened to clock work, because of its regularity. Carrying further this comparison, it may be said that it is like a delicate chronometer, in which every movement is attended with the minimum of friction. The power of modern commerce appears in the vast quantities of wares which are exchanged through its agency; its sensitiveness is shown by the readiness with which the currents of trade are turned or even reversed to suit the occasion. It has been said that commerce turns from one side of the globe to the other on a difference of a cent on a bushel of grain, a dollar on a ton of metal, a quarter of a cent a yard on a textile fabric, or a sixteenth of a cent on a pound of sugar. So sensitive has the commercial world become to every stimulus that it feels also every shock. When the McKinley tariff bill was passed in the United States, it is said that the next day several thousand workmen, employed in the manufacture of pearl buttons in a city of far-off Austria, were thrown out of work. Brief interruptions of commerce, by the outbreak of epidemic diseases, by storms or other natural phenomena, or by strikes of workers engaged in transportation, rouse serious anxiety. The sensitiveness of modern commerce may be shown, further, by the refinements to which the principle of the division of labor has been carried. It is said that in the leather manufacture skins are sometimes sent across the ocean four times, to effect economies in subordinate treatments.

389. Importance of the telegraph, illustrated by conditions preceding its introduction.—While the various changes in commerce indicated above can be ascribed largely to the use of steam in transportation, they would be inconceivable, in their present form, if the electric telegraph had not been extended over all lands and under all seas.

The importance of the telegraph in commerce can be illustrated by conditions in Shanghai about 1870, before the cable reached that port. The rate of foreign exchange, a decisive factor in all commercial calculations, was at that time determined by European advices brought by post steamers. The news brought by one steamer would make the Chinese tael equivalent to 7.25 francs; on the arrival of another steamer the rate would rise to 8.10. As merchants bought in taels and sold in francs or other European currency, their profits and losses were largely dependent on variations in the rate. Two mercantile houses of Shanghai had found it worth their while to invest a large sum in the construction of special vessels, which could be made like modern torpedo boats, practically all machinery and hence very fast, as the only cargo they had to carry was a single letter, bringing from Singapore or Hong-Kong the European news affecting the rate of exchange, many hours in advance of the regular steamer. The few merchants who enjoyed the benefit of this news service had, of course, a great advantage over their competitors, buying and selling with full knowledge of what the rate would be. With the introduction of the cable, however, all merchants shared alike in such information, and, furthermore, by the continuous communication thus established, the former violent fluctations in rates became a thing of the past.

390. Services of the telegraph to the modern organization.—Newspapers spread broadcast the market quotations which are carried by the telegraph to all parts of the world, and the farmer in the American West, the cotton grower in the South, or the sheep raiser in Australia, can learn with ease what prices his staple brings in the great markets and what price he can ask for it. At the centers of business the great merchants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both consumers and producers, study to apportion the supply so that it will reach those who stand most in need of it, and seek to regulate future production so that there may be neither waste nor want when the product is brought to market. The remarkable progress of Brazil in coffee production has been explained by a student of the subject as due in large part to the spread of the telegraph in South America and the laying of a cable to Pernambuco in 1874, bringing the country into communication with the world’s coffee markets.

The telegraph has, moreover, enabled commerce to dispense with a whole army of middlemen, commission merchants, and brokers, who were necessary under the old system, but who have now been released to find more useful employments. Merchants in the wool trade, for example, send their buyers to the countries of production on fast steamers, transmit their instructions by telegraph, and bring the wool directly to the country of consumption, cutting out entirely the middlemen of London, Antwerp, and Havre, who once controlled the trade. Before the first Atlantic cable was laid it cost about 3 per cent to get cotton through the hands of the commission merchant and broker; the cable did away with the old consignment system, and in a dozen years the charge was reduced to about 1 per cent.

391. Functions of the merchant.—I spoke above of the elimination of unnecessary middlemen. To many people all middlemen seem unnecessary, and fit only for elimination. These people regard as worthless drones all who are not engaged in the work of raising raw materials, of manufactures, or of transportation; they see no reason why a man who merely sits in an office, receives reports and writes letters, who perhaps rarely sees the wares he “handles,” should grow rich off society.

The defence of the middleman may be given in the words of an English writer, describing the important part which merchants play in marketing the great output of the British iron industry. “The merchant usually has a better knowledge of the conditions affecting different markets than the producer. He comes more directly in contact with the buyer; he knows better to whom credit can safely be given, and is prepared to risk credits that the manufacturer would often refuse; he is well posted in railway and shipping rates and conditions, understands the peculiarities, practices, and requirements of particular markets, and has all other necessary commercial information, including freights and tariff duties, at his fingers’ ends.” Surely the functions thus suggested are sufficiently important to keep specialists employed, with profit to society as well as to the individuals engaged.

392. Growth in number and variety of the mercantile class.—In fact, the class of middlemen, those who are occupied merely in the exchange of wares, has increased greatly in the course of the century. The great commercial machine runs now with such power and smoothness, only by the help of myriads of men who get their livelihood by tending it. In Prussia, for example, the number of wholesale merchants or firms increased twenty-fold in sixty years.

The change would lack a large part of its present significance if it affected only the number of middlemen. It has been a change in quality as well as quantity. The increase in business has furnished the opportunity for a redistribution of tasks, and has led to a specialization which was before impracticable. To be a jack of all trades nowadays one must be a man of supreme genius; to be master of one branch of trade is sufficient for the energy and the ambitions of the ordinary man. It pays a few men to take the position of Charles Broadway Rouse, to offer to buy anything and to sell everything. Most wholesale merchants are content to confine themselves to one branch of trade: lumber, iron, wool, leather, grain, etc. Most of these merchants, moreover, rely further on specialists to help them with certain parts of their business. They depend constantly on the banker, the speculator, the broker, the forwarder, the warehouseman, the commission merchant, and agents of many different kinds. It is impossible, in this book, to do more than suggest the complex commercial organization which has grown up in the course of the century. Only a few of the most prominent features can be treated in the following sections.

393. Insurance and speculation.—The practice of insurance has made us familiar with the means by which producers secure themselves against some of the risks of their business. A farmer can insure his growing crop against hail, a merchant can insure his stock against loss by fire, a shipowner can insure his vessel against loss at sea. For a small annual payment, which the producer can well spare, he secures himself against a loss which might prove ruinous, if it chanced to come to him. He gains relief from anxiety, strengthens his credit (he could not borrow on the security of uninsured goods), and secures that regularity of operation which is essential to the greatest efficiency.

So obvious are the advantages of insurance that every one accepts it as a benefit. We have now to see how the same service which is performed for the producer by the insurance company is performed for the merchant by the speculator. Among the greatest risks in commerce is that of price changes due to great events (wet seasons or dry seasons, war or peace, etc.) which the merchant can neither control nor foresee. A grain merchant, for instance, who has bought some excellent wheat in Dakota, has made advantageous arrangements for its transportation, and is confident of finding a ready sale to an English miller, may find the whole transaction results not in profit but in loss, if the level of wheat prices falls before his sale is accomplished, by reason, perhaps, of the unexpected yield of wheat in a distant country, or by the conclusion of a great war. Why does he not sell the wheat in advance to the miller, and so protect himself from this danger? He would simply be shifting the burden to shoulders still less able to bear it. The miller is a manufacturer, who needs to give all his thought to the technical details of his business, and who can ill afford to buy wheat when it is high, only to find when he comes to market the flour that it has dropped in price, in sympathy with a decline in wheat.

394. Services of the speculator to commerce.—The class of speculators has grown up in the course of the century, to assume such risks. It can do great harm to business by creating risks where none naturally existed, producing artificial scarcity by “corners,” etc.; this danger should not blind us to the benefits it confers when it confines itself to its legitimate business. Let us see how, in practice, this business of speculation serves commerce.

A merchant who has bought wheat or cotton in America, for sale in the Liverpool market, sells immediately an equal quantity for future delivery, at a time when he expects to have his ware ready for sale in England. It makes no difference to him then whether the general price of his ware goes up or down. If prices go up he will have to pay more to “cover” his sale of futures, but he will also get more for his real ware. If prices go down he may not be able to get as much for his real wheat or cotton as he expected, possibly not as much as he paid for it; but he will make up just the difference, by the low price at which he can cover. He renounces all chance at great gains, but also secures himself against great loss, and is glad to pay the speculator’s commission to attain this result. He makes his profit by the differences in the price of wheat or cotton not at different times, but in different places; reference to the section above, in which the description of the modern merchant was quoted, will suggest how he earns his living. In a manner similar to this many manufacturers (millers or cotton manufacturers) protect themselves against variations in the price of their raw material.

395. Decline of the market and fair, and rise of the produce exchange.—I spoke above of the regularity of modern commerce as one of its distinctive features. The gain in regularity shows itself notably in institutions like the market, the fair, and the exchange. The old system of market-days, under which country people came to town on stated days to display their wares and enable housewives to lay in a supply of provisions, has given place to a steady flow of products through city shops and market halls to the consumers. Fairs have lost their significance in modern countries, because the volume of trade is now so great, and the instruments of trade are so highly developed, that commerce has developed into one permanent fair. The great expositions, which began toward the close of the eighteenth century, but of which the London Exposition of 1851 (Crystal Palace) was the first of world-wide significance, seem to have continued to the present time the principle of periodical recurrence, but a tendency to permanence is to be noted even with respect to them. Many of these expositions have led to the establishment of museums of industry, art, and commerce, and the use of permanent expositions of models and samples has come to be a recognized means of furthering industry and commerce. Finally, the nineteenth century has witnessed the foundation of most of the modern produce exchanges, which have proved indispensable to the rapid development of commerce in the great staples. The experience of Hamburg is significant in this respect. The coffee trade of that port declined after 1882, when Havre adopted the system of dealings in futures, and did not recover until 1887, when Hamburg adopted the system also, and then enjoyed a rapid growth of the trade. These produce exchanges are to be found, with variations in the wares handled and in the system pursued, in all advanced countries. Germany, for instance, offers facilities for the characteristic trade of a produce exchange (including dealings in futures), in the following articles: wheat, rye, maize, oats, rye flour, crude alcohol, rape-seed oil, kerosene, cotton, coffee, raw sugar, granulated sugar, and carded wool.

396. Contrast of the character of association in commerce and in manufactures or transportation.—A previous section, describing the specialization of merchants in the nineteenth century, suggests the gain which commerce has made in the way of cooperation. The tendency, however, has been to split tasks up into small pieces, and to distribute these among individuals or small groups, rather than to associate great numbers of men under one management. We do not find in strictly commercial undertakings the tremendous aggregations of men and capital which have become characteristic of modern transportation and manufactures. Modern trusts, it is true, have invaded the field of commerce to a certain extent, and have effected some of their chief economies in improved methods of marketing their products. What the development may be along the line thus indicated is an interesting subject for speculation, but a subject which cannot be allowed to detain us here. Mercantile enterprises are still, for the most part, carried on by individuals, by partnerships, or by corporations in which the personal and local element is predominant.

397. More efficient utilization of capital in modern trade.—The middleman, therefore, cannot as a rule secure the capital which he needs for carrying on his business by offering securities for public subscription through the stock exchange. He seems, in this respect, at a disadvantage in comparison with the manufacturer, the railroad, or the steamship operator. He is, however, better off in at least two respects than his predecessors of an earlier time. First, he can do much more business with the same amount of capital than was possible under the old conditions. The great technical improvements have resulted in a much more rapid “turn-over” of capital, and a merchant now sells out and replenishes his stock far more rapidly than he could formerly do. The instance of the India trade, given in a section above, illustrates this fact. The “merchant princes” who once ruled this trade by their great capital have given place to many smaller merchants, who can make less capital suffice by its rapid turn-over.

398. Benefit of banks to trade.—Second, the deserving merchant can manage with a smaller capital than formerly, because he can borrow more easily and to much better advantage. The reader must be content with a summary of the results of the development of banking in the course of the century, for there is no space in which to treat the details of its history. Banks have followed business throughout the world. They have attracted the unused capital of the community until they control now a fund of enormous dimensions, available for mercantile loans. On the security of business paper (bills of exchange, bills of lading, drafts, notes, etc.), merchants secure the use of this capital, and find their means limited now only by the extent of their business. It is the function of the banker to judge of the soundness of this business, and to accord or withhold the use of the bank’s money according to the promise of the enterprise. Mistakes are made, of course, but they are comparatively rare because a mistake in either direction compromises the bank’s success. Special institutions, the commercial and credit agencies, have grown up since 1841, to aid bankers and merchants in this delicate task of judging the credit of individuals.

399. Criticism of the present organization; crises.—Of the general power and efficiency of the present organization there can be no question. It meets the supreme test of maintaining a population greater than in any previous period of the world’s history, on a scale of comfort formerly unknown. That it is perfect, however, no sensible man believes. We cannot discuss the many criticisms directed against it from various points of view, but must not omit the consideration of one confessed weakness. The organization is wonderfully efficient in normal times, but it is unsteady. It passes, at intervals, through periods of feverish activity, culminating in a crisis and followed by dull stagnation. A curve showing the course of the world’s trade during the century would not present a steady rise, but a series of waves, with distinctly marked crest and trough. There is a waste of labor and capital in all periods of a crisis. In the good times men strain themselves to build railroads where they are not needed, or to make machines for which there is no profitable use. Sooner or later they come to their senses with a shock, and realize that they have been wasting their time; then they are as depressed as they formerly were sanguine, and are too timid for a time to make good use of the capital which the crisis has left on their hands.

400. Crises before 1850.—The tendency of the commercial organization to these interruptions in its regularity of operation, which was apparent in advanced countries before 1800, has grown more marked in the nineteenth century; and, with the spread of the modern organization, crises now affect the whole world. Crises have occurred at intervals of about eleven years since 1800. A crisis marked the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. Another followed in 1825, occasioned, in England, by speculation in banks, turnpikes, and canals, and by unwise investments in South America. Commerce recovered from its depression only to decline again after the crisis of 1836-39, which was felt with particular severity in the United States in 1837. The last of the crises in the first half of the century, and the first crisis for which railroad speculation can be held largely responsible, followed in 1847, and was the more severe on the Continent because it coincided with a period of political revolution.

401. Crises since 1850.—Toward the middle of the century the new instruments of steam transportation began to work their great changes. At just this time, moreover, the discovery of gold in California (1848) and in Australia (1851) led to an immense increase in the world’s stock of gold, which is said to have doubled in little more than ten years. The results, inflation and speculation, were as marked as though the new money had been of paper, and a period of over-trading ceased only with the outbreak of the crisis of 1857, which spread quickly from the United States to England and thence to the Continent.

A longer period than usual intervened, broken only by local disturbances (failure of a great English banking firm in 1866, “Black Friday” in the United States, 1869). The crisis of 1873 was, perhaps, on this account, more serious; it led to a depression of many years, affecting all branches of trade, and even distant countries like Australia and South America. Beginning, this time, on the Continent, where the outcome of the Franco-Prussian war and the payment of the great war indemnity had led to unprecedented speculation, it found a ready field in the United States, where there had been an active speculation in land and stocks, and proved to be the greatest international crisis which the world has known. As though the air had been cleared by this great storm, succeeding disturbances have been far more restricted in their action. A banking crisis in France in 1882 and a railroad crisis in the United States in 1884 were the chief events of the next period of danger; and in more recent times have followed the American currency crisis of 1893, and the German industrial crisis of 1901.

402. Rise in the price level since 1896.—Toward the close of the nineteenth century a change became apparent in the very basis of business, namely in the world’s money in which prices are expressed. The prices of different commodities never rise or fall exactly in unison, but it is possible by statistics to show the change in the average of prices or the price level, as it is called; and a study of recent statistics shows a rise in prices so extensive and so rapid as to make it clearly a topic deserving serious attention from the student of commercial development.

Taking for the basis of comparison the average of prices in the decade 1890-1899, the price of staple raw commodities in the United States had risen in 1910 by almost 40%; or, comparing 1910 with 1896, when prices were lowest, by 66.3%, almost two-thirds. The change has been less marked in manufactured wares, for it has been offset to a certain extent by improvements in methods of production, but still it is very great: nearly 30% compared with the decade before 1900, and over 40% compared with 1896.

403. Effects of increase in the world’s gold production.—Countless factors have contributed to this result, in one way or another, but economists are generally agreed that the one cause overshadowing all others is the increase in the world’s output of gold. The metal which is the basis of the world’s currency system has become so plentiful that it has cheapened; and the purchaser of wares has now to give more gold for them, that is, prices have risen.

From the time of the Californian and the Australian gold discoveries, for almost half a century, the world’s annual gold output was curiously constant, at a figure somewhat over one hundred million dollars. The discovery of new gold fields and the perfection of new processes effected a revolution. The output of 1896 first exceeded the figure of two hundred million, in 1899 it passed the mark of three hundred, in 1906 and in succeeding years past 1910 it never fell below four hundred million.

While some classes in the community lose in a period of rising prices, particularly wage-earners and bond-holders whose income rises slowly in comparison with the increase in the cost of living, the speculators, merchants and manufacturers find in such a period a great opportunity to make money and business rapidly expands. The following pages will describe a noteworthy development of industry and trade in the period immediately preceding the World War; and the reader will realize, even when no reference is made to it, that the change in the price level has been an important factor in the development. One caution, however, seems at this point particularly advisable. Many of the statistics following, in which the development is pictured, are given in terms of money values. These figures grow with the rise in prices, even when there is no change in the physical amount of business transacted, and are an accurate index of the volume of trade only when they are reduced to an extent corresponding with the rise of prices.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

BIBLIOGRAPHY