1. The purposes of commerce.—The reader will follow more intelligently the history of commerce if he will stop a moment at the start to consider the purposes of commerce and the difficulties which must be overcome if it is to be successfully carried on.
As to the purposes we may be brief. The largest part of the time and energy of the ordinary man is consumed in getting the material things which furnish him with the means of subsistence and of culture. We are accustomed to think of the farmer and the manufacturer as charged especially with supplying our material wants, but a little reflection will show that the work of these classes, without the aid of another class, would be of little use to us. The food and clothing and tools and other desirable articles which they produce are valuable only when they are put into the hands of a man who wants them and can use them. Articles which we all should pronounce desirable, the ripe fruit of the farmer and the finished product of the manufacturer, have still only the possibility of good in them; and this possibility is realized only when they are put in the place where they are wanted at the time when they are wanted. It is the business of the merchant to attend to the proper distribution of wares, in place and time. He does not change the form of things, like the farmer or the manufacturer, but he is as truly a producer as they are.
Ice may be manufactured in summer by the ammonia process, or it may be saved from the preceding winter, or it may be brought in summer from Greenland. To the consumer it makes no difference which one of these methods is employed; he wants his ice in summer, and the trader who satisfies his wants by saving or transporting the ice is as useful a member of society as the manufacturer who makes the ice.
2. Obstacles to the development of commerce. (1) Personal.—Great as are the advantages of commerce, ages of progress were required to give it the position which it holds in the modern world. It has had to make its way against innumerable obstacles; and to some of these obstacles the reader is asked now to give his attention.
There is, first of all, the difficulty which we may term personal. A man now accepts trade as a matter of course. He devotes himself to some special line of production, the growing of wheat or the making of shoes, feeling sure that he can exchange his surplus for whatever else he wants, and making his exchanges without hesitation. An uncivilized man, however, is accustomed to satisfy his wants in only two ways, by his own labor in production or by robbing another man. He is suspicious of any offer to exchange wares, and is unwilling to apply himself to any special line of production that would make him dependent on trade. The ignorance and suspicions of men were in early times the greatest hindrances to the rise of commerce, as they are still in backward portions of the world; it has required generations of experience to teach men wants for things which they did not themselves produce, and to teach them to satisfy these wants by exchange. Commerce took on definite proportions and became of considerable importance only when a special class of traders and merchants arose, who made it their business to study wants, to inspire new ones, and to provide the means of satisfying them.
3. (2) Physical obstacles.—Another difficulty in the pursuit of commerce, which we may term physical, appears in the exchange of articles which are produced at some distance from each other, so that they need to be transported by land or sea. A farmer who sets out for the city with a load of grain will have to count carefully the cost of getting it to market. Assume that he feeds himself and his horses from his wagon-load; evidently, if the road is long, or so bad that progress is slow and many horses are necessary, he may find all the wheat consumed on the journey before he has secured a purchaser. In this aspect the facilities for transportation, whether by land or water, by pack-animal, cart, canal boat or steamer, are of great importance. It has been estimated that a human burden bearer would require more than a day and a half to move a ton of goods a mile; a strong pack-horse can carry three hundredweight a considerable number of miles in a day; while on first-rate level roads a horse can drag a ton even further. Another factor in this question is the character of the ware. A farmer who could not afford to bring wheat to market might still find it profitable to bring butter, which has much greater value in the same bulk, so that the profits on a wagon-load might pay the expenses of the journey. Gold can be exported from the interior of Alaska under difficulties which would make the transportation of any other product impossible.
4. (3) Risk of loss at the hand of public enemies or robbers.—The carrier of merchandise has to face not only physical difficulties, but also dangers from another source. From time to time we read in the modern newspaper of high rates charged for war insurance, when ship or cargo may be captured and confiscated by an enemy on the sea. The merchant must count his insurance charges before he can figure out his profits. This illustration will make clear the character of one of the obstacles to commerce, which we may term military, by some stretching of the current meaning of the word. It gives, however, no idea of the extent of this danger in earlier times, when not only were wars far more common, but when even in times of peace the state was so weak that the merchant, in every mile of his progress, was exposed to attack by highwaymen on land and by pirates at sea. Either the merchant must bear his own risks, or pay somebody to protect him against them. In either case the result would be the same, the necessity of charging higher prices for the wares, and so making sales less attractive and less common.
5. (4) Political restrictions.—Still another element can be distinguished in history, which seems often to be an obstacle to the development of commerce. This element may be termed the political. A man is not only a producer and consumer; he is also, whether he is conscious of it or not, a member of the state, and subject to some kind of political organization which restrains and directs him in his economic life. His efforts to further his own interests are restricted by laws meant to protect the interests of the people as a whole against the selfishness of individuals. A merchant in the United States who proposes to import some ware from another country will find that he must pay not only the natural transportation and insurance charges, but possibly also a customs duty in addition, that would make the exchange unprofitable. If he proposed to import a foreign ship for use in the American coasting trade he would find that he is absolutely prohibited from doing this, no matter how much he might be willing to pay as duty.
These restraints are imposed nowadays, not because the government assumes that individuals cannot take care of themselves and is afraid that they may lose money by making purchases abroad, but because it thinks that they may hurt the interests of producers in the home market, whom it proposes to protect. We shall find that governments in earlier times restrained the flow of commerce to protect not only producers but also consumers and even the merchants themselves; and that regulations were imposed, of such variety and such strictness, that they made a very important element in the commercial life of peoples. The church as well as the state interfered with the course of exchange in the Middle Ages, and thought it necessary to safeguard public morals by many restrictions which have since disappeared.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Consider some articles of your clothing; try to ascertain from what different sources the materials were gathered by the merchant for the manufacturer, and how the finished product reached you. Do the like for a common implement, a lead-pencil or pocket knife, or an article of furniture. What countries were drawn upon to supply the food and setting of your breakfast table? [Compare The cost of a dinner, Outlook, March 13, 1897, quoted in Clow’s Introduction to the Study of Commerce, Silver, Burdett & Co., 193-194.]
2. What articles would you have to do without if your supply were limited to the things produced within a radius of 10 miles of your home? Within a radius of 100? Within a radius of 1,000?
3. Ice was given as an example of a ware which varies greatly at different times. Are all wares subject to such variation? [If you find what seems to be an exception, verify it by the wholesale prices quoted in newspapers.]
4. What is the use of grain elevators and wheat speculators?
5. Can you detect any difference between city people and country people in making a bargain?
6. What has been the attitude of the North American Indians to trade? With what wares have traders had to tempt them?
7. Arrange the following articles in the degree of their transportability, i.e., according to the distance which they may be carried with profit: raw cotton, coal, potatoes, silver, building stone, gold, wheat, cotton cloth, diamonds, hay, coffee, salt, silk ribbons, copper. [The price per pound of many of these wares is given in the newspaper.]
8. Give an instance of articles wasting, unused for lack of good wagon-roads; for lack of railroads.
9. In what regions has piracy persisted to recent times? [Read some description of Borneo or of the Philippine Islands, or a description of Chinese junk trading and Chinese river life.]
10. What effect did the Civil War have on American commerce? [See reference in chap. 51.]
11. In what regions of the world is land trade still unsafe?
12. To what restrictions, if any, does an American merchant have to submit who desires to trade in one of the following wares: cigars, gunpowder, whisky, lottery tickets, imported iron, cigarettes, improper literature?
13. Government restrictions now are due usually to one of three objects: (1) collection of revenue, (2) protection of other producers, (3) protection of the consumer and the public. Classify the wares above according to the object of the legislation.
14. Read Bourne, Romance of trade, 96-137, on the close relations of politics and commerce.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The reader will find at the end of most of the following chapters titles of books suggested for further reading and study; titles of books that are warmly recommended are marked by an asterisk, titles that are particularly noteworthy are marked by two asterisks. In all cases the references are restricted to books available in English. The prices given are in most cases those at which the book was sold before the war, and are retained as giving some indication of the relative expense involved in the purchase of the books; prices have changed so much during and after the war that an attempt to list current prices appears impracticable.
Bibliography.—The best available bibliography of English books on the history of commerce is Sonnenschein’s Bibliography of social and political economy, London, 1897, reprinted from The Best Books and The Reader’s Guide. Useful bibliographical information will be found also in Palgrave’s Dictionary, and in the Subject Index of the British Museum Library, which has been published at brief intervals since 1902, and which lists all the new books added to the Library. The American Economic Review, established in 1911, is a quarterly publication which has devoted particular attention to the bibliography of economic subjects, and which should be consulted for the announcement of new books, the summary of articles in periodicals, and the appreciation of important works in book reviews. The American Library Association Catalogue, which has appeared in various editions, gives full bibliographical information about popular books which are on sale in the American market.
In default of a general bibliography the student must refer to books describing conditions in England. The most complete and scholarly bibliography is that given by Cunningham, in appendixes to his Growth, etc. References which to most students will be more useful are given in Traill’s Social England. Both these sources cover the whole period, into the nineteenth century. For the medieval period the general student has a bibliography approaching near to perfection by Charles Gross, Sources and literature of English history, London and N. Y., 1900, and the student of the history of commerce will find many references in the Select bibliography of English mediaeval economic history, edited by Hubert Hall, London, 1914. A revision of C. K. Adams, Manual of historical literature, which has been undertaken by the American Historical Association will be of great value when completed.
Manuals.—Cheesman A. Herrick, **History of Commerce and industry, N. Y., 1917, resembles in plan the present book. Bibliographies are appended to the different chapters. Two English manuals on the history of commerce, H. de B. Gibbins, *History of commerce in Europe, London, Macmillan, 1891, and J. R. V. Marchant, Commercial history, London, Pitman [about 1901], suffer from the attempt to compress an immense number of facts into a small compass. William C. Webster, *General history of commerce, Boston, Ginn, 1903, $1.40, marks a decided advance in the selection and presentation of material, but is lacking in scholarship; the present writer discusses this book in detail in Yale Review, Feb., 1904, vol. 12, p. 436 ff. It has scattered bibliographies, unclassified. George W. Sanford, *Outlines of the history of commerce, Chicago, Powers & Lyons, 1902, occupies a place by itself, and should be of decided value in supplementing any manual. It gives topical outlines of the different chapters in the history of commerce, suggestions and references for reading, and skeleton maps for the student to fill in. It seeks to give no information directly.
General Works.—Of the general works on the history of commerce most are old and out of print. Of these only one need be noted here, Lindsay’s *History, of which the first volume covers ancient and medieval times. This will be of value to any school library, if it can be procured. John Yeats, Growth and vicissitudes of commerce, Boston, Boyle, covers the whole subject, from ancient to recent times, in a volume of about 400 pages; it was compiled about 1870, from other compilations, and is not to be trusted entirely, but is about the only book of its kind now in the market. Bourne’s *Romance of trade and Oxley’s *Romance of commerce answer well to the description Bourne gives of his book, “an interesting gossip-book about commerce”; both books contain readable discussions of various topics in the history of commerce, and references will be given to them hereafter. Morris, History of colonization, 2 vols., N. Y. Macmillan, 1900, would be a valuable book to the teacher if it were well done, as it covers the history of colonization and commerce from earliest times to the present. It is, however, so badly constructed and so unreliable that it cannot be recommended. See the reviews in The Nation, Yale Review, American Historical Review. A far better book on the subject is A. G. Keller, **Colonization, N. Y. 1908.
The book which I recommend most strongly to teachers who are restricted in their choice is Cunningham’s **Growth; it will enable the teacher to dispense with many other books, and no other book could be substituted for it. Ashley’s *Economic history, always desirable, is less necessary for the purposes in view here. Ashley’s **Economic Organization of England, London, 1914, is an admirable survey of English economic history and is well suited to serve as collateral reading, but has little on the history of commerce proper. If Cunningham’s large work is provided, the teacher and student can afford to neglect the smaller manuals on English economic history by Cunningham and MacArthur, Warner, Price, Cheyney (revised edition, 1920), Usher, and others. Frederic A. Ogg *Economic development of modern Europe, N. Y., 1917, deserves separate mention since it embraces not only England, but also the more important countries on the Continent; it covers the earlier periods briefly, but treats the nineteenth century fully, and has extensive bibliographies.
Many of the general histories of Europe and England can be used to advantage by the teacher or student of the history of commerce. The only work, however, which can receive special mention here is Traill’s *Social England; chapters contributed by various writers cover the history of commerce from earliest times to 1885.
Maps.—The student must look to the general historical atlas for help in studying the history of commerce. He will find that the more elaborate atlases are hardly worth the extra expense for his purposes.
William R. Shepherd, **Historical Atlas, N. Y., Holt, revised ed. 1921, includes considerable economic material, is provided with a full index of places, and will serve all ordinary needs.
The outline maps of the McKinley Publishing Company (Philadelphia), and the Rand McNally Co., will be found valuable for the use both of teacher and class.
In many cases a modern atlas is more desirable than a historical atlas. Longmans’ **School atlas, N. Y., 1901, is an admirable work, which should be in the hands of every student, and the Century **Atlas is indispensable for reference purposes.
THE ANCIENT WORLD