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A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
.r^- 
 
 HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 BY 
 
 CLIVE DAY, Ph.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC HISTORY IN YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Author of " The Dutch in Java'' 
 
 NEW IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 
 
 1917 
 
Copyright, 1907, by 
 Longmans, Green, and Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1914, by 
 Longmans, Green, and Co. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 3^^ 
 
 
 First Edition, May, 1907 
 
 Reprinted, April, 1908; June, 1909; August, 1910 
 
 August, 191 2 
 
 New Edition, June, 191 4 
 
 Reprinted, February, 1916; April, 1917 
 
 
»^ 
 
 Co 
 E. L. D. 
 
 I 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The considerations which guided me in giving this book its 
 present form are set forth in the Introduction. I wish here 
 briefly to express my thanks to those who have assisted me in 
 the labor of its preparation, to my wife and to various col- 
 leagues, especially Professors Callender, Keller and Lang. I 
 may add to this list the name of one who may not be aware 
 that he has contributed to the book, Professor W. G. Sumner. 
 The memory of his teachings has been vividly in my mind as I 
 have written some of the following pages; and however much I 
 may have departed from the substance of his lectures I feel to 
 the spirit that animated them an obligation which has grown 
 constantly greater with time, and which it is a pleasure to 
 acknowledge here. 
 
 Clive Day 
 
 44 Highland Street, New Haven, 
 Ap-il, 1907 
 
 I 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Of the four qualities which Matthew Arnold thought to be 
 of the greatest importance in an introductory manual, clear- 
 ness, brevity, proportion, and sobriety, the quality which I 
 have tried with the most conscious attention to realize in this 
 book has been proportion. The pages of text are limited in 
 number, that the book may be available for use in schools as 
 well as in colleges, and I have endeavored always to be mindful 
 that I could put nothing on a page without crowding some- 
 thing else out. Whatever claim the book has to originality 
 must be derived chiefly from the course which I have followed 
 in the selection and arrangement of topics, and I may be par- 
 doned if I seek to indicate here, as briefly as possible, the con- 
 siderations which have governed my course. 
 
 The first part, on ancient commerce, is inserted in deference 
 to what I understand to be the desires and practices of teachers, 
 but will be omitted, I hope, by every teacher who finds it 
 necessary to omit any part of the book. The facts of the com- 
 merce of ancient countries have little bearing on the commerce 
 of those same countries to-day, as any one will perceive who 
 considers, for instance, the commerce of modern Greece and 
 modern Persia, and who attempts to apply to those countries 
 the facts that he has learned of their distant past. Even the 
 commercial institutions of the ancient world died out, with the 
 important exception of the Roman Law, and modern com- 
 mercial institutions are derived not from them but from 
 medieval origins. Finally, a decisive objection to the extended 
 study of ancient commerce by beginners arises from the fact 
 that our knowledge of conditions in the ancient world is still 
 
 ix 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 meager and unsatisfactory. When the best scholars disagree 
 on many important points the student had better leave the 
 field to them, and devote his attention to later periods of 
 which abundant records exist. 
 
 In the medieval period the national state, as we know it 
 now, had not come into existence, and it would be unprofitable 
 to trace the course of commerce within the bounds of modern 
 political geography. Just because of the backward political 
 development, however, the student has an unmatched oppor- 
 tunity to study the growth of private commercial institutions, 
 and to observe the reciprocal influence of economic and politi- 
 cal factors in commercial development. Most of the chapters 
 on medieval commerce, therefore, are general and not local in 
 character. I have thought to satisfy the demand for a descrip- 
 tion of commerce from the geographical standpoint in this 
 period by a somewhat detailed account of the trade carried on 
 in the Mediterranean and on the northern seas of Europe. 
 
 As the commercial organization develops in the modern 
 period, after 1500, it becomes impracticable in a book of this 
 size to follow out in their complex details such subjects as 
 mercantile association, commercial law, currency, credit, and 
 banking. A few introductory chapters suggest rather than 
 describe the development of the organization, while most of 
 the chapters describe the growth of commerce in the concrete 
 in the different states of Europe. In this period, if ever, the 
 treatment of commerce as a distinctly national interest is 
 justified. 
 
 With the incoming of the nineteenth century conditions 
 change again. Technical improvements, transforming the 
 different branches of production and transportation, spread 
 through the civilized world, cause a revolution in the wares 
 of commerce and an immense increase in its volume. The 
 importance of these general changes required a more extended 
 treatment than I had anticipated in planning the book, but 
 the seven chapters devoted to them will not, I hope, be found 
 to occupy a disproportionate space. It seemed impossible to 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 show clearly the causes of recent commercial development 
 without describing in some detail topics which strictly lie 
 within the realm of industrial history. Later chapters revert 
 again to the description of commercial development within 
 the different states. I sympathize with those who would 
 treat the history of commerce from the institutional stand- 
 point, and who may perhaps complain that too much space is 
 given to t^p narrative of the commercial progress of the dif- 
 ferent political groups. I am inclined to think, however, that 
 a more abstract treatment of the subject would make it, while 
 perhaps more interesting to the student of economics, less in- 
 telligible and less valuable to the future man of business. The 
 apportionment of space to the different countries is regulated, 
 roughly, by their respective commercial importance. I have 
 thought that the commerce of many outlying countries of the 
 world might better be considered in a commercial geography 
 than in an introductory history. 
 
 The history of the foreign commerce of the United States 
 has not yet been written. The subject has generally been con- 
 sidered in its relations to political history, and the treatment 
 of the subject in manuals of commercial history has been 
 warped by this fact. Too much space has been given to com- 
 mercial events of political significance; not enough space has 
 been devoted to the physical and techncial factors which have 
 really made American commerce what it is to-day. The 
 colonial period has received an attention disproportionate to 
 its commercial importance. I have abstained from any 
 attempt to describe in narrative form the commercial history 
 of the colonies, and have used the space which could be given 
 to this part of the subject for a description and analysis of 
 commercial conditions in the form which they had reached at 
 the close of the colonial period. The first two chapters on the 
 United States are designed to serve both as a summary of 
 colonial history and as an introduction to the study of com- 
 mercial development in the national period. Later chapters 
 aim to include the essentials, if they omit the incidents, of our 
 
 k 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 commercial progress. In this, as in some other parts of the 
 book, I have been forced to include some statistical material, 
 but by abbreviations which make no sensible difference in the 
 accuracy of the figures I have sought to make the statistics 
 more comprehensible to untrained students, and have indicated 
 methods of studying them which may prove useful. 
 
 The usual apparatus for the aid of teachers and students is 
 included in the book. In the bibliographies I have sought to 
 meet the demand which is now general and which ought to be 
 imperative in the case of historical manuals, of a brief descrip- 
 tion or appreciation of the books that are recommended for 
 further study. 
 
 I have sought to avoid the encumbering of the text with 
 footnotes by placing in a section apart the names of the authori- 
 ties from which the facts of the book have been drawn. The 
 study of the history of commerce has not yet, it seems to me, 
 been put on such a settled basis as to justify an author in con- 
 cealing from his reader the sources of his information. That 
 the list of authorities may better serve the purpose of a supple- 
 ment to the bibliographies I have included occasionally refer- 
 ences to books which I have not used but have reason to 
 suppose are valuable. 
 
 It seemed best, after careful consideration of the pictures 
 available, to omit pictorial illustrations, and to confine the 
 illustrative material to maps. On many subjects in the his- 
 tory of commerce good maps could be borrowed or adapted 
 from other publications. Some of the gaps remaining in carto- 
 graphic illustration I have endeavored to fill by maps con- 
 structed especially for this book. I have had to abandon with 
 regret the plan of making still more maps, after an experience 
 of the difficulties involved. 
 
 For the shortcomings of the book I can make no satisfac- 
 tory apology, but can only hope that merits will be found to 
 counterbalance the faults. This I may say, however, that if 
 the plan of the book is good, I could fairly expect to find the 
 field better prepared by previous workers for the execution 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 of the plan. Economists and historians are not contributing 
 due support to the study of economic history. The academic 
 training of the times seems to lead economists to forget that 
 there has been a past from which they have much to learn, 
 and to the study of which they can contribute many helpful 
 suggestions; it seems to lead historians to forget that there is a 
 present, whose needs and problems should direct their study 
 of the past. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 ANCIENT COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 General Considerations 
 section page 
 
 1 . The purposes of commerce 1 
 
 2. Obstacles to the development of commerce. (1) Personal. ... 2 
 
 3. (2) Physical obstacles 2 
 
 4. (3) Risk of loss at the hand of public enemies or robbers 3 
 
 5. (4) PoHtical restrictions 4 
 
 Questions and topics 5 
 
 Bibliography (general) 6 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Oriental Period 
 
 6. Prehistoric commerce. Ancient Egypt .'. . 9 
 
 7. Rise of Egyptian commerce; characteristic wares 97 
 
 8. Development of Egyptian commerce in a later period 10^ 
 
 9. Rise of commerce in the Mesopotamian valley 10 
 
 10. Development of commerce under the Assyrian and Persian em- 
 
 pires 11 
 
 11. Relative insignificance of the commerce of the ancient empires. 
 
 The Jews. The Phoenicians 12 
 
 12. Commerce of the Phoenicians. Beginnings of sea-trade 12y 
 
 13. Development of sea-trade; wares of Phoenician commerce. ... 13 \ 
 
 14. Establishment of colonies by the Phoenicians. Carthage. ... 14 
 
 Questions and topics 14 
 
 Bibliography 15 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Greek Period 
 
 15. Greece, physical character and products 17 
 
 16. Rise of Greek commerce. Colonies 17 
 
 XV 
 
XVI CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 17. Rapid development in the fifth century, b.c 18 
 
 18. Rise of Athens to leadership. Exports 19 
 
 19. Athenian imports and policy 20 
 
 20. Contrast of the ancient and modern world; effect of Macedonian 
 
 and Roman conquests 20 
 
 21. Effect of Alexander's conquests on commerce; decline of Greece 21 
 
 22. Rise of great cities 22 
 
 23. Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch 22 
 
 24. Rhodes 23 
 
 Questions and topics 24 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Roman Period 
 
 25. The Roman state; Rome not a commercial city 26 
 
 26. Development of commerce in the Roman East 26 
 
 27. Backward condition of the peoples of the West 27 
 
 28. Limited influence of Rome on the commercial development of 
 
 the West 28 
 
 29. Decline of Roman power and of commerce in the West 29 
 
 Questions and topics 30 
 
 PART II 
 MEDIEVAL COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Conditions about the Year 1000 
 
 30. Political conditions affecting commerce; the modern system of 
 
 government 31 
 
 31. Impossibility of applying modem methods of government in the 
 
 period after the fall of Rome 32 
 
 32. The feudal system; rise and character 32 
 
 33. Difficulties and dangers of transportation 33 
 
 34. Restrictions imposed to insure security. The market 33 
 
 35. Society organized to exist with the minimum of commerce; the 
 
 medieval village 34 
 
 36. Self-sufficiency of the villages; low stage of the arts of production 35 
 
 37. Evils resulting from the lack of commerce 35 
 
 38. Exceptional instances of higher organization of industry 36 
 
 39. Common wares of commerce in the period of the manor 37 
 
 40. The slave trade in Europe * 37 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 41. Distant commerce confined to rare luxuries 38 
 
 42. Character of the merchant in the early Middle Ages 38 
 
 Questions and topics 39 
 
 Bibliography 40 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Town Trade 
 
 43. Significance of towns in the economic organization; decline of 
 
 the Roman towns 41 
 
 44. Rise of towns after 1000; conditions determining their location 42 
 
 45. Development of manufacturing in the towns 42' 
 
 46. Effect of the towns in improving the conditions in the country 43 
 
 47. The "foreign" trade of this period was that between towns, even 
 
 in the same country 44 
 
 48. Small size of the medieval towns 45 
 
 49. Rural characteristics of the towns 45 
 
 50. General description of a town 45 
 
 51. Improvement in conditions in the later Middle Ages 46 
 
 52. Town organization. The merchant gilds 47 
 
 53. Position of the merchant gilds; their privilege of monopoly 48 
 
 54. Development of manufactures in the towns; the common handi- 
 
 crafts 48 
 
 55. The craft gilds 49 
 
 56. Town policy; imports, exports, protection 50 
 
 57. The market and its regulations 51 
 
 58. Attempts to regulate prices. The assize of bread 51 
 
 Questions and topics 52 
 
 Bibliography 63 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Land Trade 
 
 59. Roads neglected or left to benevolent associations 54 
 
 60. Difficulties of transportation by road 54 
 
 61 . Lack of bridges 55 
 
 62. Advantages of river transportation 55 
 
 63. Danger of violence on the road 56 
 
 64. Complicity of feudal lords in robbery 56 
 
 65. Tolls imposed by feudal authorities 57 
 
 66. Variety and number of tolls 57 
 
 67. Abuses of the tolls 59 
 
 68. Development of the toll system 59 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 69. Constraint of trade by tolls. Exemptions 60 
 
 70. Burden of the tolls on trade 61 
 
 Questions and topics 61 
 
 Bibliography 62 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Fairs 
 
 71. Fairs; the reason for their existence 63 
 
 72. Comparison of fairs with markets and modem exchanges 63 
 
 73. Privileges of merchants trading at a fair 64 
 
 74. Great fairs in Europe. The fairs of Champagne 65 
 
 75. Trade at the Champagne fairs; other continental fairs 67 
 
 76. English fairs 67 
 
 Questions and topics 68 
 
 Bibliography 69 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Sea-Trade 
 
 77. Rise of sea commerce. The Scandinavians 70 
 
 78. Development of shipping in northern Europe 71 
 
 79. Development of shipping in the Mediterranean 71 
 
 80. Backwardness of the art of navigation 72 
 
 81. Introduction of the compass, and of navigators' directories. ... 73 
 
 82. Limits of early trading voyages 73 
 
 83. Medieval seaports; contrast with modem 74 
 
 84. Decline of medieval seaports in later times 74 
 
 85. Development of maritime commerce; persistence of medieval 
 
 ideas 75 
 
 86. Piracy 75 
 
 87. Organized piracy; privateering 76 
 
 Questions and topics 77 
 
 Bibliography 78 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Levant Trade 
 
 88. Wares of the Levant trade. Slaves 79 
 
 89. Spices 79 
 
 90. Drugs; perfumes; sugar 80 
 
 91. Precious stones; preponderance in general of luxuries over 
 
 articles of general utility 80 
 
CONTENTS xix 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 92. Dyestuffs; alum 81 
 
 93. Other raw materials of industry 82 
 
 94. Textile imports; exports from Europe 82 
 
 95. Revival of Oriental trade about 1000, under the leadership of 
 
 Italians 83 
 
 96. Routes between Asia and Europe 84 
 
 97. Character of the crusades; number of crusaders 86 
 
 98. Commercial aspect of the crusades 87 
 
 99.. Effect of the crusades on knowledge of the East and of eastern 
 
 wares 88 
 
 Questions and topics 88 
 
 Bibliography 89 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Commerce of Southern Europe 
 
 100. Position of Venice; early history 90 
 
 101. Expansion of Venetian empire during the crusades 90 
 
 102. Extent of Venetian commerce 92 
 
 103. Development of the institutions of commerce in Venice -. 93 
 
 104. Venetian commercial policy 93 
 
 105. Overland trade with Germany 94 
 
 106. Strict control over German merchants in Venice. 95 
 
 107. Importance of the trade between Venice and Germany 96 
 
 108. Commerce by sea with northwestern Europe 96 
 
 109. Regulation of this commerce; the Flanders galleys 97 
 
 110. Development of other cities in Italy; freedom and vigor of 
 
 their policy 98 
 
 111. Genoa 98 
 
 112. Inland cities; Florence 99 
 
 113. Other Mediterranean cities; Marseilles, Barcelona 99 
 
 Questions and topics 100 
 
 Bibliography 101 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Commerce of Northern Europe 
 
 114. Development of commerce in South and North 102 
 
 115. Conditions and wares of the Baltic trade 102 
 
 116. Exports from the Baltic, mainly raw materials 103 
 
 117. Exports from the West to the Baltic countries 103 
 
 118. Contrast of the history of the commercial cities in Italy and in 
 
 Germany 104 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 119. Rise of the Hanseatic League 104 
 
 120. Extent and organization of the League 105 
 
 121. Control of the commerce of northern Europe by the League . . . 105 
 
 122. Methods of trading; factories 107 
 
 123. Flanders and Bruges 108 
 
 124. Decline of Bruges in the fifteenth century; rise of Antwerp 109 
 
 125. Conditions of commerce in England 109 
 
 126. English trade passive until the close of the Middle Ages 110 
 
 Questions and topics Ill 
 
 Bibliography 1 12 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Development of the Medieval Organization of Commerce 
 
 127. Types of medieval traders; pedler, shop-keeper 113 
 
 128. Merchants ' 113 
 
 129. Development of commercial association in the Middle Ages. . . 115 
 
 130. Advantages of association 116 
 
 131. Forms of association; partnership 116 
 
 132. Spread of the practice of association from Italy 117 
 
 133. Position of the Jews in medieval commerce 117 
 
 134. Character of currency in the Middle Ages 118 
 
 135. Difficulty in making payments in distant places 119 
 
 136. Introduction of the bill of exchange 120 
 
 137. Development of banking in Italy 120 
 
 Questions and topics 121 
 
 Bibliography 122 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 Commerce and Politics in the Later Middle Ages 
 
 138. Development of the modem political system in the later Middle 
 
 Ages 123 
 
 139. Variety of development in different countries 123 
 
 140. Effect on commerce of a strong and of a weak central govern- 
 
 ment : 124 
 
 141. Rise of a national commercial policy 125 
 
 142. Medieval ideas on commerce 125 
 
 143. Characteristic features of commercial policy 126 
 
 Questions and topics 127 
 
 Bibliography 127 
 
CONTENTS xxi 
 
 PART III 
 MODERN COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Exploration and Discovery 
 section page 
 
 144. The revolution about 1500; topics to be considered 128 
 
 145. Growth of geographical knowledge; Asia 128 
 
 146. Need of a sea route to Asia; means of navigation 129 
 
 147. The lead in maritime exploration taken by Prince Henry of 
 
 Portugal 129 
 
 148. Exploration of the West Coast of Africa; difficulties, real and 
 
 imagined 130 
 
 149. Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1487) and of the sea 
 
 route to India (1498) 131 
 
 150. Belief that Asia could be reached by sailing westward 132 
 
 151. Discovery of America (1492); partition of the world outside 
 
 Europe between Spain and Portugal 133 
 
 152. Effect of the discoveries on the field of commerce; growth of a 
 
 world commerce 134 
 
 153. Effect of the discoveries on the wares of commerce 135 
 
 154. Importance of the precious metals in the American trade; effect 
 
 on prices in Europe 135 
 
 155. Improvement in the means and methods of navigation 136 
 
 Questions and topics 137 
 
 Bibliography 138 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Development of the Economic Organization 
 
 156. Agriculture 139 
 
 157. Development of manufacturing organization in England; per- 
 
 sistence of gild restrictions elsewhere 140 
 
 158. Evils of the gilds 140 
 
 159. Development of the commercial organization. Rise of whole- 
 
 salers 141 
 
 160. Development of the commission trade; services of "factors". . 142 
 
 161. Improvement in means of communication; posts 142 
 
 162. Need of closer association among merchants; risks of com- 
 
 merce 143 
 
 163. Association required by government; reasons 144 
 
 164. Association in the form of the regulated company 145 
 
xxu CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 165. Objections to the form of the regulated company. 146 
 
 166. The joint stock company, and its advantages 146 
 
 167. Good and bad sides of joint stock companies 147 
 
 Questions and topics 148 
 
 Bibliography 149 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Credit and Crises 
 
 168. Growth of credit business and of banking . 150 
 
 169. Description of the rise of discount and deposit banking in Eng- 
 
 land 151 
 
 170. Rise of " money-power '^ as shown in the history of the Fagger V 
 
 family 151 
 
 171. Description of the Fugger business 152 
 
 172. Weakness of the Fugger and other banking firms 153 
 
 173. Description of business in Antwerp in the sixteenth century. . 154 
 
 174. Rise of the Antwerp Exchange; its significance 154 
 
 175. Development of business on the exchanges; produce and money 155 
 
 176. Advantages offered to industry and commerce by the exchanges 156 
 
 177. Growth of speculation; early abuses 156 
 
 178. Dangers of the new system of business; promotion of unprofit- 
 
 able enterprises 157 
 
 179. Description of the "Bubble Period" in England 158 
 
 180. The crisis of the Company of the Indies in France 159 
 
 Questions and topics 160 
 
 Bibliography 160 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Modern State and the Mercantile System 
 
 181. Growth of modern states under the influence of commerce. ... 161 
 
 182. Decline of feudal power with the rise of mercenary armies ... 161 
 
 183. Growth in power of the central government as shown in the 
 
 development of taxation 162 
 
 184. Persistence of medieval conditions in the modern period. . . . 163 
 
 185. Attempts at reform, leading in many cases to over-regulation. 163 
 
 186. Attention distracted from internal reforms by foreign interests 164 
 
 187. Wars occasioned by religious and dynastic interests 165 
 
 188. Wars occasioned by commercial interests; military aspect of 
 
 commerce in this period 165 
 
 189. Wars arising from the conflict of colonial interests in the New 
 
 World 166 
 
CONTENTS xxiii 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 190. Political importance of commerce in this period, connected 
 
 with the desire of governments for ready money 166 
 
 191. The mercantile system, aiming to increase the stock of ready 
 
 money in the country 167 
 
 192. Features of the mercantile system; restriction of imports 168 
 
 193. Encouragement of exports, manufactures, and shipping 169 
 
 194. Failure of the mercantile system to affect the distribution of 
 
 the precious metals 169 
 
 195. Important effects of the mercantile system in other ways .... 170 
 
 196. Colonial poHcy 171 
 
 /Questions and topics 172 
 
 Bibliography 173 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 Spain and Portugal 
 
 197. Extent and power of the Spanish monarchy 174 
 
 198. Rapid development of Spanish industry and commerce 174 
 
 199. Economic decline in the following period 176 
 
 200. Causes of decline; faulty political organization 177 
 
 201. The burden of taxes 178 
 
 202. Customs duties, on the frontier and inside the country 178 
 
 203. Examples of bad policy; the Mesta 179 
 
 204. Failure to develop colonial trade 179 
 
 205. Spanish colonial policy. Taxes 180 
 
 206. Restriction of trade to appointed fleets 181 
 
 207. Restriction of the market by the discouragement of emigration 181 
 
 208. Supply of the market by smugglers 182 
 
 209. Wares of the colonial trade 182 
 
 210. Reform of the colonial system about 1750 183 
 
 211. Portugal; promise of commercial greatness in the sixteenth 
 
 century 184 
 
 212. Failure of Portugal to maintain her position 185 
 
 213. Weakness in resources; bad effects of Spanish rule, 1580-1640. 185 
 
 214. Failure of Portugal to recover her position by commerce with 
 
 Brazil 185 
 
 215. Dependence of Portugal on England 186 
 
 Questions and topics 187 
 
 Bibliography 188 
 
XXIV CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 The Netherlands 
 section page 
 
 216. Establishment of the United Netherlands 190 
 
 217. Rise of Dutch commerce 190 
 
 218. Dutch commercial policy 191 
 
 219. The Dutch West India Company 191 
 
 220. The East India Company 192 
 
 221. Leading position of the Dutch in European commerce 193 
 
 222. Growth of business activity 194 
 
 223. Commercial decline of the Netherlands 194 
 
 224. Reasons for decline 195 
 
 225. Character of the Dutch East India Company 196 
 
 226. Decline of the Company after 1700 196 
 
 Questions and topics 197 
 
 Bibliography 198 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 England: Survey of Commercial Development 
 
 227. Survey of England's position and resources about 1500 199 
 
 228. England's chief advantage, her advanced organization 199 
 
 229. Benefits of the English political constitution 200 
 
 230. Development of the English into an active commercial people 
 
 about the fifteenth century 200 
 
 231. Agencies helping to extend English commerce 201 
 
 232. Enlargement of the commercial area 201 
 
 233. Relative standing of the English ports 202 
 
 234. Partition of the field of commerce among companies 202 
 
 235. Characteristics of the companies 204 
 
 236. Rapid growth of commerce in the eighteenth century 205 
 
 237. Relative share of different continents in English commerce. . 205 
 
 Questions and topics 206 
 
 Bibliography ■ 208 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 England: Exports 
 
 228. Survey of topics to be considered in studying the develop- 
 ment of English commerce 209 
 
 239. (1) Analysis of exports 209 
 
 240. (2) Development of production, explaining the growth of the 
 
 export trade. Agriculture 210 
 
CONTENTS XXV 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 241. Internal commerce and means of transportation 210 
 
 242. Manufactures; advance from the gild to the domestic system 
 
 and its significance 211 
 
 243. The new employers aided by the immigration of foreign labor- 
 
 ers 212 
 
 244. Dependence of technical progress on the new class of employers. 212 
 
 245. The domestic system preparatory to the great revolution in 
 
 manufactures in the eighteenth century 213 
 
 246. Progress of the cotton manufacture 214 
 
 247. Slower development of the woolen manufacture 215 
 
 248. Development of the iron industry with the use of pit-coal .... 215 
 
 249. (3) The chief markets for England's exports 216 
 
 Questions and topics 217 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 England: Imports; Shipping; Policy 
 
 250. (4) Analysis of English imports in the modem period 219 
 
 251. (5) Sources of the imports , 219 
 
 252. Peculiar character of the English colonies 220 
 
 253. Resources and industries of the colonies in America 220 
 
 254. Specialties of different colonies 221 
 
 255. Commerce with Africa 221 
 
 256. (6) Shipping and the carrying trade 222 
 
 257. Struggle of English seamen and government with the Dutch . . 222 
 
 258. The Navigation Acts; victory of English over Dutch shipping. 223 
 
 259. (7) Government policy. Commerce and war 224 
 
 260. Customs policy 224 
 
 261. Burden of the tariff 225 
 
 262. Colonial policy 226 
 
 263. Restrictions on colonial enterprise, regarded as justifiable at 
 
 the time 226 
 
 Questions and topics 227 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 France: Survey of Commercial Development 
 
 264. Natural advantages of France in the modem period 229 
 
 265. The chief reason why France did not rise to leadership 229 
 
 266. Progress checked by the Hundred Years' War with England, 
 
 and by religious conflicts 230 
 
 267. Effect of the absolute monarchy on French development. ... 231 
 
xxvi CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 268. Failure to reform conditions inherited from the feudal period 231 
 
 269. Bloom of French commerce in the fifteenth century as shown in 
 
 the business of Jacques Coeur 232 
 
 270. The bulk of French commerce still with nearby countries . . 233 
 
 271. Decline during the period of the religious wars 233 
 
 272. Recovery after 1600 233 
 
 273. Founding of commercial companies, and colonial expansion . . 234 
 
 274. Reasons for the failure of these enterprises 235 
 
 275. Mistaken policy of Louis XIV 235 
 
 276. Decline of the French colonial empire in the eighteenth cen- 
 
 tury 236 
 
 277. Growth, notwithstanding, in the commerce of France 236 
 
 278. Analysis of French commerce in the eighteenth century 238 
 
 279. Value of the French sugar colonies 239 
 
 Questions and topics 239 
 
 Bibliography 240 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 France: Policy 
 
 280. History of the French customs tariff 242 
 
 281 . Persistence of customs frontiers inside France 242 
 
 282. Persistence of local toll barriers 243 
 
 283. Manufactures; the gild system maintaind in spite of its bad 
 
 effects 244 
 
 284. Separation of trades 244 
 
 285. Influence of the gilds in preventing technical progress 245 
 
 286. Narrow restrictions imposed on manufactures by the govern- 
 
 ment 246 
 
 287. Burden of these restrictions on manufactures 247 
 
 288. Special privileges granted to certain manufactures; resulting 
 
 abuses 247 
 
 Questions and topics 248 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The German States 
 
 289. Political survey of Germany about 1500 250 
 
 290. Development of the economic organization 251 
 
 291. Condition of the Baltic trade 252 
 
 292. Decline of the Hanseatic League 252 
 
 293. Decline of the commerce of South Germany 253 
 
CONTENTS xxvii 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 294. The chief cause of decline of German commerce in this period 
 
 was political 254 
 
 295. The natural outlets of commerce stopped by hostile states.. 255 
 
 296. The damage done by internal dissensions and by the Thirty 
 
 Years' War 255 
 
 297. Restriction of manufactures by the gilds 256 
 
 298. The eighteenth century marked by general depression, with 
 
 some signs of improvement 257 
 
 299. The rise of Prussia important mainly from the political stand- 
 
 point 257 
 
 300. Reforms in Prussia favoring economic development 258 
 
 301. Contrast of Prussia and Austria 259 
 
 302. Political factors hindering development of the lands subject to 
 
 Austria 259 
 
 303. Slow progress of industry and commerce .' 260 
 
 304. Attempts of the government to stimulate development 260 
 
 305. Austrian commerce still backward in 1800 261 
 
 Questions and topics 261 
 
 Bibliography 262 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 Italy and Minor States 
 
 306. Political condition of Italy in the modem period 263 
 
 307. Position of Venice at the beginning of the period 263 
 
 308. Blows at Venetian trade both by sea and land routes to India. 264 
 
 309. Relative decline of Venetian commerce 264 
 
 310. Decline of commerce and industry in Tuscany 265 
 
 311. Decline in other parts of Italy 265 
 
 312. Conditions in the Scandinavian countries 266 
 
 313. Rise of Russia to a position among the European states about 
 
 1700 267 
 
 314. Character of Russian commerce in the eighteenth century .... 267 
 
 Questions and topics 268 
 
 Bibliography 268 
 
 Topics for review 268 
 
xxvill CONTENTS 
 
 PART IV 
 RECENT COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 Commerce and Coal 
 
 SECTION Pi^GE 
 
 315. Statistical survey of development since 1800 270 
 
 316. Great growth of foreign commerce 270 
 
 317. Increase in the relative importance of commerce 271 
 
 318. The world now passing through a commercial revolution .... 272 
 
 319. Share of modem countries in the commerce of the world 272 
 
 320. Possible explanations of recent commercial development 273 
 
 321. Prime importance of technical factors, especially the use of coal 274 
 
 322. Power in coal 274 
 
 323. Dependence of modem industry on coal 275 
 
 324. Importance of coal, estimated in steam horse-power 275 
 
 325. Technical history of the steam-engine 276 
 
 326. Importance of steam greatest in the most recent period 276 
 
 Questions and topics 277 
 
 Bibliography 278 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 Machinery and Manufactures 
 
 327. Development of agriculture 280 
 
 328. Progress less in agriculture than in other branches of produc- 
 
 tion 280 
 
 329. Function of machinery 281 
 
 330. Advantages of machines 281 
 
 331. Revolution in old industries effected by machinery 282 
 
 332. Introduction of new industries 282 
 
 333. Importance of iron in the age of machinery 283 
 
 334. Scarcity of iron before the nineteenth century 283 
 
 335. Development of machine tools for working iron 284 
 
 336. Steel, character and utility 285 
 
 337. Recent improvements in the manufacture of steel; the Besse- 
 
 mer process ' 285 
 
 338. The open-hearth (Siemens-Martin) process 286 
 
 339. Development of the modern chemical industry 286 
 
 340. Influences determining the local distribution of manufactures . 287 
 
 Questions and topics 288 
 
 Bibliography 289 
 
CONTENTS xxix 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 Roads and Railroads 
 
 SECTION page 
 
 341. Commercial importance of the subjects of the chapter 290 
 
 342. Statistical survey of development 290 
 
 343. Improvement in the condition of roads 290 
 
 344. Importance of roads in the present transportation system. . . . 291 
 
 345. Advantage of transportation by water; canals 292 
 
 346. Development of canals, 1750-1850 293 
 
 347. Relative decline in importance of canals 293 
 
 348. Origin of the steam railroad 295 
 
 349. Early period of the railroad 296 
 
 350. Improvements in locomotives 296 
 
 351. Importance of steel in railroad construction 297 
 
 352. Development of the railroad system after 1850 298 
 
 353. Importance of railroads at present 299 
 
 Questions and topics 300 
 
 Bibliography 301 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 Means of Navigation and Communication 
 
 354. Transportation by sailing vessels and steamers 302 
 
 355. Development of sailing vessels 302 
 
 356. Relative decline of sailing vessels, notwithstanding improve- 
 
 ments 303 
 
 357. Steamers used at first chiefly for internal navigation 304 
 
 358. Beginning of steam navigation of the Atlantic 305 
 
 359. Improvement of the means of steam navigation 305 
 
 360. Gains resulting from increase in size 306 
 
 361. Resulting decline in freight rates 307 
 
 362. Modem ship canals 307 
 
 363. The Suez Canal and its services to commerce 308 
 
 364. The postal service about 1800 309 
 
 365. Postal reforms and their results 310 
 
 366. The telegraph before the application of electricity 310 
 
 367. The electric telegraph 311 
 
 368. Submarine telegraph lines 312 
 
 Questions and topics 312 
 
 Bibliography 314 
 
XXX CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 The Wares of Commerce 
 section page 
 
 369. Effect on commerce of technical progress 315 
 
 370. Growth of the sphere of commerce and resulting specialization 
 
 of production 315 
 
 371. Abolition of the slave trade 316 
 
 372. The great wares of commerce. Coal 317 
 
 373. Metals and manufactures 317 
 
 374. Petroleum 318 
 
 375. The grain trade; shght development before 1800 318 
 
 376. Extent and importance of the grain trade at present 319 
 
 377. Commerce in other foodstuffs 320 
 
 378. The textiles; changes in relative importance 320 
 
 379. Commerce in raw materials for the textile manufacture 321 
 
 380. Colonial products ; 322 
 
 381. Rise of beet sugar, and effect on commerce 323 
 
 382. The European sugar bounty system 323 
 
 Questions and topics 324 
 
 Bibliography 326 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 The Modern Organization 
 
 383. Qualities of modern commerce. Certainty 327 
 
 384. Regularity 328 
 
 385. Economy 328 
 
 386. Sensitiveness 329 
 
 387. Importance of the telegraph, illustrated by conditions preced- 
 
 ing its introduction 330 
 
 388. Services of the telegraph to the modern organization 331 
 
 389. Functions of the merchant 332 
 
 390. Growth in number and variety of the mercantile class 332 
 
 391. Insurance and speculation 333 
 
 392. Services of the speculator to commerce 334 
 
 393. Decline of the market and fair, and rise of the produce exchange 335 
 
 394. Contrast of the character of association in commerce and in 
 
 manufactures or transportation 336 
 
 395. More efficient utilization of capital in modern trade 336 
 
 396. Benefit of banks to trade 337 
 
 397. Criticism of the present organization; crises 337 
 
 398. Crises before 1850 338 
 
CONTENTS xxxi 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 399. Crises since 1850 338 
 
 Questions and topics 339 
 
 Bibliography 341 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 Commercial Policy 
 
 400. War and peace in the nineteenth century 342 
 
 401. French privateers and English commerce 342 
 
 402. Napoleon and the Continental System 343 
 
 403. English reprisals 344 
 
 404. Failure of the Continental System 344 
 
 405. Effect of the war on England and France 345 
 
 406. Other wars of the nineteenth century 346 
 
 407. Removal of old obstacles to commerce 347 
 
 408. Customs tariffs; the prohibitive system 347 
 
 409. The period of free trade, 1860-1880 b48 
 
 410. Reduction of customs duties 349 
 
 411. The return to protection 349 
 
 412. Colonial policy 350 
 
 Questions and topics 351 
 
 Bibliography 352 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 England: Commercial Development, 1800-1850 
 
 413. Importance of the commerce of England 354 
 
 414. Statistics of the growth of commerce, 1800-1850 354 
 
 415. Change in the relative importance of different exports 355 
 
 416. Development of English manufactures 356 
 
 417. Introduction of machinery 357 
 
 418. Steam power and railroad transportation 357 
 
 419. Gradual development of the cotton manufacture 357 
 
 420. Character of the import trade 358 
 
 421. Increase in importance of trade with distant continents 359 
 
 422. Great importance of the trade with the United States 359 
 
 423. Trade with other distant countries 360 
 
 424. Trade with British dependencies 360 
 
 425. Colonies in North America and Australasia 361 
 
 Questions and topics 361 
 
 Bibliography 363 
 
xxxii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 England: Reform of Commercial Policy 
 section page 
 
 426. Burden of tariff on trade and manufactures 365 
 
 427. Prevalence of smuggling 366 
 
 428. Beginning of the reform movement, 1820 366 
 
 429. Reform of the tariff under Huskisson 366 
 
 430. Results and later completion of the reform 367 
 
 431. The corn laws and their effects 368 
 
 432. Movement of English manufacturers for a repeal of the corn 
 
 laws 369 
 
 433. Repeal of the corn laws, and its significance 369 
 
 434. Reform of the navigation acts 370 
 
 435. Final repeal of the navigation acts 371 
 
 Questions and topics 371 
 
 Bibliography 372 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 England: Commercial Development, 1850-1900 
 
 436. Development of English commerce in the last half century. . 373 
 
 437. Chief causes of the rapid development of English commerce. . 374 
 
 438. Character of English exports 375 
 
 439. Leading items among the exports 375 
 
 440. Imports; prominence of foodstuffs 375 
 
 441. Imports of raw materials and manufactures 376 
 
 442. Explanation of the excess of imports over exports 376 
 
 443. Growth of the merchant marine 377 
 
 444. Relative rank of English ports 378 
 
 445. Relative share of different countries in England's commerce . . 378 
 
 Questions and topies 379 
 
 Bibliography 380 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 England: Present and Future 
 
 446. Relative decHne in value and quality of English exports in 
 
 recent years 381 
 
 447. Significance of the decline and three possible explanations of it 382 
 
 448. (1) Competition in manufactures of low-grade labor 382 
 
 449. Competition in manufactures of high-grade labor 382 
 
 450. (2) Alleged weakness of the English mercantile organization . . 383 
 
 451. Insufficient knowledge of the needs of foreigners 384 
 
CONTENTS xxxiii 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 452. Unwillingness to adopt foreign trade customs 384 
 
 453. Attempts to remedy these faults 385 
 
 454. (3) Adverse influence of foreign tariffs; proposals to revise the 
 
 English policy of free trade 385 
 
 455. Demand for customs duties as a means of defence and retalia- 
 
 tion 386 
 
 456. Proposal of an imperial customs union 387 
 
 457. Obstacles to a customs union 387 
 
 Questions and topics 388 
 
 Bibliography 389 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 The German States 
 
 458. Connection of the commercial and the political development 
 
 of Germany 391 
 
 459. Summary of the political development 391 
 
 460. Condition of Germany about 1815 392 
 
 461. Backwardness of commerce and manufactures 392 
 
 462. Factories dependent on antiquated sources of power 393 
 
 463. Commerce small, and marked by the export of raw materials 393 
 
 464. Formation of the ZoUverein customs union) 394 
 
 465. Development following the formation of the ZoUverein 395 
 
 466. Protection and the free-trade movement 395 
 
 467. Political factors in the tariff question 396 
 
 468. Reaction in customs policy after the founding of the Grerman 
 
 Empire 396 
 
 469. Return to protection in 1879 397 
 
 Questions and topics 397 
 
 Bibliography 398 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Germany under the Empire 
 
 470. Effect on economic development of the establishment of the 
 
 Empire 399 
 
 471. Development of commerce, 1870-1900 399 
 
 472. Character of present German commerce 400 
 
 473. Rapid development of factory industry 401 
 
 474. Resources of coal and iron 401 
 
 475. Quality of the people 402 
 
 476. Superiority in technical training 402 
 
xxxiv CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 477. Efficiency of the mercantile organization 403 
 
 478. Commercial travelers and trade papers 403 
 
 479. Other factors in commercial development 404 
 
 480. Examples of German success in trade 405 
 
 481. Development of the German tariff; the agrarian party 405 
 
 482. Questions involved in the German tariff policy 406 
 
 Questions and topics 407 
 
 Bibliography 408 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 France 
 
 483. Condition of France before the Revolution 409 
 
 484. Effect of the Revolution 409 
 
 485. Backward features of industry and commerce 410 
 
 486. The French tariff in the first part of the century 410 
 
 487. Sluggishness of industrial development 410 
 
 488. Effect of the tariff on commerce 411 
 
 489. Reform of the tariff by Napoleon III 411 
 
 490. Effect of the reform on commerce 412 
 
 491. The free-trade treaty of 1860 412 
 
 492. Results of the treaty of 1860 413 
 
 493. Return to protection after the war with Germany 413 
 
 494. Growth of protective duties 414 
 
 495. Attitude of the French toward commerce 414 
 
 496. Position of France in modern commerce 415 
 
 497. Failure of the government in its attempts to stimulate com- 
 
 merce 415 
 
 Questions and topics 416 
 
 Bibliography 417 
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 Minor States of Central and Northern Europe 
 
 498. States of minor commercial importance 418 
 
 499. Commerce of the Netherlands to 1830 418 
 
 500. Dutch commerce since 1830 419 
 
 501. Position of the Dutch in present commerce 420 
 
 502. Belgium; early industrial development 420 
 
 503. Belgian commercial policy 421 
 
 504. Survey of the recent development of Belgian commerce 421 
 
 505. Switzerland; obstacles to industrial development 422 
 
CONTENTS XXXV 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 506. Position of the Swiss in present commerce 422 
 
 507. Austria-Hungary; survey of commercial development 423 
 
 508. Obstacles to the growth of commerce and industry 423 
 
 509. Gradual removal of these obstacles 423 
 
 510. Growth of commerce since 1850 424 
 
 511. Position of Austria-Hungary in present commerce 424 
 
 512. The Scandinavian States; their position in present commerce. . 425 
 
 513. Denmark 425 
 
 514. Norway; Norwegian shipping 426 
 
 515. Sweden 426 
 
 Questions and topics 426 
 
 Bibliography 427 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 States of Southern Europe 
 
 516. Condition of Italy in the first half of the century 429 
 
 517. Lack of political and commercial union 429 
 
 518. Establishment of Italian unity 430 
 
 519. Survey of Italian commerce since 1860 431 
 
 520. Development of agriculture and commerce after 1860 431 
 
 521. Increase of customs duties; protection; tariff war 432 
 
 522. Italian agriculture; poverty of the people 433 
 
 523. Manufactures 434 
 
 524. Shipping; colonies 435 
 
 525. Recent progress of Italy 435 
 
 526. Spain 436 
 
 527. Spanish commerce in the first half of the century 437 
 
 528. Recent commerce of Spain 437 
 
 529. Portugal 438 
 
 Questions and topics 439 
 
 Bibliography 440 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 Eastern Europe 
 
 530. Great size and small commerce of the Russian Empire 441 
 
 531. Historical reasons for backward development 441 
 
 532. Russian commerce about 1800 442 
 
 533. Means of transportation 442 
 
 534. Chief ports 443 
 
 535. Development up to the Crimean War 443 
 
xxxvi CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 536. Reforms; growth of the railroad system 444 
 
 537. Development of commerce ' 444 
 
 538. Character of industries and commerce 445 
 
 539. Recent history of the tariff 446 
 
 540. Development and cost of manufactures 446 
 
 541. Effect of the tariff on agriculture 447 
 
 542. Effect on railroads 448 
 
 543. Commercial reasons for Russia's eastern movement 448 
 
 544. Course of the Asiatic trade 450 
 
 545. States of the Balkan peninsula 451 
 
 546. Commerce of the Balkan states 452 
 
 Questions and topics 452 
 
 Bibliography 454 
 
 Topics for review 455 
 
 PART V 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 The Organization of Production, 1789 
 
 547. Comparison of conditions in 1789 and in 1900 456 
 
 /548. Chief exports in 1790 458 
 
 549. Predominance of agriculture; experiments with crops 458 
 
 550. Breadstuffs 459 
 
 551. Other products of northern agriculture 460 
 
 552. Southern staples: tobacco 460 
 
 553. Rice and indigo 461 
 
 554. Methods of agriculture 462 
 
 555. Forest products; potash 462 
 
 556. Fisheries 463 
 
 557. Chief imports, 1791 464 
 
 / 558. Classes of wares imported; manufactures 464 
 
 ' 559. Significance of the import of manufactures 465 
 
 560. Household self-sufficiency 466 
 
 561. Town self-sufficiency 466 
 
 562. Development of household manufactures 467 
 
 563. Appreciation and criticism of American manufactures at this 
 
 time 468 
 
 Questions and topics 469 
 
 Bibliography, general and early 470 
 
CONTENTS xxxvii 
 
 CHAPTER XL VI 
 
 Internal Trade and Foreign Commerce, 1789 
 
 section paob 
 
 564. Development of internal trade, 1789-1900 472 
 
 565. Condition of the roads; effect on freight traffic 472 
 
 •^^66. Sparsity of passenger traffic .• 473 
 
 ^ 567. Relatively great importance of waterways 473 
 
 568. Importance of the country store 474 
 
 569. Benefits and disadvantages of the comitry store 474 
 
 570. Relative smallness of interstate trade 475 
 
 571. Share of different States in foreign commerce 476 
 
 572. Development of the chief seaports into cities • 477 
 
 573. Foreign countries of the greatest commercial importance to 
 
 the United States 477 
 
 ^574. Insignificance of direct trade with Asia and Africa 478 
 
 575. Unique position of England in trade with the United States . . 479 
 
 576. Commerce with the rest of Europe 479 
 
 577. Importance of the West Indies as an outlet for wares excluded 
 
 from Europe 480 
 
 578. Character of commerce with the West Indies; triangular trade 480 
 
 579. Development of ship-building in the colonial period 481 
 
 580. Extension of American shipping 482 
 
 Questions and topics 483 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 Commerce and Policy, 1789-1815 
 
 581. Importance of commercial policy in this period 485 
 
 582. Questions of policy 485 
 
 583. Policy of England 486 
 
 584. Policy of France and other states 486 
 
 ^585. Conditions of American trade with Europe in 1789 487 
 
 \-586. Conditions of trade with the West Indies 488 
 
 587. Weakness of the United States at this time 488 
 
 588. Survey of American commerce, 1789-1815 489 
 
 589. Fluctuations in the export trade; share of domestic and of 
 
 foreign exports 489 
 
 590. Varying fortunes of foreign trade not explained by conditions 
 
 at home 490 
 
 591. Conditions abroad; effect of the European wars on domestic 
 
 exports 491 
 
 592. Effect on foreign exports and on the carrying trade 492 
 
 593. Prosperity of American conomerce and shipping 492 
 
xxxviii CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 594. Check to prosperity after 1800 493 
 
 595. Decline of commerce; embargo and war 494 
 
 596. Effect of the decline of commerce on the development of 
 
 American manufactures 494 
 
 597. Considerations determining early tariff policy 495 
 
 598. Survey of tariff policy 496 
 
 Questions and topics 496 
 
 Bibliography 497 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 National Expansion, 1815-1860 
 
 599. Survey of commerce, 1815-1860 498 
 
 600. Reasons for slowness of growth 498 
 
 601. Absorption of the national energy in territorial expansion. . 499 
 
 602. Relative decline in the importance of foreign trade 499 
 
 603. Importance of the problem of transportation in this period. . 501 
 
 604. The turnpike era 501 
 
 605. Failure of the turnpikes to meet the country's demands .... 502 
 
 606. Importance of the western waterways 503 
 
 607. Invention and application of the steamboat 503 
 
 608. Development of river transportation 505 
 
 609. Demand for canals in this period 506 
 
 610. The Erie Canal, 1825, and others 506 
 
 611. Commercial benefit of the canals 507 
 
 612. Canals less important than rivers for distant shipments 509 
 
 613. Demand for further improvement met by railroads 509 
 
 614. Early American railroads little used for freight traffic 510 
 
 615. Extension of the railroad system in the West after 1850. ... 511 
 
 616. Effect of the improvements in transportation, especially 
 
 marked in the following period 511 
 
 617. Prosperity of the American merchant marine 514 
 
 618. Position and prospects of the merchant marine in 1860 514 
 
 619. Navigation policy; reforms and restrictions 515 
 
 Questions and topics 516 
 
 Bibliography 517 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 Exports, 1815-1860 
 
 620. Chief exports in 1860 518 
 
 621. Changes since 1800 518 
 
CONTENTS xxxix 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 622. Cotton before 1800 519 
 
 623. Growth in importance of cotton 520 
 
 624. Demand for efficient means of cleaning cotton 520 
 
 625. Invention of the saw gin by Whitney, 1793 521 
 
 626. Extension of cotton cultivation, and increase of exports 521 
 
 627. King Cotton 522 
 
 628. Slight contributions of the South to exports, aside from cotton 528 
 
 629. Trade between the North, the South, and Europe 524 
 
 630. Chief exports from the North 524 
 
 631. Gradual increase in the exports of foodstuffs 525 
 
 632. Exports of precious metals; result of the California gold dis- 
 
 coveries 525 
 
 Questions and topics 526 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 Imports, Policy, Direction of Commerce, 1815-1860 
 
 633. Chief imports in 1860 528 
 
 634. Significance of the import trade at this time 528 
 
 635. Growth of domestic manufactures 529 
 
 636. Increase in the use of coal 530 
 
 637. Sluggish development of the iron industry 530 
 
 638. Success of the cotton manufacture 531 
 
 639. Failure to establish a strong woolen manufacture 531 
 
 640. Other manufactures 532 
 
 641. Dependence of the South on the North for manufactured 
 
 wares 533 
 
 642. Beginning of the system of protective tariffs, 1816 533 
 
 643. Course of tariff policy, 1816-1860 534 
 
 644. Effect of the tariff on industrial development 535 
 
 645. Changes in the relative importance of shipping ports; southern 
 
 ports and the export trade 535 
 
 646. Northern ports and the import trade 536 
 
 647. Changes in the direction of trade. New character of the trade 
 
 with England 536 
 
 648. Trade with Canada and the West Indies 537 
 
 649. Expansion of American commerce in Europe, South America, 
 
 and the far East 537 
 
 Questions and topics 538 
 
xl CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER LI 
 
 National Development, 1860-1900 
 
 section page 
 
 650. Survey of commercial development, 1860-1900 540 
 
 651. Internal development of the country 540 
 
 652. Extension of railroads 541 
 
 653. Improvements in the operation of railroads 542 
 
 6*54. Reduction of railroad rates " 543 
 
 655. Contribution of the railroads to recent national development. 543 
 
 656. Relative decline in transportation by canals and rivers 544 
 
 657. Importance of the Great Lakes; St. Mary's Canal 544 
 
 658. Decline of American shipping 545 
 
 659. Effect of the Civil War on the merchant marine 546 
 
 660. Other causes of decline 546 
 
 661. Present position of the merchant marine 547 
 
 662. Development of national manufactures 547 
 
 663. Coal production and the use of steam power 548 
 
 664. Machinery 549 
 
 665. Extension of manufactures in the West and South 549 
 
 Questions and topics 550 
 
 Bibliography 551 
 
 CHAPTER LII 
 Exports, 1860-1900 
 
 666. Chief exports in 1900 553 
 
 667. Noteworthy changes since 1860 553 
 
 668. Reasons for the increase of agricultural exports 555 
 
 669. Improvement of agricultural implements 555 
 
 670. Wheat and flour 556 
 
 671. Indian corn .* 557 
 
 672. Stock, meat, and dairy products 557 
 
 673. Relative decline in importance of exports from the South . . 557 
 
 674. Cotton * 558 
 
 675. Export of mineral products: iron 559 
 
 676. Recent development of the American iron industry 559 
 
 677. Machinery 560 
 
 678. Copper 561 
 
 679. Petroleum 561 
 
 680. Development of the oil industry 562 
 
 Questions and topics 562 
 
CONTENTS xli 
 
 CHAPTER LIII 
 
 Imports, Policy, Direction of Commerce, 1860-1900 
 
 section page 
 
 681. Survey of the import trade, 1860-1900 564 
 
 682. Changes in the character of imports 564 
 
 683. Character of foods imported 565 
 
 684. Question of producing these foods in the U. S. Sugar 565 
 
 685. Increase in raw materials imported 566 
 
 686. The chief raw materials among imports 567 
 
 687. Decline in importance of finished manufactures imported. . . . 567 
 
 688. Variety of imported manufactures 568 
 
 689. Change in tariff policy since the Civil War 568 
 
 690. Increase in protective duties 569 
 
 691. The tariff at the close of the century 569 
 
 692. Leading ports, 1860-1900 570 
 
 693. Direction of commerce abroad 571 
 
 694. Relative commercial importance of different parts of the world 571 
 
 695. Importance of the English trade 572 
 
 696. Trade with other countries: Europe 572 
 
 697. The Americas and Asia 574 
 
 Questions and topics 575 
 
 Topics for review 577 
 
 CHAPTER LIV 
 Recent Commercial Development 
 
 698. Rise in the price level since 1896 579 
 
 699. Effects of increase in the world's gold production 579 
 
 700. Railroads and shipping of the world 580 
 
 701. Increased eflficiency of the carrying trade 581 
 
 702. Share of leading countries in the world's commerce 582 
 
 703. Commerce of the United Kingdom 582 
 
 704. Illustration by the recent commerce of Japan 584 
 
 705. Relative decUne of the United Kingdom in the world's markets . 585 
 
 706. Development of German commerce 585 
 
 707. Relative importance of the internal and the foreign trade of 
 
 the United States 686 
 
 708. Growth of transportation facilities in the U. S 586 
 
 709. Change in the character of the export trade 587 
 
xlii CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 710. Development of American manufactures 588 
 
 711. Direction of commerce 589 
 
 712. Recent tariff and currency legislation 590 
 
 Authorities 592 
 
 Titles of Books cited by Abbreviations 632 
 
 Index 637 
 
LIST OF MAPS 
 
 NO. PAGE 
 
 1. The Ancient World (colored) Facing 9 
 
 2. Roman Roads in Southern Britain 28 
 
 3. Tolls on the River Loire 58 
 
 4. The Fairs of Champagne 66 
 
 5. Trade Routes between Asia and Europe ... 85 
 
 6. The Venetian Empire 91 
 
 7. Trade Routes between Germany and Italy ... 94 
 
 8. The Hanseatic Commercial Empire about 1400 . 106 
 
 9. Commercial Geography of Europe about 1250 . . 108 
 
 10. Trade Relations of a German Merchant about 1400 114 
 
 11. A Medieval Map of the World . . . .Facing 129 
 The Laurent ian Portolano of 1351. Reproduced 
 
 by permission from Beazley's ''Prince Henry, the 
 Navigator/^ (Putnams). 
 
 12. Discoveries of the Portuguese 131 
 
 13. Map of the Known World in the Time of Columbus 132 
 
 14. European Powers in America (colored) . .Facing 166 
 
 15. The Spanish Monarchy 175 
 
 16. European Powers in the East about 1700 . . . 193 
 
 17. Spheres of Trade of English Companies in the Early 
 
 Seventeenth Century 203 
 
 18. The French Colonial Empire 237 
 
 19. Germany in the Eighteenth Century 251 
 
 20. Italy, 1515 263 
 
 21. Waterways of North Central Europe 294 
 
 22. Growth of the European Railroads 298 
 
 xliii 
 
xliv LIST OF MAPS 
 
 NO. PAGE 
 
 23. The British Empire, 1902 (colored) . . .Facing 360 
 
 24. Development of the German Zollverein .... 394 
 
 25. The Trans-Siberian Railroad ....... 449 
 
 26. North America in 1782 457 
 
 27. United States, Acquisition of Territory, 1783-1853 . 500 
 
 28. River Transportation in 1860 504 
 
 29. The Erie Canal, 1825 507 
 
 30. Canals of the United States ....... 508 
 
 31. Railroads, 1830-1850 512 
 
 32. Railroads, 1850-1860 513 
 
 33. Products of the United States 554 
 
 34. Course of Steamship Lines in 1880 573 
 
A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 PART I.— ANCIENT COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 GENERAL CONDITIONS 
 
 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. 
 
 1 1 
 
2 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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 con- 
 sumer 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, (i) Per- 
 sonal. — 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 un- 
 willing 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 con- 
 siderable 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 pur- 
 suit of commerce, which we may term physical, appears in 
 
GENERAL CONDITIONS 3 
 
 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 rob- 
 bers. — 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 
 
4 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 every mile of his progress, was exposed to attack by high- 
 waymen 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 pro- 
 poses 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 them- 
 selves; 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 
 
GENERAL CONDITIONS 5 
 
 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 
 hke 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, Out- 
 look, 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 transporta- 
 bility, 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, gun- 
 powder, whisky, lottery tickets, imported iron, cigarettes, improper 
 literature? 
 
 13. Government restrictions now are due usually to one of three 
 
6 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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 
 
 [Note. — Bibliographical suggestions in this part of the book are 
 designed to aid teacher and student in their ordinary work. The authori- 
 ties at the end of the book will indicate to more advanced students further 
 sources of information. Beside the brief descriptive notes the desirability 
 of books for student and teacher is indicated by asterisks (* desirable ; 
 ** most desirable). Books which are lacking in scholarship are sometimes 
 recommended for other reasons.] 
 
 For commerce in its general aspects the reader is referred to other 
 books in this series, and to the standard commercial geographies. I 
 propose here to cover briefly books on the history of commerce since 
 ancient times; and as the list is restricted to books written in English it 
 must be confined mainly to those on the history of English commerce. 
 Books on ancient commerce will be considered in the chapters imme 
 diately following. 
 
 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. This book, however, seems to have been withdrawn 
 from sale. Useful bibliographical information will be found also in Pal- 
 grave's Dictionary, and in the Subject Index of the British Museum 
 Library, covering accessions for ten years preceding 1902. The A. L. A. 
 Catalogue gives full bibliographical information about popular books in 
 print; and Bowker and lies, Reader's guide, has a brief bibliography on 
 commerce and its history. 
 
 In default of a general bibliography the student must refer to books 
 describing conditions in England. The most complete and scholarly bibliog- 
 raphy 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 nine- 
 teenth century. For the medieval period the general student has a bibliog- 
 raphy approaching near to perfection by Charles Gross, Sources and 
 hterature of English history, London and N. Y., 1900, but this work is 
 too advanced and too general for the student who seeks merely an intro- 
 duction to the history of commerce. Ashley's Economic history, also, 
 gives useful references on the medieval period. 
 
GENERAL CONDITIONS 7 
 
 Manuals. — 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, * Out- 
 lines of the history of commerce, Chicago, Powers & Lyons, 1902, occu- 
 pies 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 skele- 
 ton maps for the student to fill in. It seeks to give no information di- 
 rectly. 
 
 General Works. — Of the general works on the history of conunerce 
 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, $2, 
 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. 
 
 The book which I recommend most strongly to teachers who are re- 
 stricted 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. If Cunningham's large work is 
 provided the teacher and student can afford to neglect the smaller manuals 
 on English economic history: Cunningham and McArthur, Outlines of Eng. 
 industrial hist., N. Y., Macmillan, 1902, $1.50; George T. Warner, Land- 
 marks in Eng. indust. hist., London (N. Y., Macmillan), 1899, 5s.; Gib- 
 bins, Industry in England, London (N. Y., Scribner, $2.50), 1896; L. L. 
 
8 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Price, Short hist, of Eng. commerce, London, 1900, 3s. 6d.; E, P. Chey- 
 ney, Indust. and soc. hist, of England, N. Y., Macmillan, 1901, $1.40. It 
 is not easy to discriminate between these books; any or all of them can 
 be used to advantage for parallel reading or the study of topics. 
 
 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. 
 Colbeck's * Public schools historical atlas, London and N. Y., Longmans, 
 2 ed., 1885, $1.50, containing 101 mpps from the series on the epochs of 
 Modern History, and provided with an index, as every atlas should be, 
 will serve most needs. Gardiner's School atlas of English history, same 
 publishers and price, composed in large part of the same material, is a 
 satisfactory substitute. Perthes, Pocket atlas of medieval and modem 
 Europe, may also be mentiond. 
 
 The outline maps of the McKinley Publishing Company (Philadelphia), 
 and of the Rand McNally Co., will be found valuable for the use both of 
 teacher and class. 
 
 In many cases a modem altas is more desirable than a historical 
 atlas. Longmans' ** School atlas, N. Y., 1901, $1.50, is an admirable 
 work, which should be in the hands of every student, and the Century 
 ** Atlas ($10), is indispensable for reference purposes. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ORIENTAL PERIOD 
 
 6. Prehistoric commerce. Ancient Egypt. — The origins of 
 commerce are lost in obscurity. Before people are sufficiently 
 civilized to leave written records of their doings they engage 
 in trade; we can observe this among savage tribes at the 
 present day, and we know that it held true of the past, from 
 finding among the traces of primitive man ornaments and 
 weapons far from the places where they were mad^ Such 
 evidences, interesting as they are, belong to the prehistoric 
 period, and this sketch of early commerce must begin with the 
 
 peoples who had acquired the art of writing and have left us 
 records from which we can gain some idea of their history. 
 
 First among these peoples, in point of time, were the 
 Egyptians. Three thousand years before Christ, at the time 
 when the great pyramids were built, this people had already 
 attained a developed civilization, which, in the opinion of 
 modern scholars, can be traced back even thousands of years 
 more. The Egyptians, however, were not a commercial people. 
 Their main resource was agriculture, and though they devel- 
 oped some of the industrial arts to great efficiency they used 
 the products for direct consumption rather than for trade. 
 Their country, a strip of the Nile valley over five hundred 
 miles long, and but a few miles wide, was so much alike in its 
 different parts that it offered little inducement to internal 
 exchange over great distances; while its isolation by deserts 
 was a bar to the growth of foreign commerce. The sea, in 
 this early period, was a hindrance, rather than a help, to 
 communication. 
 
 7. Rise of Eg5^tian commerce ; characteristic wares. — 
 
 9 
 
10 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Egypt never became a commercial country so long as it re- 
 mained under its native rulers. With the period known as 
 the New Empire, however, beginning about 1600 B.C., com- 
 merce at least became more important than it had been before. 
 Regular communication was established with Asia, and cara- 
 vans brought to the country the products of Phoenicia, Syria, 
 and the Red Sea district. Before the eyes of Joseph and his 
 brethren " behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead 
 with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going 
 to carry it down to Egypt"; to this caravan Joseph was sold 
 as a slave. The wares named here were characteristic imports 
 of Egypt; among others were precious woods, ivory, gold, 
 wine, and oil. Among the exports of the country were grain, 
 linen, and manufactured wares like weapons, rings, and chains, i 
 Even to a late period trade was carried on by barter, the use' 
 of coins being rare, and many of the imports came as tribute,j 
 for which the Egyptians needed to make no return. | 
 
 8. Development of Egyptian commerce in a later period. — 
 Only in the last period of Egyptian independence, a few cen- 
 turies before the country was conquered by Alexander, did 
 commerce bind it closely to other portions of the ancient 
 world. The government, which formerly had discouraged 
 trade, now permitted and encouraged it; Greek merchants 
 came in considerable numbers to Egypt; and an active com- 
 merce sprang up. It is said that Necho, the king who ruled 
 about 600 B.C., sent out Phoenician sailors to attempt the 
 circumnavigation of Africa; and the same king took up the 
 work of cutting a canal across the isthmus of Suez which was 
 completed shortly afterward. The canal was allowed to fill 
 up with sand, but was reopened later, and its course may be 
 distinctly traced, it is said, along the route of the modern 
 canal. 
 
 9. Rise of commerce in the Mesopotamian Valley. — The 
 district northwest of the Persian Gulf, centering in the river 
 valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, offered opportunities for 
 the rise of civilization which led to the establishment of settled 
 
ORIENTAL PERIOD 11 
 
 governments while Egypt was still living secluded from the 
 rest of the world. This district was rich in agricultural pro- 
 ducts, but lacked the metals, some of the building materials, 
 and other of the raw materials of industry. Though it was 
 bordered in part by deserts, communication with other districts 
 was far easier than in the case of Egypt; and commerce with 
 other countries early acquired an importance here which 
 Egyptian commerce attained only in the last period of the 
 country's history. Ancient Babylon, which rose to importance 
 some time after 3000 b.c, under a Semitic people (with a 
 language akin to that of the Jews), was a market-place for 
 wares brought not only from the South (Arabia) and West 
 (Syria), but also from the East (Iran, the later Persia). Clay 
 tablets, used like modern paper for the preservation of records, 
 have been discovered and deciphered in modern times, and 
 show an active trade in the precious metals, grain, wool, 
 building materials, etc. 
 
 10. Development of commerce under the Assyrian and 
 Persian empires. — Military expeditions extended the com- 
 mercial relations of the people of this district; and the con- 
 quests of an Assyrian, who founded a great empire about 
 745 B.C., were guided in part by commercial considerations. 
 Babylon, Armenia, Syria, and parts of Iran and Palestine, 
 were brought under one rule; peoples on the frontiers were 
 held in check, and order was fairly w^ell maintained within; 
 so that merchants could traverse the different parts of the 
 empire, and meet at its capital, Nineveh, to exchange their 
 wares. The Assyrian empire was made by the sword, and it 
 fell by the sword after a brief duration; but its place was 
 taken by succeeding states, and commerce continued to grow. 
 The Persian empire, which enjoyed its full power for about 
 two hundred years, until its destruction by Alexander in 
 330 B.C., included an area more than half that of modern 
 Europe; it stretched from the Mediterranean on the West to 
 the Indus on the East, from the Indian Ocean and the Persian 
 Gulf to the Black and Caspian seas. Within these boundaries 
 
y 
 
 12 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 lay some of the richest regions of the ancient world, the pro- 
 ducts of which could now be exchanged without passing from 
 under the protection of the Great King. 
 
 11. Relative insignificance of the commerce of the ancient 
 empires. The Jews. The Phoenicians. — In the Oriental 
 states which we have hitherto considered, commerce never 
 grew to a position of decisive importance in the national life, 
 however great it may seem when we compare it with its meager 
 beginnings. It served mainly the needs of luxury, and left 
 untouched the economic position of the mass of the people. 
 If we seek in the ancient Orient a people whose very existence 
 depended on trade we must look further. We do not find the 
 Jews to have been such a people, though we are accustomed 
 nowadays to think of them as devoted largely to the pursuit 
 of trade. The descriptions of the Bible show that they lived 
 mainly a pastoral and agricultural life; and down to the time 
 of the Roman Empire they counted for little in the world of 
 commerce. A truly commercial people we do find, however, 
 in near neighbors of the Jews, the Phoenicians, who inhabited 
 a strip of land on the coast of Syria and Palestine, scarcely 
 ten miles wide in most places and little over a hundred miles 
 long. They could gain a scanty food supply from the level 
 ground, and had timber in abundance on the mountains that 
 separated them from the interior, but had to look to trade 
 with other peoples for the means of growth which their home 
 denied them. 
 
 12. Commerce of the Phoenicians. Beginnings of sea- 
 trade. — From raw materials which were in many cases pro- 
 cured from other countries they manufactured products which 
 found a market throughout the ancient world. Their cloths | 
 and glass were celebrated; they exported large amounts of,- 
 metal ware; and they had a monopoly of the purple dye ex- 
 tracted from a species of shell-fish, which was highly prized 
 throughout this period. These wares were but a few of those 
 in which they regularly traded; the reader who would have a 
 more detailed account of the wares of Phoenician commerce, 
 
ORIENTAL PERIOD 13 
 
 especially the imports, is advised to study the description in 
 the Bible. They maintained an active exchange with peoples 
 to the South, East, and North of them by caravan routes, 
 while they were the first people of antiquity to secure such 
 mastery over the sea that it could be made the medium of 
 regular and extensive transportation. The beginning of these 
 sea voyages is lost in the obscurity of the past. We know 
 that they were highly developed by 1500 b.c, when Sidon 
 was the leading Phoenician city, and that they did not cease 
 to extend when the primacy of the Phoenician cities passed to 
 Tyre. The Phoenicians taught the art of navigation to the 
 ancient world. Their ships were long the accepted models of 
 construction, and the Greeks learned from them to direct their 
 course at night by the North, or, as the Greeks called it, the 
 Phoenician star. 
 
 13. Development of sea-trade; wares of Phoenician com- 
 merce. — Beginning, presumably, with fishing and short coast- 
 ing trips, and reluctant always to venture out in the stormy 
 season, they had reached the islands of Cyprus and Rhodes, 
 and had established regular commerce with Greece in the 
 heroic age of Greek history, say before 1000 b.c. From this 
 point their progress was rapid, and soon they had traversed 
 the whole Mediterranean, and passed outside it into the 
 Atlantic. The means of cheap transportation which they con- 
 trolled gave them an immense economic advantage. We may 
 accept as a product of the imagination the story that on their 
 arrival in Spain they found silver so plentiful that they not 
 only filled their ships but made their utensils, even their 
 anchors, from it; still the story shadows forth a truth. They 
 found wares in some districts cheap and begging a market 
 because of their abundance, which were rare and highly prized 
 elsewhere; and thejT^eould make great profits by exchanging 
 wares so as to put each where it was most wanted. From the 
 island which we now call England the^^rocured_tin, which 
 is a very rare metal in Europe, and which was especially 
 desired as a component of the important alloy bronze. They 
 
14 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 got copper in Cyprus and Spain, also silver and iron in Spain, 
 and gold and ivory in Africa. They carried westward the 
 wares of the Orient (cf. our words cinnamon, cassia, hyssop, 
 cumin, manna, all from Hebrew forms), and manufactures, 
 which not only gratified the momentary needs of Europeans 
 but served also as models for imitation. 
 
 14. Establishment of colonies by the PhcBnicians. Car- 
 thage. — The Phoenicians are noteworthy not only as the 
 greatest merchants and the first navigators of the ancient 
 world; they were the leaders also in the founding of colonies. 
 At points important for commercial or naval reasons they 
 established stations which enabled them to trade in security 
 with the natives and to control the sea. Gades, for instance 
 (the modern Cadiz) , near the straits of Gibraltar, was a rallying- 
 point from which the Carthaginians extended their voyages t^ 
 the tin islands in the North, and far down the Atlantic coast 
 of Africa on the South. Similar stations were established on 
 many of the Mediterranean islands (Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, 
 Balearics); and one founded on the north coast of Africa, 
 Carthage (near the site of modern Tunis), grew to especial 
 importance. The power of the Phoenicians declined, a few 
 centuries after 1000 B.C., partly by reason of internal dissen- 
 sions and the attacks of land-powers like Assyria, partly Jby 
 reason of the commercial rivalry of the Greeks, who had risen 
 to an independent position and cut the lines of communication 
 between East and West. In this period Carthage fell heir to 
 the Phoenician establishments in the western Mediterranean, 
 and maintained its power and policy on substantially similar 
 lines until it received its great defeats at the hands of Rome. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. What evidences of prehistoric commerce are given by Indian 
 arrow-heads, wampum, Indian ornaments, or the relics of the mound- 
 builders? 
 
 2. What modern countries have the strip-form of Egypt? [See a 
 map of South America.] 
 
 3. Are there any modem countries like Egypt in the uniformity of 
 
ORIENTAL PERIOD 15 
 
 their conditions and products, diminishing the stimulus to internal trade? 
 [Study, for example, conditions in Alaska, Nevada, or Australia.] 
 
 4. Are any of the exports of ancient Egypt still characteristic wares 
 of the country? [See the Statesman's Year-Book, index under words 
 Egypt, commerce.] 
 
 5. What can you infer as to the security of trade from the fact that 
 it was carried on by caravans, bands of merchants? 
 
 6. What physical barriers obstructed Egyptian commerce? [See 
 map 33 of Longmans' School atlas, noting the deserts and the cataracts 
 of the Nile.] 
 
 7. Write an essay on the economic conditions of Egypt, from references 
 to that country in the Bible. 
 
 8. What countries of the modem world fill the space occupied by the 
 ancient empires of the East? What commerce do they carry on? [See 
 Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 9. Can you suggest any reasons why the commerce of these regions 
 seems now much less important than in ancient times? 
 
 10. Write an essay on the economic conditions of later Babylon, 
 from descriptions in the Bible. [See Babylon, in the subject-index of 
 the Oxford Bible.] 
 
 11. Write an essay on the economic life of the Jews from the descrip- 
 tions of the Bible. 
 
 12. Write a similar essay on the Phoenicians. [See Sidon and Tyre 
 in the subject-index.] 
 
 13. Show the similiarity of conditions in Phoenicia and in Norway, 
 forcing the inhabitants of both countries to the sea. [Study the physical 
 characteristics of Norway in a geography, and note the history of the 
 Vikings, and the importance of commerce and navigation in modem 
 Norway.] 
 
 14. Write a report, from information to be got from the Encyclo- 
 pseSia Britannica, on one of the following subjects : — 
 
 (a) The commerce and manufactures of the Phoenicians. [See the 
 index in the last volume of the ninth edition, under Phoenicians.] 
 
 (6) The manufacture and trade in glass in the ancient world. [See 
 vol. 10, p. 647.] 
 
 (c) The Phoenician purple. [See the references under the word 
 Purple, vol. 20, p. 116, and the index.] 
 
 {d) Early navigation. [See the index.] 
 
 15. Wares of Phoenician commerce. [Bible, Ezekiel, chap. 27.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ancient Commerce. — The best available survey of the economic 
 development of the ancient world is Cunningham's ** Western civiliza- 
 
16 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 tion in its economic aspects, vol. 1, Ancient times, Cambridge (N. Y., 
 Macmillan, $1.25), 1898; this may be used for parallel reading through- 
 out. On Egypt, Adolf Erman, Life in ancient Egypt, London, 1894, is 
 interesting and reliable. Readers of English are fortunate also in having 
 a translation of Holm's * History of Greece, N. Y., Macmillan, 1894, 
 4 vols., each $2.50; it may be made to serve as a history of commerce in 
 the Mediterranean down to the second century. The popular books on 
 Alexander's conquests and their results, by Wheeler and Mahaffy, give, 
 unfortunately, little attention to economic affairs. P. V. N. Myers, 
 * History of Greece, Boston, Ginn, 1895, is a convenient manual for general 
 reading. 
 
 On commerce in the Roman world the student will find most in 
 Mommsen's * Provinces of the Roman Empire, N. Y., Scribner, 1887, 2 
 vols., $6. The current Roman histories give a distorted idea of Roman 
 commerce by viewing it from the capital. 
 
 Maps. — In default of an atlas of the history of commerce students 
 must seek the maps scattered through special works, or rely upon an 
 ordinary historical atlas. Justus Perthes' * Atlas antiquus (about $.75) 
 can be recommended for use in ancient history; it is admirably executed, 
 and is provided with an index. The same publisher's Schulatlas, by W. 
 Sieglin, costs in Germany only 80 pfennig, about 20 cents. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 GREEK PERIOD 
 
 15. Greece, physical character and products. — The men- 
 tion of the Greeks at the close of the last chapter introduces 
 us to a people who were, for a time, the leading merchants of 
 the Mediterranean. The modern country of Greece has an 
 area less than that of the State of Maine, little more than half 
 that of the State of New York. It is, however, most richly 
 diversified geographically, and no country in the world of an 
 equal area, it is said, presents so many islands, bays, peninsulas, 
 and harbors. The coast line of this little country is longer 
 than that of Spain. No point is more than a few miles from 
 the coast, and there are few points on the coast from which 
 an observer does not see an island. In the Greek sea, more- 
 over, every island is in plain sight either of the mainland or of 
 another island, and in the good season the winds are very 
 regular. Favoring conditions such as these are of vast impor- 
 tance in the early days of navigation, when sailors faced real 
 perils due to their inexperience, and perils of the imagination 
 which were even greater. At home the Greeks inhabited a 
 country which was not rich enough to support them without 
 exertion, but was, on the other hand, not so poor as to force 
 them to use all their ingenuity in finding the means of sub- 
 sistence. They could easily produce a surplus of oil and wine, 
 but found a deficiency of other products, especially grain and, 
 in the early period, manufactured wares. 
 
 16. Rise of Greek commerce. Colonies. — Though it would 
 be hard to conceive a better nursery for the growth of com- 
 merce than existed under the conditions here described, the 
 Greeks, when we first get knowledge of them, about 1000 b.c, 
 2 17 
 
18 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 were not yet ready to take advantage of their opportunities. 
 There was some commerce, it is true, but it lay entirely in the 
 hands of the Phoenicians, who brought utensils and cloth and 
 took away timber and metals. Little by little the Greeks rose 
 to commercial prominence, and gained the place formerly 
 held by the Phoenicians. A striking feature of this revolution 
 was the Greek colonial movement, which covered some five 
 hundred years, and ended about 600 b.c. Greek emigrants 
 settled throughout the ^gean Sea and established themselves 
 as a fringe on the coast of Asia Minor and about the Black Sea; 
 in the West they chose by preference the shores of southern 
 Italy and Sicily, but founded colonies as far as Malaga in 
 modern Spain, and created a great commercial center on the 
 site of modern Marseilles. The colonies kept up an active 
 intercourse with the mother country, and Greek sailors and 
 merchants ousted the Phoenicians from their commanding 
 position. The Greeks at home began to produce wares for 
 export, seeking customers not only among the colonists but 
 in other markets also; they emancipated themselves from their 
 former dependence on Oriental manufactures, and developed 
 the clay, bronze, and woolen industries to a point not dreamed 
 of before. 
 
 17. Rapid development in the fifth century, B.C. — In this, 
 which may be termed the preparatory period of Greek com- 
 merce, the leadership rested with the Greek colonies in Asia; 
 Miletos was the first of the Greek cities in commercial im- 
 portance. The advance of the Persian kings about 500 broke 
 the power of the Greek colonies in the East ; at the same time 
 the western colonies, especially Syracuse, grew rapidly in im- 
 portance, and forced Carthage to recognize their supremacy 
 in the northern Mediterranean. The mother country itself 
 was, however, that part of the Greek world which showed the 
 most striking gains. The successful resistance to the Persians 
 was followed by a remarkable development not only in politics 
 but in industry and commerce as well, and Greece now took 
 for two centuries the position which England occupies in the 
 
GREEK PERIOD 19 
 
 modern world. The little island of- iEgina (near Athens), 
 rocky and sterile, supporting to-day but 6,000 inhabitants, 
 became for a time the most important market of the Greek 
 world; it amassed fabulous riches by a commerce penetrating 
 all seas, aided by an artificial harbor and a strong war navy. 
 Another great commercial city, destined to a longer career, 
 was Corinth; this city was the natural medium of trade with 
 the western colonies, not only because it offered an opportunity 
 to reach them without rounding the dreaded promontory of 
 the southern tip of Greece, but also because some of the leading 
 colonies of the West were Corinthian or closely allied to the 
 Corinthians. 
 
 18. Rise of Athens to leadership. Exports. — The city of 
 Athens, which had developed rapidly in the century preceding 
 the Persian wars, rose to the first place among the Greek 
 cities in the century in which they occurred (500-400 B.C.). 
 The Athenians broke the power of ^Egina in armed conflict, 
 and appropriated its commerce; the Athenian sea-port, the 
 Piraeus, became the leading commercial port of the Greek 
 world, and remained so until the Macedonian period (about 
 300). Readers must be referred to one of the narrative his- 
 tories of Greece for an account of the way in which Athens 
 built up its empire in the ^gean Sea, and for the story of the 
 varied fortunes of its political power. Even in times of defeat, 
 when its war-navy was scattered and its leagues and alliances 
 broken up, it was still able to control a large part of the trade 
 of the ^gean and Black seas, and maintained an important 
 commerce with the South and West. The favorable situation 
 of the city, and the ability and energy of its navigators and 
 business men, enabled it to conduct a large carrying trade for 
 other peoples, and many of the exports we re forei gn wares 
 which were merely transshipped in the Piraeus. Of native 
 wares it exported silver and'^in, from the mines near ttre~city, 
 some natural products (oil, figs, honey, wool, marble) of 
 comparatively slight importance, and especially manufactured 
 wares, of which pottery was the chief. 
 
20 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 19. Athenian imports and policy. — The chief import was 
 wheat, on which Athens was then as dependent as England is 
 now; the city had grown so great by trade that the surrounding 
 country was unable to support it. The great granary of 
 Athens was the level country north of the Black Sea, and 
 th'e Athenians made extraordinary efforts to control the narrow 
 entrance to the Black Sea, that they might assure their food 
 supply. They were not entirely dependent on this source, 
 however, and imported wheat also from Sicily, Egypt, Syria, 
 and the mainland to the North. Among the other imports 
 were ship-building materials, salt fish, slaves, raw materials 
 for the Athenian manufacturers, and articles of luxury. The 
 breadth of the Athenian trade is pictured in the statement of 
 a contemporary: ''What delicacies there are in Sicily, or Lower 
 Italy, or Cyprus, or Egypt, or Lydia, or on the Pontus, or in 
 Peloponnesus, or anywhere else, they all are brought to Athens 
 by her control of the sea." 
 
 The commercial policy of the Athenians was framed with 
 an eye especially to the interests of the consumer. What 
 duties were levied were low, and had no leaning to ''protection'' 
 in the modern sense. The export of articles especially desired 
 (wheat, ship-building materials) was restricted in the hope of 
 keeping up the home supply, and commercial advantages were 
 granted or withheld with the idea of exercising political pressure 
 on other states; but nothing like modern protectionism can be 
 found in the commercial policy of this period. 
 
 20. Contrast of the ancient and modem world; effect of 
 Macedonian and Roman conquests. — In the course of our 
 narrative we are now approaching a point when a great change 
 came over the ancient world. The isolation of the earlier 
 states of antiquity is their most striking feature. Each one 
 lives only unto itself. It rises in civilization and then de- 
 clines, without sharing its gains and losses with other states. 
 It may conquer and hold them for a time, it is true, but it 
 rules them as foreign territory, with alien interests; and the 
 great empires crumble as readily as they are made. This 
 
GREEK PERIOD 21 
 
 characteristic of ancient history is one of its main difficulties 
 to the student, for it deprives him of any bond of connection 
 between the peoples, and forces him to pass from one to another 
 of them, until he feels lost in the complexity of the narrative. 
 
 The modern world, with its common fund of culture and 
 its community of interests uniting different peoples, could 
 arise from these conditions only after long centuries of struggle. 
 The unity of the Christian faith was needed to confirm the 
 union of peoples in a common civilization. The process of 
 union begins, however, at the point which we have reached; 
 the great conquests of Alexander of Macedon, and those of 
 Rome, did much to break down the barriers between peoples, 
 and to prepare them for the acceptance of a common civiliza- 
 tion and a common religion. It is to be hoped that the student 
 knows already something of the narrative of those conquests. 
 We shall have to confine ourselves to the results as they appear 
 in the history of commerce. Here the reader can merely be 
 reminded that Alexander united the eastern world into an 
 empire extending from Greece to India, a little before 300 b.c, 
 and that the Romans began about 200 b.c. to extend their 
 authority outside the Italian peninsula, and before the birth 
 of Christ had subjected to it practically all the peoples whose 
 history we have been studying. 
 
 21. Effect of Alexander's conquests on commerce; decline 
 of Greece. — In appearance the empire of Alexander outlived 
 its founder but a few years, and then dissolved. Alexander, 
 however, was a civilizer as well as a conqueror; he endowed 
 the East with a common fund of Greek culture; and however 
 distinct or hostile the states might seem thereafter the peoples 
 were united as they had never been before. Commerce took 
 on a new aspect. Greece, which before had been at the center 
 of the great commercial movements, was now left on the 
 western edge. Greek merchants could for a time use their 
 former commanding position to share in the great commercial 
 development, but in the long run their struggle was hopeless. 
 The most energetic Greeks left their home to settle in eastern 
 
22 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 countries which were richer, more populous, and closer to the 
 great currents of trade. Corinth was the only city which 
 managed to maintain and extend its trade. Athens declined 
 rapidly in commercial importance; and grass grew and cows 
 were pastured in the streets of other towns which had once 
 been important markets. 
 
 22. Rise of great cities. — Some indication of the develop- 
 ment of commerce, and of the rearrangement of its important 
 centers, can be got from a study of the great cities of the ancient 
 world. Before the time of Alexander there were only three 
 cities of the Mediterranean with a population of over 100,000, 
 Syracuse, Athens, Carthage; none of these had a population 
 far above that figure. About 200 B.C., scarcely more than a 
 century afterward, there were four cities with a population over 
 200,000, Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch, Carthage; one city with 
 a population far above 100,000, Syracuse; and of cities with a 
 population about 100,000 there were Corinth, Rome, Rhodes, 
 Ephesos, and possibly others. The names of some of these 
 cities are already familiar to us. Carthage was enjoying its 
 last century of commercial greatness, before Rome robbed it 
 of its influence in the northern Mediterranean. Syracuse was 
 the chief Greek colony of the West, destined also to fall under 
 the Roman power just before 200. Other names, however, 
 are entirely new to history, or first became of great importance 
 at this time, and the best idea of the commerce of the period 
 can be got by considering the reasons for their greatness. 
 
 23. Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch. — Alexandria, as its 
 name suggests, was founded by the Macedonian conqueror. 
 It was situated on a tongue of land between a lagoon and the 
 sea, near the most western of the mouths of the Nile. It had 
 a double harbor, formed by the island Pharos, which has given 
 the name for lighthouse in some of the modern languages 
 (French, phare, Italian, jdro), as the most celebrated light- 
 house of antiquity was erected there. Alexandria furnished 
 the only good harbor for large vessels on the coast of Egypt; 
 it had access to the Nile, tapping one of the great granaries of 
 
GREEK PERIOD 23 
 
 antiquity, and connected with the Red Sea through the canal 
 that ran from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes. It was at the 
 point where the sea-route from the far East reached the Medi- 
 terranean, and it became by right the greatest market and the 
 largest city that the world had known. 
 
 Next to it in size and importance came two other cities, 
 Seleukia and Antioch, which were founded even later than 
 Alexandria. Seleukia, on the Tigris, took the place of the 
 earlier Babylon and the later Bagdad; it was situated in a 
 rich plain at the points where the routes from the Persian 
 Gulf and the Persian highlands met on their way westward. 
 Antioch was at the focus of the routes by which the trade with 
 inner Asia was carried on. Situated at a point where the 
 Euphrates approaches to within a few days' march of the coast, 
 and where the valley of the Orontes offers the best means of 
 reaching the sea from the interior, it had the full benefit of 
 the revival of eastern commerce which followed the conquests 
 of Alexander and the enlightened rule of his successors. 
 
 24. Rhodes. — Only one other city, Rhodes, deserves es- 
 pecial attention, and this not because of its size alone but 
 also because it was so specifically a commercial city. The 
 little island could offer but scanty products to commerce, but 
 it enjoyed an exceptionally favorable position, where navi- 
 gators from Egypt and Syria, avoiding the dangers of the 
 open sea, would put in for shelter and to trade. Rhodes 
 followed a far-sighted foreign policy, guided by the idea of 
 securing the greatest freedom of trade; it policed the seas and 
 repressed piracy with vigor; and established a code of mer- 
 cantile law which was celebrated as a model and which invited 
 dealings in its market. The Rhodians were skilful navigators, 
 and developed the principles of commercial association to a 
 point of high efficiency. It is little cause for wonder, therefore, 
 that commerce flowed hither from all parts of the eastern 
 Mediterranean and even from the Black Sea; that foreign 
 merchants sent their sons there to learn the conduct of com- 
 merce; and that great riches were accumulated, of which one 
 
24 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 evidence was furnished by the many colossi, gigantic statues, 
 about the city. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Prove the statement in the text, regarding the Greek islands. 
 Take a good map, measure off on the scale 25 miles, the distance at which 
 hills of about 125 feet are visible (the Greek islands are mountainous and 
 the air very clear), and show by what stepping-stones timid sailors could 
 advance. 
 
 2. Study in detail the influence of the physical characteristics of 
 Greece on the people and their history. [See Myers, chap. 1; Holm, vol. 
 1, chap. 2.] 
 
 3. Write a report on the evidences of early civilization and trade. 
 [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 8.] 
 
 4. Write a report on the early commerce carried on by Phoenicians. 
 [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 9.] 
 
 5. Make a careful study of the Greek colonial movement, noting, (a) 
 the motives to colonization, (b) the extent of Greek colonies, (c) the rela- 
 tions with the mother-country, (d) the mode of life in the colonies, (e) the 
 influence on the commercial development of the different parts of Greece. 
 [Myers, chap. 5; Holm, vol. 1, chaps. 12, 13, 14, 21, 25.] 
 
 6. Write a report on the history of the Greek colonies of the West, 
 especially Syracuse and its contest with Carthage. [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 
 25; vol. 2, chap. 6, 29; Freeman, Story of Sicily, N. Y., Putnam, 1892, 
 $1.50.] 
 
 7. Study the growth of the sea-power and empire of Athens, indicat- 
 ing on a map the allied or subject cities. [Myers, chaps. 15, 16; Holm, 
 vol. 2, esp. chap. 17.] 
 
 8. Contrast Athenian exports of this period with the exports of 
 modem Greece. [Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 9. What is the leading port of modern Greece? [Same.] 
 
 10. Write an essay comparing the Athenian and the British empires, 
 noting, (a) advantages of geographical position, (6) products of the home 
 country, exports and imports, (c) naval power and naval stations, (d) 
 policy to members of the empire, (e) commercial policy of the home country. 
 [See Myers or Holm, and the chapters in this book on England; compare 
 E. A. Freeman, Greater Greece and Greater Britain, London, 1886.] 
 
 11. Compare the imports of ancient and of modern Greece. [States- 
 man's Year-Book.] 
 
 12. Make a chart, naming on a horizontal line the leading states of 
 antiquity, from Egypt to Rome, placing dates (3000, 1500, 1000, etc.) in a 
 column at the left, and indicating changes in the history of each state in 
 the appropriate place in its column. 
 
GREEK PERIOD 25 
 
 13. Draw a map showing the extent of Alexander's conquests, and 
 comparing the empire with earlier Oriental empires. [See the maps in 
 Myers, and if no good historical atlas is available consult the maps in the 
 Oxford Bible, teacher's edition.] 
 
 14. Study the influence of the Macedonian conquests on civilization 
 and commerce. [Myers, chaps. 25, 26, 27; Holm, vol. 3, esp. chap. 27.] 
 
 15. Write a report on the economic decline of Greece after the Mace- 
 donian conquest. [Holm, vol. 4.] 
 
 16. Is England exposed to such a change in the currents of trade as 
 furthered the decline of Greece? 
 
 17. Why do great cities rarely grow up without the aid of commerce? 
 [The answer to this question is suggested in a later chapter, but the stu- 
 dent should be able to work it out himself.] 
 
 18. Are there any exceptions? What is the commerce of Washing- 
 ton, D. C? Is there any one of the cities named in this section which 
 may have owed its size to something beside commerce? 
 
 19. Has there been any later period in which great cities have risen 
 suddenly, as in this period after Alexander? 
 
 20. Write a commercial history of Carthage from the information 
 to be got in a Roman history, or in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Write 
 a commercial history of Syracuse in the Roman period, from the same 
 sources. 
 
 21. Write a report on the commerce and civilization of one of the 
 cities, using Holm, vol. 4, and the encyclopedia. 
 
 22. Endeavor to trace the later history of one of these cities, and to 
 discover its population now, using the encyclopedia and a geographical 
 gazetteer. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter ii. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 ROMAN PERIOD 
 
 25. The Roman state ; Rome not a commercial city. — In 
 
 entering on the period of Roman domination we need spend 
 no time over the earher history of the city which came to rule 
 the world. The Romans were not a commercial people. Even 
 in the last two centuries B.C., when Rome extended her sway 
 over the eastern countries which have already been noticed, 
 and subjected a large part of the West as well, Rome did not 
 become a commercial center. The city grew to unparalleled 
 size, it is true, and required immense imports of food to support 
 the population. These imports came, however, as taxes and 
 tribute to the conquerors. Rome supplied no exports of con- 
 siderable amount, and built up no great carrying and for- 
 warding trade such as would have made the city the center 
 for the exchanges of other people. The service which the 
 Romans gave to the world of their time, and for which they 
 received such rich reward, was not economic but political in 
 character; they were the greatest organizers and administrators 
 of antiquity, and by their skill in the arts of war and govern- 
 ment succeeded in living on the labor of subject peoples. 
 They were not mere parasites. They earned all that they 
 received by one great contribution, ''pax Romana," Roman 
 peace, which continued almost unbroken for centuries, and 
 which furnished an opportunity for commercial development 
 before unknown. 
 
 26. Development of commerce in the Roman East. — The 
 study of commerce in the Roman period resolves itself, as 
 suggested above, into a study of commerce in the different 
 regions of which the great Roman state was composed. In 
 
 26 
 
ROMAN PERIOD 27 
 
 the East commerce developed on the lines which have already 
 been described; Alexandria and Antioch continued to be great 
 markets for Oriental wares, coming now even from India and 
 China; and Carthage remained an important outlet for the 
 African trade. Asia Minor, northern Africa, and southeastern 
 Europe reached the very pinnacle of their historical develop- 
 ment in the Roman period; these countries have never since 
 attained to anything like the prosperity they then enjoyed. 
 We shall not have the time hereafter to notice the commerce 
 of these regions in detail; the reader may take it for granted 
 that merchants struggled strenuously to keep the place they 
 had reached, and that decline came slowly, when it did come 
 later. 
 
 Our attention must be directed hereafter mainly to the 
 West. It was there that the most important states of modern 
 Europe arose, and there that commerce grew up in its modern 
 form. Our chief interest must be to know what progress the 
 peoples of the West made under Roman rule, and how far 
 commerce had developed among them. 
 
 27. Backward condition of the people of the West. — The 
 peoples of the West were far behind those of the East in civi- 
 lization. They have sometimes been compared to the Ameri- 
 can Indians, and though the comparison is inexact in detail 
 and may easily mislead, it gives still a rough indication of their 
 backwardness. They lived more from the products of their 
 flocks and herds than from agriculture, when the Romans came 
 in contact with them; they had practically no towns, and no 
 considerable trade. 
 
 The five hundred years (roughly) of Roman rule made 
 some striking changes in the Roman provinces of the West 
 (modern Spain, France, England; not Germany or countries 
 farther east). It kept the people in order, and gave them an 
 opportunity to acquire the elements of a higher civilization. 
 The fact that modern Spanish and French are based on Latin 
 remains always a striking testimony to the Roman influence 
 on the provincials. 
 
28 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 28. Limited influence of Rome on the commercial develop- 
 ment of the West. — It is easy, however, to overestimate the 
 results of this influence, especially so far as regards economic 
 progress. Rome gave her subject peoples of the West a chance 
 at commercial development, but none had sought it and few 
 were ready to profit by it. The Roman government con- 
 structed a system of military roads, models of their kind, 
 which enabled troops and messengers to reach speedily the 
 
 The course of some of the roads is uncertain, and the number would be increased 
 or diminished according to the authority followed. The map gives, however, 
 a fair picture of the Roman road system ; it was, evidently, not so extensive 
 as our modern railroad system. 
 
 different provinces. Romans settled in the provinces as officials 
 or private gentlemen, and Roman culture was acquired by the 
 wealthy provincials; cities and large landed estates formed 
 centers of industry and exchanged manufactured products for 
 the raw materials of the surrounding districts. 
 
 The roads, however, seem to have served mainly Roman 
 purposes, and the cities and culture depended mainly on 
 
ROMAN PERIOD 29 
 
 Roman influence for their support. The mass of the people 
 remained passive, and advanced slowly. Most of them lived 
 by agriculture in the country districts, producing the things 
 necessary for their own subsistence and a small surplus for the 
 
 ^Roman tax-gatherer; they received for their surplus no wares 
 which would have formed the basis of commerce. However 
 much Rome did to efface the differences of race, language^ and 
 national tradition, such differences remained to hinder com- 
 merce; and peoples were still separated by great distances and 
 by serious physical barriers. The commercial development of 
 the West, though it may seem great in comparison with con- 
 ditions in the following period of disorder, was very limited 
 even at the height of Roman power. 
 
 29. Decline of Roman power and of commerce in the 
 West. — The time came soon when the provincials could no 
 longer look to Rome for protection and stimulus. In the 
 third century, a.d., the Roman government began to go to 
 pieces. It lacked the force to repress internal revolts in the 
 provinces, and to repel the inroads of barbarians on the fron- 
 tiers. The process of decline had already proceeded far before 
 the ''Fall of Rome" (476), when even the shadow of authority 
 passed from the Roman Emperor of the West. The remnants 
 of Roman rule centered henceforth about the eastern capital, 
 Constantinople. In the West barbarian chieftains established 
 government of a kind on the fragments of the Roman state, 
 but endeavored in vain to follow the models which the Romans 
 had set them. The motives to commerce grew weaker as 
 
 " Roman culture disappeared, and the obstacles to commerce 
 increased rapidly with the decline in public order. Brigandage 
 and piracy became more profitable than honest industry; roads 
 and bridges deteriorated; the course of rivers was obstructed. 
 Even a great ruler like Charlemagne, who had himself crowned 
 Emperor in 800, could do little to stay the process of decline, 
 and weaker successors could do still less. The last remnants 
 of the Roman organization seemed to have passed away, and 
 the European world passed into the "Dark Ages." 
 
30 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Endeavor to verify the statements in the text by studying the 
 descriptions of Roman commerce in the current Roman histories. Ask 
 the following questions of them. What wares, beside manuscript books 
 and a few other items of no great importance, did the people of Rome 
 produce for export? What wares beside food for the people and luxuries 
 for the rich did they import? 
 
 2. Show how the taxes and tribute from conquered provinces can be 
 regarded as war-insurance, 
 
 3. Write a report on the civilization and commerce of one of the 
 provinces of the Roman Empire, [See Mommsen, Provinces, esp. vol, 1, 
 chap, 7, Greek Europe; chap, 8, Asia Minor; vol. 2, chap, 12, Egypt; chap. 
 13, the African Provinces.] 
 
 4. Write a similar report on one of the provinces of the West, [Vol, 
 1, chap. 2, Spain; chap. 3, Gaul; chap. 4, Germany; chap. 5, Britain.] 
 
 5. Study the civilization of Roman Britain, distinguishing carefully 
 the life of the upper (Roman) classes, and the life of the common people. 
 What effect would this contrast of classes have on the extent and charac- 
 ter of commerce in the Roman period? [Consult manuals of English 
 history.] 
 
 6. Study the economic and political factors in the fall of Rome, 
 [Cunningham, West, civ., vol. 1, p. 170 ff.; Adams, Civ., chap. 4.] 
 
 7. Compare the fall of Rome with the growth of political corruption 
 in some modern cities, as affecting the prosperity of commerce. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter ii. 
 

 PART II.— MEDIEVAL COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR 1000 
 
 30. Political conditions affecting commerce; the modem 
 system of government. — The reader who studies the history 
 of commerce in the medieval period faces a system of govern- 
 ment entirely different from that of modern times, which he 
 must understand before he can appreciate the peculiar con- 
 ditions of commerce then. We can illustrate the modern 
 method of government by taking a country, say France, for 
 an example. We wish to understand the relations of the 
 capital, Paris, to other parts of the country, say the district 
 around Bordeaux, in the southwest corner. An observer of 
 this country will find that Paris and Bordeaux are united by 
 different means of communication and transportation, tele- 
 graphs and posts, railroads, highways and canals, which are 
 constantly employed in the service of government. On the 
 path from the province to the capital go the reports of the 
 officials who are in charge of the government of Bordeaux; 
 and, if they fail in their duties, petitions and complaints from 
 private citizens, asking relief, will take the same path. By 
 this path, also, the taxes collected at Bordeaux will stream to 
 the treasury at Paris, to be employed in maintaining the 
 government. Part of these taxes will be expended at Paris, 
 to support the officials who live in the capital, the central 
 army, etc. Part, however, must be used to fulfil the local 
 needs of Bordeaux; and on the road from the capital to the 
 province we shall find money and wares, going as salaries to 
 officials, appropriations for public works and the like. On 
 this road, furthermore, we shall find a stream of messages, 
 sent by the central government to its local subordinates, 
 
 31 
 
32 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 directing them in their work; these messages will answer the 
 reports of officials and the petitions and complaints of subjects. 
 
 31. Impossibility of applying modem methods of govern- 
 ment in the period after the fall of Rome. — The system of 
 government, thus roughly outlined, was the system used in 
 the period when Rome was still strong. But when the power 
 of Rome declined it became constantly more difficult to main- 
 tain a system of the kind; every obstacle to the free passage 
 of men and wares weakened the hold of the government on its 
 provinces. The roads grew worse, and while they were still 
 passable the danger of traversing them increased, so that the 
 expense of maintaining this government became prohibitive. 
 The reports from officials and the petitions from subjects were 
 delayed or lost; only a small part of the local taxes reached 
 the treasury at the center. The central government, on its 
 side, found that it had no longer the means to pay the bills 
 for salaries and public works in the provinces, and found that 
 its commands were not received there, or were not obeyed, 
 because the government could no longer send officials and 
 troops to force obedience. 
 
 32. The feudal system ; rise and character. — The time came, 
 finally, when the government had to recognize publicly the 
 change in conditions, and to adopt a system of quite a differ- 
 ent kind, known as the feudal system. In substance it told 
 the man who before had been a salaried official that it could 
 no longer pay salaries, and that he must support himself 
 henceforth from the revenues of land which would formerly 
 have gone to it as taxes. It maintained still a nominal supe- 
 riority, and exacted from the feudal lords who now assumed 
 the responsibility of government certain payments for general 
 public service, occasionally a sum of money and more fre- 
 quently personal service of a military or judicial kind. Prac- 
 tically, however, the state had split into little pieces; the 
 central government had lost the right even to nominate the 
 successor of an official, and each was succeeded in the duties 
 and profits of government by his son, as though he had been 
 
CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR 1000 33 
 
 a petty king. It is impossible to state accurately the number 
 of little governments of this kind that existed in the different 
 countries of Europe; in France, in the tenth century, it is 
 supposed to have exceeded 10,000. The character ofgovern- 
 ment varied greatly, of course, according to local conditions, 
 not only in different countries but in different parts of the 
 same country, but it was everywhere extremely low when 
 measured by modern standards. This will be apparent as we 
 survey the conditions under which commerce was carried on 
 in the period known as the Dark Ages. 
 
 33. Difficulties and dangers of transportation. — Attempt 
 was made to maintain the roads, which of course are essential 
 to trade by sea as well as by land, by making the proprietors 
 through whose land they ran responsible for their repair. 
 Many of the proprietors managed to escape contribution, and 
 what work was done was largely wasted, through ignorance 
 and lack of proper superintendence. We shall see that even 
 in later periods the roads were bad; in this early time they 
 were so bad that they seem to have been mere tracks, of 
 service to passengers on foot or on horseback, but of little use 
 for wagon traffic. 
 
 The merchant suffered even more, however, from bad men 
 than from bad roads. Government was so weak that robbery 
 was common; people were so ignorant of everything outside 
 the narrow sphere of local interests that they suspected every 
 stranger, and too often with reason. There is a whole series 
 of English laws, beginning about 700 and continuing for 
 centuries, of which this is an early example ''If a man come 
 from afar, or a stranger, go out of the highway, and he then 
 neither shout nor blow a horn; he is to be accounted a thief, 
 either to be slain or to be redeemed." 
 
 34. Restrictions imposed to insure security. The market. — 
 The dangers of travel required a merchant to go in company 
 with others, and the danger that a merchant would himself 
 turn robber made it necessary for him to subject himself 
 constantly to public supervision, and to get residents who 
 
 3 
 
34 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 would act as sureties for his good behavior. In England, even 
 in the eleventh century, the central government thought it 
 necessary to pass a law "thsit every man above twelve years 
 of age make oath that he will neither be a thief nor cognizant 
 of theft." Such a general statute would surely be of little 
 use. 
 
 Many other statutes of a more specific nature were passed, 
 which may have helped to repress robbery, but which must 
 have hampered trade at the same time. The idea in general 
 was to force a man to make his purchases in public, so that 
 if he appeared at home with new wares he could get witnesses 
 to prove that he came honestly by them. Cattle formed a 
 large part of the personal property in early times, and as these 
 could readily be stolen, many laws were passed restricting the 
 trade in cattle. Other things were included in the restriction, 
 however, as the need of protecting commerce became more 
 apparent. In England, in the tenth century, a man was not 
 allowed to buy or sell any goods above the value of twenty 
 pence, unless he did it within a town where a public official 
 and witnesses could legitimate the bargain. In this practice 
 is found the origin of the market, a medieval institution of 
 which more will be said later. A market was a place appointed 
 by the government, where bargains could properly be made; 
 and only small exchanges of household produce could be made 
 outside it, in the open country. Beginning in the need that 
 was felt to prevent thieving it developed as a public institution, 
 which the people found it profitable to extend as a means of 
 collecting tolls and of regulating internal trade. 
 
 35. Society organized to exist with the minimum of com- 
 merce ; the medieval village. — The striking and important 
 feature in the life of European peoples at this period was not 
 the large amount of commerce carried on, but the small amount. 
 The people were organized on a system which enabled them 
 to support life with the least commerce possible. Instead of 
 being concentrated in towns, they were isolated in little groups, 
 often called manors, one of which would be composed often 
 
CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR 1000 35 
 
 of less than 100 people, who got their living from the square 
 mile or so of land surrounding them. It is not necessary here 
 to discuss the social and political life of these little groups, 
 though it is proper to remark that often some of the inhabitants 
 were slaves, and many more were only half-free, like the 
 Russian serfs of the nineteenth century. 
 
 36. Self-sufficiency of the villages; low stage of the arts of 
 production. — The economic life of these village groups is the 
 side in which we are interested, and the chief point in that 
 was the self-sufficiency of each group. A village tried to pro- 
 duce everything that it wanted, to be free from the uncer- 
 tainty and expense of trade. We find, then, that almost all 
 the people in a village were agriculturists, and these raised 
 the necessary food supply by methods which were always 
 crude, and were often very cumbersome and wasteful. The 
 stock was. of such a poor breed that a grown ox seems to have 
 been little larger than a calf of the present day, and the fleece 
 of a sheep weighed often less than two ounces. Many of the 
 stock had to be killed before winter, as there was no proper 
 fodder to keep them, and those that survived were often so 
 weak in the spring that they had to be dragged to pasture on 
 a sledge. Insufficient stock meant insufficient manure, and 
 though the fields were allowed to lie fallow every third year 
 they were exhausted by constant crops of cereals, and gave a 
 yield of only about six bushels of wheat an acre, of which two 
 had to be retained for seed. 
 
 Not only the food but nearly everything else had to be 
 raised where it was to be consumed. Houses were constructed 
 of materials from the forest, clothes were made out of flax 
 and wool from the village fields, furniture and implements 
 were made at home. Nearly every village had a mill, usually 
 run by water, to grind its meal or flour; some villages had a 
 smith or carpenter; few special artisans beside those suggested 
 were to be found in the ordinary manor. 
 
 37. Evils resulting from the lack of commerce. — Before we 
 proceed to describe the growth of European commerce from 
 
36 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 such origins it will be well to stop and consider the results of 
 a system which was based on the lack of commerce. With 
 regard to the main product, food staples, the result was an 
 alternation of waste and want. A good year brought a surplus 
 for which there was no market outside the village, and which 
 could not be worked up inside for lack of manufacturing skill 
 and implements. A bad harvest, on the other hand, meant 
 serious suffering, because there was no opportunity to buy 
 food supplies outside the manor and bring them to it. Nearly 
 every year was marked by a famine in one part or another of 
 a country, and famine was often followed by pestilence. Dis- 
 eases now almost unknown in the civilized world, like leprosy 
 and ergotism or St. Anthony's fire, were not infrequent. The 
 food at best was coarse and monotonous; the houses were 
 mere hovels of boughs and mud; the clothes were a few gar- 
 ments of rude stuff. Nothing better could be procured so long 
 as everything had to be produced on the spot and made ready 
 for use by the people themselves. Finally, these people were 
 coarse and ignorant, with little regard for personal cleanliness 
 or for moral laws, and with practically no interests outside the 
 narrow bounds of the little village in which they lived. 
 
 38. Exceptional instances of higher organization of indus- 
 try. — These conditions existed all over western Europe, and 
 may be taken as typical of the period about the year 1000. 
 Though they determined the commerce, or better the lack of 
 commerce, at this time, they were not absolutely universal. 
 Great feudal princes and great monasteries owned each a 
 considerable number of villages or manors, and tried to intro- 
 duce a more advanced economic system among them. A 
 great lord would have his shoemaker and tailor, his saddler, 
 swordsmith, etc.; and would have a considerable number of 
 women gathered in a sort of factory making clothes. It is 
 noteworthy, however, that the difficulties of transportation 
 were so great that for a long time to come it was not prac- 
 ticable to concentrate the food supplies of a large group of 
 manors in one place, and the owner would have to go to the 
 
CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR 1000 37 
 
 food instead of having it brought to him. So we read of the 
 kings and princes being always on the road, traveling with 
 court and retinue from one manor to another, eating up the 
 surplus that had accumulated and then moving on. 
 
 39. Common wares of commerce in the period of the manor. 
 — Absolute self-sufficiency was impossible; it was the ideal at 
 which the managers of the manor aimed, but there were few 
 manors which could supply all the necessaries of life. The 
 list, however, of articles which had to be procured by com- 
 merce with the outside world was small. Salt was one item, 
 of special importance as it was so difficult to keep live stock 
 through the winter, and the animals had to be killed and 
 salted down. Iron was necessary for various implements, 
 though it was so expensive that it was spared in every possible 
 way. Other articles had to be bought as occasion arose, 
 stones for the mill or tar to keep the murrain from sheep. 
 These wares were essential to existence; by channels so obscure 
 that they cannot now be traced they reached the places where 
 they were wanted, and were purchased with part of the manor's 
 scanty surplus. Cattle and horses formed also, as is natural, 
 common objects of exchange. 
 
 40. The slave trade in Europe. — One ware which had long 
 been an object of commerce was of especial importance in the 
 period just after the fall of Rome, and, indeed, for some time 
 later; this was slaves. The slave trade extended over all 
 Europe, and had great markets on the Mediterranean, the 
 North, and the Baltic seas. Merchants drove troops of slaves 
 in chains from one country to another, or exported them in 
 lots of 100 or more. In the slave markets of the Baltic as 
 many as 700 are said to have been put up for sale at once. 
 A number of English laws regulated the slave trade of the 
 time. It seems to have been largely confined to convicts, but 
 a law of Alfred provided that a father should not sell his 
 daughter to servitude among strange people. Later the Eng- 
 lish laws forbade the trade entirely, but we read of Bristol 
 merchants in the eleventh century who not only bought slaves 
 
38 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 all over England for export to Ireland, but bred them as well; 
 and the trade persisted in various sections even later. 
 
 41. Distant commerce confined to rare luxuries. — Under 
 conditions such as these the term ''foreign commerce" in its 
 modern sense is meaningless. The areas which now form the 
 countries of Europe did not specialize in the production of 
 different wares, so that we can trace a regular exchange of 
 products between them. Most of the common wares of com- 
 merce circulated inside a restricted area. Only the rich could 
 afford to pay for the transportation of wares over any dis- 
 tance, and they would spend their money only for valuable 
 luxuries. The dignitaries of the church, by reason of their 
 higher culture and connection with a uniyersal organization, 
 created a demand for a few foreign wares, and the governing 
 classes wanted some things which could not be produced at 
 home. Wines and spices were brought up from southern 
 Europe, along the river routes and over the passes of the Alps, 
 and furs were brought down from the North. 
 
 Distant sea voyages were still uncommon. An English 
 law of about 900 provided that " if a merchant thrived so that 
 he fared thrice over the wide sea by his own vessel " he might 
 be promoted to a higher social class; and later laws refer to 
 merchant ships again. The Scandinavians have left records 
 of adventurous voyages to the North and West, and a vast 
 number of silver coins found in Russia and the Baltic countries 
 shows that a land trade with southwestern Asia persisted in 
 the period of which we treat. It is only toward the close of 
 this period, however, that we begin to get details about distant 
 commerce, and can see that it is firmly established. The 
 Institutes of London, issued in the eleventh century, and 
 regulating the commerce of the town, mention ships coming 
 from Flanders, from Rouen and other places in France, and 
 from Germany. Foreign merchants brought wool and pigs, 
 and sold wine, furs, spices, gloves, and fish. 
 
 42. Character of the merchant in the early Middle Ages. — 
 We know even less of the person of the merchant, in this 
 
CONDITIONS ABOUT THE YEAR WOO 39 
 
 period (about 1000 a.d.), than of the wares that he carried. 
 It is certain, at any rate, that the merchant was not the spe- 
 cialist that he afterwards became, but was a jack-of-all-trades. 
 He might be wholesaler and retailer, transporter and pedler, 
 and often an artisan too. Nothing like the country store of 
 the present day existed, and trade outside the few centers 
 where markets had been established was carried on by pedlers, 
 who carried their wares on the back or on a pack animal. 
 Every merchant was sure to be something of a soldier, as he 
 was thrown largely on his own resources for self-defence; and 
 he often assumed the garb of a missionary or pilgrim to get 
 the help of the church in carrying on his trade. The pilgrim 
 was exempt from many burdens laid on the ordinary traveler 
 or merchant, and though this exemption had later to be 
 abolished, because it was so frequently abused, it seems to 
 have been of great use in helping commerce through its early 
 stages. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Modem France has, approximately, an area of 200,000 square 
 miles. Calculate the average size of the feudal state about the year 
 1000, and compare it with the county in which you live. 
 
 2. Can you suggest anything in cow-boy life on the plains of the 
 West reminding you of feudal conditions, when the State was weak? 
 
 3. What district, known to you, has the least commerce with the 
 outside world? 
 
 4. How does the yield of wheat, as given in the text, compare with 
 the yield in different parts of the U. S.? [See Abstract of 12th Census, 
 Table 130.] 
 
 5. Show why the lack of commerce requires small groups of people 
 to produce everything for themselves, and why this self-sufficiency in- 
 volves a low standard of living. 
 
 6. How does commerce remedy the waste and want which are charac- 
 teristic of self-sufficiency? Why cannot people plan to produce just 
 enough food? 
 
 7. Report on the wares and workmen collected on the estates of a 
 great king. [Falkner, Statistical documents of the Middle Ages, Phila- 
 delphia, 1896, 10 cents, pp. 2-5.] 
 
 8. Name some wares, important in the stock of even the smallest 
 country store, which did not appear in commerce in the period of the 
 
40 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 manor. Show the necessity of each one of the wares mentioned in the 
 text. 
 
 9. Why could a profitable commerce in slaves be carried on when 
 other wares did not pay the merchant? 
 
 10. What are the luxuries which a trader now can afford to pack into 
 the uncivilized districts of Africa and America? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 References on the rise and character of feudalism may be found in 
 many manuals of European history; among others Emerton, Introduction, 
 236; Mediaeval Europe 477; Robinson, Middle Ages, 119. Brief accounts, 
 mainly for the student of political history, may be found in the above, 
 in Adams, European Hist., 185-191; and in the same author's * Civiliza- 
 tion, chap. 9. The best account of the feudal system in English is Seig- 
 nobos, ** Feudal regime, N. Y., Holt, 1903, $.50. 
 
 Most of the books describing conditions in this period treat them 
 either from the political or the agrarian standpoint ; the writer knows 
 nothing, suitable for student's reading, discussing the origins of commerce 
 at this time. See, therefore, Cunningham, Growth, vol. 1, book 1, or the 
 smaller manuals on English economic history. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 TOWN TRADE 
 
 43. Significance of towns in the economic organization; 
 decline of the Roman towns. — In the latter part of the Middle 
 Ages, beginning after the year 1000, a striking change took 
 place in the life of Europe; the people advanced so rapidly 
 in their economic and political organization that we can ma^e 
 this a new era in their history. It will be necessary to jnotice 
 the important changes in detail, but we can summarizeHhem 
 now, from the economic standpoint, by saying that people 
 advanced from the stage of the village or manor to that of 
 the town. A town, as the word will be used here, means a 
 group of at least several hundred, perhaps several thousand 
 people, settled closely together, and maintaining themselves 
 in large part by manufactures and trade. Such towns had 
 existed, as noted above, in the Roman Empire of the West. 
 In Roman Gaul (modern France) there were over one hundred 
 of them. They depended for their existence, however, on the 
 stimulus of Roman culture, and on the security which good 
 government could afford to their trade. A manufacturing 
 class evidently could not eat the wares it made, and needed the 
 • chance to exchange them for food products from the country 
 districts if it was to maintain itself. In the period before, 
 during, and after the German invasions the chance for exchange 
 grew steadily less, as we have seen. Some of the towns were 
 entirely destroyed in the period of disorder which followed the 
 fall of the Roman government. London, for instance, which 
 had been a flourishing town under Roman rule, must have 
 become a mere heap of rubbish, for when it was rebuilt i^ 
 later times no attempt was made to follow the lines of the old 
 
 41 
 
42 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 streets, and new streets were laid out over the ruins of former 
 houses. When a town was not actually destroyed it ceased 
 to live; the inhabitants had to take to agriculture to support 
 themselves, and the town shrank to a mere village, which 
 could not be distinguished from the manors about it. Of 
 more than 500 modern French cities scarcely 80 can be traced 
 back to the Roman period, and all of these lost their identity 
 as towns and became simple villages in the intervening time. 
 
 44. Rise of towns after looo; conditions determining their 
 location. — We read of towns in Europe before the year 1000 
 but they scarcely deserve the name; they were rather the 
 germs from which towns were later to spring. Considerable 
 numbers of people would collect in the place where some 
 great feudal lord spent most of his time, or where a monastery 
 had been founded; garrisons would be established at places 
 suitable for military operations. We must regard such groups, 
 however, as supported by taxation rather than by the trade 
 of individuals, from which most urban groups arise. Trade 
 of this kind became, however, so considerable after the year 
 1000 that real towns grew up in constantly increasing numbers. 
 Their position was determined by two important conditions of 
 existence, political protection and the chance for profitable 
 trade. People found the former by nestling under the walls 
 of some castle or monastery; the many Frenchvtowns which 
 bear the name of some saint show how much the protection 
 of the church was prized. The latter object was generally 
 attained by founding the town at some break in a line of 
 transportation, where goods had to be transshipped and where 
 merchants would naturally congregate to rest and exchange 
 their wares (cf. Ox-ford, Cam-bridge, etc.). We find the most 
 considerable towns, therefore, along the seacoast and rivers, 
 and at breaks or intersections of the land routes. 
 
 45. Development of manufacturing in the towns. — The 
 rise of the towns brought with it, as has been suggested, a 
 new era in manufactures. In the ordinary village it did not 
 pay men to specialize in the production of wares, as the market 
 
TOWN TRADE 43 
 
 was so small. A shoemaker, for instance, could not make a 
 living by selling 50 or 100 pairs of shoes a year. If we think, 
 however, of a village growing into a town surrounded by a 
 considerable country population, we see that the market has 
 widened into an area of size sufficient to support a number of 
 specialists. Manufacturing became a profession to which men 
 devoted most of their time. A man could learn his trade 
 much more thoroughly, and could afford to make the tools 
 which would enable him to exercise it most efficiently. The 
 result was an increase in production which enabled the people 
 on a given area to live far more comfortably than they had 
 done before. 
 
 46. Effect of the towns in improving the conditions in the 
 country. — This movement was bound to change the condi- 
 tions of life in the country districts. The people there were 
 freed from the necessity of devoting part of their time to 
 work which they never did well; they could apply most of 
 their energy to agriculture, and could use the surplus crop 
 which they thus obtained, for a profitable exchange with the 
 artisans of the town. The growth of towns affected them in 
 another way. In the purely manorial period a serf could not 
 better his condition by running away; he had nowhere to go 
 except to other manors like the one he had left, where his 
 condition might actually be worse than before. .In the towns, 
 however, practically all the population were free; the artisans 
 were numerous and intelligent enough to provide for their 
 own protection, and did not need to subject themselves to a 
 lord. The towns were islands of freedom in a sea of serfdom 
 or of half-freedom. The custom established itself that a serf 
 who could escape from his lord, and who lived a year and a 
 day within the walls of a town, became a free man, and could 
 not be reduced to his former position. Landlords found that 
 they must bid against the attractions of the town if they 
 were to keep the laborers in the country, and agreed to lighten 
 their burdens if they would stay. Many influences worked 
 together, and the results were modified by many factors, 
 
44 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 especially of a political kind, in various countries, but the 
 upward movement of the country population was general 
 throughout western Europe. Free men produced more than 
 serfs, and this was another influence increasing the surplus of 
 the country districts, and furthering trade thereby. 
 
 47. The "foreign" trade of this period was that between 
 towns, even in the same country. — The student who has 
 begun the history of commerce with the notion, as common as 
 it is erroneous, that the foreign trade of a country is more 
 important than its internal trade, and who is impatient to 
 arrive at the description of this foreign trade, will be disap- 
 pointed to learn that even in the latter part of the Middle 
 Ages it scarcely existed in the modern sense. We mean now 
 by foreign trade that between states — between the United 
 States and Germany, for example. In the manorial period, 
 as has been suggested, foreign trade was rather that which 
 existed between manors. In the period under discussion it 
 was that which existed between towns. The towns existing 
 inside the boundaries of a modern European country did not, 
 it is true, differ as much among themselves, in their products, 
 as they differed, taking them altogether, from the towns of 
 another country. But the expense of transportation restricted 
 most trade still to a comparatively small radius, and the town, 
 rather than the country, was the natural trading unit. The 
 radius of profitable trade, for most articles, was so small that an 
 English town would have its most important commercial rela- 
 tions with the other English towns rather than with the towns 
 of foreign countries. The town, moreover, was the unit for 
 regulating trade. Each town would have its own customs 
 tariff, and to a merchant of London it made little difference 
 whether he traded with Southampton or with Paris; national 
 regulation was less important than municipal. Climatic and 
 historical influences, it is true, made a clearly marked distinc- 
 tion between the great sections of Europe, the North and the 
 South, the East and the West, and we shall have to take up 
 some 'of these sections in detail; but we shall use our time 
 
TOWN TRADE 45 
 
 most effectively by spending it not on the features of trade 
 in the different modern countries considered separately, but 
 on the characteristics of trade common to all the advanced 
 countries. 
 
 48. Small size of the medieval towns. — A point deserving 
 special emphasis in the description of the medieval town is 
 this, that though the town comprised practically all the mer- 
 cantile and manufacturing population of a country, and though 
 it marked a tremendous advance over the village, yet the 
 town was a very small affair when measured by modern stand- 
 ards. In England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
 the average size of the first class of towns was probably below 
 5,000 inhabitants; few had more than 10,000 and many had 
 less than 1,000. On the Continent, in the last centuries of 
 the Middle Ages, even celebrated cities like Nuremberg and 
 Strassburg had not over 20,000 inhabitants. Frankfort on 
 the Main had scarcely 10,000, and other cities which played a 
 great part in economic and political history had even less. 
 
 49. Rural characteristics of the towns. — Another miscon- 
 ception must be guarded against. Though the town was a 
 distinctly industrial group in comparison with the village, 
 yet each town had grown from a village, and retained many 
 features of its agricultural infancy even to a late period. Most 
 of the townspeople owned some land which they used for 
 garden plots, and every town had considerable amounts of 
 arable and pasture land outside the walls which was used for 
 the benefit of the townspeople if not actually worked by them. 
 In Coblentz, in the thirteenth century, work on the city walls 
 was stopped during harvest by lack of labor, and in London 
 at the same period people were allowed to keep pigs "within 
 their houses," and the attempt to keep vagrant swine off the 
 streets was a distinct failure. 
 
 50. General description of a town. — There were generally 
 a few streets that were broad and straight, as they were the 
 old highways on which the town had grown up. The attempt 
 was made to keep these clear of encroaching houses and shops 
 
46 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 by sending a horseman through them once a year with a 
 spear held horizontally, and by forcing the removal of obstruc- 
 tions. Most of the streets, however, had grown up from 
 village by-paths and were narrow and crooked. They were 
 rarely paved, and as they served as the repository for all 
 kinds of offal and garbage we can understand why the towns- 
 people wore wooden overshoes when they went out, and even 
 the saints in the pictures were painted with them on. The 
 houses were of wood in the early period, and there were no 
 chimneys, so that fires were frequent and disastrous until they 
 forced people to a better mode of building. Travelers in 
 Europe now remark upon the picturesque beauty of the old 
 houses, and upon the merits of their construction, but it 
 should be noted that most of these relics date from the very 
 end of the Middle Ages and that they were the select few of 
 their time, and give no indication of the character of the 
 average house. Most of the people lived in narrow quarters, 
 dark and drafty, unsuited for good work places and unwhole- 
 some as habitations. Wares were exposed for sale either in 
 the open market-places which are so common in European 
 towns, or in little shops like pedlers' booths at the front of 
 the house. The municipal government spent little or nothing 
 for public works or police protection; it tried to make the 
 inhabitants share in performing all absolutely necessary duties, 
 but succeeded so ill that all the towns were sinks of disease, 
 and breach of the peace was a constant occurrence. 
 
 51. Improvement in conditions in the later Middle Ages. — 
 In the early period of the towns, say before 1300, conditions 
 were distinctly worse than they were in the last two centuries 
 of the Middle Ages, when commerce had attained such devel- 
 opment that it brought great wealth to some and comparative 
 comfort to many among the city people. The town of Col- 
 chester, in England, ranked as one of importance in 1295, but 
 a tax roll of that date shows a striking poverty in the stock 
 in trade assessed for taxation, in the small value of household 
 furniture, in the insignificant amount of most of the assess- 
 
TOWN TRADE 47 
 
 mentS; and in the preponderance of rural wealth like live 
 stock and agricultural produce over other kinds of personal 
 property. In the fourteenth century, however, the population 
 of the town doubled, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
 turies the towns of England in general freed themselves from 
 the worst features of medieval squalor, accumulated wealth, and 
 expended large sums in building and improvements. 
 
 52. Town organization. The merchant gilds. — Much more 
 might be said about the general characteristics of the medieval 
 town, but the student of the history of commerce must devote 
 most of his time to its economic life. He must prepare himself 
 to accept and understand conditions quite different from those 
 of modern times, and must try to realize how much the world 
 has gained by the advance of the commercial organization 
 from these early stages. In every town the merchants and 
 manufacturers were organized in gilds and subject to strict 
 regulation. The Anglo-Saxon word gild means " a contribution 
 to a common fund," and came to be applied to the society 
 itself. Societies had existed in the first part of the Middle 
 Ages with social and religious objects, and about the eleventh 
 century, with the springing up of trade, commercial gilds 
 became more and more common. It is supposed that the 
 dangers and difficulties of trade were then so great that mer- 
 chants united in bands for a journey, as caravans are now 
 formed in the unsettled countries of the East. A collection 
 of early gild rules shows that the members were subject to 
 regulations like the following : Every one was obliged to carry 
 armor, a bow and twelve arrows on penalty of a fine; they 
 must stand by and help each other when they set out for a 
 journey; in case one member had not sold his wares the others 
 must wait one day for him; if one was imprisoned or lost his 
 wares on the road the others must ransom him. The organi- 
 zation was probably temporary at first, and the company of 
 merchants dissolved at the end of the trip; but as such caravans 
 became more regular at any place there grew the tendency to 
 permanence of organiz^i^tion. These merchant gilds were at 
 
48 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 first also private associations, formed voluntarily by the mer- 
 chants to protect themselves; but they received public recog- 
 nition and became a part of the town government as the 
 town saw the advantage it could get from them in pushing its 
 trade and protecting it against the efforts of rivals. They 
 included not only professional merchants, but all who bought 
 and sold, including many artisans. Of the nine members who 
 belonged to the Shrewsbury merchant gild in its earliest period 
 two were fishermen and one was a butcher. 
 
 53. Position of the merchant gilds ; their privilege of monop- 
 oly. — These merchant gilds did not exist in all parts of Europe, 
 and differed much from each other in the various regions 
 where they did exist. In England, which we shall choose to 
 illustrate their operation, they became regular parts of the 
 town government. They were granted one most important 
 privilege, the exclusive right of trading within the town. 
 " Foreigners," which meant at this period the people from any 
 other town, whether English or not, were allowed to bring their 
 wares to the town and to sell them wholesale, but they were 
 forbidden to purchase wares which the townspeople wanted 
 for themselves, and they were not allowed to keep shops and 
 to sell retail. The gilds were not like modern "trusts," for, 
 in the first place, their membership was very broad, and, in 
 the second, they were associations of men, not of capital, and 
 there was no division of profits among the members. There 
 was a strong feeling of solidarity among the members, how- 
 ever, and competition between them was discouraged. In 
 some places there was a law that if a gildsman made a bargain 
 for any ware another gildsman had the right to share in it if 
 he gave security that he could pay for the portion he desired. 
 
 54. Development of manufactures in the towns ; the common 
 handicrafts. — The growth of towns led, as has been said, to a 
 specialization in manufactures which was impossible before. 
 All the industries that had been carried on in villages were 
 continued in towns by professional craftsmen, and new ones 
 were added as the demand for them grew. There were from 
 
TOWN TRADE 49 
 
 a dozen to a score of handicrafts which supported for centuries 
 the staple manufacturing groups of the towns: butchers, bakers, 
 brewers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, masons, car- 
 penters, cabinet-makers, wheelwrights, skinners or furriers, 
 tanners, shoemakers, saddlers and harness makers, weavers, 
 dyers, fullers, and tailors. Most of these terms will be familiar 
 to the reader. Coppersmiths took the place of the modern 
 tinsmiths before the introduction of tinned iron. Fullers 
 improved the texture of cloth after it had been woven, by 
 beating and washing it with fuller's earth, a clay which absorbs 
 the grease from the wool ; the cloth loses in length and breadth 
 but gains in body and thickness. 
 
 55. The craft gilds. — The craftsmen, like the traders, were 
 organized in gilds, which followed shortly after the rise of 
 merchant gilds. The general reason for their existence was 
 the desire on the part of members of a particular ^craft to be 
 free to regulate their professional affairs as they pleased, and 
 the willingness on the part of the public authorities to grant 
 them this privilege when it seemed to promise better work 
 and better products for the consumer. To insure efficient 
 regulation the grant of monopoly was necessary, and accord- 
 ingly no one was allowed to practise a craft who did not belong 
 to the appropriate gild. We shall see that the monopoly was 
 greatly abused in later times and was a serious hindrance to 
 the development of manufacturing. At the start, however, 
 the craft gilds were liberal; they desired a large number of 
 members to increase their political importance, and admitted 
 them freely; inside the gild the class distinctions were at first 
 unimportant. " The regulations drawn up by the crafts aimed 
 at the prevention of fraud, and the observance of certain 
 standards of size and quality in the wares produced. Articles 
 made in violation of these rules were called 'false,' just as 
 clipped or counterfeit coin was 'false money.' For such 
 'false work' the makers were punished by fines (one half 
 going to the craft, the other half to the town funds), and, upon 
 the third or fourth offence, by expulsion from the trade. 
 4 
 
■ 50 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Penalties were provided, as far as possible, for every sort of 
 deceitful device; such as putting better wares at the top of a 
 bale than below, moistening groceries so as to make them 
 heavier, selling second-hand furs for new, soldering together 
 broken swords, selling sheep leather for doe leather, and many 
 other like tricks.'' 
 
 56. Town policy; imports, exports, protection. — Every 
 town felt a community of interests among its inhabitants and 
 a competition with the inhabitants of other towns, which 
 expressed themselves in a town policy very like the national 
 commercial policy of the modern state. We can consider this 
 municipal policy under several different heads. 
 
 (1) Every town had what may be called a "revenue tariff,'^ 
 consisting of duties levied on articles brought within the walls, 
 with additional dues for the use of the market. As an example 
 we can cite a brief extract from one of the London tariffs, 
 giving the customs on victuals. "Every load of poultry that 
 comes upon horse, shall pay three farthings, the franchise 
 excepted. ... If a man or woman brings any manner of 
 poultry upon horse, and lets it touch the ground, such person 
 shall pay for stallage three farthings. And if a man carries 
 it upon his back and places it upon the ground, he shall pay 
 one half-penny, of whatever franchise he may be." It is 
 interesting to note that this custom still survives in some 
 European cities (octroi). 
 
 (2) Prohibitions to export goods, now rare in national 
 policy (though suggested recently to keep English coal at 
 home), were common in the town policy, when the supply of 
 necessaries was small. "No butcher, or wife of a butcher, 
 shall sell tallow or lard to a strange person for carrying to the 
 parts beyond sea; by reason of the great dearness and scarcity 
 that has been thereof in the City of late." "No person shall 
 carry corn or malt out of the City, under penalty of forfeiture." 
 
 (3) The modern idea of protection was applied by the 
 towns in a number of different ways. Bread from one part of 
 London could not be sold in another part, which formed a 
 
TOWN TRADE 51 
 
 separate jurisdiction. The protection at this period was at- 
 tained more commonly, however, by aiming it against persons 
 rather than wares; the merchant always accompanied his 
 wares at this period, so it was easy to discriminate against 
 *' foreigners," by making them pay special dues from which 
 members "of the franchise," i.e., townspeople, were excepted, 
 and by restricting their chances for profit. Reference has 
 been made above to the monopoly of retail trade reserved to 
 townspeople and designed to protect the "home market." 
 
 57. The market and its regulations. — (4) The market was 
 an institution used in this period to regulate trade for the 
 benefit of the townspeople; the name is applied now especially 
 to meat shops simply because regulations were imposed on 
 butchers after other dealers were freed from them. The 
 townspeople were afraid that traders bringing provisions for 
 sale could impose on their needs and force higher prices by 
 making separate individual bargains. Therefore they required 
 the country people to bring their provisions to a certain place 
 (market-place) at a certain time, that they might have the 
 benefit of competition among sellers; and tried to force the 
 traders to sell out their stock before the close of the market. 
 That all the townspeople might have an equal chance they 
 were forbidden to buy goods on their way to market ("fore- 
 stalling"); to buy larger amounts than they needed ("en- 
 grossing"); and to buy goods for retailing before the ordinary 
 consumers had supplied their needs ("regrating"). After the 
 close of the market the town shop-keepers looked after the 
 needs of retail trade. 
 
 Ignorance and distrust were still so powerful in the town 
 period that merchants were subject to constant supervision; 
 they had to employ officials to weigh and measure for them, 
 and could not employ brokers to hunt up customers unless the 
 agents were also officials acting under oath. 
 
 58. Attempts to regulate prices. The assize of bread. — The 
 town government went even so far as to set the prices at which 
 wares must be sold. We are familiar, nowadays, with in- 
 
52 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 stances of the regulation of prices by public authority, as in 
 the case of hack fares. Such instances, however, are now 
 exceptional, while in the Middle Ages innumerable attempts 
 at public regulation, covering practically all wares, were made 
 at different times and places. Most of them were soon given 
 up, because they defeated their own object; when the price 
 was set too low the ware was no longer offered, and people 
 suffered more by going without than by paying the higher 
 price. Thus it was found unwise to set a price for a necessary 
 like wheat; and high wheat prices were allowed to work their 
 own cure by the inducement they offered to an increase in 
 supply. It was as hopeless to set a fixed price for bread, but 
 the government determined that at least the baker should 
 not make improper profits from the necessities of his customers. 
 It established, therefore, the "assize of bread," a sliding-scale 
 which fixed the weight or the price of a loaf according to the 
 market price of wheat, and so restricted the power of the 
 baker to raise his charges unduly. The same system was 
 applied to ale, and assizes of this kind have lasted down to the 
 nineteenth century in some countries. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Show what would happen to our modem cities if there were an 
 interruption of commerce, either physical (perhaps the giving out of 
 coal) or political (wars, strikes attended with violence, etc.). 
 
 2. Study the effect on a modern city of such a brief interruption as a 
 great blizzard. 
 
 3. Find the reasons for the rise and growth of the following: London, 
 York, Paris, St. Omer, Lille, St. Denis, Lyons, Bruges, St. Cloud. [Use 
 a geography and the encyclopedia.] 
 
 4. Starting from the statements in the text, that in a manor of 100 
 inhabitants the only specialists were perhaps miller and smith, try to 
 think of specialists who would appear as the group grew in size to 1,000; 
 to 10,000; to 100,000; 1,000,000. For example, when would the follow- 
 ing appear: watch-maker, artificial limb-maker, shoe-maker, saddler? 
 [The business directory of a city may supply helpful suggestions.] 
 
 5. How has the growth of cities in the U. S. affected the agriculture 
 of the surrounding districts and the welfare of the farmers? 
 
 6. Compare the size of medieval towns with that of towns and vil- 
 
TOWN TRADE 53 
 
 lages familiar to you, and try to realize the conditions if all the larger 
 cities were swept off the map. [See Abstract, 12th Census, Table 91, 
 giving the population of all places having 2,500 or more inhabitants, 
 arranged by States.] 
 
 7. (a) Make a list of the ten or fifteen largest towns in modern Eng- 
 land. [Statesman's Year-Book, index, England, cities and towns.] (6) 
 Compare this with a list of towns in early times and discover what large 
 towns are of recent origin. [Cheyney, English towns, pp. 35-39, Be- 
 ware of the large figures of population, p. 38; they are misleading.] 
 
 8. Write a report on the economic and social life of a medieval 
 town. [See M. D. Harris, Life, or the original local customs in Cheyney, 
 English towns, pp. 2-6.] 
 
 9. Write a similar report on the merchant gilds. [Harris, Life, 
 chap. 7; Cheyney, English towns, pp. 12-20.] 
 
 10. Reviewing the list of trades in the text, try to realize how the 
 people managed in the manorial period, when professional specialists in 
 these trades were lacking. 
 
 11. Study the list of craft gilds in York, 1415; find from dictionary 
 and encyclopaedia the meaning of each trade mentioned; arrange them 
 in classes, as, for example: food, clothing, building utensils, personal 
 service, etc. [Cheyney, English towns, pp. 29-32.] 
 
 12. Write a report on the town artisans and the craft gilds. [Harris, 
 Life, chap. 13; Cheyney, English towns, pp. 21-29.] 
 
 13. Compare medieval and modern ideas on the regulation of trade. 
 [Farrer, The State in its relation to trade, N. Y., Macmillan, 1902, $1.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Gross, Sources, §§24a, 72. 
 
 General. — For the significance of towns in the development of the 
 industrial organization the student may be referred to two important 
 books, differing in details : SchmoUer, Merc, system; Bucher, Indust. 
 evolution. Chapters on the rise of towns and town life will be found in 
 Adams, * Civ.; Emerton, Med. Eur.; Robinson, Middle Ages; Munro, 
 Hist.; etc. Greater emphasis is, of course, laid on the economic (includ- 
 ing commercial) aspects of town life in ** Ashley and * Cunningham. 
 Jessopp, * Coming, gives a vivid picture of urban and rural life of the 
 period. Mary D. Harris. ** Life in an old English town (Coventry), 
 London, 1898 (N. Y., Macmillan, $1.75), should be very useful to student 
 and teacher. Green, ** English Towns, is valuable and interesting for 
 the English towns of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Sources. — Cheyney, ** English towns and gilds, Penn. Transla- 
 tions, Phila., 1895, $.20, gives an excellent selection, which can be used 
 to advantage with advanced students. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 LAND TRADE 
 
 59. Roads neglected, or left to benevolent associations. — 
 
 The maintenance of the roads was still left to local authorities. 
 We find in the court records of manors that the people reported 
 stretches of road which were in bad condition, and ordered 
 that they should be repaired under penalty of fine; but a 
 road had to be very bad before it attracted attention, and 
 received little care at best. The clergy were the leaders in 
 maintaining the roads, for their estates were scattered and 
 they felt the need of transportation as none other but mer- 
 chants did. Pious persons also devoted themselves to this 
 object, as a meritorious work like visiting the sick or caring 
 for the poor; they formed associations to keep roads in repair, 
 and left bequests to allow the work to be carried on after their 
 death. The Alpine hospices, which are so familiar to visitors 
 in Switzerland now, were established by religious orders to 
 help travelers and merchants on their way. 
 
 60. Difficulties of transportation by road. — A feudal lawyer 
 distinguished in theory five kinds of roads: the path, the 
 wagon road of eight feet, the road of sixteen feet, the highway 
 of thirty-two feet, and the Roman roads of sixty-four feet. 
 There was nothing in reality to correspond to this distinction. 
 The Roman roads were still in use, but they were too much 
 worn and too few in number to raise the general level of trans- 
 portation. When an English king wanted to transport pro- 
 visions to Scotland about 1300, he required four horses, or, in 
 the northern counties, eight oxen to a wagon. Transportation 
 by wagon was so difficult that pack animals were still in 
 general use and travelers nearly always went on horseback, 
 
 54 
 
LAND TRADE 5B 
 
 both men and women riding astride, and twenty miles being 
 considered a fair day's journey. The town of Bristol was 
 granted a county court in 1373 to save the townspeople the 
 journey to Gloucester, "distant thirty miles of road, deep, 
 especially in winter time, and dangerous to passengers." At 
 the very end of this period (1499) a glover traveling to market 
 at Aylesbury was drowned with his horse in a pit which a 
 miller had dug to get clay from the road. A court acquitted 
 the miller on the ground that he had no malicious intent, and 
 really did not know of any other place where he could get 
 the kind of clay he wanted. 
 
 61. Lack of bridges. — Bridges were still rare. Those 
 which the Romans had built fell into ruins; they were rebuilt 
 in wood, or replaced by bridges of boats, by simple ferries, or 
 by mere fords. Complaint was made to the English Parliament 
 in 1376 that nobody was bound to maintain the bridge over 
 the Trent near Nottingham; the bridge was "ruinous," and 
 " oftentimes have several persons been drowned, as well horse- 
 men, as carts, man and harness " : Parliament refused authority 
 to keep the bridge in repair. A large number of towns had 
 grown up on rivers, as is shown, for instance, by the number 
 of English town names ending in -ford, -bridge, -ferry; and 
 the difficulty and danger of crossing the streams were serious 
 obstacles to trade. Pious and public-spirited people took up 
 the work which the government was still unable to undertake, 
 and devoted their time and money to the construction and 
 repair of bridges; the church assisted by the grant of indul- 
 gences (remitting church punishments for sins) to those who 
 contributed. Even now the religious character of some of the 
 European bridges is attested by the chapels built on or near 
 them. 
 
 62. Advantages of river transportation. — The difficulties 
 of land transport led to the use of river navigation wherever it 
 was practicable. It is said that the flow of many European 
 rivers was more full in the Middle Ages than it is now, and 
 though the course was apt to be obstructed by mill dams and 
 
(/ 
 
 56 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fish-weirs, and little was done to preserve the channel, mer- 
 chants could transport by rivers bulky articles which would 
 not have paid for their carriage on land. A single boat, it is 
 estimated, carried as much as 500 pack animals would take, 
 and it often paid to go far out of the shortest way to a market 
 to follow navigable water. It was cheaper, for instance, to 
 bring salt from Liineburg to Brandenburg by way of Liibeck 
 and Stettin, though the direct land route was of course far 
 shorter. 
 
 63. Danger of violence on the road. — The physical diffi- 
 culties of travel were accompanied by danger of violence of 
 which people nowadays have little conception. The church 
 attempted to secure the safety of merchants, and cooperated 
 with the political authorities in maintaining the "Peace of 
 God," and in repressing disorder. The feudal system had 
 developed into a more efficient system of government in its 
 later period, and something like the modern state rose from 
 it before the close of the Middle Ages. But in spite of all 
 efforts highway robbery and violence were regular and normal 
 occurrences, even in the more advanced countries. In many 
 parts of Europe merchants still traveled in temporary bands 
 or "caravans," for better protection, and students going to 
 college in England were encouraged to carry arms on the 
 journey. 
 
 64. Complicity of feudal lords in robbery. — The King of 
 France tried in vain, in the thirteenth century, to make feudal 
 lords responsible for crimes committed in their territories. 
 The lords were often accomplices in the crimes; the King him- 
 self was not always above suspicion; and even dignitaries of 
 the church or heroes of the crusades turned highway robbers 
 on occasion. An indication of the conditions is given by a 
 complaint of the English House of Commons in 1348. " Whereas 
 it is notoriously known throughout all the shires of England 
 that robbers, thieves, and other malefactors on foot and on 
 horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the land in 
 divers places, committing larcenies and robberies; may it 
 
LAND TRADE 57 
 
 please our lord the king to charge the nobility of the land that 
 none such be maintained by them, privately nor openly; but 
 that they help to arrest and take such bad fellows." A cen- 
 tury before, two merchants from the continent had been 
 robbed in Hampshire; the culprits were arrested, but could 
 not be convicted for a long time; finally more than sixty 
 persons were executed for complicity in this and similar crimes, 
 the number including many men of position, numerous royal 
 officials and some even of the king's household. Shakespeare's 
 story of Prince Hal's exploits on the road may not be true, 
 but it is not at all improbable. 
 
 65. Tolls imposed by feudal authorities. — It would be a 
 great mistake to suppose that the merchant's expense com- 
 prised only the sums necessary to transport his goods over 
 bad roads and to protect himself against robbers. In addition 
 every merchant had to pay the feudaHolls: tolls for the repair 
 of a road which was not kept up, and tolls for protection which 
 he had to furnish himself. Feudal lords were everywhere, and 
 every feudal lord tried to make money out of the movement 
 of men and goods. As early as the time of Charlemagne (809) 
 we find the central government attempting to keep the ways 
 of commerce open. Charlemagne forbade the compelling of 
 travelers to use bridges when there were short-cuts, or the 
 building of bridges in dry places to extort passage money 
 from travelers, or the stretching of ropes across streams to 
 force ships to pay for the right of passage with money or wares. 
 The attempt was vain. The power of the central government 
 fell into the hands of local lords, and was exercised by them 
 without regard to any but selfish and local interests. 
 
 66. Variety and number of tolls. — The variety of feudal 
 tolls is almost inconceivable. Attempts by scholars to classify 
 them as we should modern fees and taxes are useless, because 
 no principle underlay the system. A French scholar has made 
 a list of seventeen different kinds of tolls, but this is rough 
 and incomplete. We can say in general that tolls were levied 
 everyw^here and on everything. Even a jongleur, the equiva- 
 
58 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 lent to the modern organ-grinder, could not pass the gates of 
 Paris without making his monkey show off to pay his own 
 way. A man had to pay toll not only when he went over a 
 bridge; he had to pay a toll when he went under it, and could 
 not escape the toll by going around it. 
 
 HUDSON RIVER FROM NEW YORK TO TROY Same Scale as Loire River 
 
 Places at which tolls were levied are marked by a line across the river, or, when 
 many were levied at one place, by lines drawn near the river. The tolls as shown 
 were established at different times down to the seventeenth century, and af- 
 fected different wares ; so that a merchant did not have to pay all of them at 
 any time. The map of the Hudson is inserted as a help in estimating distances. 
 
 In the thirteenth century there were on one side of the 
 Rhone four toll-stations on a stretch of little over thirty miles. 
 In the fourteenth century there were 74 tolls on the Loire, 
 from Roanne to Nantes; 12 on the Allier; 10 on the Sarth; 
 60 on the Rhone and Saone; 70 on the Garonne or on the 
 land-routes between la Reole and Narbonne; 9 on the Seine 
 between the Grand Pont of Paris and the Roche-Guyon. 
 There were 13 toll-stations on the Rhine between Mainz and 
 Cologne. In a few hours' walk around Nuremberg one passed 
 10 stations. 
 
 The traveler abroad, whose route follows the line of medieval 
 
LAND TRADE 50 
 
 trade, is struck with the number of feudal castles which he 
 passes. He admires the picturesque ruins, perhaps, without 
 realizing that each castle was once a toll station and without 
 reflecting that the Hudson shows a higher stage of civilization 
 than the Rhine. 
 
 67. Abuses of the tolls. — The burden of the tolls was 
 aggravated by the fact, already suggested, that the merchant 
 got nothing in return except the right to look out for himself. 
 The merchants were forced to associate to do what the river y 
 lords neglected: keep up the tow-paths, drag the river-bed, l/ 
 build warehouses and wharves. The merchant might pay a lord 
 for a safe-conduct which was supposed to assure him protection 
 in a certain territory, and then be robbed by the lord himself. 
 
 According to the feudal theory exemption from tolls must 
 be granted in certain cases. Supplies for the army and navy, 
 for the king and higher officials, for churches, hospitals, and 
 monasteries, should pay no toll. Scholars at the universities 
 enjoyed in theory an immunity which they could not secure in 
 fact. The merchant, however, was always regarded as fair 
 prey, and wares of commerce which were supposed to be 
 exempt, as in France, for instance, wares on their way to 
 Lyons fair, enjoyed only partial immunity. A sixteenth-cen- 
 tury French writer instances as an example of the oppression 
 of tolls the case of a merchant who shipped to the East some 
 cloth that was wet on the voyage and had to be sent back to 
 Paris to be redyed; all along the road in France the tolls had 
 to be paid over again. The collectors levied toll even on grain 
 that was being taken to mill, on cattle that were to be used 
 as plow animals, on agricultural implements and manure. 
 
 68. Development of the toll system. — With the growth of 
 commerce the toll-stations of course increased in value; and 
 the practice grew up of leasing them to contractors, who paid 
 a high sum for the privilege and had to devise, an old author 
 tells us, "ten thousand new and unusual tyrannies, frauds and 
 exactions" to make any profit for themselves. Many kept 
 taverns, and managed to detain the merchant for days on 
 
60 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 various pretexts, such as absence of the proper official. Some 
 made the merchant pay to be relieved of the necessity of 
 having his wares unpacked and weighed and measured in 
 detail. Many kept the tariff secret, and extorted what they 
 could on every occasion. Some lived far from the highway, 
 and some put their offices by design on impracticable roads, 
 and fined the merchants heavily who went by another route. 
 
 On some routes, as along the middle Rhine, Bingen to 
 Coblenz, it was almost impossible for commerce to be carried 
 on except along the river, and very heavy tolls could be levied 
 here without danger of the merchants escaping; but under 
 other conditions the collectors established wings, as they were 
 called, secondary offices on the side-roads to prevent evasion 
 of the toll. Some collectors established regular pools, to use 
 the modern term applied to railroad combination; twenty-five 
 or thirty of them, representing perhaps five or six separate 
 toll-areas, associated and agreed upon their rates; then they 
 pooled and divided their profits. 
 
 69. Constraint of trade by tolls. — The establishment of 
 toll-stations put an artificial constraint on trade, which kept it 
 in the paths most convenient for the collectors, not most 
 suitable to the merchants. Lords would not allow new and 
 better roads to be built, for fear that profits on the old roads 
 would be impaired. The compulsion to follow certain routes 
 (German S trass enzwang) became a serious evil as commerce 
 developed and sought new openings; and the loss to the public 
 was far greater than any gain by the toll receiver. 
 
 Peculiarly noxious customs clustered around the rights 
 which feudal lords claimed for themselves in the period when 
 the central government was pow^erless. The right to a wrecked 
 ship, which had once been the prerogative of the king, could be 
 distorted so that the whole cargo of a Regensburg ship was 
 confiscated in 1396 because a single little cask had fallen off 
 into the Danube. It was an accepted rule in Germany that if 
 a wagon broke down so that the axle touched the ground it 
 became a part of the land and belonged to the lord of the 
 
LAND TRADE 61 
 
 territory; break-downs must have been frequent, in view of the 
 wretched condition of the roads, and it has been suggested that 
 lords sought to cause them by traps and pitfalls. 
 
 70. Burden of the tolls on trade. — The most evident effect 
 of the tolls was the additional cost of transportation which 
 must be paid, of course, by the consumer. The price of a ry 
 ware might rise, within a comparatively short distance, so 
 much that it could not be sold at all. It has been estimated 
 that in the fourteenth century the Rhine tolls merely on the 
 stretch between Bingen and Coblenz amounted to two thirds of \V^ 
 the value of the wares. Even in the fifteenth century, and \ 
 after some reform had been effected in the French tolls, the 
 price of goods was doubled by carriage from Nantes to Orleans 
 on the Loire or from Honfleur to Paris on the Seine. 
 
 Besides the loss of money there was the loss of time; a 
 merchant might arrive at his destination too late to find a 
 market for his wares, or might find that they had deteriorated 
 on the road. The monks of Beauvais took three pennyworths 
 from each horse load that passed by, and on fast days they 
 spent so much time in selecting their fish that the rest of the 
 load spoiled before it reached Paris. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1 . Make a study of the roads in your own State, noting (a) the extent 
 of good and of bad roads, (b) the effect on transportation, (c) the system 
 under which the roads are maintained, (d) organized attempts at im- 
 provement. Study the system of New Jersey and its effects. [Documents 
 aiding in this study may be obtained from the Department of Agriculture, 
 Washington, and probably from the government of your own State — 
 apply to State Librarian for information.] 
 
 2. To what extent is river navigation practised in your State? Was 
 it not more important before the introduction of railways? 
 
 3. Estimate the distance between the points named in the text, 
 sect. 62, by land and by water. 
 
 4. Have we had in theU. S. in recent times any similar dangers of 
 violence in transportation? [Read the history of gold-mining in Califor- 
 nia, in H. H. Bancroft or other available books.] 
 
 5. Robber knights in medieval Germany. [Baring-Gould, Story, 
 chap. 22.] 
 
62 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 6. Read the first part of Shakespeare, Henry IV, about the exploits 
 of Prince Hal and Falstaff on the highway. 
 
 7. What would be the effect on trade in your State if tolls were 
 levied on the border of every county, or even inside the counties? 
 
 8. Using a good map find from the scale of miles the length of one of 
 the stretches mentioned in sect. 66 (for example, Mainz to Cologne), 
 and insert the toll stations; then transfer this, changing the scale if neces- 
 sary, to some road or railroad entering the place where you live. 
 
 9. Modem railroad officials are sometimes called "robber barons." 
 Assuming the truth of charges made against them, discuss the appropriate- 
 ness of the term, indicating points of likeness and of difference with re- 
 spect to medieval nobles. 
 
 10. Compare medieval and modern compulsion in the choice of routes. 
 What is alleged to be the attitude of transcontinental railroads to the 
 construction of the Panama Canal? 
 
 11. Using the method suggested in sect. 66 apply the statements 
 in sect. 70 to conditions at home, and show how much medieval tolls 
 would add to the present low charges of transportation. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 By far the best reference that can be given is Jusserand, ** English 
 wayfaring life. If a library containing older books is available much of 
 interest will be found in Smiles, * Lives of the engineers, London, 1862, 
 vol. 1. A good study will be found also in the Economic Review, vol. 7, 
 July, 1897: Alice Law, English towns and roads in the thirteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 FAIRS 
 
 71. Fairs ; the reason for their existence. — The foregoing 
 description of medieval commerce will have shown that trade 
 was far less extensive than it is now, and will suggest the 
 reason for one of the characteristic trading institutions of the 
 time — the fairs. 
 
 Every person with wares to sell seeks a purchaser who 
 desires those particular wares and who will give him in ex- 
 change something that he himself desires. Nowadays, for 
 instance, a farmer brings his country products to the city, 
 seeks out a produce merchant who will give him money for it, 
 makes his purchases at the dry goods store with the money, 
 and returns contented; he has exchanged his surplus for what 
 he lacks. If there is no special store where he can sell his 
 produce he must seek out . buyers by going around to the 
 separate houses, and if there is no general store where he can 
 make his purchases he must again hunt up the individuals 
 who make or sell what he desires. Where exchange is still 
 relatively rare it may be a very troublesome process to find 
 the buyers and sellers of particular wares, and the following 
 device has almost always been adopted to meet the difficulty; 
 people who desire to trade agree to meet at a certain time and 
 place, so that there will be every chance that buyer and seller 
 will find each other and secure that coincidence of supply and 
 demand which exchange implies. The current of trade is 
 dammed for a time as it were; then allowed to flow in much 
 greater volume for a little while, then dammed again. 
 
 72. Comparison of fairs with markets and modem ex- 
 changes. — Even now the old custom of " market days' ' 
 
 63 
 
64 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 persists in some places, and once it was universal; townspeople 
 and country people agreed on a certain day, and met in the 
 market-place then to exchange their wares. A fair is the 
 same kind of institution as a market, and grew up for similar 
 reasons, but it represented a further step of development, for 
 it attracted buyers and sellers from a far greater area, and 
 served the needs of wholesale as well as retail trade. The 
 fair is, of course, much less advanced than the modern ex- 
 Ix changes (stock and produce), from the fact that it was inter- 
 mittent instead of being continuous, as well as for other reasons; 
 but in the Middle Ages it was the means by which commerce 
 grew strong, and the prosperity of commerce could be measured 
 by the prosperity of fairs. 
 
 The fairs always attracted people for social as well as 
 .business purposes; life in the Middle Ages would be regarded 
 as insufferably dull at the present time, and both townspeople 
 and country people enjoyed the excitement which the fair 
 brought with it. There were "side-shows" in plenty, then; 
 wild animals, trained dogs, and monstrosities, poets and musi- 
 cians, actors and clowns, dancing and gambling halls; and 
 there was a good opportunity to turn a penny dishonestly as 
 well as honestly. The court roll of the English fairs of St. Ives 
 tells us of a defendant who was caught selling a ring of brass 
 for 5Jd., saying "that the ring was of the purest gold, and 
 that he and a one-eyed man found it on the last Sunday in 
 the Church of St. Ives, near the Cross." 
 
 73. Privileges of merchants trading at a fair. — The fair 
 ordinarily grew up under the protection of some feudal lord, 
 secular or ecclesiastical, who endeavored in every way to 
 further its growth that he might increase his revenue from 
 the taxes he imposed on it. The lord of a fair endeavored to 
 attract merchants by guaranteeing them protection on their 
 way, and there were many cases in which the lord took up the 
 , cause of merchants of his fair who had been robbed or mal- 
 ^ treated by others, and forced restitution. Furthermore, he 
 endeavored to secure exemption from tolls for wares on the 
 
FAIRS 65 
 
 way to his fair, and sometimes merchants on their way to a 
 fair were freed from the attachment of the person for debt. 
 Inside the fair a freedom of trade was allowed which was 
 unusual at the time, and various special privileges were granted 
 the merchants. The most important of these was a special 
 court in which cases of breach of contract and the like could 
 be tried. It was called the Court of Pie Powder (Pie, French 
 pied, foot; curia pedis pulverizaii, court of dusty foot) from 
 the dusty feet of the merchants, or, as some said, because 
 justice was done as speedily as dust would fall from the foot. 
 At any rate this court did give a rough and ready means of 
 settling commercial disputes by referring them to a committee 
 of traders, which was highly prized because commercial law 
 was still in its infancy, and no justice could be looked for in a 
 manorial or a feudal court. 
 
 74. Great fairs in Europe. The fairs of Champagne. — It 
 would be possible to give a long list of fairs, for every country 
 of Europe had them in varying number at different times. 
 The oldest was probably that of St. Denis at Paris, which 
 may have been founded (as its patrons alleged) in the seventh 
 century, and which was certainly in active operation long 
 before the time of Charlemagne. In a later period another 
 Paris fair, that of St. Germain, became more important, and 
 later still the fairs in the French province of Champagne 
 became the most flourishing in Europe. The prosperity of 
 these fairs was due in part to their geographical position, 
 which made them a natural trade center and distributing 
 point when commerce on land was more important than that 
 on sea, but still more, apparently, to the good government 
 and wise policy of the Counts of Champagne. The Counts 
 gave sufficient protection both at home and abroad, main- 
 tained regular and reasonable dues, and did everything to 
 stimulate the confidence of the merchant class. They got an 
 enviable reputation by their strictness in forcing the proper 
 execution of contracts made at the fairs, and took such pre- 
 cautions to assure the payment of debts contracted there that 
 5 
 
Most of the traffic of the Champagne fairs went North and South, by way of Flanders 
 and of Italy. Merchants from Normandy ascended the river Oise to its junction 
 with the land route. The route of German merchants is unknown, but most of them 
 probably went by way of Bruges. 
 
FAIRS 67 
 
 some merchants (or bankers) went to the fairs simply to loan 
 money. 
 
 75. Trade at the Champagne fairs ; other continental fairs. — 
 
 In the thirteenth century, the period of their greatest pros- 
 perity, six fairs were held at different places in Champagne, 
 /-of which Troyes and Provins, southeast of Paris, were the 
 most important. Each lasted over six weeks, and, following 
 in rotation, they supplied an almost continuous market. Here 
 one might find all the wares which formed the objects of com- 
 merce in Europe; textiles of silk, wool, and linen; minor manu- 
 factures and jewelry; drugs and spices; raw materials like salt 
 and metals; leather, skins, and furs; foods and drinks, live 
 stock and slaves. The bulk of the trading was done by mer- 
 chants from various parts of France and Flanders (modern 
 Belgium) and by Italians who came up over the Alpine 
 passes; there w^ere also Germans and Spanish, and, in less 
 number, English, Dutch, and Swiss. Wares came from more 
 distant countries, Scandinavia and the eastern Mediterranean, 
 but changed hands on the way. 
 
 The fairs declined as heavier dues were imposed, and 
 especially when Champagne was brought directly under the 
 French king, about 1300; wars diverted the merchants from 
 Champagne to Flanders, and the growth of sea-trade favored 
 this same movement. The Champagne fairs dwindled to insig- 
 nificance, and their place was taken by the fairs of Bruges and 
 Cologne, of Frankfurt on the Main, Geneva, and Lyons. 
 
 76. English fairs. — England was near the circumference 
 of trade in this period, instead of being at the center as it now 
 is, and its commerce was not so highly developed, as that of 
 some of the Continental countries. The English fairs, there- 
 fore, were of less importance, and in most cases did not attrao'. 
 merchants from distant countries. The largest English faii^ 
 was Stourbridge Fair held about a mile from Cambridge, in 
 an excellent position for trade with the low countries across 
 the Channel, and for the distribution of goods through the 
 thickly populated districts of England. Another great English 
 
68 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fair was that of Winchester, held each year for sixteen days, 
 beginning on August 31st. "The hill-top was quickly covered 
 with streets of wooden shops; in one the merchants from 
 Flanders, in another those of Caen or some other Norman 
 town, in- another the merchants from Bristol. Here were 
 placed the goldsmiths in a row, and there the drapers; while 
 around the whole was a wooden palisade with guarded entrance, 
 — precautions which did not always prevent enterprising 
 adventurers from escaping payment of toll by digging a way 
 in for themselves under the wall. ... All trade was com- 
 pulsorily suspended at Winchester, and within a 'seven-league 
 circuit,' guards being stationed at outlying posts, on bridges 
 and other places of passage, to see that the monopoly was 
 not infringed. At Southhampton, outside the circuit, nothing 
 was to be sold during the fair-time but victuals, and even the 
 very craftsmen of Winchester were bound to transfer them- 
 selves to the hill and there carry on their occupation during 
 the fair. There was a graduated scale of tolls and duties; all 
 merchants of London, Winchester, or Wallingford who entered 
 during the first week were free from entrance tolls; after that 
 date newcomers paid tolls, except the members of the merchant 
 gild of Winchester." 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Following the reasons given in sect. 71 to explain the rise of fairs, 
 show why they have declined in recent times. What effect will the exten- 
 sion of railroads and the development of trade between Asia and Europe 
 have upon the fairs of Nijni Novgorod? 
 
 2. Set down all the points of Hkeness and of difference, so far as they 
 occur to you, of: market, fair, produce or stock exchange. 
 
 3. Study the history of fairs in your own State. Did the "county 
 fair" once have more economic importance than it has now? 
 
 4. Does a modern stock-exchange seek to attract customers by 
 offering guarantees of special security, as in the case of fairs? [Study 
 the rules of the exchange, and the pains taken to secure honesty and 
 solvency of members.] 
 
 5. Study, on a good map, the advantages of location (transportation 
 by land and water, nearness to advanced commercial people) of the Cham- 
 pagne towns; of their successors in commercial importance. 
 
FAIRS 69 
 
 6. Indicate on a sketch map of England the position of medieval 
 fairs. [See the index of Cunningham or Ashley] 
 
 7. Write a report on English fairs in the Middle Ages [same reference.] 
 
 8. Write a report on one of the following topics : 
 
 (a) The great fairs of Europe. [Home, Harper's Magazine, vol. 46, 
 p. 376.] 
 
 (b) The fair of Nijni Novgorod. [T. Child, Harper's Magazine, vol. 79, 
 p. 670.] 
 
 (c) Kentucky fairs. [James Lane Allen, Harper's Magazine, vol. 79, 
 p. 553.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Gross, Sources, has no separate section on fairs, but includes a num- 
 ber of books on them, to be found by consulting the index. A bibli- 
 ography will be found also in the article ** Fairs, by John Macdonald, in 
 the Encyc. Brit.; this article can be heartily recommended to teacher and 
 student. For modem fairs see Poole's Index of Periodical Lit. Bourne, 
 Romance of trade, devotes chap. 3 to fairs. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 SEA TRADE 
 
 77. Rise of sea commerce. The Scandinavians. — We 
 
 might suppose, in view of the difficulties and dangers of travel 
 on land, that the trade of Europe would have been forced to 
 the sea during the feudal period. In the last two centuries of 
 the Middle Ages there was, in facf]a grouitii of maritime 
 commerce which prepared the way for the great discoveries 
 and the oceanic period of modern commerce. Before this 
 period, however, the means of navigation were still so slight 
 that regular and extended commerce on the sea was the excep- 
 tion rather than the rule. 
 
 In Northern Europe the Scandinavians were the leaders in 
 the development of navigation. We get an idea of the ships 
 that they used from one which was discovered a few years 
 ago in a burial mound in southern Norway, where it had been 
 preserved since the ninth century, it is supposed. It is an 
 open boat, clinker built, and fashioned to go in either direc- 
 tion; it is about 75 feet long, and has places for 15 oars on 
 each side, but no arrangement for a sail. Similar boats, with 
 the addition of a rudder and hutch at each end, are still used 
 in the Lofoten Isands. They are well suited to carry pas- 
 sengers along the coast, but have small cargo capacity, and, of 
 course, are unfit for feng— sesr^Toyages. The Scandinavian 
 Vikings, indeed, used them mainly for raiding and piracy, and 
 in them harried for centuries the coasts of western Europe, 
 with a recklessness which accorded with their warlike char- 
 acter. A chronicle speaks of Danes who were tossed about 
 for nearly a month before they made their landing in England. 
 Along with these war vessels the Scandinavians must have had 
 
 70 
 
SEA TRADE 71 
 
 some cargo-ships, the details of which are unknown to us; a 
 modern writer conceives them to have been clumsy and slow, 
 "tub-shaped, round-bowed, and flat-bottomed." Sailing ships 
 were certainly used from a very early period. 
 
 78. Development of shipping in Northern Europe. — The 
 Bayeux tapestry, which pictures the events of the conquest 
 of England by the Normans in 1066, shows what was sub- 
 stantially the Viking type of vessel to have been used in that 
 expedition; the boats were undecked, and several foundered at 
 anchor before starting. A modern writer thinks that few 
 were over 30 tons in size, and that none carried over 40 or 50 
 men. About two centuries later the seals of Sandwich and 
 Dover show a ship still undecked, but provided with a rudder 
 working over the side, fighting platforms at bow and stern, 
 and a mast with a crow's-nest at the top. It is doubtful how 
 far we can trust representations such as these on the tapestry 
 and seal, which were often executed by persons unfamiliar 
 with the object and were sure to be conventional. We can, 
 if we choose, follow the statements in the chronicles, which 
 would make the ships much larger, holding a hundred men or 
 even several hundred; the chronicles are notorious, however, 
 for the constant exaggeration in matters of statistics, and the 
 truth lies probably somewhere in between our two sources of 
 information. Down to the fifteenth century the single mast 
 with the square sail was the usual rig. Some vessels, however, 
 carried two masts, one near the center and one toward the 
 bow, and could spread six sails. For shorter trips and for the 
 coasting trade smaller boats were used, sometimes propelled 
 only by oars. 
 
 79. Development of shipping in the Mediterranean. — Navi- 
 gation developed more rapidly in the Mediterranean, especially 
 after the beginning of the Crusades, than in northern Europe. 
 It is hard to believe the statements according to which the 
 Mediterranean ships carried 1,000 or even 1,500 pilgrims, after 
 all allowance is made for the crowding which would be per- 
 mitted at this time, but the Mediterraenan ships undoubtedly 
 
J 
 
 72 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 surpassed others in size and equipment. Venice presented to 
 France in 1268 some ships which measured 110 by 40 feet, 
 which were llj feet deep in the hold and had a height between 
 decks of 6i feet. These ships carried a complement of over 
 100 men, and must have measured 400 or 500 tons, while 
 English ships of the period rarely exceeded 50 or 100. Medi- 
 terranean shipping regulations of about this date show ad- 
 vanced ideas concerning the construction, the equipment, and 
 the loading of ships; all ships were inspected and none could 
 sail which did not comply with the regulations. 
 
 The ship-builders of the Mediterranean ports retained the 
 type of the classical galley, depending mainly upon oars for 
 its propulsion. The hull was much longer than in the northern 
 type of sailing ships and did not rise far above the water; 
 both characteristics depended on the need of placing the 
 oarsmen where they could work to advantage. The three 
 square sails were a comparatively late improvement on the 
 earlier rig, which consisted ordinarily of one sail; a fair wind 
 was utilized for helping the boat on its course, but the chief 
 reliance was placed on the oars. 
 
 80. Backwardness of the art of navigation. — The control 
 of a ship is as important as its construction, if it is to serve 
 commerce, and the growth of maritime commerce in the last 
 centuries of the Middle Ages was due as much to improvements 
 in the art of navigation as to superior ship building. During 
 the early Middle Ages, as in ancient times, ship captains took 
 their lives in their hands when they ventured out of sight of a 
 familiar coast. The only means they had for determining their 
 position at sea was "dead-reckoning," i.e., estimating the 
 distance that they had traveled from a known point, and the 
 course that they had steered; and to know their course they 
 had to rely upon the stars, which of course were obscured in 
 stormy weather, when their help was most wanted. It was 
 customary, on voyages in the open sea, to sail due north or 
 south to the parallel of the destination, then to turn at right 
 angles and sail due east or west; errors in the course of 8 or 
 
SEA TRADE 73 
 
 even 10 degrees were not uncommon. The means of fixing 
 the course in any weather, the mariner's compass, which was 
 discovered by the Chinese, and is supposed to have been 
 known to the Arabs at this time, was still unknown in Europe. 
 
 81. Introduction of the compass, and of navigators* direc- 
 tories. — The first documentary evidence of acquaintance with 
 the compass in the West dates from a little before 1200; and 
 within fifty years we find it mentioned in nearly a dozen 
 different places, both in the North and South of Europe. It 
 has been suggested that Mediterranean sailors may have been 
 the first to learn of the compass, from the Arabs, but that they 
 could not use it in its early form of a magnetized needle floated 
 
 on water by a rush or cork, because of the choppy seas; later > 
 the needle was balanced, as at present, on a point. In 1300 ^ 
 the compass was in general use. It is possible to exaggerate 
 its importance as a cause of the great maritime explorations; 
 for without it the Northmen had made their distant expeditions 
 to the North and West, and with it the Portugese crept along 
 the west coast of Africa only slowly and timidly for a con- 
 siderable period. As a means to regular navigation, however, 
 it was indispensable; and the great extension of commercial 
 voyages in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages is incon- 
 ceivable without it. Medieval types of "sailing directions'' 
 now came into use; these were manuals telling the sailor about 
 the coast, the tides, the bottom, and other features of the 
 route he was to traverse. One of them, written probably 
 before 1400, covered the whole West of Europe from Spain to 
 the mouth of the Finnish gulf, enabling the mariner who was 
 provided with a compass (used for determining the time of 
 tides) to navigate the coast with a fair degree of safety. 
 
 82. Limits of early trading voyages. — Maritime voyages 
 were made to suit the conditions of the time. In the first 
 part of the period, under discussion (say before 1300), they 
 were attempted only for short distances and in the part of the 
 year when severe storms were rare. " To sail after Martinmas 
 (November 11) is to tempt God," writes an old chronicler; 
 
74 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and in the early days of the Hanseatic League there was a 
 regulation by which ships were not to sail after November 11, 
 and were to be in port if possible before that time. Some 
 time afterwards an amendment was adopted which allowed 
 ships laden with beer, herrings, or dried cod to sail as late 
 as December 6, because the cargo was perishable or was needed 
 for the Lenten market. The extent of the voyage was at first 
 short. The sailors of Bordeaux would go as far as the coast 
 of Brittany and Normandy; the Normans would go as far as 
 England and Flanders; and so the chain of voyages was kept up. 
 
 83. Medieval seaports ; contrast with modem. — Vessels 
 were so small that they needed no great depth of water in their 
 harbors, and could ascend rivers for a considerable distance. 
 So the English town of Bawtry, lying on the little river Idle, 
 which flows into the Trent, which flows into the Humber, 
 which flows into the North Sea, was called in an official docu- 
 ment "the port of Bawtry"; and the town of York, situated 
 on the river Ouse, another branch of the Humber, claimed 
 the right to share in wrecks at sea, as though it were on the 
 seaboard. Ports of this kind were actually preferred to those 
 on the coast which form the great harbors of modern times, 
 for they gave access to the interior markets without the expense 
 of land transport^ation, and they offered better security not 
 only against tempests but also against pirates. Towns like 
 Rouen on the Seine, Nantes on the Loire, Bordeaux on the 
 Garonne, Narbonne and Aigues Mortes ("Dead waters"); on 
 lagoons of the Mediterranean coast, were the great French 
 ports of the early period. 
 
 84. Decline of medieval seaports in later times. — Occa- 
 sionally a medieval port would keep its importance later; 
 from the list above we can select Bordeaux, and there are a 
 number of other examples in Europe — London, Antwerp, and 
 Hamburg, for instance. Often, however, the port was super- 
 seded by another on the same river but nearer the sea; the 
 trade of Rouen went to Havre; the trade of the Humber river 
 system has gone to Hull; the commerce of Bremen has gone 
 
SEA TRADE 75 
 
 to Bremerhafen. The town of Bruges, in Flanders (modern 
 Belgium), once the most important port in Europe, is situated 
 at a distance of seven miles from the sea, and this might be 
 seven hundred as far as its present oceanic commerce is con- 
 cerned. Its trade has been taken by seaports giving easy- 
 access to large vessels; in the same way the trade of Narbonne 
 and Aigues Mortes has passed to Marseilles. 
 
 85. Development of maritime commerce; persistence of 
 medieval ideas. — After about 1300 the distances covered by 
 sea voyages grew much greater. Galleys were sailed and 
 rowed from Venice all the way to Bruges, and met there 
 vessels from the far North and East of Europe; English sailors 
 traded regularly with southern France, Spain, and the Scan- 
 dinavian countries. The expense of transportation by sea, 
 however, was still great. The price of spices was in Bruges y 
 two or three fold what it was in Venice; and English wool jy/ 
 transported to Florence sold there for two to twelve times as 
 much as it brought at home. It is hard for us, in modern 
 times, to realize such facts, but the student should note them 
 carefully, for they go far toward explaining the slight develop- 
 ment of commerce even in the latter part of the Middle Ages. 
 
 The high cost of transportation is itself a fact demanding y^ 
 explanation. Inefficient ship-building and navigation wouldi/ 
 account for it in large part, but other factors are still to be 
 considered. These distant voyages were carried on in the 
 face not only of real dangers serious enough, but also of far 
 greater dangers imagined by ignorant and credulous men. 
 An English chronicler says that in 1406, when English ships 
 w^ere going to Bordeaux, they entered an unfrequented sea, 
 and four vessels from Lynn were engulfed in a whirlpool 
 which swallowed up the flood and vomited it forth again 
 three times a day. The Arabian Nights have been called 
 sober and realistic in comparison with the ideas held by the 
 medieval mariner of the wonders and dangers of the unknown 
 parts of the world. 
 
 86. Piracy. — At sea, as on land, the merchant faced 
 
76 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 dangers of violence which were probably as serious an obstacle 
 to the growth of commerce as the physical difficulties of navi- 
 gation. Ships went always armed, and sailed when possible 
 in fleets for better protection. Sometimes one that had ven- 
 tured out alone could beat off its enemies, as in the case of a 
 trading ship from Stralsund which was attacked in 1391 but 
 won a complete victory, and brought back (it is said) 100 
 pirates, packed in casks with only the heads sticking out, for 
 a bloody punishment. Pirates came from every source. An 
 ordinary merchantman would turn pirate if it met a weaker 
 vessel from some town which was so far distant or so weak 
 that reprisals need not be feared. A mariner of Winchelsea in 
 England, who had seized and plundered a vessel owned by 
 Dorsetshire merchants, became mayor of Winchelsea a few 
 years later, and in the fifteenth century a Canterbury abbot 
 was convicted of plundering a wine ship and was forced to 
 make restitution. Even ships sent out by the public author- 
 ities for protection against pirates attacked and plundered 
 ships not only of other nationalities but of their own too. Six 
 ships which had been organized in 1316 to protect Berwick 
 from freebooters harried the English coast to the south, and 
 the fleet of the Cinque Ports (five towns on the English Channel), 
 used its spare time in preying on English commerce and attack- 
 ing English towns. 
 
 87. Organized piracy ; privateering. — Piracy became a 
 regular profession, in which partners organized for greater 
 efficiency. The "Victual Brothers'' formed an organization, 
 modeled after that of the Knights Templars, for carrying on 
 piracy; their motto was "God's friend and all the world's 
 enemy." They had a stronghold at Gotland, in the Baltic 
 Sea, and were long a terror to traders and fishermen; their 
 power was broken in 1394 only by a fleet of thirty-five ships 
 gent against them. A fleet of Venetian galleys on their way 
 north were attacked off Lisbon in 1485 by a piratical expedi- 
 tion of six ships, which killed and wounded over four hundred 
 men and took enormous booty; it is said that the discoverer 
 
SEA TRADE 77 
 
 Christopher Columbus was one of the corsairs. War at sea 
 was carried on even more barbarously than war on land. 
 Crews and passengers of captured merchant vessels, whether 
 taken after resistance or not, were frequently tossed over- 
 board, sometimes with their hands tied behind their backs, 
 or were hung to the yards, or murdered on the deck in cold 
 blood. 
 
 An appearance of legitimacy was given to the attack on 
 merchant vessels in time of war; "letters of marque" were not 
 considered necessary to justify attacks by private vessels 
 against merchant vessels of the enemy, and as war was the 
 rule rather than the exception in Europe privateering was 
 nearly constant. During the Hundred Years' War between 
 England and France, in spite of booms and chains, watches and 
 beacons, almost every town on the south coast of England 
 was sacked and burnt by French privateers. Even at London 
 the streets which opened on the river were defended by chains, 
 to hinder a landing within the city, and the people thought of 
 building high stone towers on both sides of the river, with a 
 chain stretched between them, to defend the shipping from 
 night attacks. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Ships and exploits of the Vikings. [Beazley, Prince Henry, chap. 
 2; C. F. Keary, The Vikings in western Christendom, N. Y., 1891, chaps. 
 5, 6, 9.] 
 
 2. In connection with the small vessels of the early Middle Ages the 
 reader is reminded of the exploits of various "captains" of the present 
 day who cross the ocean alone, and he might profitably hunt up a descrip- 
 tion of one of the boats employed and compare it with the description in 
 the text. A ton is 100 cubic feet of internal volume. 
 
 3. If the reader lives at a trading port he should ascertain the tonnage 
 and rig of the vessels ordinarily employed, and thus prepare himself to 
 understand the conditions of medieval navigation. 
 
 4. Compare the medieval galley with the ancient galley described in 
 classical histories. [Beware of pictures given in the text-books; many are 
 pure products of the imagination.] 
 
 5. Write a report on the history of the compass. [Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica; consult Poole's Index for articles in recent periodicals.] 
 
78 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 6. Measure distances in sect. 82, and apply them to the sea- or lake- 
 coast of the U. S. 
 
 7. Indicate on an outline map of Europe the position of the ports 
 named, in sect. 82, using the conventional signs of death (f) and birth (*) 
 to show those that declined and those that gained in importance. 
 
 8. Write a report on the credulity of early sailors. [Voyages of Sin- 
 bad the Sailor in the Arabian Nights, a popular romance of the Indian 
 trade in the ninth century; Voyages of Sir John de Mandeville, N, Y., 
 Macmillan, 1900, SI. 50; Selections in Cassell's Library, paper, $.10.] 
 
 9. What is the difference between a government war-vessel, a priva- 
 teer, and a p)irate? [Dictionary and encyclopedia, or some manual of 
 international law.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Articles and bibliographies by * Clowes in Traill's Social England; 
 John Fiske, * Discovery of America; Alice. Law, Notes on English medieval 
 shipping, in the Economic Review, 1898, vol. 8; Cornewall-Jones, The 
 British merchant service; Lindsay, History, vol. 2. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE LEVANT TRADE 
 
 88. Wares of the Levant trade. Slaves. — The " colonial 
 products" of the modern world (tea, coffee, spices, etc.) have 
 familiarized us with a class of wares which cannot be produced 
 at home and are imported from distant countries. In the 
 commerce of medieval Europe there were wares like these 
 which could not be produced near the place where they were 
 to be consumed, because of the severe climate, or the lack of 
 technical skill, and yet which were eagerly desired by the 
 upper classes. These wares were obtained from Asia, and 
 formed the basis for an Oriental trade which was one of the 
 most important branches of medieval commerce. There was 
 one ware of Oriental trade in which there was a reciprocal 
 exchange; this was slaves. Slaves were exported from Europe 
 to the great market at Cairo in Egypt, and were imported 
 from western Asia and Africa. At the very end of the fifteenth 
 century there were said to be 3,000 slaves in the single city of 
 Venice. Most of the wares, however, flowed in only one 
 direction; and to give an idea of the character and importance 
 of the trade we shall preface our narrative of its development 
 by a description of the chief products imported into Europe. 
 
 89. Spices. — r Among the raw materials a very important 
 place was taken by spices, the product of tropical plants and 
 trees which thrive only in a few parts of the world even now. 
 The food of the common people in the Middle Ages would seem 
 intolerably coarse and monotonous to a modern laborer, on 
 whose table appear regularly products from all parts of the 
 world; and even the diet of the rich needed a great deal of 
 condiment if it was to be palatable. A staple import, then, 
 
 79 
 
80 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 was pepper, the berry of a vine growing in India and in the 
 islands of Asia, which was used in Europe by all who could 
 afford the luxury of a seasoning. For common use the price 
 was prohibitive. Cloves, from the Molucca Islands, were even 
 more expensive, costing two and three times as much as pepper; 
 they were used for ' seasoning food and drink, and also as 
 medicine. Cinnamon, nutmegs, and mace served similar pur- 
 pose, and ginger took a place among medieval luxuries of this 
 kind second only to pepper. 
 
 90. Drugs ; perfumes ; sugar. — Beside the spices which 
 were employed in medicine by medieval apothecaries many 
 wares were imported which served solely or mainly for drugs. 
 Among them were rhubarb, aloes, balsam, borax, gum traga- 
 canth, gum benzoin, cubebs, cardamoms, camphor, etc. 
 
 Sugar belongs in this list of wares, on the border-line 
 between medicines and table delicacies. It was far too costly 
 to be an article of common consumption, and the gift of a 
 small piece of loaf sugar implied far more devotion than would 
 be evidenced now by a present of the finest confectionery. 
 It found its main employment in medicine, therefore, and 
 though it was used in increasing quantities for sweetening food 
 and drink and for preserving, native honey was the medium 
 commonly used. 
 
 91. Precious stones; preponderance in general of luxuries 
 over articles of general utility. — Another category of wares, 
 which found a ready market among the upper classes of me- 
 dieval Europe was precious stones. The part of Europe which 
 now produces a considerable quantity of these, the region of 
 the Ural Mountains, was still unexplored ; the source of supply 
 in the New World was of course unknown; and Europe looked 
 entirely to Asia and Egypt for its supply. Diamonds, emeralds, 
 rubies, sapphires, lapis lazuli, etc., were collected in various 
 parts of the East, passed through innumerable hands, and 
 finally found a resting-place among the jewels of some great 
 lord or lady of the West. Pearls came from the Indian Ocean, 
 and ivory from Africa, through the hands of Asiatic traders. 
 
THE LEVANT TRADE 81 
 
 Europe was able to make a return in kind from the Mediter- 
 ranean coral fisheries; the greater part of European coral was 
 exported to meet the demand in the East, being carried to 
 Egypt by Spanish or Italian ships, and distributed from there 
 to India and China. 
 
 The reader who has followed thus far this category of 
 eastern products must be struck by the preponderance in it 
 of costly luxuries over articles of general consumption. The 
 expenses of transportation over great distances and through 
 dangerous districts were, in fact, so great that most of the 
 Eastern wares had necessarily to comprise great value in a 
 small bulk, and sought their market only among the upper 
 classes of Europe, who could afford to pay well to gratify their 
 desires. 
 
 92. Dyestuffs ; alum. — Among the raw material brought 
 from the East there was only one important class of wares 
 which served manufacturing industries, the dyestuffs. Indigo 
 (Greek, Indikon, Indian) came from the East as its name 
 implies, the chief staple for it being Bagdad. It gives a fast 
 and deep blue and had been imported in Europe even in 
 ancient times; with the revival of commerce after the Crusades 
 it became again an article of commerce, and was used con- 
 stantly thereafter as a dyestuff, in spite of the attempt to 
 substitute for it the native woad, an herb of the mustard 
 family. Some of the red dyes were produced in Europe, 
 notably madder, mentioned in one of Charlemagne's laws, and 
 the scarlet or carmine obtained from the kermes insect in 
 Southern France and Spain. Both of these dyes were imported 
 to some extent, however, and another red dye which was an 
 important import was Brazil-wood. The name suggests an 
 American origin, but was given it in fact because its redness 
 made it seem like glowing coals (cf. English brazier), and the 
 South American country received its name later from the tree 
 found growing in it. Brazil-wood was brought to Europe in 
 blocks and was then ground up for use in dyeing and painting. 
 A common yellow dye of the Middle Ages, saffron, was also 
 6 
 
82 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 imported when the best quahty was desired, and yellow arsenic 
 (orpiment) was used as a pigment. Lac (shellac) was used for 
 a dye as well as for varnish. More important than any of the 
 separate dyes was alum, which came to be regarded as indis- 
 pensable for fixing the color when wool or silk had been dyed 
 in the piece. This was procured mainly in Asia Minor, and was 
 one of the most highly prized products of the eastern trade. 
 
 93. Other raw materials of industry. — In comparison with 
 the dyes most other raw materials of industry were unimpor- 
 tant as objects of trade. Cotton (Arabic kotn) was imported 
 both in its finished form and as a raw material. The cotton 
 manufacture in Europe had, of course, nothing like its present 
 importance, but it was already well established in Germany, 
 where a staple cloth was made out of a mixture of cotton and 
 flax, and it required more of the raw cotton than the planta- 
 tions of southern Europe could supply. Small amounts of 
 flax were imported from Egypt, because of the superior quality 
 of the product. 
 
 Silk was, however, the only textile material which was a 
 very important ware in its raw form. The culture of the 
 silkworm, which had been carried on for centuries in China, 
 but so far as possible had been kept a secret from other peoples, 
 spread gradually to the West and was introduced into Europe 
 by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The Arabians 
 introduced mulberry plantations and the raising of silkworms 
 into Sicily and Spain, and the culture thrived so far as to 
 leave a surplus for export after supplying the home manu- 
 factures. Christian peoples, however, did not succeed so well 
 in the culture; France could as yet furnish no appreciable 
 quantity of raw silk, and the output in Italy was unsatisfactory 
 both in respect to quality and quantity. The growing silk 
 manufacture in Europe had therefore to meet its deficiency by 
 trade with the East, getting part of its supply of raw material 
 from China and Persia, but the bulk from the countries about 
 the Caspian Sea. 
 
 94. Textile imports ; exports from Europe. — Among manu- 
 
THE LEVANT TRADE 83 
 
 factures imported from the East textiles held the most impor- 
 tant place. Europe was strong enough in the manufacture of 
 linen and woolen goods to export them in considerable quan- 
 tities to Asia, but it lacked in the manufacture of cotton and 
 silk not only raw material but the technical skill to compete 
 with the artisans of the East; and imported large quantities 
 of finished cloth. Dignitaries of the church and the merchant 
 princes of the late Middle Ages demanded for clothing and for 
 furniture fabrics of finer quality and of greater quantity than 
 the looms established by the Mohammedans in Spain and 
 Sicily could supply, and sought them chiefly in the countries 
 bordering the eastern end of the Mediterranean. From this 
 district came a great variety of silks, woven often as brocades 
 with gold or silver threads, and the early types of velvet and 
 satin. Silk goods formed the chief but not the sole con- 
 stituent of the textile imports; with them came fine cottons 
 from India, cloth made from the hair of camels and other 
 animals, and linen from Egypt and Syria, which surpassed all 
 of western make. Europe depended also on the East for fine 
 china and glass. 
 
 Before the end of the Middle Ages the Italian silk manufac- 
 ture had grown strong enough to turn the tide, and to export 
 to the East. Through the greater part of this period, however, 
 the only European textiles exported to Asia were the woolens 
 and common linens which were produced in England, Flanders, 
 and other of the more advanced countries. Besides these 
 manufactures the main exports consisted of raw materials: 
 wool, hides, metals (gold, silver, and tin), and food stuffs. 
 
 95. Revival of Oriental trade about 1000, under the leader- 
 ship of Italians. — As commerce with the East had lasted 
 throughout the period of Roman rule, and had cultivated 
 tastes among rich Romans and provincials which could only 
 be satisfied by its continuance, we find evidence even in the 
 Dark Ages that it was still carried on. A document dated 716 
 shows that the rich monastery of Corby in northern France 
 received pepper, cloves, and other spices from southern France; 
 
84 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and Marseilles maintained its commercial relations with the 
 East. The trade in this period, however, was carried on 
 almost entirely by Syrians and Jews; the peoples of western 
 Europe had not yet learned to profit by active participation 
 in it, and it had sunk to comparative insignificance. The 
 revival came about the year 1000 with the general awakening 
 of economic life in Europe which had for its most striking 
 feature the growth of towns. As the possibilities for trade 
 became greater, and the demand for luxuries kept pace with 
 them, the eastern trade felt a powerful stimulus, and grew 
 rapidly in importance. It was now carried on mainly by the 
 people who were destined to control it until the great dis- 
 coveries left them outside the path of progress, — the Italians. 
 A group of towns in the far south of the Italian peninsula, Bari, 
 Trani, Brindisi, and Taranto, took advantage of their nearness 
 to the Levant (the eastern end of the Mediterranean) to estab- 
 lish commercial relations which returned large profits and 
 developed into a considerable trade. Another group of towns 
 near the Bay of Naples, of which Amalfi was the chief, shared 
 in the profits of this trade, and still another town, standing 
 alone near the head of the Adriatic Sea, Venice, began already 
 to assume the commanding position in the Oriental trade which 
 she was destined to make good against all rivals. 
 
 96. Routes between Asia and Europe. — The main routes 
 serving as the paths of trade between Asia and Europe during 
 the Middle Ages were three in number. The central route, 
 the oldest and for much of this period the most important, 
 began at the head of the Persian Gulf; after the foundation of 
 Bagdad near the site of ancient Babylon (about 750 a.d.) it 
 found there its first important stopping-place. Thence a cara- 
 van route led around and through the desert to Damascus, 
 where it branched off to the coast of ancient Phoenicia in one 
 direction, to Egypt in the other. Aside from partial inter- 
 ruptions this route was used steadily until near the close of 
 the Middle Ages, when it was partially blocked and commerce 
 was forced to the south. 
 
THE LEVANT TRADE 
 
 85 
 
 The southern route, reaching Europe through Egypt, was 
 mainly maritime. It had to contend with two great difficul- 
 ties: the great stretch of open water presented by the Indian 
 Ocean, and the difficulty of navigation in the Red Sea, on the 
 west coast of which strong north winds blow through much of 
 the year. The first of these difficulties became less serious in 
 the Christian era, as navigators learned to time their voyages 
 
 TRADE ROUTES BETWEEN ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 The map shows only the chief hnes of trade, omitting side routes for the sake of 
 clearness. See the text, sect. 96, for description of the uses to which the routes 
 were put. 
 
 to suit the monsoons, the winds blowing at regular seasons in 
 the Indian Ocean. Vessels could leave an Egyptian port in 
 July and reach India by the southwest monsoon in little over 
 two months. The second difficulty was obviated by starting 
 for the East not from the Gulf of Suez but from a point part 
 way down the coast (Berenice), reached by a trip on the Nile 
 and by caravan. This route became of greatest importance 
 at the close of the Middle Ages. 
 
86 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 The third route, entirely overland, led from India across 
 the mountains to the River Oxus, where it was joined by a 
 caravan route from China. Branching near Bokhara, one part 
 led to the Caspian Sea and up the Volga, another left the 
 Caspian to the north and reached Europe at the Black Sea 
 (Trebizond, Constantinople). This route traversed high moun- 
 tain passes and long desert stretches, and was suitable only for 
 the carriage of valuable articles of small bulk. For about two 
 centuries after 1250 it was kept open by the Mongols or Tartars, 
 who lived on good terms with the Christians; then it was 
 blocked by the Turks. 
 
 97. Character of the crusades ; number of crusaders. — To 
 assign to economic motives the chief part in the crusades 
 would be a distortion of the great movement which marked 
 the life of Europe in the two centuries following 1100. Not 
 hope of gain but vague ideals of this life and the life to come 
 drove hundreds of thousands of men to the perilous journey 
 to the Holy Land from which so few returned. Indirectly 
 commerce had its share in this movement; it had drawn the 
 peoples closer together, stimulated curiosity and broadened 
 interests. Men sought an outlet for their surplus energy, and 
 a relief from the monotony of medieval life; ascetic ideals 
 imposed upon them holy tasks which they could fulfil to the 
 benefit of their souls. The effect can be traced in an increase 
 in the pilgrimages of individuals to holy places. The people of 
 Europe needed only organization and a leader to unite their 
 scattered forces; they found their organization in the church, 
 their leader in the Pope and his delegates, their goal in the 
 delivery of the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels 
 who were abusing Christian pilgrims. 
 
 Any estimate of the numbers who engaged in the crusades 
 must be pure guesswork. The statistics of medieval chron- 
 icles, always notoriously inaccurate, seem to reach the acme 
 of unreliability in the figures of the crusaders engaged in the 
 different expeditions. The main body of the first crusade, 
 which started in 1095, was compared in number with the 
 
THE LEVANT TRADE 87 
 
 sands of the seashore or the stars in heaven; even moderate 
 contemporaries made it 600,000 or at least 300,000 strong; 
 perhaps it was really 100,000. There were six or eight separate 
 expeditions lasting down to 1270, and we may say that a 
 million men, roughly speaking, and probably many less rather 
 than more, took part. 
 
 98. Commercial aspect of the crusades. — Even the trans- 
 portation of this number of men, with their baggage and 
 equipment, must have been a great stimulus to the growth of 
 Mediterranean shipping. The first crusade went almost en- 
 tirely by land, but the sufferings and losses were so great that 
 crusaders were driven to the sea route, and this became grad- 
 ually the regular way of reaching the Holy Land. Italian 
 merchants accompanied the expedition from the beginning, 
 not as real crusaders but as contractors for transportation and 
 supplies, turning both the needs and the successes of the 
 crusaders to their commercial profit. A fleet from Genoa and 
 Pisa accompanied the first crusade along the coast of Syria, 
 selling provisions. The Venetians waited until Jerusalem had 
 been taken; then fitted out a fleet which fought the Pisans, 
 quarreled with the Greeks, and in return for very slight ser- 
 vices rendered to the crusaders demanded that in every city 
 captured they should have a market, church, and freedom 
 from taxes. " Whilst the warriors of Christendom were fighting 
 for glory, for kingdoms, or for the tomb of Christ, the merchants 
 of Venice fought for counting-houses, stores, or commercial 
 privileges." "The other crusaders obeyed the new impulse, 
 the Venetians utilized it." 
 
 The fourth crusade, starting soon after 1200, was fairly 
 captured by the Venetians and turned into a commercial 
 expedition for their profit. When the time for starting came, 
 the feudal knights, improvident as ever, could not pay the 
 sum agreed on for their transportation, and Venice used her 
 power over them as debtors to force them to aid her, first to 
 capture Zara on the Adriatic, a Christian city but a commercial 
 rival, then to take Constantinople itself, the key to the trade 
 
88 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of the Black Sea. The crusade accomplished nothing against 
 the infidels; it was merely a means by which Venice built up 
 her commercial and colonial empire at the expense of other 
 Christians. 
 
 99. Effect of the crusades on knowledge of the East and of 
 eastern wares. — Aside from the help which the crusades gave 
 the Italians in building up their fleets and in establishing 
 trading posts or colonies in the East, they were of no less 
 importance in extending the market for eastern wares in 
 Europe. The crusaders lost their provincialism, and acquired 
 new fashions (shaving the beard and bathing); they became 
 acquainted with fine stuffs and dyes and were no longer satisfied 
 with the coarse products of home. The European vocabulary 
 was not large enough to give names to the new acquisitions, 
 and we can trace back to this period many words which 
 were borrowed from Arabic, the common language of the 
 Mohammedans: alcove, sofa, mattress, talisman, elixir; many 
 of commercial significance, bazar, tariff, corvette, barracks. 
 Not only the words but the things themselves became native 
 in many cases; the crusades spread in Europe the cultivation 
 of the lemon, apricot, watermelon, rice, and sugar cane. Euro- 
 pean literature described the marvels of the Orient, the silks of 
 Syria, the tapestries of Persia, the precious stones and per- 
 fumes of Arabia; the names of eastern countries became familiar 
 and knowledge of geography widened rapidly. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Selecting any one among the more important wares, sects. 88-94, 
 write a report on its production, uses, value, and history as an article of 
 commerce. [Encyclopedia; commercial geographies; encyclopedias of 
 commerce and of manufactures, as those by McCulloch, Waterston, 
 Homans, Ure.] 
 
 2. Taking British India as a characteristic source for the Eastern 
 wares, contrast the exports then and now. [Statesman's Year-Book, 
 index, India, exports.] 
 
 3. What seaports of those named in sect. 95 are still of importance? 
 [Statesman's Year-Book, index, Italy, shipping.] 
 
THE LEVANT TRADE 89 
 
 4. What evidences have the other ports left of their former greatness? 
 [Encyc; * Baedeker's guide-books.] 
 
 5. Which one of the three routes, sect. 96, is now the most important? 
 
 6. What railways have been constructed or proposed along the line 
 of ancient routes? [See a good atlas, and note the proposed railway from 
 Asia Minor through the Mesopotamian valley to the Persian gulf. What 
 effect may this railway have on the importance of Constantinople?] 
 
 7. Read a description of one of the ancient centers of trade in modem 
 times. [Consult books by modern travelers in south-western Asia.] 
 
 8. Where now can be found pilgrimages like those of the Christians 
 to Jerusalem? What is their commercial influence? [See Mecca in the 
 encyclopedia; and in Poole's Index.] 
 
 9. How does the average number of crusaders going per year to 
 Palestine compare with the number of Americans going abroad? 
 
 10. Prepare, from descriptions in the current history manuals or 
 from a historical atlas (Droysen's, for example), a map showing the route 
 of each crusade; number each route that the development of the sea-route 
 may be more apparent. 
 
 11. Show the development of Venice in the period of the crusades, 
 by comparing her commerce and power at the two dates limiting the 
 period. [References in next chapter.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Aside from the current manuals of the history of commerce very little 
 has appeared in English on the routes and wares of the Levant trade. 
 Lincoln Hutchinson, * Oriental trade and the rise of the Lombard Com- 
 munes, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1901-2, 16: 413-432 (esp. 415- 
 421), can be recommended; and Cheyney, ** Eur. background, has two 
 excellent chapters on the subject (Levant wares in chap. 1; routes in 
 chap. 2). 
 
 The reader will have to rely largely on accounts of the crusades, in 
 which there are incidental references to commerce: Adams,* Civ.; Robin- 
 son (* bibliography); Emerton, Med. Eur. (bibliog.); etc. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 
 
 100. Position of Venice ; early history. — The course of the 
 eastern trade can best be followed in connection with the 
 fortunes of the city of Venice which still shows, in the splendid 
 palaces lining its canals, the evidence of its former greatness. 
 
 The beginnings of the city are traced back to the period of 
 barbarian invasions when fugitives from the mainland sought 
 shelter on the islands a short distance from shore. The inhab- 
 itants, thus protected from the unending wars of the feudal 
 period, were at the same time forced to seek their living on 
 the sea, first as fishermen but more and more as merchants. 
 The Italian conquests of the Emperor Justinian (about 500 a.d.), 
 brought them into relations with Constantinople which were 
 maintained by trade and frequent embassies. Even before 
 the year 1000 the Venetians had won a secure position in 
 Constantinople by an imperial charter which granted them, 
 among other privileges, freedom from the vexatious tolls and 
 delays imposed by subordinate customs officers. Still more 
 important was a charter of 1082, which granted lands and 
 buildings in Constantinople for a special Venetian quarter, 
 which freed the Venetians from all taxes and at the same time 
 required their trade rivals, the Amalfitani, to pay taxes to 
 them for the right to trade. 
 
 101. Expansion of Venetian empire during the crusades. — 
 Before the crusades, therefore, Venice had a commanding 
 position in the eastern trade. It confirmed this position by 
 a series of bitter struggles with its rivals, especially the cities 
 of Genoa and Pisa which were rising to great prominence. 
 These cities imperiled for a time Venetian control of the Black 
 
 90 
 
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 
 
 91 
 
92 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Sea trade at Constantinople; but the outcome of the fourth 
 crusade (1204), was a victory for Venice which left her su- 
 premacy for the time unquestioned. 
 
 In the share taken by them in the partition of the Eastern 
 Empire the Venetians showed that common sense which is 
 always found at the bottom of all their actions. They left to 
 the crusaders the inland provinces and took for themselves 
 the coast-towns and islands which promised the best com- 
 mercial returns and were easiest to defend. In Constanti- 
 nople itself they took a large part of the city, in which their 
 podestat ruled almost as an independent sovereign. At places 
 commanding the all-important sea route to the East, in the 
 Peloponnesus or Morea, in Crete and in Euboea, naval stations 
 were established under the control of officers sent out by the 
 home government. The strict rules by which these officers 
 were governed gives an insight into the discipline which existed 
 in the Venetian foreign service. In every place in which the 
 Venetians founded a principality their capital was surrounded 
 by Italian colonies; there where one found formerly only nests 
 of pirates, the terror of Venetian commerce, one found now 
 friendly ports, refuges fortified and secure, where Venetian 
 captains and merchants, certain of a good reception, could ask 
 asylum and protection. 
 
 102. Extent of Venetian commerce. — Thanks to the colo- 
 nial empire which they established the Venetians controlled 
 the trade of the eastern Mediterranean more efficiently than 
 Great Britain has controlled the world commerce of the nine- 
 teenth century; the field of operations was narrower, and 
 "trade followed the flag" in those early times as it has never 
 done since. Foreigners might trade if they would pay suffi- 
 ciently for the privilege; without this recognition of their 
 inferiority they were public enemies to be given short shrift. 
 
 Venice established her colonies or trading factories not only 
 along the shore of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black 
 Sea; Venetian merchants penetrated deep into Russia, and 
 into Central Asia through the Crimea. So bold were their 
 
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 93 
 
 enterprises that the home government, fearful for its interests, 
 passed a law to limit their extent. "Dalmatia, Albania, 
 Romania, Greece, Trebizond, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Cyprus, 
 Candia, Apulia, Sicily and other countries, kingdoms and 
 islands were the fruitful gaMens, the proud castles of our 
 people, where they found again profit, pleasure, security. '^ 
 The old chronicler names but one side of the equation of 
 trade; the products from all these countries and from the far 
 East behind them were brought to Venice to be exchanged for 
 the products of the West. Martino da Canale says of an earlier 
 period what must at any rate have been true of his own (thir- 
 teenth century) : " The Venetians went about the sea here and 
 there, and across the sea and in all places, and bought mer- 
 chandise and brought it to Venice from every side. Then 
 there came to Venice Germans and Bavarians, French and 
 Lombards, Tuscans and Hungarians, and every people that 
 lives by merchandise, and they took it to their countries." 
 
 103. Development of the institutions of commerce in Venice. 
 — Reference has been made in an earlier chapter to the Vene- 
 tian regulations on the building, rigging, and manning of ships, 
 which anticipated by many centuries similar legislation in the 
 countries of northern Europe. The extent of her commercial 
 relations led Venice to a development of book-keeping and 
 banking which made her in these important branches the 
 instructor of Europe, to whom the sons of wealthy merchants 
 in other countries were sent to school. The reader will appre- 
 ciate how great is the debt of other countries to Italy when 
 he reflects on the number of Italian words having to do with 
 commerce and banking which have become current in general 
 commercial use; among them are conto, conto corrente, porto, 
 risico, disconto, brutto, netto, deposito, folio, bilanza, etc. 
 
 104. Venetian commercial policy. — The Venetian commer- 
 cial policy may be described briefly as the maintenance of as 
 strict a monopoly as possible in the trade east of Italy, and 
 the regulation of trade between Venice and the North or West 
 which would give the Venetians the greatest advantage when 
 
94 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 they sold their Oriental wares to other Europeans. This policy, 
 as well as the material character of the commerce, can be 
 studied in connection with the two great branches of Venetian 
 
 The different routes varied in importance at different periods, and some routes were 
 used besides those indicated on the map. The Brenner Pass was always of great 
 importance to Venetian trade ; the St. Gothard Pass was not opened until the 
 thirteenth century. 
 
 trade in Europe, the overland commerce with Germany, and 
 the sea commerce with northwestern Europe. 
 
 105. Overland trade with Germany. — As the Venetians 
 
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 95 
 
 were essentially a sea-faring people, and as it was easier to 
 reach the large cities of central and southern Germany by 
 land than by sea, they took the passive part in their German 
 trade, staying at home and allowing the Germans to come to 
 them for wares. The trip overland from central Germany 
 took roughly two weeks or a little less; trade letters of the 
 fifteenth century were a month or more on the way between 
 Venice and Bruges. Different routes were chosen according 
 to the starting-point of the journey. The chief route was that 
 leading over the Brenner, one of the lowest of the great Alpine 
 passes, lying between Augsburg in Germany and Verona in 
 Italy; but very often the merchant struck off to the East 
 before reaching Verona into the valley of the Drave or the 
 Brenta. Coming from the East, from Vienna, for instance, the 
 Semmering pass was commonly chosen. 
 
 106. Strict control over German merchants in Venice. — 
 On reaching Venice the merchant was put at once under strict 
 supervision. He could not choose his own lodgings, but must 
 stay at the "Fondaco dei Tedeschi" (German factory, using 
 that word in its earlier sense of a trading post). This was a 
 building (in its later form a handsome palace now used as a 
 government office) which belonged to the city, and which 
 served at once as a hotel, a warehouse, and an office for con- 
 trolling the trade. When a merchant arrived he was disarmed 
 and given a room; a careful list was made of all his wares, 
 which served as a basis for the government dues; and an 
 inspector was assigned to him. This inspector acted as an 
 interpreter and as a broker, helping the merchant make his 
 bargains, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that he 
 was appointed mainly to serve the merchant's convenience; 
 his main business was to "shadow" the merchant constantly, 
 to see that he broke none of the numerous regulations designed 
 to assure to the government its dues and to the Venetian 
 people their profits. Germans could bring to Venice only the 
 wares of their own country and of northeastern Europe, be- 
 cause the Venetians wanted to carry on themselves the trade 
 
96 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 with Flanders; Germans could trade with no other foreigners 
 in Venice, and could not trade even among themselves, in 
 order that the Venetians might have the sole market; they 
 must sell out their whole stock in Venice, without the option 
 of withdrawing part of it and carrying it further. One is 
 tempted to ask why the Germans came to Venice at all, to 
 submit to such severe restrictions. The answer is easy; they 
 had no other place to go to, for the wares they wanted. Thanks 
 to her position and to her skill in trade and war Venice had a 
 monopoly of Oriental wares which enabled her for some time 
 to make what regulations she pleased without fear of losing 
 her customers. 
 
 107. Importance of the trade between Venice and Germany. 
 — The German trade in Venice amounted, according to an 
 estimate of the fifteenth century, to a million ducats a year, 
 and the ducat of this period was worth considerably more 
 than the modern dollar. It supplied Germany with the 
 coveted eastern wares which we have already enumerated, and, 
 moreover, with some of the products of Venetian manufactures, 
 which were then highly developed and which were stimulated 
 
 ( by protective tariffs. These manufactures included glass, 
 which is even now a specialty of the city, fine textiles, weapons, 
 paper, etc. The Venetian trade, on the other hand, furnished 
 to Germany a market for her metals (gold, silver, iron, copper, 
 lead, tin), furs, twine, rosaries, and manufactures of leather 
 and horn, and the coarser textiles. 
 
 108. Commerce by sea with northwestern Europe. — With 
 the countries west of Germany Venice carried on an "active" 
 commerce; that is, instead of waiting for foreigners to come 
 to her she brought the wares to them, as she could well do by 
 the sea route. The crusade of 1204, to which we have already 
 referred as a turning-point in Venetian development, was 
 composed in large part of knights from northwestern Europe, 
 and the relations established then with Flanders, Champagne, 
 and neighboring districts, were continued by trade. The first 
 reference to Venice discovered in English documents is dated 
 
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 97 
 
 1201, but before the close of the thirteenth century a brisk 
 commerce with England had grown up; at one time in the 
 reign of Edward I over 2,000 sacks of wool were found in the 
 possession of Italian trading companies. The trade followed 
 at first the land route across France, but soon took to the sea, 
 and though the land traffic was never wholly abandoned it 
 became less important and was discouraged by special dues. 
 
 109. Regulation of this commerce ; the Flanders galleys. — 
 Soon after 1300 the government took charge of this trade and 
 regulated it on principles which were followed for the two 
 hundred years during which it remained important. Separate 
 voyages were, as a rule, prevented, and Venetian merchants 
 who wished to participate in the trade must join in the fleet 
 of "Flanders galleys'' which sailed at intervals (usually once 
 a year), as the opportunity for trade seemed favorable. On 
 these occasions the Venetian senate voted a certain number 
 of galleys for the voyage, and auctioned off the right to freight\^ 
 them. Each galley was propelled by 180 oarsmen, and carried! 
 for its protection a force of archers commanded by four young 
 patricians who were sent out that in this way they might see 
 the world and learn to serve their native city. The cargo was 
 carried on the account of private merchants, but the supreme 
 control of the fleet was vested in a captain appointed by the 
 Venetian government, and bound to follow its instructions. 
 The voyage to Flanders and back occupied the greater part of 
 a year, as the galleys touched and traded at many ports along 
 the way. The route generally taken included the following 
 stopping-places: Capo d'Istria (Pola), Corfu, Otranto, Syracuse, 
 Messina, Naples, Majorca, the principal ports of Spain and 
 Morocco, and Lisbon. In the English Channel the fleet divided, 
 some galleys going to Southampton or London, others to 
 Sluys (the port of Bruges, connected with it by a short canal), 
 Middelburg, and Antwerp. The chief objective was the city 
 of Bruges, the great market where the trade of northern Europe, 
 in the hands of the Hanseatic merchants, and the trade of 
 southern Europe in the hands of the Venetians, came together. 
 7 
 
98 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 110. Development of other cities in Italy; freedom and 
 vigor of their policy. — Space forbids the consideration in 
 detail of the history and policy of other Italian cities, of which 
 some rose to the first rank in commerce, though none attained 
 to the greatness of Venice. The lack of a central government 
 in the peninsula enabled each city to frame its policy solely 
 with an eye to its own interests. The Italian cities were able to 
 free themselves from the laws and customs that had been neces- 
 sary in an earlier time, but which lay like fetters on developing 
 trade and industry. The city of Florence, for instance, showed 
 a liberality in its policy regarding land tenure, industry, domes- 
 tic and foreign commerce, which was strikingly modern. The 
 result was an extraordinarily rapid development in commerce, 
 manufacture and finance, but also, unfortunately, a jealous 
 rivalry between the cities, which expressed itself not only in 
 commercial competition but also in destructive wars. 
 
 111. Genoa. — Genoa, situated in a position corresponding 
 to that of Venice on the other side of the Italian peninsula, 
 grew great like her in the course of the crusades. In conflict 
 with Pisa, which had become a threatening commercial rival, 
 Genoa was a complete victor by the naval victory of Maloria 
 in 1284. Against Venice the city was not so fortunate. Genoa 
 recovered in part from the blow dealt her by Venice in the 
 fourth crusade, when the Greek empire was re-established at 
 Constantinope (1261), and won some important naval victories 
 in the constant succession of wars culminating in the battle 
 of Chioggia in 1380. The Genoese managed always to secure 
 a share of the Oriental trade; they helped to establish the 
 system of joint stock companies; and contributed to the 
 development of banking and public finance. They lacked, 
 however, the advantages of the Venetian situation, both as 
 regarded their opportunity for trade and their capacity for 
 defence. They were drawn into the net of continental politics, 
 and as at home they had never shown the ability of the Vene- 
 tians to pacify or to crush rival factions, their force was wasted 
 in useless political conflicts. 
 
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 99 
 
 112. Inland cities; Florence. — Besides the two great sea- 
 ports of Venice and Genoa other cities of northern Ital}^ grew 
 rich by industry and commerce at this period, notably Milan. 
 The chief commercial city in the interior, however, was Florence 
 in central Italy. Though Florence had no seaport of its own 
 until after 1400, when it overpowered Pisa and Leghorn, it 
 carried on an extensive commerce in its chief product, wool 
 and silk textiles. Great trading houses bought up the raw 
 material through agents settled in markets like Bruges, or 
 traveling for years at a time, and sold the finished product 
 through a similar network of agencies. The amount of manu- 
 facturing and commerce in the city stimulated the development 
 of banking institutions, and Florentine bankers gained not only 
 a regal position at home, but also a commanding voice in 
 international politics. 
 
 113. Other Mediterranean cities; Marseilles, Barcelona. — 
 On the Mediterranean coast of France the only great port at 
 this period was Marseilles, which had developed rapidly in the 
 course of the crusades. It exported to Italy and the East 
 French textiles (woolen and linen), wood, metals, wine, oil, 
 soap, etc. 
 
 In Spain the Arabs had developed the arts of civilization to 
 a point which was far above that of the contemporary Christian 
 states. Toward the close of the Middle Ages, however, the 
 contest between them and the Christian kings for the su- 
 premacy of the peninsula absorbed the best energies of both 
 parties, and caused an actual decline in material civilization. 
 One city, however, Barcelona, carried on a very extensive 
 commerce, and was one of the most important ports of the 
 Mediterranean. Its inhabitants enjoyed unusual freedom 
 under the kings of Aragon and were reputed to be among the 
 best sailors of their time; they had trading stations along the 
 coast of the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Syria, and as 
 merchants or pirates frequented the Grecian archipelago. 
 
100 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Study : (a) the position of Venice in the Mediterranean ; (b) the 
 peculiarities of the site of the city; and write a report on the influence 
 of these factors on the history of Venice in its different periods. [En- 
 cyclopedia.] 
 
 2. Compare the policy pursued by Venice toward Amalfi in Con- 
 stantinople to the early policy of the Standard Oil Company. [See the 
 account of railroad rebates in accounts of the Standard Oil Company by 
 Lloyd or Tarbell.] 
 
 3. Compare the Venetian and the Athenian sea-empires in respect to 
 (a) extent, (6) duration, (c) policy. [See chapter 2, and for further in- 
 formation on Venetian history see Brown.] 
 
 4. Make a map showing Venetian trade relations in the fifteenth 
 century. [Falkner, Statistical Documents, V.] 
 
 5. Summarize the account of commercial transactions at that period. 
 [Same.] 
 
 6. Write a report on the contributions of the Italians to book-keeping. 
 [Cf. Beckmann, Hist, of inventions, Bohn's Library, vol. 1, pp. 1-5.] 
 
 7. Write a similar report on their contributions to banking. [Encyc, 
 Palgrave's Diet., or some history of banking.] 
 
 8. Write out the English equivalents of the Italian words in sect. 103. 
 
 9. What resemblance can you find between Venetian policy toward 
 Germans, and Boer policy toward English in the South African Republic? 
 [See one of the many accounts of conditions preceding the war in South 
 Africa.] 
 
 10. From the description in sect. 109 draw on an outline map the 
 route of the Flanders galleys. 
 
 11. Write a report on the political conditions in Italy in the last 
 centuries of the Middle Ages. [Current manuals of European history; 
 Burckhardt, CiviUsation of the Renaissance, London, 1878.] 
 
 12. Write a report on the rivalry of Venice and Genoa. [Brown, 
 Venice.] 
 
 13. Write a report on the chief periods in the history of Genoa. 
 [Encyclopedia.] 
 
 14. Study the history of the Medici family as showing the character 
 of commercial and political liTe in Florence. [Encyclopedia; various 
 biographies.] 
 
 15. Write a brief report on the commercial history of Marseilles or of 
 Barcelona. [Encyclopedia.] 
 
COMMERCE OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 101 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A bibliography of the history of Venice is given by Brown, pp. xix- 
 xxiii. A good brief survey of Venetian history, with a description of the 
 modern city and a map, will be found in the Encyc. Brit. The history 
 in the Story of the Nations series cannot be recommended. The best 
 book for our purposes is Horatio F. Brown, * Venice, N. Y., Putnam, 
 1893, $4.50. The most important sources are in foreign languages; see 
 my authorities. The history of other Italian cities is treated, with some 
 attention to commerce, in Bella Duffy, The Tuscan republics with Genoa, 
 N. Y., Putnam, 1893, $1.50. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE 
 
 114. Development of commerce in South and North. — 
 
 Medieval commerce reached its highest development on oppo- 
 site sides of the continent of Europe, in the Levant trade of 
 the South and in the trade carried on by the Hanseatic cities 
 of the North. Commerce was, of course, not confined to 
 these localities. We have seen already how German merchants 
 and the Flanders galleys united the North and South of Europe; 
 and every one of the present European countries took a greater 
 or less share in the exchange of wares. We have already de- 
 scribed, however, the general character of commerce in the 
 medieval period, and must refer the reader to that description 
 for some idea of the commerce of countries which are not 
 treated in detail in this sketch. 
 
 115. Conditions and wares of the Baltic trade. — The wares 
 of the northern trade present a contrast to those which fur- 
 nished the material of eastern commerce. In the first place 
 the countries of central Europe found in Scandinavia and the 
 Northeast, which formed the trading ground, peoples who were 
 their industrial inferiors; these peoples were glad to receive 
 manufactures instead of supplying them. Secondly, the cost 
 of carriage was much less in the North than in the South, not 
 only because transportation was almost entirely by sea and 
 over a shorter route, but also because the tolls on trade were 
 much less than in the Asiatic countries. It was possible, 
 therefore, to trade in bulky articles of comparatively small 
 value. 
 
 The luxuries which formed so large a part of the eastern 
 exports were scarcely represented in the northern trade. 
 
 102 
 
COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE 103 
 
 Amber can be put in this class, though the trade in it was of 
 no great importance; this was a fossilized resin which was 
 found on the coast of the Baltic, and which was used for orna- 
 ments. Wax was a far more considerable item of export, 
 which may, perhaps, be regarded as a luxury, since it found 
 its chief employment in the form of candles used in church 
 services. 
 
 116. Exports from the Baltic, mainly raw materials. — 
 Most of the exports from northeastern Europe were raw ma- 
 terials serving the simpler needs of man. Among the food- 
 stuffs fish took the first place. Until the fifteenth century 
 the herring, which does not now range outside the waters of 
 the North Sea and the open ocean, came each year in late 
 summer to the Swedish and German coasts of the Baltic; and 
 the trade in dried and salted fish, especially herring, was one 
 of the chief branches of northern commerce. The whole popu- 
 lation of western Europe was at this time Roman Catholic, 
 and the consumption of fish was of course stimulated by the 
 rules of the church. Other foodstuffs exported were honey, 
 butter, and salt meat. 
 
 The Northeast had no textiles to offer to the rest of Europe, 
 but in its furs it had a substitute for them which was most 
 highly prized. The furs included not only the finer varieties, 
 the use of which was restricted to the upper classes, but also 
 common grades that were desired as much for their warmth 
 as for their appearance. Houses were so poorly heated that 
 comfort was impossible without thick clothing. We can under- 
 stand, therefore, the complaint of a German bishop who said 
 that " we strive as hard to come into the possession of a marten 
 skin as if it were everlasting salvation." 
 
 Other raw materials exported were skins and tallow from 
 animal industry, and forestry products which were destined to 
 be the mainstay of the Baltic trade in later times, various forms 
 of timber and the group of products known later as "naval 
 stores," including pitch, tar, and turpentine. 
 
 117. Exports from the West to the Baltic coimtries. — In 
 
104 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 return for its • imports western Europe sent to Russia and 
 Scandinavia its manufactures and the raw products which 
 could not be obtained in the Northeast. The list includes 
 wheat, wine, salt, and metals, and, among the manufactures, 
 especially cloth and beer. The merchants of the West con- 
 ducted the trade not only between their home districts and 
 the less developed countries, but also between these countries; 
 they carried herrings, for instance, from Scandinavia to Russia. 
 
 118. Contrast of the history of the commercial cities in 
 Italy and in Germany. — The cities of Germany, which took 
 advantage of the opportunities for trade in the North, were 
 like those of Italy in their freedom from royal authority. 
 There seems, therefore, a chance that they might fight among 
 themselves for the trade, and that one of them might get a 
 commanding position as did Venice in the South. No one of 
 them, however, had the peculiar advantages of the geographical 
 position and the freedom from attacks by land which Venice 
 enjoyed. They were too evenly matched to settle quickly the 
 question of supremacy, and they ran such dangers from the 
 attacks of feudal lords that they could not afford to quarrel 
 among themselves. Instead of competing they united, in the 
 Hansa or Hanseatic League, which was the most remarkable 
 commercial association of the medieval period. 
 
 119. Rise of the Hanseatic League. — The word "hanse" 
 meant in early German a society, a band of men, and was 
 applied to a number of commercial associations besides the 
 particular league to which we apply it here. This league grew 
 up gradually in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The 
 merchants of various German cities found it necessary to unite 
 for the protection of their interests abroad, and the beginnings 
 of the association are found in the island of Gotland, in the 
 Baltic and in the city of London, where Germans carried on a 
 considerable trade. After a while the cities at home took up 
 the association which their merchants had started in foreign 
 countries, and in the fourteenth century a great league grew 
 up, centering in the cities at the southwestern corner of the 
 
COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE 105 
 
 Baltic, of which Liibeck was the chief. Sailors were still 
 afraid to navigate the waters around Denmark, because of the 
 dangerous currents and shoals, so Baltic wares were carried 
 across the isthmus, and cities like Liibeck grew great on 
 this trade and on that which came down the Elbe valley. 
 
 120. Extent and organization of the League. — " When the 
 ambassadors of the Hanseatic League in England in 1376 
 were asked for a list of the members who made up their vast 
 association, they answered scornfully that surely even they 
 themselves could not be supposed to remember the countless 
 names of towns, big and little in all kingdoms, in whose name 
 they spoke." The league was in fact very extensive, for it 
 included not only the chief German seaports, but also towns in 
 the interior and some towns outside of Germany altogether. 
 The number varied from time to time; in the period of greatest 
 power it was nearly 100, stretching from Dinant in modern 
 Belgium to Krakau and Reval in the East, and including 
 towns as far inland as Gottingen in Germany. The towns 
 never formed a very close union, but sent their representatives 
 every year or so to a meeting-place where they could discuss 
 matters of common interest, decide upon the policy to be 
 followed, and raise what resources they could for carrying the 
 policy through. 
 
 121. Control of the commerce of northern Europe by the 
 League. — The aim in general was the protection of commerce 
 from the attacks of pirates and feudal lords and the negotiation 
 of commercial treaties which would extend the privileges of 
 members and preserve their monopoly of trade. The League 
 was so successful that it obtained in the closing centuries of 
 the Middle Ages a predominance in the commerce of northern 
 Europe comparable to that of the Dutch and of the English 
 in later times. In the West it had to share its trade with 
 other peoples. In this direction Bruges was the terminus of 
 many of the voyages; at that port the Hanseatics met the 
 Venetians, coming in the Flanders galleys, and secured also 
 many wares from western Europe. This was by no means, 
 

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COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE 107 
 
 however, the limit of their western voyages. They had an 
 important trading station in England, with a great group of 
 buildings, the "Steelyard" near London bridge, and invested 
 their capital in English tin mines; one of their favorite voyages 
 was to Bourgneuf, south of the Loire, on the western coast of 
 France; and they sent their ships in some periods as far as 
 Spain and Portugal. 
 
 The North and East of Europe were, however, the field of 
 their greatest success. In Scandinavia (including Iceland) and 
 Russia, they gained a complete monopoly of commerce; the 
 peoples of those countries were so backward that they per- 
 mitted the Germans to do the most important part of their 
 trading for them, and the governments were weak and were 
 easily forced to grant the privileges desired. 
 
 122. Methods of trading; factories. — The methods which 
 the Hanseatics employed in their trade are worthy of special 
 attention, because they were characteristic of the time, being 
 very similar to those of the Venetians in the East, and because 
 they have been employed under similar conditions in later 
 periods. They established "factories" in the sense of trading 
 posts {not manufactories), where most of the trade was carried 
 on. A factory was, in the first place, a fortress where the 
 merchants could be safe from attacks by the natives; at 
 Novgorod, for instance, the group of buildings was enclosed 
 and was carefully guarded by men and by great watch-dogs 
 both day and night. The factory was, moreover, a place 
 where the trade could be regulated, and where the merchants 
 could be kept under supervision. To let a man trade as he 
 pleased would have subjected not only himself but all his 
 compatriots to danger, for the natives made little distinction 
 between foreigners and would readily have punished one mer- 
 chant for the fault of another. The factories were centers of 
 social life, with their rough initiations and their games, and 
 they were useful in training young men in commerce; but they 
 were kept under such strict discipline and minute regulation 
 th^t they seem like garrisons in the enemy's country. 
 
108 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 The map follows a contemporary description of the wares which were brought for 
 sale to Bruges and Flanders, omitting some of the less important and those dif- 
 ficult to identify. Of the countries left blank on the map, Italy excelled in 
 manufactures (textiles and glass), and France had a notable export trade in wine. 
 
 123. Flanders and Bruges. — Between the regions under 
 the commercial control of the Hanseatics on one side and the 
 Venetians on the other lay a sort of neutral zone where both 
 parties met, centering in the region about modern Belgium. 
 This district was favored not only by the junction in it of the 
 
COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE 109 
 
 northern and southern trade; it had other advantages of posi- 
 tion in that it lay near the mouths of great rivers, the Scheldt, 
 Meuse, and Rhine, and was also at the crossing of important 
 land routes. It had enjoyed an early development of industry 
 in its towns, and had been liberally treated by its feudal rulers. 
 At different periods the great commerce which flowed to 
 and through this district chose different points for its concen- 
 tration. In the fourteenth century the favored spot was 
 Bruges (the Flemish word meaning bridges), the greatest 
 market in northern Europe, vying even with Venice. Here 
 could be found Scandinavians, Germans, English, French, 
 Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians, exchanging the wares 
 from different sources; a contemporary writer names 30 differ- 
 ent countries, both Christian and Mohammedan, which fed 
 the market of Bruges with their commodities. The natives 
 were content to let foreigners carry on the business of trans- 
 portation; they stayed at home and grew rich from the wares, 
 money and credit instruments which commerce brought to 
 their doors. 
 
 124. Decline of Bruges in the fifteenth century; rise of 
 Antwerp. — Partly because of this passive part which they 
 assumed, partly because of the practice of medieval countries 
 in diverting their trade from one place to another, the people 
 of Bruges had but a precarious hold on their commerce, and 
 lost it in the fifteenth century. The silting up of its harbors, 
 making these unfit to hold the larger ships now coming into 
 use, explains in part the decline of Bruges, but political forces 
 were at work also to divert commerce to another center. In 
 the fifteenth century the place of Bruges as the great market 
 of northern Europe was taken by Antwerp, which had fought 
 its way up against all rivals, and which held the leadership 
 now for one hundred years. 
 
 125. Conditions of commerce in England. — England lay 
 on the outside of the great currents of medieval commerce. 
 It had an advantage which it had enjoyed since pre-Roman 
 times, the practical monopoly of tin production in Europe; 
 
no A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and added to this in the latter part of the Middle Ages a still 
 more important monopoly, that of wool production. Sheep 
 were raised, of course, in other parts of Europe, and the merinos 
 of Spain yielded a finer grade of wool than could be produced 
 in England. For some reason, however, the sheep industry 
 did not prosper elsewhere as it did in England. Possibly the 
 constant wars and raids which disturbed the feudal states of 
 the continent may have prevented the production of a com- 
 modity which could be so easily destroyed or carried off as 
 booty. At any rate, the more settled political conditions in 
 England, where internal war became soon a rare exception, 
 favored the development of all the national resources. Aided 
 by the prevalence of peace at home, and by the disappearance 
 of feudal tolls on trade, the English advanced rapidly in the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and instead of exporting 
 the raw wool began to make it into cloth and to export the 
 finished product. Trade was furthered also by the continental 
 conquests of English kings, which brought England and the 
 South of France into close relationship, and built up a large 
 import trade in French wines. 
 
 126. English trade passive until the close of the Middle 
 Ages. — Most of the trade in English wares, however, was in 
 the hands of foreigners until the very close of the Middle 
 Ages. The English kings showed more interest in the develop- 
 ment of their resources by the encouragement of alien mer- 
 chants than they showed in the extension of commerce carried 
 on by natives. Hanseatics and Venetians fetched and carried 
 the wares of distant countries for the English; and the "Mer- 
 chants of the Staple," a society composed largely of aliens, 
 enjoyed a legal monopoly of the export of the most important 
 raw materials which England supplied to European commerce 
 — wool and sheepskins, leather, tin, and lead. 
 
 English merchants became restive in the inferior position 
 assigned to them both at home and abroad, and before the 
 end of the Middle Ages began to fight for equal rights or for 
 privileges, but they did not secure final and complete victory 
 
COMMERCE OF NORTHERN EUROPE 111 
 
 until the beginning of the modern period, in the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Pursue on sects. 114-117 studies similar to those suggested above 
 (sects. 88-94) for the Levant wares. For the character of the Baltic trade 
 at present consult the Statesman's Year-Book, index, Norway or Sweden, 
 The history of the trade in amber may be made an interesting study, as 
 the article has been an object of commerce since prehistoric times. 
 
 2. Origin of the Hanseatic League. [Zimmern, pp. 11-29.] 
 
 3. What place does Liibeck hold in the commerce of modern Ger- 
 many? [Statesman's Year-Book, Germany, last table in section on com- 
 merce.] 
 
 4. What effect may the Elbe-Trave Canal, opened June 16, 1900, 
 have upon the future of the city? [See U. S. Consular reports and news- 
 papers about that date.] 
 
 5. Contrast the organization of the Hanseatic League and of the 
 Venetian empire. 
 
 6. Report in detail on the organization of the League, and its weak- 
 nesses. [Zimmern, 202-220.] 
 
 7. Write an essay on the life in a Hanseatic factory. [Zimmern, 
 137-147, Bergen; 179-201, London.] 
 
 8. Compare the Hanseatic factory with an Indian trading post. 
 [Descriptions of such posts can be found in histories of the Hudson's Bay 
 Company.] 
 
 9. Write a report on the rise and fall of Bruges or of Antwerp as a 
 commercial center. [Encyclopedia.] 
 
 10. Write a report on one of the following topics in English medieval 
 commerce : 
 
 (a) Exports. 
 (6) Imports. 
 
 (c) Shipping. 
 
 (d) Attitude of the king. 
 
 (e) Institution of the Staple. 
 
 [Sufficient material on all these points may be found in Cunningham, 
 Growth, and if the student is able to use a book like that he will get far 
 more benefit than in abstracting the summaries (often inaccurate or mis- 
 leading) in the smaller manuals.] 
 
112 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 For general bibliography consult Gross, Sources, and Palgrave's 
 Dictionary, 
 
 General accounts will be found in Encyc. Brit., article Hanseatic 
 League, and in Zimmern, ** Hansa Towns, a book which can be strongly 
 recommended. It includes a map and illustrations, but has no bibliog- 
 raphy. 
 
 For descriptions of English commerce in this period see Cunningham, 
 ** Growth, or the articles in Traill's Social England. Briefer accounts 
 are, of course, to be sought in manuals already mentioned. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIEVAL ORGANIZATION OF 
 COMMERCE 
 
 127. Types of medieval traders ; pedler, shopkeeper. — 
 Enough has already been said to guard the reader against the 
 idea that great wholesale merchants of the modern type were 
 common in the Middle Ages. The regular type of trader was 
 the artisan who manufactured the goods he sold, or the pedler 
 who collected a stock of goods in a town and carried them 
 about in a pack for sale. The pedler's stock was not unlike 
 that which he would carry around the country nowadays, — 
 sewing materials, toilet articles, etc. An illumination in a 
 manuscript of the fourteenth century, representing monkeys 
 opening a pedler's box, shows vests, caps, gloves, musical 
 instruments, purses, girdles, hats, cutlasses, pewter pots, and 
 other articles. An English statute of the fourteenth century, 
 describing a similar stock in trade, mentions rabbit skins as 
 one of the articles which the pedlers took in exchange for 
 their wares, and an English author of the period accuses them 
 of catching cats for their skins. The petty shopkeeper stood 
 a step above the pedler. He had a regular shop in a town, 
 where he displayed his wares, and often went on trips to the 
 markets of other towns, where he set up a booth and carried 
 on such trade as the town regulations allowed. 
 
 128. Merchants. — Still another step above the shop- 
 keeper was the real merchant, who had his warehouse, from 
 which he supplied the retail traders, and who bought up 
 considerable quantities of goods at the great fairs at home 
 and abroad. It is doubtful whether we can find in this class 
 in northern -Europe any men who devoted themselves entirely 
 
 8 113 
 
114 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 See section 128 for a description of the trade of this merchant. The map shows only 
 his German business, and indicates roughly, by the size of the circle, the importance 
 of each town in his commercial dealings. Note how trade tended to the water routes. 
 
MEDIEVAL ORGANIZATION OF COMMERCE 115 
 
 to wholesale trade; and merchants had not yet specialized so 
 that each would devote himself exclusively to the trade in a 
 particular ware. We can illustrate the point by a German 
 merchant, whose account books have been preserved so that 
 it is possible to follow his business operations exactly. Vicko 
 von Geldersen was a draper of Hamburg, where he rose 
 to wealth and a high position. He imported cloth wholesale, 
 and sold it both wholesale and retail. But he made use 
 of his connection with Bruges, which was the great cloth 
 market, to send there for sale iron, honey, meat, butter, etc., 
 and to import such wares as oil, spices, figs, and almonds, 
 which he sold to smaller dealers in many cities of Germany. 
 
 Members of the class to which Vicko belonged were the 
 leaders of commerce in the North of Europe during the Middle 
 Ages; they accumulated wealth which seemed great at the 
 time, and formed an aristocratic class in social and political 
 life. Their sons were brought up to follow the family business, 
 and often trained to it by extensive study and residence in 
 foreign countries. 
 
 129. Development of commercial association in the Middle 
 Ages. — In the Middle Ages we find the beginnings of that 
 process of association which can be traced step by step to 
 the formation of the great "trusts" of the present day, and 
 which forms one of the most important features in the develop- 
 ment of commerce. To point out the various advantages 
 which arise from the association of laborers and of capitalists 
 would lead us into political economy; and to describe in detail 
 the development of the various forms of association would 
 require an excursion into legal history equally out of place. 
 We must content ourselves with indicating some of the main 
 features which are easily intelligible. 
 
 The need of association was felt especially in the Middle 
 Ages because it was necessary that a merchant or his repre- 
 sentative should accompany his wares on the road. It was 
 often difficult for a merchant to look after a commercial venture 
 in person; he could not trust it to a hireling; and the slight 
 
116 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 development of the carrying and commission profession made 
 it impossible for him to leave it to a class of persons who 
 nowadays make it their business to attend to such matters. 
 The merchant, therefore, would associate with him some one 
 who could represent his interests; and a modern author asserts 
 that in comparison with the amount of business many more 
 commercial companies were formed then than at present. The 
 merchant would choose by preference a member of his family, 
 and family partnerships were the prevailing form of association 
 at first. With the growth of commerce, however, greater 
 freedom of association was demanded, and the group ceased 
 to be limited by considerations of relationship. 
 
 130. Advantages of association. — By joining together, two 
 or more men could follow different lines; one would stay at 
 home while another could accompany the wares, and perhaps 
 still another could attend to sales in a distant city. The 
 advantages of this are apparent, and of not less importance 
 are the benefits arising from the better utilization of capital. 
 A person who had accumulated wealth, but. who on account 
 of advanced age, physical disability, or other circumstance 
 could not himself employ it in commerce, would join with him 
 a man who contributed to the enterprise the necessary business 
 activity. 
 
 Capitalists gained also in another way, for they were enabled 
 by association to share the risks of an enterprise. A man who 
 put all his money into one ship or cargo ran the risk of being 
 ruined; and foregoing paragraphs have shov/n that the dangers 
 in the path of commerce were by no means slight. By dis- 
 tributing his capital in a number of enterprises, however, as 
 could easily be done if he entered into association with others, 
 he could hope to make up for any probable loss by the profits 
 of his successful ventures, and can be regarded as insuring 
 himself. We find, in fact, that the shipping business was for 
 the most part carried on in this way. 
 
 131. Forms of association ; partnership. — Commercial asso- 
 ciation took ordinarily the form of a "commenda" (Latin 
 
MEDIEVAL ORGANIZATION OF COMMERCE 117 
 
 commendare, entrust). The " commendator " contributed capi- 
 tal in the form of money, wares or a ship, while the other 
 party, called the "tractator" contributed only his personal 
 services to the enterprise; of the profits one fourth went to 
 the tractator and the remainder to the commendator. The 
 tractator who saved his earnings could in time also contribute 
 capital, and was given a greater share of the profits and more 
 freedom in conducting the business. 
 
 The commenda, corresponding to a "silent partnership," 
 was older and of more importance in commercial undertakings 
 than the ordinary partnership of the present day; but the 
 latter form of association grew up also at this time, and was 
 used in commerce as well as in industry. The joint-stock 
 corporation belongs in its important applications to a later 
 period. 
 
 132. Spread of the practice of association from Italy. — 
 The different forms of partnership developed especially in 
 Italy in the last few centuries of the Middle Ages, when the 
 growth of commerce was most rapid, and they became ex- 
 traordinarily extensive and important. They secured the union 
 of capital and executive ability which enabled far greater en- 
 terprises to be carried on than would have been possible without 
 them. The Italian commercial house of the Peruzzi, for 
 instance, had fourteen branches and one hundred and fifty 
 factors or agents. Even the assistants in the business, who 
 did not themselves contribute capital to it, were interested in 
 its success by a system of profit sharing. From Italy the 
 practice of association spread to the North of Europe, and it 
 became practically universal in commercial undertakings. 
 Each of the larger firms had its characteristic trade-mark, 
 distinguishing its bales of goods. 
 
 133. Position of the Jews in medieval commerce. — The 
 Jews held a peculiar position in medieval Europe. They were 
 distrusted and disliked by the Christians, because of their 
 difference in religion, and because of their business ability, 
 which made competition with them a difficult matter. Though 
 
118 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 they were scattered throughout Europe they kept touch with 
 each other, and so enjoyed exceptional advantages in the 
 pursuit of commerce and the extension of business relations. 
 In the early part of the Middle Ages they were indispensable; 
 Christians were not educated up to their level in business, and 
 had to leave to them the major part of the slight commerce of 
 the times. As Christian peoples developed, however, they 
 demanded for themselves the place which the Jews had won; 
 and by a long series of restrictions and persecutions they 
 forced the Jews into some particular branches of business 
 where the Christians could not follow them. The church 
 taught for a time that it was wrong to lend money at interest, 
 and discouraged Christians from seeking gain by this means. 
 The Jews, therefore, seized the opportunity which was denied 
 to Christians, and became money-lenders. Their position was 
 always precarious, for the law gave them no protection, and 
 they were subject constantly to robbery by feudal princes 
 and by the people, who believed everything evil of them. 
 From England they were banished altogether, for several cen- 
 turies. They showed astonishing skill and fortitude, but in 
 the last centuries of the Middle Ages they lost their position 
 even as leaders in credit operations. The church then per- 
 mitted money-lending if the terms were not extortionate; and 
 Christians from southern Europe, "Caursines" (named from 
 Cahors, in the south of France) and "Lombards," succeeded 
 the Jews as the money-lenders of Europe. 
 
 134. Character of currency in the Middle Ages. — One of 
 the serious obstacles to the development of commerce was the 
 character of the currency in the various countries of Europe. 
 Assuming that the reader appreciates the importance of money 
 as facilitating the operations of exchange, and knows the 
 qualities of good money, we may confine ourselves to pointing 
 out some of the characteristic faults of medieval currency. 
 
 (1) Merchants could not rely upon the government to 
 maintain the standard of value. In many countries the kings 
 debased the coinage again and again, to secure the means of 
 
MEDIEVAL ORGANIZATION OF COMMERCE 119 
 
 carrying on war or paying public expenses of other kinds. 
 Every debasement, as it left the coins with less pure metal, 
 lowered their purchasing power and raised prices; many inno- 
 cent people suffered and everybody grew reluctant to make 
 bargains and contracts. 
 
 (2) In many countries, especially those on the Continent, 
 the privileges of the great feudal lords included the right to 
 keep a mint and to issue coins. The central government 
 restricted this right, as it grew stronger, but in general the 
 currency of medieval Europe was made up of a vast variety 
 of coins of standards even less reliable than that of the king's 
 coinage. There was danger that a coin, even if it was of good 
 weight, could not be .passed at its full value outside the locality 
 where it was minted. 
 
 (3) Even in countries like England, where feudal coinage 
 was put down and where debasement by the government was 
 exceptional, counterfeits were not rare, and the clipping of 
 coin was very common. 
 
 These characteristics of medieval currency made the money- 
 changer a necessary figure in the commercial world ; he was to 
 be found everywhere, even in the small towns, buying and 
 selling the various coins in circulation. 
 
 135. Difficulty in making payments in distant places. — 
 While the money-changer facilitated payments in any given 
 place, he was not of much assistance to a merchant desirous 
 of making a payment in a distant town or country. The 
 merchant, it is true, could buy from him foreign money with 
 which to make the payment; but the transportation of the 
 actual coin was not only dangerous and expensive, but also 
 subject to legal restriction, and was to be avoided if possible. 
 The merchant would probably prefer to send instead of money 
 some ware, which he could sell to advantage at the destination, 
 and then with the proceeds make his payment. For example, 
 when Michael Behaim of the Nuremberg Company wanted to 
 send 1,000 gulden from Breslau to Nuremberg, he found it 
 expedient to buy an amount of wax which he could sell in 
 
120 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Nuremberg for the required sum, and he shipped that instead 
 of money. 
 
 136. Introduction of the bill of exchange. — It might not, 
 however, always be convenient for a man to meet his obliga- 
 tions in this way; he might not have the commercial knowledge, 
 or perhaps he might have no good opportunity to ship a ware. 
 Behaim, in the case cited, had in fact resorted to the wax 
 shipment only from necessity, after he found it impossible to 
 make his payment by the means of remittance now become 
 general, the bill of exchange. 
 
 Suppose that B. in Breslau owed the 1,000 gulden, to 
 A. in Nuremberg, for spice; and suppose that D. in Breslau 
 was the creditor of another Nuremberg .merchant C, to the 
 extent of 1,000 gulden, perhaps for furs. It would be absurd 
 for B to ship the money or to go out of his way to ship wax 
 to A, and for C to ship the same value to D, when the pay- 
 ments could be made to cancel each other. Why should not 
 B pay to D in Breslau the 1,000 guldens due him, and tell 
 C to pay the same amount to A in Nuremberg? This could 
 be accomplished by means of bills of exchange; D could write 
 out an order to C directing him to pay the money, and sell it 
 to B, who would thus have the means of paying his debt in 
 Nuremberg to A. 
 
 Such an operation implies, however, not only regular com- 
 merce of considerable volume but also mutual confidence 
 among the participants. How could B know whether D 
 actually had a correspondent in a distant place who would 
 meet his obligations promptly? It was not, in fact, until the 
 thirteenth century that bills of exchange were used to any 
 considjerable extent; then they were developed in Italy, and 
 spread from there. 
 
 137. Development of banking in Italy. — In Italy, also, 
 the money-changers developed other forms of banking. As 
 they were dealers in money, business men in want of capital 
 for their operations naturally sought it of them. The money- 
 changers might lend it from their own stock or act as brokers 
 
MEDIEVAL ORGANIZATION OF COMMERCE 121 
 
 and secure the money from some man who had a surplus. 
 The short step from this to the common form of modern 
 banking was made when merchants deposited their surplus 
 cash with the money-changer, and he had thus a considerable 
 stock, which he could lend so long as he kept sufficient reserve 
 to meet the demands of depositors. It soon became unneces- 
 sary for money to pass at all in large transactions; a man 
 could get a loan from a bank simply by having a deposit 
 ascribed to him on the books, and could assign this loan to 
 others as he chose to pay it out. The characteristic danger 
 of banking, the attempt to make a great deal of credit out of 
 a little capital, appears early in Italy, with its results of failures 
 and crises. The advantages of the banking system, however, 
 the economizing of time and money and the facilitating of 
 business operations, were so clear that banking kept its place, 
 and spread toward the close of the Middle Ages from Italy to 
 other countries. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 There is, in the history of commerce, no topic more difficult and none 
 more important than the development of the organization. The student 
 who has learned the facts has made only a beginning; he must grasp the 
 significance of the facts if he is to gain anything from his study. The 
 teacher is advised, therefore, to enlarge on the advantages of association 
 and cooperation, as they are treated, from one point of view, in Adam 
 Smith's celebrated discussion of the division of labor, and in many manuals 
 of economics. 
 
 So much depends on the degree of advancement of the pupil, and on 
 his particular environment in country, town or city, that it is difficult to 
 suggest specific questions or topics. In general, the teacher should sug- 
 gest the meaning of earlier development by constant reference to the 
 present organization. Why have pedlers disappeared in so many dis- 
 tricts, where do they still remain, and why? What is the proportion of 
 retail and wholesale merchants in your city; how far has the specializa- 
 tion of wholesale trade progressed? Answers may perhaps be found in a 
 business directory. The student who is competent to work out the his- 
 tory of business organization in his own town will not fail to get new 
 light on the history of earlier development; and a report on the history 
 of some particular branch of trade at home should be an excellent exer- 
 cise to be worked out. Another exercise would be the history of the 
 
122 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 different forms of association (partnerships, joint-stock companies), and 
 a study of the reasons lying behind the rise and fall of a particular form. 
 The choice of questions and topics here must be left to the ingenuity and 
 discretion of the teacher. 
 
 The history of the currency in England [see Cunningham] is an easier 
 topic. 
 
 On the rise of credit instruments (bills of exchange, banking), the 
 student will probably be best prepared if he is given reading, either in 
 review or in anticipation, in some general manual which will enable him 
 to appreciate the importance of credit institutions now, and will hence 
 interest him in their origin. 
 
 An exercise which should be profitable and rather easy is a report by 
 the student on the life of some English merchant. [See Fox Bourne, or 
 consult the Dictionary of National Biography on names like Richard 
 Whittington, WilUam Canynges, William de la Pole, etc. Further bio- 
 graphical material is provided by Alice Law, Some notable "King's 
 Merchants," Economic Review, 1902, 12: 309 ff.; 1903, 13: 411 ff.] 
 
 If Bourne's Romance of trade is available the student may prepare 
 an abstract of chap. 1 (the Jews) or chap. 4 (money and credit). 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The student will find bibliographies of some of the topics treated in 
 this chapter by consulting the appropriate articles in Palgrave's Diction- 
 ary. Most of the best literature is foreign. The best references in Eng- 
 lish are to ** Ashley and * Cunningham. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 COMMERCE AND POLITICS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 
 
 138. Development of the modem political system in the 
 later Middle Ages. — Toward the close of the Middle Ages the 
 feudal system of government gave place gradually to a system 
 more like that which the Romans had established and with 
 which we are familiar now. As trade and intercommunication 
 increased, and towns grew up holding a population of con- 
 siderable wealth, the kings found it possible to make into a 
 reality the position of nominal headship which tradition and 
 the church conferred upon them. They found in the mer- 
 cantile and manufacturing classes people who could afford to 
 pay taxes, and who were willing to pay large sums to be 
 relieved from the oppressions of the feudal lords. It became 
 possible once more to transport supplies and to send troops 
 to distant localities, and the kings devised means by which 
 they could keep in touch with their officials, and hold them 
 to loyal service. The result was a great increase in the power 
 of the central government, at the expense of the feudal lords. 
 
 139. Variety of development in different countries. — The 
 development, as sketched above, was very different in the 
 different countries. It came early in England, and local lords 
 lost practically all of their independence. In France it was a 
 very gradual process, extending over the last four centuries 
 of the Middle Ages. Even in the sixteenth century and later, 
 the kings, though they seemed to enjoy great power, did not 
 abolish all the remnants of feudalism, which continued down 
 to the French Revolution in 1789, to the great harm of indus- 
 trial development. In Spain the union of the crowns of 
 Castile and Aragon just before 1500 completed the process, 
 
 123 
 
124 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 by establishing nearly absolute royal authority over the greater 
 part of the peninsula. In Germany and Italy the result was 
 different. The same man, who called himself the Emperor of 
 the Romans, claimed the royal power in both countries, but 
 in attempting too much he lost everything. He wasted the 
 royal resources in vain attempt to establish his authority, and 
 became a mere figure-head. The control of government passed 
 in those countries to local authorities; but it is important to 
 note that these included not only feudal lords, but also cities 
 which had become strong enough to throw off feudal authority 
 and to establish for themselves almost complete independence. 
 
 140. Effect on commerce of a strong and of a weak central 
 government. — In a country in which the cities established 
 complete independence they seemed for a time to have gained 
 by throwing off the royal power. Each city could control its 
 affairs and shape its policy to suit local interests; and the 
 great cities of Italy and Germany before the close of the Middle 
 Ages were the most advanced and prosperous parts of Europe. 
 Though they controlled only small areas of land they had 
 great resources from their commerce, and even in war could 
 hold their own with the feudal lords fighting in the old-fashioned 
 way. 
 
 They were strong enough to fight a feudal lord; they were 
 not, however, strong enough to fight a modern king. While 
 they were building up their power at the expense of rival 
 cities and at the expense of the country districts, the kings of 
 lands to the west of them were quietly engaged in uniting all 
 the cities and the country districts, too, under one rule. The 
 cities in France and England seemed for a time to lose, because 
 they were forced by the kings to make concessions to each 
 other and to the country districts. When, however, they had 
 become used to consider themselves as only parts of a bigger 
 whole, the nation, they found that their sovereign was far 
 better fitted to represent their interests and further their 
 progress than any one of them was individually. The struggle 
 of the independent cities of Italy and Germany against the 
 
COMMERCE AND POLITICS IN LATER MIDDLE AGES 125 
 
 national states of England, Spain, and France was not decided 
 until after the discovery of America and the sea-route to Asia, 
 when the national organization proved decisively its superiority 
 to the municipal. 
 
 141. Rise of a national commercial policy. — The rise in 
 power of the central government in countries like England 
 and France is proved by the appearance, toward the close of 
 the Middle Ages, of a national commercial policy. The reader 
 will remember that even in these countries the towns were at 
 first so independent that each adopted a commercial policy of 
 its own; as though, nowadays, for instance, Boston and New 
 York and Philadelphia should each have its own independent 
 tariff and set of commercial regulations. A merchant of Dover 
 was a foreigner in Southampton, and if he wanted to collect 
 a debt due him from a Southampton merchant he would 
 appeal, not to the central government and the law^ of the land, 
 but to the Dover government; and the Dover government 
 would put pressure on the Southarripton government, perhaps 
 by arresting any merchant from Southampton and holding 
 his goods, until the debt was paid. About 1300 the English 
 king was at last strong enough to make general regulations in 
 matters like this of the collection of debts, and about the same 
 time he established a national tariff at the ports, as a regular 
 system, and forced the various towns to give up the right to 
 levy what dues they pleased. A similar change took place in 
 France at nearly the same time; the idea grew strong that the 
 general interest of all Frenchmen was superior to the particular 
 interests of any town or individual, and the people of France 
 began to look to the king instead of to the local authorities 
 for protection and control. 
 
 142. Medieval ideas on commerce. — When commerce was 
 undeveloped and only an incidental feature in the economic 
 life of peoples, those high in authority in church and state 
 held ideas of it which have faded away as commerce has 
 proved its power and shown its benefits. Many kinds of 
 commerce, including some forms of money-lending now con- 
 
126 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 sidered legitimate, were prohibited because they seemed to 
 give a man something for nothing. In ordinary trade one 
 man was thought to make his profit at the expense of another, 
 and government was always vigilant to protect the weaker 
 party. A government, moreover, looked on foreign commerce 
 rather as a privilege of its citizens than as their right, and 
 used it freely as a political weapon instead of considering it 
 an economic necessity. The ports of the kingdom were the 
 "king's gates," which he could open or close at his pleasure, 
 to further his royal policy. 
 
 143. Characteristic features of commercial policy. — Among 
 the characteristic features of national economic policy in the 
 later centuries of the Middle Ages we find the following: 
 
 (1) Export and import could be carried on only by favor 
 of royal license, which was granted to and withdrawn from 
 groups of natives and foreigners as suited the king's ideas. 
 
 (2) The export of necessaries was frequently prohibited 
 (as had previously been the custom with the towns), to increase 
 the supplies of the kingdom and keep an enemy from getting 
 the good of them. 
 
 (3) The export of money, as a specially valuable asset of 
 the kingdom, was prohibited and its importation was favored. 
 
 (4) The growth of native industries was stimulated by a 
 variety of regulations. The English cloth manufacture was 
 protected, for instance, in the following ways: the export of 
 raw material (wool, teasles, etc.) was forbidden from time to 
 time, that the home manufacturer might supply himself more 
 cheaply; the import of foreign cloth was restricted; and the 
 wearing of fur was limited to certain classes, that the home 
 market for woolen manufacture might be larger. Among the 
 protected industries was shipping. " Navigation acts," requir- 
 ing the use of native ships, were common, though they ordi- 
 narily remained in force but a short time and had not yet 
 hardened into a system. 
 
 (5) The foreign trade of a country was not only restricted, 
 as at present, to certain points on the frontier where duties 
 
COMMERCE AND POLITICS IN LATER MIDDLE AGES 127 
 
 could be collected, but was often concentrated in one or more 
 special places, the "staples." The government could then 
 oversee the trade more easily, could collect its dues, insure 
 good quality, and protect merchants more readily, and it 
 could also make better use of trade as a weapon of policy, 
 directing the stream of goods where it pleased, and so rewarding 
 or punishing other states. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Review the sections on feudalism, and see how the modern system 
 of government grew up from feudalism as the forces which had created 
 feudalism were reversed. [Cf. Seebohm, Prot. Rev., pp. 15-21.] 
 
 2. Write a report on the rise or decline in power of the central govern- 
 ment in one of the following countries, in the period 1100-1500 : France, 
 England, Germany, Italy, Spain. [Consult the current history manuals, 
 or the encyclopedia.] 
 
 3. In connection with sect. 140 read the sections in a later part of 
 the book, describing the advantages which have come to Germany and 
 Italy in recent times by their union under strong central governments. 
 
 4. Write a report on medieval doctrines on one of the following 
 subjects: 
 
 (a) Loans at interest. 
 
 (b) Profits in trade. 
 
 [Cunningham, Growth, or Ashley, vol. 1, chap. 3; vol. 2, chap. 6.J 
 
 5. Write a report on "protection" in the medieval state. [See 
 Cunningham or Ashley on commercial policy, or read J. S. Nicholson, 
 The English corn laws.] 
 
 6. What has been the history of the meaning of the word staple f 
 [Dictionaries, especially Murray's New English Diet.; Cunningham.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The subject of this short chapter takes the reader within the bounds 
 of political history, and he is referred to the many history manuals for 
 further reading and references. The growth of the French monarchy 
 has been well treated by Adams, Civilization, chap, xiii, or Growth of the 
 French nation. 
 
PART III.— MODERN COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 
 
 144. The revolution about 1500; topics to be considered. — 
 
 The period centering about the year 1500 was marked by 
 changes so rapid and so extensive that they deserve the name 
 of revolution. The changes affected not only the intellectual 
 life of Europe (the Renaissance) and its religious life (the 
 Protestant Revolt or Reformation); they caused a revolution 
 also in the world of politics and in the world of industry and 
 commerce. It will be necessary to survey some of these 
 changes before we return to the narrative of the- history of 
 commerce. Three main topics will occupy the attention: first, 
 the extension of the commercial area by exploration and 
 discovery; second, the development of the commercial organi- 
 zation by new forms of cooperation; third, the rise of modern 
 states in Europe, and their influence on the growth of commerce. 
 
 145. Growth of geographical knowledge. Asia. — About 
 the year 1000, to most people in Europe 'Hhe world" meant 
 scarcely more than the village in which they lived, so limited 
 were their interests and their knowledge. Pilgrims to the 
 holy places in Palestine brought back with them knowledge 
 of this edge of Asia, but what the Greeks and Romans knew 
 of that continent and of Africa had been forgotten, and even 
 the better educated people thought of the outer parts of the 
 world as mysterious regions, wrapped in darkness or peopled 
 with prodigies, when they thought of them at all. The growth 
 of the Levant trade and the crusades caused an increase in 
 interest and in information. After the year 1200, when a 
 great Mongol or Tartar Empire was established in inner Asia 
 by Genghis Khan, Europeans began to penetrate Asia seeking 
 
 128 
 
y 
 
EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 129 
 
 aid from the Mongols against their enemies the Turks. Am- 
 bassadors, missionaries, merchants, and explorers made the 
 journey so frequently that a regular guide-book was written 
 by an Italian soon after 1300; and about the same time the 
 Venetian Marco Polo returned from a long stay in China and 
 described his travels. He had gone by land, through Persia, 
 Turkestan, and Mongolia, and, returning by sea, he could tell 
 also about Japan, the great Malay islands, Burmah, India, etc. 
 Before the invention of printing knowledge spread slowly, but 
 the maps of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries show that 
 the results of these explorations were not lost, and Europe 
 had become conscious that Asia was bounded by a sea on the 
 east. 
 
 146. Need of a sea route to Asia ; means of navigation. — 
 The explorations by land in Asia were of great importance in 
 spreading knowledge of the countries from which the wares 
 of the Levant trade came, but they were of little assistance to 
 traders who sought to develop commerce on the old routes. 
 With the decline of the Mongol power and the spread of the 
 Turks, passage across Asia became constantly more difficult. 
 The available routes finally narrowed to one, that through 
 Egypt, and trade on this route was burdened with very heavy 
 tolls. The European people were urged by powerful economic 
 motives to seek out the sea route to India which was now 
 believed to exist. 
 
 The means of navigation were still those of the later Middle 
 Ages. The ships in which some of the most adventurous 
 voyages were taken were of fifty tons or even less. The rig 
 had been improved slightly, so that the ships could be handled 
 more readily than when they bore the old square sails; and 
 instruments for ascertaining the position at sea were also 
 improved. Still, when we add to the actual peril of distant 
 voyages the imagined dangers which the minds of men ascribed 
 to unknown seas, we must admit that the early explorers met 
 a test of courage to which men nowadays are rarely put. 
 
 147. The lead in maritime exploration taken by Prince 
 
 9 
 
130 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Henry of Portugal. — Italians were, in general, the guides who 
 led Europeans through the seas of darkness to the East. Con- 
 ditions at home, however, forced them to seek service abroad 
 in realizing their plans, and Portugal was the first of the 
 European countries to effect great oceanic discoveries. The 
 country was small and undeveloped, but it enjoyed in the 
 fifteenth century the guidance of a singularly able line of 
 kings. It had in the person of Prince Henry, "the Navigator," 
 an enthusiast who devoted practically his whole life and fortune 
 to the cause of discovery. When but twenty-four years old 
 he retired from the world to a promontory at the southern 
 extremity of the country, and there he worked for over forty 
 years, until his death in 1460. Prince Henry combined the 
 commercial motive with missionary zeal and a medieval hos- 
 tility to the Mohammedans, but the character of his work 
 was entirely modern and business-like. He gave what was 
 most needed for success, organization; he attracted sailors and 
 pilots from all Europe; stimulated development in the science 
 and art of navigation; equipped and inspired expeditions. 
 
 148. Exploration of the West Coast of Africa; difficulties, 
 real and imagined. — The great achievement of Portuguese 
 navigation was the discovery of the sea route to India around 
 Africa. The coast of the northwest corner of Africa was 
 well known to sailors of several European countries, and the 
 belief was current in many minds that circumnavigation was 
 possible. Some Genoese sailors had actually attempted to 
 reach India in this way in the thirteenth century, but they 
 had disappeared without leaving a trace. There was all the 
 difference in the world between the theory and the practice of 
 European navigators ; the limit of their voyages had practically 
 always been Cape Bojador, far north on the west coast. A 
 strong inshore current and short but furious storms made 
 coasting dangerous. The coast of dreary sand dunes afforded 
 no good anchorage; mist or dust dimmed the air and frightened 
 sailors with the thought that they were actually entering the 
 sea of darkness; Cape Bojador was a forbidding obstacle in 
 
EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 
 
 131 
 
 that it projected far out beyond the coast line, and was sup- 
 posed to be extended by perilous reefs. Furthermore, most 
 people submitted to the opinion of ancient philosophers, that 
 the tropics were uninhabitable by reason of the intense heat 
 of a blazing sun, which approached nearer the earth in those 
 regions. 
 
 See Sections 148-149. 
 
 149. Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1487) and of 
 the sea route to India (1498). — Under the stimulus of Prince 
 Henry the Portuguese passed Cape Bojador in 1434, and were 
 rewarded on a more extended voyage about ten years after- 
 ward by the discovery of Cape Verde. The name, "Green 
 Cape," is significant; the explorers had passed the southern 
 edge of the desert and found a watered country with waving 
 palms. In this enterprise, as in most others, the first steps 
 proved to be the hardest. Though progress was steady it was 
 slow, and at the death of Prince Henry in 1460 the Portuguese 
 
132 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 had not passed beyond Sierra Leone. They had, however, 
 accumulated valuable experience and gained confidence; the 
 long period of preparation fitted them to advance more rapidly 
 as time went on. In 1471 they passed the equator, without 
 the scorching that some had feared; and in 1487, under Diaz, 
 they turned the southern extremity of the Continent, named 
 by the sailor the Cape of Storms, but renamed Cape of Good 
 Hope by the King, as an augury for the future. The illness 
 
 Map of the known world in the time of Columbus. 
 
 and death of the King prevented the Portuguese from utilizing 
 their discovery immediately; but in July, 1497, Vasco da Gama 
 was despatched with a fleet bound for India, which anchored 
 at Calicut (southwest coast; not Calcutta), in May, 1498. 
 Oceanic commerce with India had begun, and the tolls and 
 charges which had hampered trade by the land routes were 
 things of the past. 
 
 150. Belief that Asia could be reached by sailing westward. 
 
EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 133 
 
 — While the Portuguese were pushing on down the west coast 
 of Africa in their search for a route to India, the minds of some 
 men were occupied with the thought that the same object could 
 be attained more easily by sailing directly west from Europe. 
 The earth was known to be round and was thought to be 
 smaller than it actually is. Asia was known to be bounded 
 by a sea on the East. Why not reach India by sailing around 
 the globe? Perhaps, they thought, the east coast of Asia was 
 but a little way from the west coast of Europe or Africa. 
 Skippers who ventured to the Azores, the Canaries, and other 
 islands not far from Europe, brought back stories of foreign 
 objects washed up on the beaches, or of land dimly descried 
 on their voyages. 
 
 The belief that land existed beyond the horizon was com- 
 monly held, and Columbus does not deserve the credit of 
 originating the idea. Nor can his discovery of the New World 
 in 1492 be regarded as one of those acts without which the 
 history of the world would be very different. The Portuguese 
 were certain to touch America sooner or later in circumnavi- 
 gating Africa, for they planned to steer due south fiom Guinea 
 to the latitude of the Cape, to avoid the calms and currents 
 of the coast, and an equatorial current carried their ships 
 westward. Under these conditions the Portuguese Cabral, on 
 his way to India around the Cape, actually did land on the 
 coast of what is now Brazil, in 1500. 
 
 151. Discovery of America (1492) ; partition of the world 
 outside Europe between Spain and Portugal. — Columbus, how- 
 ever, certainly deserves the fame which has been given him, 
 for the courage he showed in turning theory into action; and 
 the consequences of the discovery, however we apportion the 
 credit for it, make it one of the turning-points in the world's 
 history. Europe was disappointed, it is true, in the hope that 
 a shorter route to India had been found, Balboa proved by 
 the discovery of the "South Sea," or Pacific Ocean (1513), 
 that the new land was a continent by itself, and the great 
 distance between America and Asia became known by the 
 
134 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ' voyage of Magellan around the earth (1519-1522), "doubtless 
 the greatest feat of navigation that has ever been performed." 
 Time was needed to prove that America offered more than 
 Asia to build up European commerce, and the full measure of 
 its possibilities was not realized until the nineteenth century. 
 At the time Portugal seemed to have gained more than Spain. 
 The non-Christian world was divided between these two powers 
 by a papal decree, which gave to Portugal Africa and Asia 
 (except the Philippines) and to Spain the Americas (except 
 Brazil). So long as other European states obeyed papal 
 authority and feared the might of Spain and Portugal, they 
 were bound to respect this division; and the first period of 
 discoveries was followed by a series of voyages, carried on 
 especially by English and Dutch, seeking a passage northeast 
 or northwest through Arctic seas, that would enable them to 
 evade the monopoly granted by the Pope. 
 
 152. Effect of the discoveries on the field of commerce; 
 growth of a world commerce. — Contrasting medieval and 
 modern commerce we find that the discoveries produced great 
 changes bolh in the area and in the articles of trade. Maritime 
 commerce in the Middle Ages was restricted in general to the 
 seas of Europe (Baltic, North, Mediterranean, Black) and to 
 the edge of theXtlantic; exchange was hindered not only by 
 physical obstacles but also by the claims of various states to 
 the exclusive control of inland waters (Hansa in the Baltic, 
 Venice in the Adriatic). When once sailors had learned to 
 leave the coast and steer boldly into the open ocean, secure 
 in the consciousness that they were approaching not a "sea 
 of darkness" but a land much like that which they had left 
 behind them, the ocean became a means of uniting continents 
 rather than of separating them. The principle that the sea 
 is free to all was not accepted, it is true, for some time; states 
 tried to extend to the open sea the same narrow principle of 
 exclusion that had been practised with respect to interior 
 waters. These claims led to bitter national conflicts in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they fell gradually 
 
EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 135 
 
 into oblivion as the hopelessness of making them effective 
 became apparent; and the European commerce of a former 
 period expanded into a world commerce. 
 
 153. Effect of the discoveries on the wares of commerce. — 
 Europe had become acquainted with Asiatic wares in the 
 course of the Levant trade, so that the market for them was 
 well established when the first Portuguese ships returned from 
 India. Transportation by the sea route, however, with its 
 diminished costs and with the greatly increased cargoes, 
 caused such a decline in the price of eastern goods that the 
 market for them expanded immensely. What had before been 
 costly luxuries for the rich became now a part of their regular 
 necessaries, and became for other classes luxuries or comforts 
 which they could afford to purchase. It is in this ♦period that 
 tea, coffee, and sugar became common articles of consumption 
 in some of the European countries. The part played by those 
 three articles in the commerce of an advanced country can be 
 seen from the fact that before the end of the eighteenth century 
 they formed over one fourth of the total imports of England. 
 Other wares, such as Indian textiles, which had been known 
 to Europe before, but which were too bulky to pay for the im- 
 port of cheaper grades, could now be placed on the market in 
 large quantities, when protective duties did not exclude them. 
 
 154. Importance of the precious metals in the American 
 trade ; effect on prices in Europe. — The American continent 
 offered at first only one class of wares of prime importance, 
 namely, the precious metals. The Spanish secured great quan- 
 tities of gold in the early years of their conquests, but about 
 1550 the output of gold was exceeded by that of silver, which 
 reached enormous proportions, as a result of the discovery of 
 new mines in Mexico and Peru, and by the use of the amalga- 
 mation process. Before 1550 the production of the precious 
 metals in Europe and Africa exceeded the supply from the 
 New World, but then the balance changed; and during the 
 seventeenth century the American supply was more than five- 
 fold that gained in the Old World. The result was an increase 
 
136 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 in the stock of money in Europe so great that a revolution in 
 prices ensued; silver became so plentiful that a given weight 
 of it would purchase only one half or one third, sometimes 
 even one fourth or one fifth, of what it would have bought 
 before the discovery of the American mines. The serious 
 results of this price revolution on different classes in Europe 
 must be left to the imagination of the reader, as they lie outside 
 the scope of this manual. No other American product com- 
 peted in importance with silver, in the early period, but as the 
 North American continent and the West Indies were settled 
 with whites and negroes some important staples were brought 
 from those parts to Europe. The islands proved to be espe- 
 cially well suited to the production of sugar, while the mainland 
 contributed in tobacco a ware before unknown in Europe, 
 but one which could soon rely on a large and increasing demand. 
 Food staples like maize and potatoes continued unimportant, 
 not only as wares of commerce but also as articles of European 
 production, until comparatively recent times. 
 
 155. Improvement in the means and methods of navigation. 
 — With the extension of navigation new qualities were needed 
 in ships; speed to cover the great distances, carrying capacity 
 for the storage of bulky cargoes, and stability sufficient to 
 ensure safety in tropical hurricanes or eastern typhoons. The 
 medieval galley, rowed with oars, was, of course, unsuited to 
 long voyages, and sails came into universal use. The favorite 
 types of vessel all showed, however, the influence of medieval 
 models. The caravel, of small tonnage and easily managed, 
 was simply a galley fitted with masts and sails. The galleon 
 was larger, having two or three decks; in it the attempt was 
 made to unite the lines and speed of a galley with the stability 
 and dimensions of a cargo carrier. Finally, the carrack, with 
 four or five decks, combined great carrying capacity with the 
 defensive strength of a floating fortress. Piracy continued to 
 be a plague, especially in the Mediterranean and in waters 
 outside Europe, and the large merchantman with a con- 
 siderable number of guns enjoyed a great advantage over 
 
EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY 137 
 
 smaller vessels. We read of ships of a thousand tons and 
 over. The size of the Hanseatic ships trading to London 
 increased so much in the sixteenth century that they could 
 no longer pass London Bridge, or lie at the wharf of the Steel- 
 yard; and the increase in the size of ships caused changes in 
 the importance of ports, by which Seville gave place to Cadiz, 
 Rouen to Havre, Dordrecht to Rotterdam. 
 
 Improvements were effected also in the art of navigation, 
 especially in the meauo of determining the position east and 
 west. The simple means of the later Middle Ages could give 
 some idea of a vessel's latitude, but very little of its longitude. 
 The introduction of the log in the seventeenth century enabled 
 a sailor to measure distanc^tra versed more accurately, and 
 the invention of the chronometer in the eighteejith century 
 gave at last a reliable and practical means of determining 
 longitude at sea. Progress in scientific astronomy w^as made 
 of service to sailors by tables which were the forerunners of 
 the modern "nautical almanac"; and charts and. sailing direc- 
 tions became, as the fesuTTof generations of experience, more 
 trustworthy and more useful. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Character and life of Prince Henry of Portugal. [E. G. Bourne, 
 Prince Henry the Navigator, Yale Review, Aug., 1894, 3: 187-202, re- 
 printed in Essays in historical criticism, N. Y., 1901; or one of the read- 
 ings in the bibliography.] 
 
 2. Measure on the map the distances traversed in the voyages in 
 search of the sea-route to India; indicate these distances on a straight 
 hne, with the dates, that the rapid increase in the extent of the voyages 
 may be apparent. 
 
 3. Early life and first voyage of Columbus. [Bourne, Spain, chaps. 
 1 to 3.] 
 
 4. Early Christian pilgrimages to the East. [Beazley, chap. 1.] 
 
 5. European explorers in Asia. [Cheyney, chap. 3; Verne, vol. 1, 
 part 1; Beazley, chap. 3.] 
 
 6. Write a report on one of the countries of the East visited by Marco 
 Polo. [See the translation of his travels.] 
 
 7. Development of geographical science before 1500. [Beazley, In- 
 troduction, chap. 5.] 
 
138 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 8. Make tracings of typical maps, of antiquity, of the Middle Ages, 
 and of the period of the great discoveries; and compare them with a 
 modem map of the world. [See maps in Beazley and Cheyney.] 
 
 9. Maritime exploration before the fifteenth century. [Beazley, 
 chap. 4.] 
 
 10. What were the means and methods of navigation in the fifteenth 
 century? [See Cheyney, p. 53 ff., and Fiske, Discovery.] 
 
 11. Voyages in search of a passage to India through the Artie Ocean. 
 [Oxley, Romance, chap. 6; Verne, vol. 1, part 2, chap. 3; or Payne.] 
 
 12. Write a report on the history of tea, coffee, or sugar as a ware of 
 commerce. [Use the references suggested for wares of the Levant or 
 Baltic trade.] 
 
 13. Write a similar report on gold, silver, or tobacco. 
 
 14. Effect of the fall in value of silver in England. [Cunningham, 
 Growth, vol. 2, sect. 182.] 
 
 15. Development of the art of navigation in modern times. [Encyc. 
 Brit., Navigation.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Classified bibliographies of the period of the discoveries will be found 
 in Cheyney, and in Cambridge modern hist., vol. 1. 
 
 General accounts will be found also in those two sources. Cheyney's 
 ** European Background includes some half dozen chapters on important 
 topics in the history of commerce; these chapters offer, in some cases, the 
 only available reading in English, and the book can be warmly recom- 
 mended. Another book, which is inexpensive, readable, arid very valuable, 
 is Beazley's ** Prince Henry; this is full on the beginnings of exploration, 
 and has an especially good collection of early maps. The first part of 
 Fiske's ** Discovery of America presents an admirably written survey 
 of conditions leading to the explorations. The first volume of the Ex- 
 ploration of the World by Jules Verne, N. Y., Scribner, 1879, 3 vols., covers 
 the medieval period as well as that of the great discoveries; it has the 
 merits and failings which the author's name suggests. 
 
 For Prince Henry and the Portuguese discoveries see ** Beazley, 
 Stephens, Portugal, chap. 7, Cheyney, chap. 4, or, for a brief and readable 
 account, Oxley, Romance, chap. 7. 
 
 For the period following the discoveries, E. J. Payne, Voyages of the 
 Elizabethan seamen, London, 1880, can be recommended; it contains 
 original accounts of the exploits of the great English seamen of the time 
 of Elizabeth (Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, etc.). Howard Pyle, * The Bucca- 
 neers, N. Y., Macmillan, $1.50, continues the narrative to a later period. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 
 
 156. Agriculture. — The next important subject to be dis- 
 cussed in considering the great changes in commerce in the 
 modern period is the development of the economic organization. 
 The influence of the discovery of new lands, new routes, and 
 new wares is so obvious that the discoveries are often repre- 
 sented as the chief cause of the growth of commerce in the 
 modern period. They were unquestionably very important 
 factors in this growth, but European commerce was developing 
 without them, and would have felt their influence much less 
 if it had not been changing in its internal structure. Men 
 were applying new methoils_pX-,gooperation, which enabled 
 them to make more of their resources~ariiome and to utilize 
 with greatest effect the opportunities for gain abroad. Even 
 at the end of the period the commerce of ^SglandTwTth Europe 
 was larger than with all the other continents together. 
 
 We shall review briefly in the following sections the main 
 changes in the different branches of production. The topic of 
 agriculture must be dismissed with but a few words. There 
 was a general movement toward freedom of the agricultural 
 classes of western Europe at the beginning of the period. Wars 
 and other political interruptions checked the movement in 
 France, and brought about an actual decline of the cultivators 
 in Germany; England was the only important country in 
 which the country classes became perfectly free. In Europe 
 as a whole, however, the conditions of production in agriculture 
 were decidedly better than they had been in the Middle Ages, 
 and the increased product supported a larger population and 
 furnished a basis for a more extended trade. 
 
 139 
 
140 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 157. Development of manufacturing organization in Eng- 
 land ; persistence of gild restrictions elsewhere. — In manufac- 
 tures, also, there was a movement toward freedom in the 
 more favored countries. We shall see, in the history of Eng- 
 land, how greatly English manufactures, and the commerce 
 depending on them, advanced under the leadership of mer- 
 chants and capitalists who broke through the old gild restric- 
 tions. The striking feature, however, in the manufactures 
 of most countries of this period is the maintenance of the 
 gild system, which became a most serious check on industrial 
 advance. It will be remembered that the gilds grew originally 
 out of the union of artisans in any trade, who banded together 
 to protect their interests, and who were granted certain privi- 
 leges, especially that of monopoly, that they might regulate 
 the trade more efficiently and so protect the interests of con- 
 sumers also. At the present time the interests of consumers 
 are sufficiently protected by the competition of producers, who 
 do not need government regulations to tell them that they 
 must sell good wares at low prices if they desire to succeed; 
 and just as soon as exchange becomes sufficiently active to 
 stimulate competition the public gains by having restrictions 
 abolished. In most of the European countries, however, the 
 gild privileges and restrictions were retained until the nine- 
 teenth century, with results set forth in the following paragraph. 
 
 158. Evils of the gilds. — (1) The privilege of monopoly 
 was abused by limiting entrance to the gild in various ways, 
 so that production was restricted and prices were raised to 
 the detriment of merchant and consumer. Laborers suffered, 
 also, by the lessened demand for their services. (2) Gilds 
 came into frequent conflict over the question as to which had 
 the right to exercise a particular branch of trade or manu- 
 facture; these quarrels were similar to those arising between 
 trade unions at the present time. Manufacturers suffered 
 from the separation of allied trades; and time and money, 
 which ought to have gone into the business, were wasted in 
 long lawsuits. (3) The full members of the gilds, the masters, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 141 
 
 tried to keep the laborers (apprentices and journeymen) in an 
 inferior position, and granted promotion by favor rather than 
 by merit; laborers lost the incentive to good work and were 
 tempted to idleness and disorder. (4) The masters tried to 
 preserve equality among themselves. Any master who was 
 sufficiently enterprising to attempt to extend his business by 
 introducing improvements or by employing more men was 
 pulled back to the general level. (5) Technical improvements 
 were prevented also by the regulations which were adopted 
 originally to secure good quality of the product, but which 
 hardened into a routine prescribing the details of every process 
 of manufacture. (6) After all the restrictions, consumers did 
 not get good quality even when they paid high prices. They 
 could not punish the producers of poor goods by withdrawing 
 their custom; and scamped work, adulteration, and fraud were 
 common. 
 
 159. Development of the commercial organization. Rise 
 of wholesalers. — Reviewing the substance of the last few 
 paragraphs we find that the advance in agriculture was local 
 and incomplete, while in manufactures it failed, in great 
 measure, to displace a wornout system inherited from a 
 preceding period. Only in commerce itself were the changes 
 rapid and general in western Europe. Methods of business 
 which before had been practised in only a few Italian cities, 
 were now adopted in the country north of the Alps, and de- 
 veloped rapidly in the leading commercial districts. 
 
 A class of professional wholesale merchants now sprang up. 
 Before this time, of course, merchants had on occasion dealt 
 in considerable quantities of wares, but even the leading 
 medieval merchants seem to have been glad to keep up their 
 business by selling in small quantities to consumers. Only in 
 the last century of the Middle Ages do w^e find in Germany 
 merchants who confined themselves entirely to wholesale trade. 
 As yet they had not become specialists in any one particular 
 ware. An idea both of the variety and of the extent of their 
 transactions can be gained from the business of John von 
 
142 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Bodeck, who was a merchant in Frankfort about 1600. He 
 bought silk and drugs in Venice, spices in Amsterdam, and 
 sent them for sale to Hamburg; he bought iron and wax in 
 Hamburg and sent them to Spain; he bought indigo and wool 
 in Spain and sent them to Amsterdam and Antwerp; he bought 
 rye in Amsterdam and sent it to Genoa. 
 
 160. Development of the commission trade; services of 
 factors. — Bodeck must have traded in these wares often 
 without knowing much about them himself, and generally 
 without seeing them. Such a business would have been im- 
 possible in the Middle Ages when a merchant accompanied his 
 wares or shared his responsibilities with a few associates. It 
 was made possible now by the development of the commission 
 trade. Commission merchants, or factors, made it their pro- 
 fession "to buy and sell for other business men for a certain 
 profit which is given them for their trouble by the principals." 
 Sometimes they were in business on their own account also; 
 sometimes they were specialists in various lines. A writer of 
 the seventeenth century distinguished five classes: those who 
 lived in a manufacturing or commerical center and bought 
 goods for others; those who sold goods for others; the corre- 
 spondents of business men and bankers who made collections 
 and remittances of money for them; forwarders, who received 
 and forwarded goods at places of transshipment; and, finally, 
 the agents for carriers, who distributed and collected the load 
 of a freight wagon in a city. The duties of a mercantile factor, 
 in general, were to advise his principal frequently concerning 
 the market for wares, the course of exchange, etc., to acknowl- 
 edge letters punctually, and to follow orders exactly. The 
 commission varied from 5 per cent of the value of the goods in 
 the West Indies to 2 per cent or even less in some of the 
 European countries. 
 
 161. Improvement in means of communication; posts. — 
 Commission business of the kind described in the preceding 
 paragraphs implied much greater frequency of communication 
 among merchants, and it is noteworthy that the system of 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 143 
 
 public posts was founded in Europe about the beginning of 
 this period, and developed rapidly during it. Relays of horses 
 with postilions and with the necessary officials were established 
 by the governments of various countries, to insure regular 
 communication; the system was meant at first only for official 
 business, but was soon extended to serve the needs of private 
 individuals. Some idea of the advance can be got from a 
 statement made at the opening of the railroad from Strassburg 
 to Basel, giving the time required to go from the one to the 
 other of these places in earlier times. The distance, about 
 seventy-five miles, or less than the distance between New York 
 and Philadelphia, was covered in the sixteenth century by a 
 coach in eight days, in 1600 by a diligence in six days, inl700 
 by the same vehicle in four days, and in 1800 by, "express" 
 (Eilwagen) in two days and a half. In the eighteenth century 
 a man in England could send a letter fifteen miles for a penny, 
 thirty miles for twopence, and so on up, the sum increasing 
 with the distance; postage from London to France was tenpence, 
 to New York a shilling. 
 
 Merchants needed no longer to rely upon the friendly 
 oflSces of the traveler who happened to be going in the desired 
 direction, and were free from the expense of special couriers. 
 Knowledge of market conditions in distant places spread more 
 broadly and more rapidly than it had ever done before. Shrewd 
 speculators could still sometimes make great profits by getting 
 possession early of some special bit of news, but the essentials 
 of commercial information were available for all. The modern 
 newspaper grew up, by several stages, from written reports 
 that were passed around as circulars in this period, telling of 
 the state of the market, prices, conditions of transportation, etc. 
 
 162. Need of closer association among merchants; risks of 
 commerce. — The most striking change in the organization of 
 commerce, regarding especially that with distant countries 
 and other continents, was the growth of association among 
 merchants. We have noted the development in the Middle 
 Ages of the partnership and other forms of association; we 
 
144 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 have now to study the rise of great companies which form a 
 connecting link with the corporations and trusts of the present 
 day. 
 
 Among the reasons for the rise of great commercial com- 
 panies the following are to be noted. (1) Distant commerce 
 was exposed constantly to armed attack. The protection of 
 a country's navy extended but a small distance from home. 
 Ships in European waters were threatened by pirates in times 
 of peace, by privateers in times in war; in waters outside 
 Europe they faced trade rivals from other European countries, 
 and hostile natives who were not bound by the civilized rules 
 of peace and war. Distant commerce was essentially military 
 in character, and required for successful prosecution greater 
 military force_than a small group of men could afford. (2) 
 Partly because of dangers suggested above, partly because of 
 the natural perils of the sea under the conditions of navigation 
 at the time, partly because of the very novelty of the trade, 
 distant commerce was very hazardous. If five men sent out 
 a ship they might make a great fortune, but they might lose 
 everything. If they associated themselves with ninety-five 
 others and together sent out twenty ships they were pretty 
 sure to lose some of these, but they were pretty sure to make 
 from the other ships enough to return large profits. 
 
 163. Association required by government; reasons. — It was 
 natural, under the circumstances, that associations of men 
 should spring up for carrying on commerce in distant parts. 
 We must note further, however, that these associations were 
 required by European governments, that a certain field was 
 assigned to each company in which it was given a monopoly, 
 and that in this field trade by individuals and by other asso- 
 ciations was prohibited. The reasons for this course were, in 
 brief, as follows: 
 
 (1) The peoples of distant countries did not distinguish 
 between individual merchants. As all Chinamen look alike 
 to us, so all Englishmen or even all Europeans were alike to 
 them. An unscrupulous trader, who cheated, robbed, or 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 145 
 
 killed a native, escaped the consequences of his crime and left 
 them to be borne by his countrymen who sought later to carry 
 on the trade. The home government could not punish such 
 offences, and it could not afford to let them continue. It 
 required, therefore, that a man proposing to trade to a distant 
 country should have an interest in the permanent welfare of 
 the tradjQ, by making him contribute mojjey to the association, 
 and subscribe to its rules. 
 
 (2) The government could diminish the risks of distant 
 commerce by assuring merchants who spent money in building 
 up a trade that they should not be deprived of the fruits of 
 their labors by newcomers who had made no sacrifices. It 
 seemed as proper to encourage in this way the investment of 
 capital in commerce as to encourage investment in' manufac- 
 tures by granting patents. 
 
 (3) Finally, governments were led naturally to apply the 
 prevalent ideas of gild regulation to distant commerce, and 
 found some practical advantages in doing this; it was easier 
 to tax and to regulate an association of men than a number of 
 individuals. 
 
 164. Association in the form of the regulated company. — 
 Many of the objects enumerated above could be obtained by 
 union in what was called a "regulated company." The regu- 
 lated company had a monopoly of a certain field of trade, and 
 established regulations which were binding on the members 
 trading in that field. Every one, however, who secured ad- 
 mission by paying the entrance fee and promising obedience 
 to the rules, traded thenceforth with his own capital, and 
 kept his profits for himself; there was no pooling of capital or 
 profits. The character of such a company may be suggested 
 to readers by the organization of the modern stock exchange. 
 No one who is not a member can trade on the exchange, and 
 every member is bound to follow certain rules in his dealings, 
 but every member keeps his capital and profits distinct from 
 those of the others. 
 
 The larger part of the early English commercial companies 
 10 
 
146 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 were regulated companies of this kind. To a certain extent 
 they attained the objects of association which have been 
 enumerated above; some of the worst evils of individual trade 
 were impossible so long as the company adopted wise regulations 
 and could force members to live up to them. 
 
 165. Objections to the form of the regulated company. — 
 Still, the regulated company was at best a loose association. 
 Individual traders had no greater interest in it than the amount 
 of their entrance fees, and regarded their momentary individual 
 interests as more important than the permanent interests of 
 the group. This weakened the control of the company over 
 the associates, and rendered difficult the prevention of abuses. 
 A strong and active policy was hardly possible, moreover, 
 when associates kept the bulk of their capital in their own 
 hands, and could withdraw in periods of adversity, so that 
 the resources available to push the interests of the association 
 diminished when most needed. 
 
 The problem set before Europe in this condition of affairs 
 was as important as it was difficult. The future of European 
 commerce, even of European civilization, depended on some 
 solution which would make from the individual impulse to 
 gain, the instinctive selfishness of every man, a collective force 
 which would enable a number of men to work for gain together. 
 The partnership had united the interests of a very few men, 
 simplifying the problem by starting with members of the 
 same family, who were naturally bound together. The relation 
 of merchant and factor was another move in the right direction, 
 as it united in loyal support of each other two men separated 
 by considerable distance, and with no other common interest 
 than that of their business. The principle of association 
 must, however, be extended far beyond the bounds of factor- 
 ship, or partnership, or of the regulated company, if Europe 
 was to rise to the opportunity presented by trade with distant 
 countries. 
 
 166. The joint stock company, and its advantages. — The 
 problem, reviewed briefly, was to get: (a) a permanent stock 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 147 
 
 of capital, (5) so large that it must be contributed by a very 
 considerable number of people, (c) under the management of 
 a few people who would employ it efficiently, and for the 
 advantage of all the contributors. The solution was the joint 
 etock company. Early examples of this form of association 
 are to be found in Italy, but it developed north of the Alps 
 only after the founding of the Dutch and English East India 
 Companies about 1600. 
 
 Let us see how the stock company meets the demands for 
 an improved form of association which were imperative at 
 this time. (1) It insures permanence of operation. Individual 
 stockholders or managers may die, but the company does not 
 die with them; their places are filled, and the company con- 
 tinues with its original capital. (2) The contributor does not, 
 like a partner, need to be a business man; does not, like a silent 
 partner, need to have especial trust in the person of the man- 
 agers. The contributor may be a foreigner, a child, or a woman, 
 and the sources from which capital may be drawn are thus 
 immensely extended. (3) Capitalists of every class are willing 
 to contribute to the undertaking because of the peculiar safe- 
 guards which this form of association offers to them. In the 
 first place, though the investment is permanent, from the 
 standpoint of the company, and so enables the management 
 to carry out far-sighted plans, yet it endures, from the stand- 
 point of the individual subscriber, only so long as he pleases. 
 The system of transferable shares enables a stockholder to sell 
 out his interest at any time, and so change his investment. 
 In the second place, the stockholders have a voice in the 
 management of the company proportionate to their interest 
 in it. They choose the persons to whom they will entrust 
 the active direction of affairs, require periodical reports on the 
 course of business from the managing directors, and have the 
 power to change the directors if the conduct of affairs is not 
 satisfactory. 
 
 167. Good and bad sides of joint stock companies. — The 
 reader would err if he assumed that all the advantages sug- 
 
148 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 gested above were secured immediately on the founding of the 
 first stock companies. Experiments of various kinds were 
 tried at the start, and only gradually did the companies take 
 the form which they have assumed in modern law. The 
 English East India Company, for instance, which was founded 
 in 1600 as a regulated company, was made over into a joint 
 stock company by degrees, and could not be regarded as 
 permanently established on this basis for over fifty years. 
 Generations of bitter experience were required to teach people 
 the possible dangers as well as the possible benefits of this 
 form of association. 
 
 Incompetence and corruption were prevalent in the man- 
 agement of affairs. The worst abuses of our modern cor po- 
 rations give one but a faint idea of the enormities that were 
 perpetrated in the early period of joint stock history. In spite 
 of all, the joint stock companies accomplished the purpose for 
 which they were created; they attracted capital at home, 
 stimulated the prosecution of a definite policy abroad, and 
 extended commercial interests as individuals or other forms 
 of association would have been unable to do. The American 
 reader may remember that Virginia was founded and Massa- 
 chusetts was developed by joint stock companies. Other 
 forms of association, especially partnership, were more suitable 
 for many purposes, and increased constantly in number; but 
 alongside them several hundred stock companies grew up in 
 Europe of which perhaps a hundred were founded to develop 
 great commercial and colonial undertakings. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Write a report on the break-up of the manor and the rise of modern 
 farming in England. [Cheyney, Indust. hist., chap. 5, or one of the other 
 manuals of English economic history.] 
 
 2. Write an essay comparing the restrictions of the gilds with those 
 of modem trade-unions. 
 
 3. What are the functions of wholesale merchants and hence what 
 was the importance of their rise at this time? 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION 149 
 
 4. Who were some of the notable merchants of the period? [Bourne, 
 Romance, chap. 12, or English merchants.] 
 
 5. What examples can you find nowadays of the different classes of 
 commission merchants mentioned in the text? What commission do they 
 charge? 
 
 6. Write a report on the rise of the modem postal system. [See 
 Encyc. Brit., articles Post-office, Postage stamps.] 
 
 7. Write a similar report on the history of the newspaper. [Encyc. 
 or Biicher, ** Indust. Ev., chap. 6.] 
 
 8. Endeavor to understand the reasons for mercantile association, 
 and for the requirement of this association by the government, by re- 
 viewing the changes in conditions since this period, and seeing why 
 association is not necessary or compulsory now. 
 
 9. Study Cunningham, Growth, vol. 2, sect. 188, on regulated and 
 joint-stock companies, and pick out examples of each type in the follow- 
 ing sections. 
 
 10. Write a report on the various forms which the (English) East 
 India Company assumed during the first century of its existence, and 
 the reasons for the changes. [Cunningham, or Hunter, ** Hist, of British 
 India.] 
 
 11. Write a report on abuses and corruption in this company. 
 [Hunter.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A bibliography accompanies the chapter by Cunningham on ** Eco- 
 nomic change, Cambridge mod. hist., vol. 1, which furnishes the best 
 brief account in English of topics considered in this chapter. 
 
 Histories of various countries at the period of the Reformation present 
 descriptions of their agricultural, industrial, and commercial organization; 
 but I know of no general and comprehensive treatment in English of 
 topics treated here. 
 
 The only topic on which there is abundant material available is that 
 of commercial organization. See Cheyney, ** Eur. background, chap. 7 
 (chartered commercial companies), chap. 8 (typical American colonizing 
 companies); Hewins, ** English trade, chap. 3 (trading companies); 
 Hunter, Hist. Brit. India (East India Co.). 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CREDIT AND CRISES 
 
 168. Growth of credit business and of banking. — The rise 
 of the joint stock companies was a great step in the development 
 of the power of capital and of credit. Individual savings, 
 which before might have been hoarded and made useless to 
 society, were drawn from their hiding-places to form the capital 
 and loans by which the great companies extended the scope of 
 commerce in this period. Another step in advance, which 
 deserves notice here, was the extension of banking north of 
 the Alps. The medieval doctrine that it was wrong to take 
 interest on loans lost its force when it appeared that loans 
 were wanted by merchants who would put them to a good 
 use; and society concluded that it was wise to en,courage the 
 lending of money by permitting the lender to take interest for 
 it. There is a great difference, however, between the lending 
 by an ordinary individual, who has more than he knows what 
 to do with, and the business of lending as practised by a 
 banker. The difference is this, that an ordinary individual 
 lends his own money, while a banker lends that of somebody 
 else. When credit operations have become sufficiently exten- 
 sive the banker appears as a man who makes dealing in credit 
 his profession. He steps in between the people who have 
 capital but lack the ability or inclination to employ it profit- 
 ably, and the people who have the ability and inclination to 
 conduct business enterprises but lack the desirable amount of 
 capital. The banker is a specialist in this profession, and by 
 his special knowledge can do more than any one else could to 
 collect the surplus capital and place it where it can be used 
 to the best advantage. 
 
 150 
 
CREDIT AND CRISES . 151 
 
 169. Description of the rise of discount and deposit banking 
 in England. — The history of banking is too large a topic to 
 be considered here in detail. The early banks were marked 
 by a number of individual peculiarities, and occupied often a 
 public position as agents of the government; these points need 
 not detain us. The development of ordinary commercial 
 banking can be illustrated by the business of the London gold- 
 smiths in the seventeenth century. The goldsmiths were re- 
 quired by the character of their stock to keep strong-boxes 
 ("safes"), which served the purpose of a modern safe-deposit 
 vault; and they united dealings in gold and silver coin with 
 their original business. They were naturally the persons to 
 whom a man would apply who wanted the means of keeping 
 cash and other valuables more securely than was possible on 
 his person or at his office or home; and thus they received in 
 time considerable deposits from merchants and others. Prob- 
 ably they made some charge at first for the accommodation, 
 but soon they were encouraging deposits by paying some 
 interest, and by undertaking to perform services suph as col- 
 lection and remittance for their customers. They could afford 
 to do this by reason of the fact that they did not let the cash 
 lie idle in their vaults, but lent it to the government and to 
 business men; they had become banks of discount and deposit. 
 A tract published in 1676, entitled "The Mystery of the New 
 fashioned Goldsmiths or Bankers," gives this account of their 
 operations. "Having thus got Money into their hands, they 
 presumed upon some to come as fast as others was paid away, 
 and upon that confidence of a running Cash (as they call it) 
 they begun to accommodate men with moneys for Weeks and 
 Moneths, upon extraordinary gratuities, and supply all neces- 
 sitous Merchants that overtraded their Stock, with present 
 Money for their Bills of Exchange, discounting sometimes 
 double, perhaps treble interest for the time, as they found the 
 Merchant more or less pinched." 
 
 170. Rise of "money-power" as shown in the history of 
 the Fugger family. — The reader will perhaps comprehend 
 
152 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 more clearly the great development of business in the modern 
 period if we follow here the history of one of the families of 
 South' Germany which rose to the first rank among the money 
 powers. The Fugger family was descended from a simple 
 country weaver, who settled in Augsburg and died there in 
 1409. His sons rose to high place in the crafts of weavers 
 and merchants, and accumulated wealth, like many others, 
 by trade in spices, silks, and woolen cloth. Under a grandson, 
 Jacob (1459-1526), who had been trained in Venice, the family 
 business underwent a striking change. We should call Jacob 
 a financier rather than a merchant. He and his brothers 
 continued, it is true, to deal in merchandise, but they made 
 their great profits by dealing in money and capital. If a prince 
 or king wanted a loan they made it to him, charging a good 
 round sum in commission and interest, gaining often a security 
 for their advance, such as a mine or the right to collect some 
 taxes, from which they could make good profit. If a king like 
 Charles V, whose dominions were widely scattered, wanted to 
 disburse some of his revenues in a distant province, they 
 undertook to sell him the necessary exchange and avoided 
 the transportation of the coin itself. Their business extended 
 from Hungary and Poland in the East to Spain in the West, 
 from Antwerp in the North to Naples in the South. 
 
 171. Description of the Fugger business. — The records of 
 the Fugger firm have been preserved, and we can learn the 
 extent and character of its business by the statement of its 
 resources as they appeared in 1527. The figures are in florins, 
 of which each had a purchasing power equal roughly to eight 
 dollars to-day. 
 
 Mines (Tyrol, Hungary) 270,000 
 
 Other real estate (city and country) 150,000 
 
 Merchandise (copper, silver, brass, textiles) 380,000 . 
 
 Cash (in home office and 14 factories) 50,000 
 
 Loans 1,650,000 
 
 Private accounts of associates 430,000 
 
 Various current affairs 70,000 
 
 3,000,000 
 
CREDIT AND CRISES 153 
 
 The reader will note the large sums appearing under mines 
 and merchandise, showing that the Fuggers still maintained 
 their dealings in wares, after they made finance their special 
 business. The chief item, however, is that of loans, which 
 included sums borrowed by the Pope, the Emperor, and kings 
 of Europe. The Fuggers and other great financiers had immense 
 influence on the politics of their time, for they could command 
 money and credit while sovereigns were still trying in vain to 
 build up an adequate revenue system. They made fabulous 
 profits, over 50 per cent a year, in prosperous periods, and the 
 Fuggers managed to make an average profit of over 30 per cent 
 a year for over thirty years. In the case of most firms, however, 
 there were lean years as well as fat ones, and the general 
 average would be very much less. More striking than the 
 rate of profit is the increase in the size of the capital. Taking 
 two Italian banking firms, the Peruzzi about 1300, and the 
 Medici about 1440, and comparing them with the Fuggers in 
 1546, we find that the capital was about as follows, expressed 
 in modern purchasing power: Peruzzi, $800,000, Medici $7,500,- 
 000, Fuggers $40,000,000. 
 
 172. Weakness of the Fugger and other banking firms. — 
 The great financial firms of the sixteenth century seem to 
 have been premature. They lacked the permanence of the 
 later joint stock companies, for they still retained the medieval 
 form of a company based chiefly on family relationship, and 
 required constant reorganization. Their success in the hazard- 
 ous operations of the time depended entirely on the sagacity 
 of the heads of the family, and as genius cannot be transmitted 
 indefinitely they went to pieces ordinarily in the third genera- 
 tion from their establishment. The head of the Fugger firm 
 about 1550 tried to wind up the business and withdraw the 
 capital, but found it impossible to do this, and became involved 
 in more and more enterprises. The balance of the firm in 
 1563 showed decided weakness; members of the family began 
 to quarrel among themselves; and the firm finally lost in un- 
 fortunate loans practically all its accumulations. The bank- 
 
154 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ruptcy of one of these firms involved wide-spread disaster, for 
 as time went on they carried on their business less and less on 
 the money contributed by members, and more and more on 
 their credit. All classes in the community — nobles, burghers, 
 peasants whose savings did not exceed ten florins, even servants 
 — deposited their money at interest with the financiers, and 
 were involved in their fall. 
 
 173. Description of business in Antwerp in the sixteenth 
 century. — After considering the new forms of business from 
 the standpoint of individual firms it will be profitable to study 
 them in the city that was the business center of the time, 
 where all the great firms were represented by agents. This 
 city, in the first part of the sixteenth century, was Antwerp, 
 which rose as the medieval port of Bruges declined. There 
 have been, of course, greater cities and greater markets since 
 that time, but never before or since, it is said, has the world 
 seen such concentration of the trade of different peoples in a 
 single place. The town owed its development almost entirely 
 to the foreigners who flocked there to trade, and though it saw 
 less of Italians and Hanseatics than Bruges had done, it was 
 the one great gathering place for the Portuguese, Spanish, 
 English, and German merchants who were now the leaders. 
 It is said that over five hundred vessels sailed in or out of 
 the port in one day, and that the English merchants alone 
 employed over 20,000 persons in the city. The poet Daniel 
 Rogiers said of the Antwerp exchange, "One heard there a 
 confused murmur of all languages, one saw there a motley 
 mixture of all possible costumes; in short the Antwerp bourse 
 seemed to be a little world in which all parts of the great were 
 united." In contrast with Bruges, trade in Antwerp was almost 
 entirely unrestricted, and this was perhaps the chief reason 
 why the merchants of the time selected it as the place in which 
 to develop the new forms of business. 
 
 174. Rise of the Antwerp exchange ; its significance. — 
 Antwerp presented in the sixteenth century the first case of 
 a great bourse or exchange, that is, a place in which men 
 
CREDIT AND CRISES 155 
 
 meet daily and effect their exchanges without displaying and 
 transferring the wares themselves, by the use of paper securities 
 representing the wares. Such an institution cannot exist until 
 the volume of trade is large enough to cause a steady and 
 continuous flow of wares, in contrast to the spurts that marked 
 the period of the fairs. It requires, moreover, that the objects 
 dealt in be of such a kind that they can be represented at 
 the exchange by some document or sample, so that the buyer 
 can learn the quality of the ware without actually inspecting 
 it. This is possible when a ware can be graded, put into a 
 certain class the characteristics of which are so closely defined 
 and so well known that the buyer needs only to decide whether 
 he cares to take a certain quantity at a certain price. 
 
 175. Development of business on the exchanges; produce 
 and money. — The use of the word "ware" in the foregoing 
 description may suggest the produce exchange as the earliest 
 and most important form of the exchange. Produce of various 
 kinds, especially pepper, did form an object of exchange trade 
 in Antwerp; and there was a considerable development of the 
 produce exchange later in Amsterdam. At the "candle-auc- 
 tions" on the Royal Exchange of London in the seventeenth 
 century, goods were offered with an inch of lighted candle on 
 the desk, and were knocked down before the candle went out; 
 a single parcel of silk, indigo, or spice sold in this way was 
 sometimes worth half a million dollars. The produce exchange, 
 however, did not reach its full development until the nineteenth 
 century, and we shall leave its significance in the commercial 
 organization for later consideration. 
 
 The " ware " which formed the main object of trade on the 
 Antwerp exchange was loanable capital, represented by various 
 paper instruments. Princes who desired to borrow money, 
 and who formerly would have applied to individual financiers 
 like the Fuggers, turned to the exchange of Antwerp or of 
 Lyons, where loanable capital from all over Europe was col- 
 lected. Through the medium of the exchange a French king 
 could and did borrow money of a Turkish pasha; and it was 
 
156 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 said that payments amounting to a million crowns were made 
 in a single morning without the use of a penny of cash. 
 
 176. Advantages offered to industry and commerce by the 
 exchanges. — Antwerp and Lyons had served especially politi- 
 cal needs in their loans; they were embarrassed by the insol- 
 vency of royal debtors, and soon declined. Their place was 
 taken by Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, Frankfort, and other 
 cities, and with the rise of these new money centers a change 
 of importance is to be noted. The new exchanges attracted 
 capital for investment in private or semi-private economic 
 undertakings, serving the needs of the new companies which 
 were being established. Ordinary people with comparatively 
 small savings would not have known (as they would not know 
 now) where to invest their money if they had not had the stock 
 exchange to turn to for an indication of enterprises seeking 
 capital, and of the current price of the stock. The stock 
 exchange was the natural and necessary accompaniment of 
 the stock company. 
 
 Shares of trading and industrial companies and of public 
 debts became the objects of a regular commerce, which was not 
 confined by national boundaries, but which drew capital from 
 all sources. When shares of the Dutch East India Company 
 were put on the market in 1602 they were taken up to a con- 
 siderable extent by capitalists of Antwerp who no longer had 
 use for their money at home; much of the money needed to 
 rebuild London after the fire of 1666, and a large part of the 
 capital of the Bank of England, came from the Dutch; shares 
 of the English companies trading with Asia and Africa circu- 
 lated freely on the Amsterdam exchange; a loan to the German 
 Emperor was floated in London. 
 
 177. Growth of speculation ; early abuses. — Modern forms 
 of speculative business grew up with the exchanges. A pam- 
 phlet published as early as 1542 described the "monstrous 
 thing " that Antwerp merchants had devised ; they bet with 
 each other on the course of foreign exchange, one saying it 
 would be 2 per cent, one 3 per cent, etc., and afterwards they 
 
CREDIT AND CRISES 157 
 
 settled by paying the differences. This is substantially the 
 same operation as that which is carried on regularly to-day. 
 When the trade in shares of stock was established traders 
 would speculate on a rise or a fall, or a combination of both. 
 Shrewd speculators organized a system of news gathering and 
 forwarding which gave them the first knowledge of important 
 events affecting the price of securities, and enabled them to 
 anticipate the turn of the market. London speculators got 
 word through a private channel of the signing of the treaty of 
 Rijswijk in 1697, a day before the English ambassador arrived 
 with the official announcement; their eagerness to buy bank 
 stock aroused suspicion, and the reason for their purchase 
 appeared when the news was published and the price of the 
 stock rose from 84 to 97. 
 
 Underhanded methods of trade were common. Speculators 
 would set afloat rumors to depress the price of securities, and 
 then buy in. One day during the reign of Anne in England a 
 well-dressed man rode furiously through the street proclaiming 
 the death of the Queen. The news spread and the funds fell; 
 the Jew interest on the exchange bought eagerly, and were 
 suspected later of being responsible for the hoax, though it was 
 not proveii against them. The Englishman, Child, who made 
 a fortune in speculation, and who was called in a pamphlet of 
 1719 "the original of stock-jobbing," would have one set of 
 brokers spread rumors of disaster, and sell a little of his stock 
 publicly, while another set bought for him "with privacy and 
 caution " ; in a few weeks he would reverse the process and come 
 out ten or twenty per cent ahead. 
 
 178. Dangers of the new system of business; promotion of 
 unprofitable enterprises. — The appeal of joint stock companies 
 to the public through the medium of the stock exchange 
 proved to be so effective in gathering capital that a great 
 many worthless undertakings were floated. When times were 
 good, that is, when enterprises had proved successful, when 
 people had saved money for investment and looked with 
 confidence to the future, almost anything in the shape of a 
 
158 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 company could get subscribers to its stock. The reader should 
 note that there were two sides, one good and one bad, to the 
 new methods by which commerce was being developed. The 
 facility of getting capital from a great number of subscribers 
 made possible more and larger undertakings than had been 
 known before, and was an unmixed benefit when the new 
 undertakings were devised to fill a real need of society. There 
 was, however, a separation before unknown between the sub- 
 scriber and the undertaking; the contributor of capital might 
 be entirely ignorant of the economic basis of the enterprise, 
 and might sink his money for a return which came late or not 
 at all. There was thus a chance for the diversion of the capital 
 of society to worthless purposes; the business organization had 
 become more powerful, but at the same time more delicate 
 and subject to derangement. We find in this period the 
 beginning of commercial crises marked by the misdirection of 
 invested capital, disappointment of investors, and distrust and 
 lethargy, until spirits rose with the recovery of lost ground, 
 and good times began again. 
 
 179. Description of the "Bubble Period" in England. — 
 Commercial crises occurred in all of the advanced countries 
 during this period. We shall not, however, attempt an enu- 
 meration of them here, but shall use the available space for a 
 description of the most important crisis, that which affected 
 both England and France about 1720". 
 
 The crisis in England was closely connected with the course 
 of the South Sea Company, which had been established in 
 1711 as a trading corporation. The company had secured the 
 right to export slaves to the Spanish colonies, had developed 
 a promising whale-fishery, and was thought to be a large and 
 flourishing concern. It was then transformed into a financial 
 company, with the bold plan of assuming the whole national 
 debt, for which it made extravagant offers. "The large sum 
 offered by the company, which made success impossible, stim- 
 ulated the imaginations of the people, who fancied that a privi- 
 lege so dearly purchased must be of inestimable value, and the 
 
CREDIT AND CRISES 159 
 
 complication of credulity and dishonesty, of ignorance and 
 avarice, threw England into what it is scarcely an exaggeration 
 to term a positive frenzy." 
 
 All classes rushed to buy the stock, which at one time was 
 quoted at 1,000. Then the weakness of the scheme became 
 apparent; the stock fell as rapidly as it had risen, and investors 
 or speculators were ruined in large numbers. This was only 
 one of the bubbles which were inflated and which burst about 
 this time. Other companies were promoted for making salt 
 water fresh, for extracting silver from lead, for trading in 
 human hair, and for a wheel of perpetual motion. Insurance 
 was now coming into prominence, and this offered a favorite 
 field for promoters. Subscriptions were received for companies 
 that proposed to insure against losses of servants, against 
 burglars and against highwaymen ; one scheme was " Plummer 
 and Petty 's Insurance from Death by drinking Geneva" (gin). 
 We get a vivid idea of the spirit of the period from the fact that 
 one promoter, who announced a company " for an undertaking 
 which shall in due time be revealed," secured 2,000 guineas in 
 a single morning, with which he immediately made off. 
 
 180. The crisis of the Company of the Indies in France. — 
 Just before the time of the English crisis one curiously similar 
 in character occurred in France. A Scotchman, John Law, 
 who was an able banker and financier, promoted a Company of 
 the West, expanded later into the Company of the Indies, 
 which united with its commercial projects an attempt to 
 finance the government. Extravagant ideas were formed of 
 the possibilities of Law's "system," and the roads to Paris 
 were blocked by people hurrying there to speculate in shares. 
 Two of the ablest scholars in France deplored the madness at 
 one interview, and at the next found themselves bidding 
 against each other. Coachmen, cooks, and waiters became 
 millionaires by lucky speculation; tradespeople in the street 
 where the exchange was established made fortunes by letting 
 out their stalls and chairs. The price of stock rose until it 
 frightened even the promoter of the system, who interfered in 
 
160 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the hope of checking speculation, but who found soon that he 
 was unable to check either the rise or the fall of the stock. 
 The crash which quickly followed was especially serious, as the 
 whole currency consisted now of discredited notes issued by 
 the company. Ruin was widespread, and credit received a 
 blow which made the promotion of legitimate enterprises 
 difficult for a long time thereafter. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Prepare yourself to see the significance of the facts of this chapter 
 by reviewing the functions and benefits of credit institutions like banks. 
 [See Bullock, Introd., chap. 9, or other current manuals of economics.] 
 
 2. Write a report on the way in which churchmen and scholars came 
 to justify the taking of interest on loans. [Cunningham, Growth, or 
 Ashley, ** Ec. hist., vol. 2, sect. 65 and others following, esp. 72.] 
 
 3. Fill in the outline of the text, sect. 169, by details to be found in 
 Cunningham, Growth, vol. 2, sect. 180. 
 
 4. Write a report on the business career of Sir Thomas Gresham, 
 one of the great English financiers of the sixteenth century. [En eye. 
 Diet, of nat. biography, and references in those sources.] 
 
 5. Write a report on Antwerp in the sixteenth century. [See Motley, 
 Rise of Dutch Repubhc, N. Y., 1858, vol. 1, p. 81 ff., chap. 13.] 
 
 6. Benefits and dangers of speculation. [Hadley, Economics, chap. 4.] 
 
 7. Manias and panics, modem and recent. [Bourne, Romance, 
 chap. 11.] 
 
 8. Write a report on one of the following topics: 
 
 (a) The tulip mania. [Oxley, Romance of commerce, chap. 3.] 
 
 (6) The "Bubble" period in England, [Cunningham, Growth, vol. 
 
 2, sect. 218; Oxley, chap. 2; cf. Lecky, Hist, of England, and cf. Macaulay's 
 
 history of bubbles about the time of the founding of the Bank of England.] 
 
 (c) John Law and the Mississippi Bubble. [Oxley, chap. 1; other 
 
 references in notes to this volume.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 As the subjects of this chapter have been treated generally by special- 
 ists, and considered in their relation to modern economics rather than 
 earlier history, the reading is scattered, and, for our purposes, unsatis- 
 factory. See the titles in Bowker and lies, Reader's guide, p. 40 ff. 
 
 The chapter by Cunningham in the first volume of the Cambridge 
 modern history covers in part the ground of this chapter. The important 
 commercial crises are described in the histories of England, France, etc. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 THE MODERN STATE AND THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM 
 
 181. Growth of modem states under the influence of com- 
 merce. — If the modern reader is impressed, in studying the 
 history of Europe before 1500, with the influence on commerce 
 of the lack of strong government, he will be equally impressed, 
 in the period from 1500 to 1800, with the strength of govern- 
 ment and with the important part it played in commercial 
 development. We have here to sketch in brief the changes in 
 political conditions, leaving to later chapters a consideration 
 of the details as they appear in the history of different countries. 
 Commerce itself was the great force that broke the power of 
 feudalism. Commerce crept through the barriers that kept 
 localities apart; it established a circulation of wares through a 
 large area of country; and it concentrated wealth in the cities 
 which it built up. These were the very changes needed to 
 allow the world to escape from feudal anarchy, and to construct 
 a system of government similar to that which the Romans had 
 employed. Kings had now subjects able and willing to pay 
 taxes, and, by means of commerce, they could transport their 
 taxes, turn the proceeds into any shape they chose, and apply 
 them wherever it was necessary. 
 
 182. Decline of feudal power with the rise of mercenary 
 armies. — A large part of the new revenues was spent by 
 governments in strengthening their military position. Feudal 
 lords were good fighters in the old-fashioned way, and would 
 not give up their local power without a struggle. They had 
 to yield finally, however, before the standing armies which 
 kings called into existence towards the close of the Middle 
 Ages. Feudal lords loved to fight, but they were only amateurs, 
 
 11 161 
 
162 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 after all, and did not make fighting a business. The merce- 
 naries, on the other hand, whom kings collected as soon as they 
 could afford the expense, were professionals, who submitted 
 to a certain amount of discipline because they could make a 
 living by doing so. Enterprising men collected a number of 
 recruits, taught them to use their arms, and drilled them until 
 they counted for far more than an equal number of untrained 
 men; the leaders studied tactics and strategy, and knew how 
 to make the most of their superiority. The leaders were 
 perfectly willing to let their troops to any one who could pay 
 the price, but as feudal lords were always in want of ready 
 money the advantages of the new armies went almost entirely 
 to the kings. The introduction of gunpowder in warfare 
 increased the superiority of the mercenary armies, by adding 
 to the value of training, and here again the kings, with ready 
 money to invest in the latest improvements, had an advantage. 
 183. Growth in power of the central government as shown 
 in the development of taxation. — By the year 1500 the process 
 had gone so far that many of the states of Europe had assumed 
 a shape substantially like that which they have to-day; and 
 feudalism as a great political force was dead. Government 
 could now proceed to develop on the basis of an extended 
 territory. Some measure of the gain of the central govern- 
 ment in power can be had by noting the increase of its resources 
 from taxation. English taxes yielded about half a million 
 pounds in the sixteenth century, seven and a half million in 
 the next century, and about forty million towards 1800. In 
 little over a hundred years the yield of taxes in Prussia in- 
 creased twenty-eight fold. The revenue system was still crude 
 and wasteful. Every European state followed at one time or 
 another the practice of raising money by selling the right to 
 hold an office. Every European state lost money, not only by 
 the inefficiency of the revenue system, but also by corruption 
 of officials; often half or more of money that the people paid 
 in taxes never reached the treasury. In spite, however, of 
 these inevitable faults, national resources were concentrated 
 
MODERN STATE AND MERCANTILE SYSTEM 163 
 
 as they had never been before, and the central government 
 gained a power before unknown. 
 
 184. Persistence of medieval conditions in the modem 
 period. — From the modern standpoint no better field could be 
 found for the use of this power than in the reform of internal 
 conditions. Centuries after feudalism had lost its controlling 
 position the local differences and the spirit of separatism which 
 marked the feudal period remained to plague the merchant 
 and the statesman. Commerce was hindered by local varia- 
 tions in laws and in weights and measures; by the persistence 
 of barriers to the development of trade and manufacture which 
 had grown up in the medieval system of tolls and gilds; by the 
 maintenance of the class distinctions marking feudal society, 
 and putting on a different basis the merchant, the agriculturist, 
 and the noble. A country like England, which early threw off 
 the most oppressive of its medieval institutions, gained a 
 great start over countries where they were allowed to continue. 
 Statesmen in these other countries recognized the need of re- 
 form, and made attempts to realize it from time to time; they 
 made slow progress, not only because the task of reforming 
 old customs was at best tedious and expensive, but also because 
 their attention was distracted from the task for much of the 
 time by the pressure of foreign affairs. 
 
 185. Attempts at reform, leading in many cases to over- 
 regulation. — All the European governments in this period did 
 pay attention to the development of internal resources. One 
 of the chief features of the mercantilist theory, that animated 
 government policy during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, was the emphasis laid on the circulation of money and 
 wares inside the country. The new national governments 
 helped to further internal commerce by repressing disorder, 
 and by reforming, to some extent at least, the system of laws 
 and courts to which business men could appeal for the settle- 
 ment of disputes. Most of the governments paid considerable 
 attention also to the development of the postal system. 
 
 Governments could serve their people well in ways like 
 
164 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 these, but unfortunately they expended their energy on other 
 objects that were useless or harmful. " The state moulds men 
 into whatever shape it pleases," was an idea of the time, 
 which led to an enormous amount of government regulation. 
 In few states of the Continent was a man free to seek his profit 
 where he would ; he was entangled in a network of government 
 regulations that fixed the rules of his trade, the prices of his 
 wares, even the articles which he might or might not consume. 
 An excellent example is furnished by the grain trade, which 
 governments regulated so strictly that in many cases laws 
 caused the very famines which they were designed to prevent. 
 186. Attention distracted from internal reforms by foreign 
 interests. — A consciousness that government regulation had 
 gone too far for the interests of commerce grew strong before 
 the end of the eighteenth century, when a school of thinkers, 
 the physiocrats, protested earnestly against it. Their for- 
 mulas, "don't govern too much," "let things alone" (laisser 
 jaire), were to be realized in the nineteenth century. At the 
 time, however, they had little effect; the faith in the power of 
 government was still strong in the minds of rulers, and their 
 attention was distracted by other interests. When rulers had 
 crushed the resistance of their subjects, and established their 
 absolute authority, they had a surplus of power which they 
 were inclined to apply abroad. The period from the sixteenth 
 to the eighteenth centuries is filled with strife between the 
 European states, each attempting to get possession of some of 
 the territory and power of a rival. The states of Europe were 
 still young, with all the vigor and all the inexperience of youth, 
 and not until they had tried conclusions with each other were 
 they willing to settle down as they have done in the nineteenth 
 century. It was said above that internal reform was the best 
 object of government expenditure "from the modern stand- 
 point." Kings and peoples were not modern, and to a king of 
 the time one of the best objects appeared to be a war with 
 another king by which he might get more people under his 
 power. 
 
MODERN STATE AND MERCANTILE SYSTEM 165 
 
 187. Wars occasioned by religious and dynastic interests. — 
 
 In tracing later the commercial histories of the different coun- 
 tries it will be necessary to refer occasionally to these wars, 
 but it will conduce to clearness if we stop a moment here to 
 examine their causes and character. Some of the wars were 
 religious, growing out of the Protestant revolution. The states 
 of the South remained Catholic, and those of the North became 
 Protestant with comparatively little opposition, but in the 
 center, in France and Germany especially, where neither side 
 had at first a clear supremacy, the Protestant movement led 
 to disastrous civil wars. 
 
 Another series of wars may be called dynastic, as they 
 grew out of the ambitions of rulers to extend their power in 
 Europe at the expense of other ruling families. In the sixteenth 
 century the chief contestants were Spain and France. Spain 
 dropped from the first rank, and France and Austria continued 
 the struggle for supremacy through the seventeenth and eight- 
 eenth centuries. The dynastic wars seem to the student of 
 the history of commerce as unfortunate as those that came 
 from religious differences. They diverted men and resources 
 from production to destruction; they checked at the same time 
 commercial development and the reform of government. 
 
 188. Wars occasioned by commercial interests; military 
 aspect of commerce in this period. — Still another class of 
 wars can be distinguished in which the religious or dynastic 
 motive might enter to some extent, but in which the com- 
 mercial motive was predominant. The reader should be 
 cautioned against an extravagant idea of the power of govern- 
 ment to extend commerce. At the present time this power 
 seems very slight indeed. It was, however, far greater in the 
 period under consideration. References in preceding sections 
 to the prevalence of piracy and to the warlike attitude of 
 merchants of different nations toward ieach other have suggested 
 the military character of commerce, inviting the armed protec- 
 tion of the state. "One fact stands out clearly," says a recent 
 authority on the history of India, "No European nation has 
 
166 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 won the supremacy of the East which did not make it a national 
 concern." The prize in distant commerce went not to the best 
 producers and merchants, but to the group of the best fighters; 
 not size and resources, but ability to organize and willingness 
 to risk resources in conflict, determined the question of success. 
 The little state of Holland made her fortune by an eighty years' 
 war, in which she broke the power of the Portuguese and 
 Spanish in the East. The English were still unready to em- 
 bark their national resources in distant ventures, but they 
 won their position in continental India in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury by military support which the French kings refused their 
 subjects. 
 
 189. Wars arising from the conflict of colonial interests in 
 the New World. — Between 1600 and 1815 was a constant 
 succession of wars, arising from the fact that five European 
 powers had colonies in the New World which they were seeking 
 to maintain or to extend. Holland and Portugal lacked the 
 territorial basis to maintain their struggle when larger states 
 armed for the conflict; France and Spain found their best 
 energies absorbed by dynastic interests in Europe which, tied 
 their hands^j j>road ; England emerged victorious from the 
 conflict and found herself repaid, by a position of commercial 
 supremacy, for the expense to which she ha d bee n put. Out 
 of the one hundred and twenty-six years between 1688 and 
 1815 she had spent more than half, sixty-four, in wars ranging 
 from seven to twelve years in length. 
 
 190. Political importance of commerce in this period, con- 
 nected with the desire of governments for ready money. — 
 Commercial expansion in this period depended, as said above, 
 on the political power of the home country. Did not, on the 
 other hand, the political power of the state depend on com- 
 merce? A statesman of the tim6 would have answered this 
 question in the affirmative, and with an emphasis which would 
 seem strange now. We think nowadays that the resources 
 of a state depend upon the prosperity of the people, no matter 
 whether this prosperity comes from agriculture or from manu- 
 
MODERN STATE AND MERCANTILE SYSTEM 167 
 
 factures, from internal trade or from foreign trade. Statesmen, 
 however, of the period under discussion, set a peculiarly high 
 value on foreign commerce, and regarded it as a more important 
 branch of industry than any other. 
 
 The chief reason for this view lay in the fact that most of 
 the European states produced little ox_iK)ne of _ the precious 
 metals, and could get them only by trade with a neighbor or 
 with a distant country. Now money is "the sinews of war," 
 and when states were constantly at war with each other, a 
 good supply of money seemed to the statesman a matter of 
 the first necessity. We regard money nowadays only as a 
 means of procuring other forms of capital by exchange, and 
 do not worry about the money supply so long as capital in 
 other forms is abundant. It may have been the fact, however, 
 that in the early period of the modern state the fiscal and 
 military systems operated more smoothly when the stock of 
 money in the country was abundant. 
 
 191. The mercantile system, aiming to increase the stock 
 of ready money in the coimtry. — Whether rulers were justified 
 or not in the anxiety that they showed about the money 
 supply, they made it a cardinal point in their policy to regu- 
 late commerce so as to increase, if possible, the stock of the 
 precious metals in the country. They argued that the country 
 would make money if it sold more merchandise to foreigners 
 than it bought of them, for then the foreigners would have to 
 make up the balance in coin or bullion. This was called "a 
 favorable balance of trade," as tending to bring money into 
 the country. On the other hand, if the country became in- 
 debted for foreign merchandise to an amount greater than 
 could be offset by the exports, the country would owe a cash 
 balance abroad, and this was an "unfavorable" balance of 
 trade. At the beginning of the period the government tried 
 to effect its object simply by prohibiting the export of bullion 
 (gold and silver) ; this was the " bullionist " policy. 
 
 Prohibitions were found to be ineffective, however, and 
 were a serious hindrance to some branches of commerce, that 
 
168 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 with the East especially, in which the foreigners demanded 
 considerable supplies of the precious metals. The export of 
 bullion, therefore, was generally permitted, and the govern- 
 ment contented itself with a regulation of the commerce in 
 merchandise which, it hoped, would bring more bullion into 
 the country than was carried out. 
 
 192. Features of the mercantile system; restriction of im- 
 ports. — If the student will remember that the main object 
 of the mercantile system, as it was expressed in the com- 
 mercial policy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
 was to increase the credits in a country's foreign trade, and 
 diminish the debits, so as to get a balance in cash, the main 
 features of the policy will be easily intelligible. 
 
 In the first place, imports were discouraged. A Spanish 
 mercantilist thought that his country suffered "an infinite 
 wrong" from the importation of fish from abroad, which, by 
 his reckoning, cost the country three million piasters a year; 
 he suggested either that home fisheries should be built up so 
 that the money need not leave the country, or that permission 
 be obtained from the Pope to eat meat on Saturdays, which 
 would diminish the necessity for importation. A typical 
 example of the ideas underlying the policy is furnished by an 
 appeal of the English salt-makers in the seventeenth century, 
 urging that the use of foreign salt in the curing of fish be 
 prohibited on the ground that it was the " wisdom of a kingdom 
 or nation to prevent the importation of any manufacture from 
 abroad which might be a detriment to their own at home, for 
 if the coin of the nation be carried out to pay for foreign manu- 
 factures and our own people left unemployed, then in case a 
 war happen with our potent neighbours, the people are inca- 
 pacitated to pay taxes for the support of the same.'' 
 
 Mercantilism and modern protectionism easily ran together, 
 as is apparent in the quotation, but the spirit animating 
 restrictions was in this period mainly mercantilist, based, that 
 is, on consideration of the flow of precious metals. The 
 methods of tariff regulation, moreover, differed from those of 
 
MODERN STATE AND MERCANTILE SYSTEM 169 
 
 modern proteo^nism; statesmen did not, in most cases, 
 attempt to scale the duties so as just to'balance the advantages 
 of the foreign producer, but resorted to downright prohibition 
 of the wares which they desired to exclude from the home 
 market. 
 
 193. Encouragement of exports, manufactures, and shipping. 
 — In the second place, exports were encouraged, for they 
 represented the credit items in a country's trade, and might 
 bring home a balance in cash. Even imports could be tolerated 
 if they led to a more than corresponding increase in exports. 
 The trade with East India was looked on with suspicion for 
 some time because, as said above, it required the export of 
 considerable bullion; but finally it established itself in public 
 esteem, on the ground that a large part of the eastern wares 
 was transshipped in England and exported to other European 
 countries, so that the bullion was recovered from them. Alto- 
 gether the best kind of imports, however, was held to be the 
 raw materials of manufacture; if these could be worked up in 
 England and exported, the country cleared not only the sum 
 originally due for the imported material, but also the extra 
 charge for the manufacture. Home industries were given 
 various privileges by the government, because they either 
 spared the importation or increased the exportation of the 
 wares which they produced. 
 
 Shipping and the fisheries were regarded with special favor, 
 not only because they helped to produce a favorable balance 
 of trade, but also because they were feeders for the national 
 navy, and thus augmented the strength of the country in war. 
 
 194. Failure of the mercantile system to affect the distribu- 
 tion of the precious metals. — Such were, in brief, the charac- 
 teristics of commercial policy in the time of the mercantile 
 system. The word "system" may give a false impression, 
 for though the main ideas of mercantilism were generally 
 accepted during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they 
 were greatly modified in their practical application, and were 
 seldom carried to their logical conclusions. For example, 
 
170 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 though statesmen professed a desire to stimulate exports, yet 
 export duties were generally retained in this period for the 
 revenue that they returned, and they hurt in some cases, 
 without question, the sale of wares abroad. 
 
 After this review of the characteristics of commercial policy 
 the reader will naturally inquire what were its effects. On 
 one point an answer can be given with considerable assurance; 
 the policy had no important effect on the distribution of the 
 precious metals. Gold and silver were brought from America, 
 the chief source of supply, to Spain, and flowed from Spain to 
 the countries where they were needed in business; it seemed as 
 though all the people of the world were in an unconsicous 
 conspiracy to defeat the plans of statesmen for checking or 
 directing the flow. It is noteworthy that Spain, the country 
 which had the best chance apparently to accumulate treasure 
 and which pursued a policy of exaggerated mercantilism, was 
 always complaining of the dearth of gold and silver, while 
 Oriental states, which had never heard of mercantilism, accu- 
 mulated large stores of bullion. The attempts of European 
 countries to rob other countries of their treasure by legislation 
 present, from one point of view, an absurd spectacle, for they 
 were all applying the same principles in much the same way, 
 action and reaction were equal, and no amount of political 
 straining affected the distribution due to economic (Remand. 
 
 195. Important effects of the mercantile systeii in other 
 ways. — The commercial policy of the mercantilist period had 
 effects in other directions, if it did miss the mark at which it 
 aimed. It was important, considered merely as a policy of 
 restriction, in checking the exchange of commodities between 
 states. Just as manors and the districts centering around a 
 city had aimed at self-sufficiency in an earlier period, so the 
 states of this period were led by their dislike of imports to 
 attempt the production of everything possible within their 
 borders; and an international organization, in which each state 
 would specialize in the products for which it was best fitted, 
 and would depend on commerce with others for supplying 
 
MODERN STATE AND MERCANTILE SYSTEM 171 
 
 deficiencies, was hindered from developing. The mercantile 
 system furnished a natural basis for the system of national 
 protection, which grew up from it, and which has not entirely 
 outgrown even yet its mercantilist origins. One of the most 
 obvious effects of mercantilist commercial policy can be traced 
 in its influence on the foreign relations of states. It was not, 
 as is often said, the chief cause of the many wars which vexed 
 Europe at this period; their cause lay deeper than any theory 
 of favorable or unfavorable balances of trade. The balance of 
 trade theory did, however, affect the political grouping of 
 countries to a considerable extent, and inclined statesmen to 
 look for friends or foes in the countries with which the balance 
 was favorable or unfavorable, England, for example, made 
 herself the ally of Portugal through a large part of the modern 
 period, because Portugal bought her manufactures, and sold 
 in return wines and other commodities which could not be 
 produced at_Jiome; and England kept alive the traditional 
 hostility toward France because the trade with that country 
 showed regularly an unfavorable balance. 
 
 196. Colonial policy. — Based on considerations like the 
 preceding, the colonial policy of this period was marked by 
 restrictions entirely opposed to modern ideas of commercial 
 freedom. A government which permitted or encouraged the 
 establishment of colonies in distant lands, considered it a duty 
 to itself to see that other governments or the colonists them- 
 selves did not rob it of the rewards of success. .The colonial 
 policy of the period has sometimes been pictured as purely 
 one-sided, selfishly sacrificing the colonists to the interests of 
 the people at home. This view leaves out of account not only 
 the generous help given by European governments to their 
 dependencies, but also a great mass of legislation aiming to 
 benefit the colonists by assuring them a market in the home 
 country, and imposing sometimes serious restrictions on the 
 inhabitants there. A government did no more than hold reso- 
 lutely to the idea that emigrants, wherever they might be, 
 were still citizens of their native state and bound to help 
 
172 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 maintain its power. The government tried ordinarily to frame 
 its regulations so that mother country and dependency would 
 devote themselves to different lines of production, and so 
 supplement rather than compete with each other. It con- 
 sidered it only natural and proper that the colony should trade 
 mainly or entirely with the mother country. As said above, 
 this was a period of bitter conflict among the European states, 
 and a country's commerce was thought to be one of the main- 
 stays of its military and naval power; it seemed, therefore, to 
 be the plain duty of colonists to contribute by their commerce 
 to the resources on which the independent existence of the 
 whole nation was thought to depend. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 The student will do best, probably, to study carefully one of the 
 references to manuals in the bibliography as a means to an understanding 
 of the topics of this chapter. 
 
 1. An exercise requiring considerable time, and supposing some 
 acquaintance with narrative history, but promising valuable results, is 
 the following. Select one of the European states : England, Fraijce, 
 Spain, the Netherlands. Make a chronological summary of its wars 
 during the period 1500-1789, classifying the wars under one of the heads 
 suggested, and aiming to get the total years spent in each kind of war and 
 at peace. Estimate the gains and losses by war, and so reach a position 
 to judge of the merits of the policy pursued. 
 
 2. Sections 181-2 cover, to some extent, the ground of chap. 15. 
 Review that chapter, and, if possible, review the history of some state like 
 France, to appreciate the significance of the political development. [Adams, 
 French nation.] 
 
 3. Make a written summary of the hindrances to commerce in France 
 at the end of this period. [Taine, The ancient regime, N. Y., Holt, 1876, 
 $2.50; Edward J. Lowell, The eve of the French Revolution, Boston, 
 Houghton, 1900, $2.] 
 
 4. Thomas Mun, an Englishman who lived in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, wrote that the regular means "to encrease our wealth and treasure 
 is by F arraign Trade, wherein wee must ever observe this rule; to sell more 
 to strangers yearly than wee consume of theirs in value." State the argu- 
 ments by which Mun would support this proposition, and determine your 
 own opinion on the question. 
 
MODERN STATE AND MERCANTILE SYSTEM 173 
 
 5. Make a brief written statement of the difference between mer- 
 cantilism and protectionism. 
 
 6. Define the attitude which the mercantilist would assume toward 
 each of the following trade phenomena: import of raw silk, .export of silver 
 plate, export of silk goods, import of knives, import of gold bullion, im- 
 port of salt fish. 
 
 7. Study, in a book on economics, the influences determining the dis- 
 tribution of the precious metals, and show how mercantilism was bound 
 to fail in its object of increasing the money in circulation in a given coun- 
 try. [For a brief and clear discussion see F. A. Walker, Pol. econ., ad- 
 vanced, N. Y., Holt, sects. 176-178.] 
 
 8. Discover, in the writings and speeches of American protectionists, 
 evidence of mercantilist views. [See, for example, Roberts, Government 
 revenue, Boston, 1884, or R. W. Thompson, History of protective tariff 
 laws, Chicago, 1888.] 
 
 9. Criticism of the old colonial policy. [Adam Smith, Wealth of 
 nations, Book 4, chap. 7, part 2, reprinted in Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 1.] 
 
 BIBILOGRAPHY 
 
 A bibliography, unfortunately ill suited to the purposes of untrained 
 students, is appended to chap. 22 of Cambridge mod. hist., vol. 3. See 
 also the histories of economics by Cossa and Ingram, under mercantilism. 
 
 Of general discussions the student must choose between the chapter 
 noted above, J. N. Figgis, Political thought in the sixteenth century, 
 which is abstruse and theoretical, or Cheyney, Eur. background, chap. 6, 
 Political institutions of Central Europe, 1400-1650, which is concrete and 
 descriptive; neither is satisfactory for our purposes. Probably the most 
 intelligible discussion will be found to be Seeley's ** Expansion of Eng- 
 land, especially lecture 4, the old colonial system; and lecture 6, commerce 
 and war. Schmoller, ** The mercantile system, deserves its place as an 
 economic classic, but will be found difficult by beginners. A brief account 
 of mercantilism, by Ingram, will be found in the Encyc. Bri*^., 9th ed., 
 19: 354-358. 
 
 Among the smaller manuals can be recommended: Cunningham and 
 Mc Arthur, chap. 4; Warner, chap. 9. Thomas Mun, England's treasure 
 by forraign trade, N. Y., Macmillan, 1895, $.75, presents mercantilist 
 views in their typical form, and is an excellent source for somewhat ad- 
 vanced students; chapters may be assigned for discussion and criticism. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 
 
 197. Extent and power of the Spanish monarchy. — Pur- 
 suing now the history of modern commerce by studying its 
 development in different countries, we turn first to the states 
 of the Iberian peninsula, whose great possessions outside of 
 Europe seemed to assure their commercial supremacy. 
 
 Shortly before the close of the last century of the Middle 
 Ages three events of great significance occurred in Spanish 
 history. One was the union of the crowns of Castile and 
 Aragon, which brought the greater part of the Iberian penin- 
 sula under one ruler. The second was the completion of the 
 centuries old war against the Moors, by the conquest of their 
 last stronghold in Granada. The third was the discovery of 
 America by Columbus. The great Spanish king of the six- 
 teenth century, Charles V, was the most powerful sovereign in 
 the world. He governed at home with undisputed absolutism; 
 he was ruler by one title or another of some of the richest 
 European countries outside of Spain (especially the Nether- 
 lands); and he enjoyed in his own right the sovereignty not 
 only over the greater part of America, but over Asiatic and 
 African possessions as well. 
 
 198. Rapid development of Spanish industry and commerce. 
 — The rise to greatness of the Spanish kings was paralleled by 
 the development of the Spanish industrial organization. Spain 
 had throughout the Middle Ages been rich only in her raw 
 materials; she had exported wool, iron, and wine, and had 
 imported all her manufactures, largely in foreign ships. The 
 long wars against the Moors had turned people from the in- 
 dustrial arts, so that manufactures were primitive except in a 
 
 174 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 
 
 175 
 
 The map shows approximately the extent of the Spanish possessions under Philip II, 
 
 (1556-1598). 
 
176 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 few cities like Barcelona. The most advanced classes in man- 
 ufactures and trade were not the native Christians but Moors 
 or Jews. A decided advance can be noted under Ferdinand 
 and Isabella, but the movement did not gain full headway 
 till the sixteenth century. Then, it is said, the laborers em- 
 ployed in the textile industries of Toledo rose from 10,000 to 
 50,000 in about twenty-five years, and still merchants could 
 not supply the demand and had orders for five or even ten 
 years ahead. The industries based on wool, it is, said, grew 
 till they supported nearly a third of the population; Spain 
 began to import raw silk and export the finished product, a 
 reversal of previous conditions; great factories were established 
 to make soap and other wares; and the amount of business 
 transacted in Spain made the fairs of Medina del Campo one 
 of the important clearing houses of Europe. Over 100 ships 
 measuring from 300 to 500 tons left Spain yearly for, the colo- 
 nies, and at least as many cleared for European ports; 50 ships 
 or more, it is said, often left the harbor of Santa Maria together, 
 carrying away the salt that was manufactured there. 
 
 199. Economic decline in the following period. — Astonish- 
 ing as is this rapid economic development, it is less striking 
 than the economic decline that followed. Lack of space forbids 
 the discussion in detail of the complex causes which brought 
 about, first, an actual decline of productive power, and then 
 a condition so nearly stationary that Spain was passed by 
 nearly all the other states of western Europe. One important 
 factor, the colonial system of the Spanish kings, will be reserved 
 for discussion later as a separate topic. In this place we shall 
 take up some of the significant facts showing the decline, and 
 suggest some influences that make it intelligible. 
 
 The most serious symptom of decadence was an actual 
 decrease of population. In 1723 the total population of Spain 
 was under six million, three million less than the figures 
 show for 1594, when the decline had probably already begun. 
 This decrease is the more significant in that it affected largely 
 the urban groups whose numbers reflect the prosperity or 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 177 
 
 reverses of industry and trade; large cities lost half or even 
 three quarters of their population in half a century. Before 
 the middle of the seventeenth century the wool manufacture 
 consisted only of a few unimportant factories of coarse ma- 
 terials; the silk tax of Granada brought in less than a quarter 
 of what it had yielded under Charles V; and Spain had to 
 rely on other countries to furnish the, manufactured wares for 
 export to her colonies. The decline affected not only the 
 quantity of the population, but, to all appearances, its quality 
 as well; beggary and vagrancy became a national curse. 
 
 200. Causes of decline ; faulty political organization. — The 
 decline in population cannot be explained by emigrations to 
 America, for the drain from that source was small, as will be 
 shown later. Executions by the Inqujsitjori, numerous as they 
 were, could not alone have checked the population. More 
 serious was the expulsion, under ecclesiastical influences, of 
 the Moriscoes of the South, numbering perhaps a million. 
 These people of Moorish blood, the leaders in the agriculture 
 and industry of Spain, in 1609 followed into exile the Jews who 
 had been the leaders in trade; the native Spanish were unfit 
 to fill the gaps thus made in the industrial ranks. 
 
 Deeper-lying causes were at work, however. The damage 
 from any single event could have been repaired if there had 
 been wholesome vigor in the Spanish political organization, as 
 there was and as there is still among the Spaniards as a people. 
 It was the fortune of Spain, at this critical period of her history, 
 to have the control of affairs vested in the hands of rulers 
 who were negligent of her condition, by the distraction of 
 their interests or by natural incompetence, and who wasted 
 her resources. The framework of government offered no chance 
 for good councils to reach the monarch's ears. Men of business 
 sense were excluded from office even in the towns* so far as 
 possible, and were a rarity in the national parliament; power 
 lay in the hands of lay and ecclesiastical lords who had in- 
 herited feudal ideas, the reverse of business-like, from the 
 earlier period of the crusade against the Moors, and who had 
 12 
 
178 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 no understanding of the measures needed for industrial devel- 
 opment. There can be little doubt that the prime evil from 
 which Spain suffered was (as it still is) bad government. 
 
 201. The burden of taxes. — The chief political abuse ap- 
 peared in the form of taxes so burdensome in their amount 
 and in the method of collection that industry was stifled. 
 Taxes increased so rapidly in the sixteenth century that in 
 1594 it was asserted that they amounted to 30 per cent on a 
 man's property, and that farmers could not exist no matter 
 how small a rent they paid; they left Spain or went to prison. 
 The "alcabala," a tax supposed to be 10 per cent on a ware 
 every time it was bought and sold, was raised until it absorbed 
 most of the profits of trade and was a leading factor in the 
 decline of industry. A Spanish author of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury (Ulloa) shows that a man engaged in the manufacture 
 of a certain stuff would have had to pay in taxes actually more 
 than he earned; "hence it follows that he would have gained 
 more by making nothing, and in Spain it is profitable not to 
 work." Some industries, more fortunate, paid 60 per cent or 
 40 per cent of the value of the goods as a tax to the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 202. Customs duties, on the frontier and inside the country. 
 — The same ruinous excesses marked the policy in customs 
 duties. The government established rates which were for the 
 time enormously high, or absolute prohibitions with the death 
 penalty for infraction. Commerce would have ceased almost 
 altogether if it had not been for the absolute need of foreign 
 wares in Spain after the destruction of home manufactures. 
 The wares were procured partly by smugglers through the 
 corruption of the customs guards, partly by the connivance of 
 the government, which allowed foreigners such favors in meas- 
 urement and valuation that often not over a quarter of the 
 nominal duty was paid. This allowed wares to enter, but it 
 killed the remnants of active Spanish commerce with Europe, 
 for the favors granted to foreigners were refused to natives. 
 Other measures almost as monstrous were attempted, and 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 179 
 
 failed only because the government lacked power to enforce 
 them. Spanish shipping declined until it practically ceased 
 to exist outside the protected colonial traffic. 
 
 Finally, to complete this picture of the difficulties under 
 which commerce labored in Spain, duties existed not only on 
 the frontiers but in the interior of the country, hindering the 
 free passage of goods and the development of resources. 
 Spanish kings made attempts to abolish the internal customs 
 frontiers, which failed through the opposition of interested 
 persons and the royal need for money. It was not until 1717 
 that the internal duties were done away with, and even then 
 the remedy was insufficient, and Andalusia kept its internal 
 tariff barriers. 
 
 203. Examples of bad policy ; the Mesta. — An excellent 
 example of the evils of the government's economia policy is 
 furnished by the history of the Mesta^ an association of stock 
 raisers largely devoted to the production of merino wool. The 
 flocks grazed in summer on the highlands of Leon, and de- 
 scended in winter to Estremadura. The Mesta got such 
 privileges that it killed the agriculture within its reach. Where 
 the sheep had once fed the land could never be alienated for 
 another purpose; no one could bid against the Mesta for the 
 lease of pastures; proprietors along the route of the sheep 
 must sit passive and see the crops destroyed by them. Estre- 
 madura, once one of the richest provinces of Spain, became 
 one of the poorest, and parts of it now are nearly desert. The 
 policy of favoring one interest, by sacrificing to it other 
 interests more important, was characteristic of the diseased 
 political condition of Spain; and the wasting of national re- 
 sources shown in the case of the Mesta was but one of many 
 examples of neglect. The canals and aqueducts of the irriga- 
 tion system, on which the Moors had lavished their care, were 
 allowed to deteriorate and go out of use; and the forests were cut 
 down to the permanent detriment of the soil and water supply. 
 
 204. Failure to develop colonial trade. — In the foregoing 
 sketch we find sufficient explanation of the decline of the 
 
180 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 domestic industry and commerc e of Spain ; we have still left 
 to consider the question why the evils of the home system 
 were not repaired by the chances for commercial development 
 which the discovery of America and of the sea route to eastern 
 possessions opened. Before the attention of Spanish rulers 
 was absorbed by the attempt to suppress the Protestant move- 
 ment in Europe and to subject the Netherlands, the crown 
 had won an immense area outside of Europe; even to-day the 
 extent of the Spanish possessions at this period is attested by 
 the hold which the Spanish language still has on the world. 
 Of all the European countries Spain was the one which ap- 
 peared in the sixteenth century to have the best chance to 
 build up a great commercial empire based on world-wide pos- 
 sessions. Why was not this chance accepted? 
 
 205. Spanish colonial policy. Taxes. — It was a misfortune 
 for the Spaniards that they quickly discovered precious metals 
 in America, andTn seeking to increase tlieif supply were diverted 
 from a more substantial basis of prosperity. But the final 
 blame for failure lies again not with the people nor with the 
 nature of the colonies, but with the government. The expla- 
 nation is to be sought in the colonial policy of the Spanish 
 kings. At first the trade to America was comparatively unre- 
 stricted. Before, however, merchants could establish the trade 
 relations which would have enabled them to develop the 
 resources both of Spain and the transmarine possessions, the 
 government laid its heavy hand on the trade and held it down 
 so tightly that it never acquired vigor. Heavy taxes were 
 levied on trade, and, as in the case of taxes at home, these 
 often were framed in such a short-sighted way that they 
 brought far more loss to commerce than gain to the treasury. 
 The " palmeo," for instance, was an export duty levied in the 
 eighteenth century on wares merely according to theirjiulk, 
 without regard to their value; its effect was to encourage the 
 export of foreign manufactures, which had great value in a 
 small bulk so that they could afford to pay the duty, while 
 the coarser Spanish exports were taxed out of existence. 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 181 
 
 206. Restriction of trade to appointed fleets. — Ships could 
 not sail to America as might suit the convenience of mer- 
 chants, but had to sail from a given port (Seville or Cadiz), 
 at a given time, to a given port in America (Porto Bello near 
 the modern Colon, or Vera Cruz). The government by this 
 restriction made it easier to protect the^hi^s at sea, and to 
 collect taxes f rom their cargoes, but it bound the arms of 
 merchants so fast with its official red tape that they were 
 weak and helpless. In theory two fleets left Spain each year, 
 one for Central America and one for South America; in fact 
 there were years together, especially in the eighteenth century, 
 when fleets did not sail, and when the colonial possessions 
 might have been entirely non-existent so far as regarded 
 benefit to the mother-country. 
 
 207. Restriction of the market by the discouragement of 
 emigration. — On arrival in America a cargo was sold some- 
 times for a tremendous advance over cost. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, and more and more frequently as time went on, a fleet 
 would find on arrival that there was no market for its goods, 
 and they would be sacrificed or brought back to Spain unsold, i / 
 
 A special reason for this will appear later, when we refer to-AjL^l 
 the growth of smuggling. One general cause, however, for -^.^^.^ 
 the weakness of Spanish colonial commerce must be noticed - 
 
 in this place. In contrast to the English, who stimulated -2 
 emigration and so built up a market for their wares in the 
 colonies, the Spanish kings kept emigration under a system of 
 regulation which was almost inconceivably strict. Colonists 
 were discouraged from settling in the New World not only by 
 the difficulty of getting permission to go out, but also by the 
 poor chances for making a living when they arrived. They 
 were strictly forbidden to engage in any industry which could 
 threaten to compete with a Spanish industry; they were tied 
 down to residence in some particular province; and they were 
 prevented from developing the resources about them by 
 restrictions which applied not only to trade with the mother- 
 country but also to intercolonial trade. Trade with the 
 
182 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Philippines, for instance, was closely restricted or even pro- 
 hibited. Districts in the southern part of South America were 
 subject to similar burdensome restrictions. A settler on the 
 La Plata might have to get his European wares by a trip across 
 the Continent to Lima, then up the west coast, and across the 
 isthmus to Porto Bello. When the privilege of receiving two 
 ships a year was granted to Buenos Ayres a customs frontier 
 was established in the interior to prevent goods from reaching 
 Peru by this route. 
 
 208. Supply of the market by smugglers. — Spanish colo- 
 nists increased but slowly, therefore, in numbers and riches, 
 and furnished a poor market for Spanish exports. The Indians 
 were even worse customers. Natives who went^barefoot and 
 had no beards were forced, it is said, to buy razors and silk 
 stockings at exorbitant pricesji l^ut of course they had no 
 natural desire for those or other European wares, and took 
 only an inconsiderable amount. As the home manufactures 
 declined in vigor, exports to the colonies came to consist 
 almost entirely of the wares from other European countries, 
 and even these were obtained mainly through smugglers. The 
 government could maintain its regulations against Spaniards, 
 but not against foreigners, who absorbed the most profitable 
 parts of the trade, and spoiled the market for merchants who 
 obeyed the restrictions. The English and Dutch islands became 
 the stations for an illicit trade which flourished as the regular 
 trade declined. After 1713 England had the right, by treaty, 
 to the monopoly of the African slave trade with the Spanish 
 possessions, and was privileged to send out nearly five thousand 
 negroes a year. The English had moreover the right to send 
 out one trading ship of 500 tons; they secretly enlarged the 
 capacity of the ship and used accompanying transports to carry 
 still more cargo. 
 
 209. Wares of the colonial trade. — Of the products which 
 Spanish America furnished to commerce silver continued the 
 most important during the colonial period^the list of a ship's 
 cargo begins always with an enumeration of the "plate," in 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL '^ 
 
 
 ^^.;^- 
 
 bullion and coin, of which but a small part was gold. A fleet V 
 which left America in 1582 comprised 37 ships, "and in every- 
 one of them there was as good as thirty pipes of silver one 
 with another, besides great store of gold, cochinilla, sugars, 
 hides, and Cana Fistula (arrow-root?) with other apothecary- 
 drugs." Descriptions of cargoes in the eighteenth century are 
 substantially similar; among additional wares enumerated we 
 find indigo, cocoa, vanilla, sarsaparilla, "Jesuit's bark," (quinine) 
 "Paraguay tea" (mate), etc. The chief export from the La 
 Plata region was hides, of which two ships brought nearly^ 
 40,000 in 1723. Most agricultural products were too bulky to 
 pay for transportation. 
 
 The Spanish exported to the colonies assorted cargoes; one 
 of 1625 included "Wines, Figs, Raisins, Olives, Oyle, Cloth, 
 Cursies (kerseys, light woolens named from an English town), 
 Lmnen, Iron and Quicksilver for the mines." 
 
 210. Reform of the colonial system about 1750. — In the 
 eighteenth century the old Spanish colonial system went to 
 pieee^. The government recognized at last that it could not 
 execute the laws which it had made, and that the system 
 which was meant to form the basis of a great empire resulted 
 only in stifling Spanish commerce and in encouraging foreigners 
 to great illegal gains. Foreigners were still excluded in theory; I 
 the importance of the change lay in the_opening^ of_the trade 
 to the Spanish who had before been excluded by restrictions 
 and taxes. Spanish merchants were allowed first to send out 
 ships independent of the fleets, and then in 1748 the fleets 
 were given up altogether. The prohibition on commerce 
 between the colonies was removed, and many new ports in 
 America were opened to the European tradie. An indication 
 of the results that might follow such a change in policy had 
 been furnished by the experience of Havana. When this city 
 was captured by the English in 1762 and thrown open to 
 English trade, 727 merchant vessels entered the harbor in less 
 than a year. Even though the prohibition of trade with 
 foreigners was still retained, the effect of the reform in policy 
 
184 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 was nothing less than magical. In ten years the trade and 
 the customs duties increased about eightfold. 
 
 The reform came too late to benefit the Spanish industrial 
 system. The colonies were destined to exercise their new 
 strength in breaking their old bonds; while the home industries 
 had decayed so far that a revival was impossible in competition 
 with industries of more progressive nations. We leave Spain 
 in the eighteenth century as we found her in the fifteenth 
 century, serving the other countries of Europe by the produc- 
 tion of raw materials, and dependent on them for her manu- 
 factured goods. Running through the list of the principal 
 Spanish exports in the eighteenth century we find among 
 them some that had undergone the first stage of manufacture, 
 like wine, oil, soap, soda, and iron; but most were simple raw 
 materials such as wool, salt, fruits, and nuts. 
 
 211. Portugal; promise of commercial greatness in the 
 sixteenth century. — The little country of Portugal, numbering 
 perhaps a million inhabitants, built up in the sixteenth century 
 a commercial empire worthy to rank with that of Spain, and 
 exceeding in importance that which any of the more northern 
 states in Europe had yet established. I have already recounted 
 the achievements of the Portuguese in maritime explorations. 
 The part which they played in these expeditions prepared them 
 for the oceanic commerce which developed after the discovery 
 of America and of the sea route to India. While other nations 
 stronger than Portugal in resources and industrial development 
 were still unready to put forth their strength in distant com- 
 merce, Portugal shared with Spain the extra-European world, 
 and gained for herself the richest part,^the East. Da Gama 
 returned to Lisbon in 1499 with a cargo which repaid sixty 
 times the cost of the expedition. This was the beginning of a 
 series of voyages devoted especially to the importation of pepjper 
 and other spices, which could be bought so cheaply in the 
 East that they returned immense profits in Europe. Even 
 the gold and diamonds which came later from Brazil were 
 less valuable to Portugal than the monopoly she now possessed 
 
&PAIN AND PORTUGAL ^ 185 
 
 in the spices, drugs, dyes^ and manufactures, which formerly- 
 had been obtained only by the expensive land route. 
 
 212. Failure of Portugal to maintain her position. — Por- 
 tugal was favored not only by conditions in Europe, which 
 gave her the start on other states, but also by conditions in 
 Asia which enabled her able agents to build up, through naval 
 powfir^a commercial overlordship which brooked no coinpeti- 
 tors, either Asiatic or European. 
 
 Portugal was, however, destined to play a great part in 
 European commerce for only one century. We cannot, as in 
 the case of Spain, say that a mistaken policy was the cause of 
 her decline, for although the Portuguese commercial policy 
 was very similar to the Spanish and would have shown the 
 same weaknesses if it had been allowed to develop, more 
 important forces were at work to drive Portugal from the rank 
 which fortune had conferred upon her. 
 
 213. Weakness in resources; bad effects of Spanish rule, 
 1580-1640. — Portugal was not only small but industrially J 
 undeveloped, and from the very first depended on other coun- /;^ 
 tries for the wares which she exported to the East. Her ex- 
 plorations and her distant commerce were due to the energy "Y ' 
 of the dynasty__ratli£r^ than that of the people, and it was the ^ 
 misfortune of the country, in the critical period 1580 to 1640, /&^ 
 to fall under the rule of Spanish kings whose influence on her ' 
 commercial interests was entirely for the bad. Of the 806 ' 
 vessels which Portugal sent to India, 1497-1612, only 186 
 sailed after 1580, and not only the number but the quality 
 declined in a period which should have been marked by growth. 
 Countries like England and Holland, which were far stronger 
 economically than Portugal, refused longer to allow her the 
 profits of trade while they did the work of production, and 
 
 the English broke the power of the Portuguese in India, while 
 the Dutch drove them from the eastern islands. 
 
 214. Failure of Portugal to recover her position by com- 
 merce with Brazil. — After the recovery of her independence 
 in 1640, Portugal could look only to her American possession, 
 
^ 
 
 ^-^ 
 
 ZAyv^y^ 
 
 (^F 
 
 ^-L„v"^ /y\r ,.^' ■' (7 
 
 J^"' 186 "^ ', C" A. ^fSTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Brazil, for the means of developing her commerce. The Dutch 
 were expelled from that possession, and the discovery of gold 
 there stimulated the growth of trade. Comparing the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century with the earlier part of the 
 seventeenth, the commerce between Portugal and Brazil is 
 said to have increased twenty.-iold. In place of a dozen ships 
 a hundred sailed every year for America, returning with sugar, 
 tobacco, hides, brazil-wood, gold, and diamonds. 
 
 The profits of this commerce, however, went for the most 
 part to foreigners. Conditions at home had gone from bad to 
 worse. The slight advance which the country had achieved 
 in agriculture and manufactures before the discoveries had 
 been lost by the attraction of all energetic spirits into com- 
 merce and navigation. Africa n slav es, took the place of free 
 men in the fields. Portugal staked everything in the sixteenth 
 century on the chance of commercial greatness, and when she 
 lost, lost all. 
 
 215. Dependence of Portugal on England. — "In 1754 Por- 
 tugal scarcely produced jjiything towards her own, .support. 
 Two thirds of her physical necessities were supplied by England. 
 England had become mistress of the entire commerce of Por- 
 tugal, and all the trade of the country was carried on by her 
 agents. The English came to__Lisbon to monopolize even the 
 commerce of Brazil. The entire cargo of the vessels that were 
 sent thither, and consequently the riches that were returned 
 in exchange, belonged to them. Nothing was Portuguese but 
 the name." Reviewing the list of exports to Brazil we find, 
 in fact, that they were wares which Portugal was herself unable 
 to produce, and which were supplied by England: woolens, 
 hats, stockings, gloves, metals, linens, etc. England had taken 
 advantage of her economic and political weakness to make a 
 mere dependency of her, imposing treaty obligations which 
 gave the English producers every advantage in her markets, 
 and which reduced her to a state of pitiable subjection. 
 
 The great Portuguese statesman, Pombal, who made the 
 statements quoted at the beginning of this section, attempted 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 187 
 
 to reanimate industry, and succeeded to a slight extent in 
 throwing off the Engli sh supre macy. At the close of the 
 eighteenth century, however, Portugal had still only one strong 
 national industry, the production-of wine-(port, so called from 
 its place of shipment, Op(^^) for the dinner tables of the 
 English upper classes; and in spite of the efforts of Portuguese 
 statesmen even the wine trade was controlled by English 
 merchants. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. What are the chief exports of Spain at present? [Commercial 
 geography or Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 2. Write a report on beggary and vagrancy in Spain after 1500. 
 [Moses, in Journal Pol. Econ.; Prescott or Motley.] 
 
 3. Write a report on the results (especially the economic results) of 
 one of the following: 
 
 (a) The Inquisition. ' ^ 
 
 (b) Expulsion of the Jews. , 
 
 (c) Expulsion of the Moriscoes. 
 [See the various books by H. C. Lea.] 
 
 4. Verify the statements concerning the character of Spanish govern- 
 ment in sect. 200. [Prescott or Motley.] 
 
 5. With reference to sect. 201, what is regarded as a reasonable rate 
 of taxation in the U. S. now? [See a manual of Civics, that by John 
 Fiske, for instance.] 
 
 6. Write a report on the decline of Spain in productive power as the 
 result of bad government. [Moses in Jour. Pol. Econ., Jones in No. 
 Amer. Review.] 
 
 7. In what parts of the world is Spanish still the common lan- 
 guage? 
 
 8. Write a report on the beginnings of Spanish colonial pplicy. 
 [Bourne, chap. 14.] 
 
 9. Write a report on the Spanish system of fleets. [Bourne, chap. 19; 
 Roscher.] 
 
 10. Was there any good reason for the sailing of ships in fleets? 
 [See in Oxley the chapter describing the exploits of Drake and other 
 freebooters.] 
 
 11. Write a report on the great Spanish fairs in America. [Bourne, 
 pp 291-293 ; Roscher.] 
 
 12. Spanish emigration to America. [Bourne, chap. 16; Moses, 
 Spanish rule.] 
 
188 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 13. Restrictions on intercolonial trade. [Bourne, p. 289 ff.; Moses; 
 Roscher.] 
 
 14. History of smuggling in the Spanish colonies. [Bourne, chap. 19; 
 Roscher; manuals of English history in connection with the treaty of 
 1713 and the "War of Jenkins' Ear," 1739.] 
 
 15. Write a brief report on the characteristics and history as a ware 
 of commerce of one of the following: cochineal, cocoa, vanilla, cinchona, 
 or quinine. [Encyc; Willis, Practical flora; manuals and encyclopedias 
 of commerce.] 
 
 16. Assuming that most of the manufactures in the list of exports 
 from Spain were furnished by other countries, what do you infer as to 
 the economic hold of Spain on her colonies — was trade with the mother- 
 country a necessity to the dependencies? 
 
 17. Write a report on the reform of the colonial system and the light 
 that the results throw on early policy. [Bourne, p. 295 ff.; Roscher.] 
 
 18. History of the Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century. 
 [Stephens, chap. 9; W. W. Hunter, History of British India, vol. 1.] 
 
 19. Effects of the sixty years of Spanish rule. [Stephens, chap. 13.] 
 
 20. History of the Portuguese in Brazil. [Stephens, chap. 10; Keller 
 in Yale Review, Feb., 1906.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Reference may be made at this point to C. K. Adams, Manual of his- 
 torical literature, third ed., N. Y., Harper [1888], as a bibliographical aid 
 which is far from answering modem requirements, but which may still be 
 of use to a teacher in handling such collections of books as may be found 
 in a city library. A bibliography of Spanish history in the sixteenth 
 century is appended to Cambridge Mod. Hist., vol. 1, chap. 11, and is 
 continued in later volumes. A bibliography is given also in Martin A. S. 
 Hume, The Spanish people, N. Y., 1901, a book which covers Spanish 
 history from the earliest to present times, and which pays some attention 
 to social history. 
 
 Of general books on Spanish history, Prescott, Motley, etc., may still 
 be put to good use. Attention should, however, be especially directed 
 to the writings of * H. C. Lea, which contain valuable social and economic 
 material. A useful paper by Bernard Moses, ** The economic condition 
 of Spain in the sixteenth century, has been published both in the Journal 
 of Polit. Econ., Chicago, 1892-3, vol. 1, pp. 513-534, and in Report of 
 Amer. Hist. Assoc, 1893, Washington, 1894, pp. 123-133. The Story of 
 Spain in the Story of the Nations series is of no value for our purposes. 
 
 On the colonial history and policy of Spain the student has several 
 excellent books: E. G. Bourne, ** Spain in America (with bibliography); 
 
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 189 
 
 Habler, ** The colonial kingdom of Spain, in H. Helmolt, Hist, of the 
 World, vol. 1, pp. 386-422, N. Y., Dodd, Mead & Co., 1902; Roscher, 
 **The Spanish colonial system, N. Y., Holt, 1904, $.50; Moses, * The 
 estabhshment of Spanish rule in America, N. Y., Putnam, 1898, $1.25. 
 
 The best single reference on Portugual is H. Morse Stephens, * Por- 
 tugal. For the Portuguese in the East see Hunter, ** British India, 
 vol. 1; for Brazil, A. G. Keller, ** Portuguese colonization in Brazil, Yale 
 Review, Feb., 1906, 14: 374-410. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 THE NETHERLANDS 
 
 216. Establishment of the United Netherlands. — With the 
 decline of Spain and Portugal the supremacy in European 
 commerce passed definitely to the countries of the North. 
 The country which first took the lead, and which we shall 
 consider next, was the Netherlands, or as it is often called from 
 its main province, Holland. The Netherlands, which has now 
 an area but one fourth of that of New York State, was a part 
 of the possessions which by marriage and politics had come 
 under the rule of the Spanish crown. Its natural resources 
 are slight, and in the early part of the sixteenth century it 
 was far behind the adjoining Spanish territory now known as 
 Belgium, which contained the developed manufactures of 
 Flanders and the great port of Antwerp. The Dutch were 
 strong, however, in the individual capacities of the people, 
 and in spite of the disparity of the contest were able to win 
 their independence from Spain in the Revolution which came 
 in the last part of the sixteenth century. 
 
 A variety of causes combined to urge the Dutch to revolt. 
 They suffered under Spanish rulers political oppression, and 
 religious persecution designed to crush the Protestant move- 
 ment which they had embraced. They suffered also, however, 
 under the commercial restrictions of Spanish policy. These 
 they could bear so long as they found an outlet for their growing 
 commerce by trade with the East through Portugal, but the 
 union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal in 1580 closed even 
 this outlet, and forced them to fight for the means of existence 
 and of growth. 
 
 217. Rise of Dutch commerce. — The Dutch were forced 
 
 190 
 
THE NETHERLANDS 191 
 
 to the sea by the difficulties of life_ajLhpme, and had made 
 good progress in commerce with their European neighbors 
 bef.ore their revolt. They had become used, also, to distant 
 voyages by explorations designed to open up new routes for 
 trade. In the vain attempt to establish a northeast route to 
 India by the Arctic ocean they showed especial energy; and 
 the names Tasmania, Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, attest 
 their boldness later in exploring tjie^-sauthern hemisphere. 
 When, therefore, they had achieved their independence and 
 needed no longer to fear the threats of Spanish and Portuguese 
 rulers, they made rapid strides in oceanic commerce. Before 
 1602 sixty-five ships had made the return voyage to India, 
 and throughout the seventeenth century an active commerce 
 was maintained with both Asia and America. 
 
 218. Dutch commercial policy. — We are tempted, by the 
 position that the Netherlands took against Spanish oppression, 
 to ascribe to the Dutch a greater love of liberty than they 
 actually had. The government which they established for 
 themselves was marked by serious faults of oppression and 
 corruption, and their commercial policy was nearly as narrow 
 as that of Spain. The exclusion of foreigners from trade with 
 their distant ^dependencies was only natural in this period of 
 commerce; even the Dutch, however, were not free to trade 
 as they pleased. The colonial commerce was absorbed by 
 great companies, which were granted a monopoly of trade in 
 certain areas, and which regulated this trade with extreme 
 minuteness. The companies had a complicated organization 
 which prevented efficiency and encouraged the improper use 
 of personal and political influence. 
 
 219. The Dutch West India Company. — The Dutch West 
 India Company, founded in 1621, controlled the trade west of 
 the Cape of Good Hope, comprising commerce with the west 
 coast of Africa, and the east coast of the Americas. This 
 company was an extraordinary specimen of its kind. It paid 
 high dividends for a time, but its earnings were necessarily 
 precarious for it made them not from the ordinary operations 
 
192 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of commerce and colonization, but from armed attacks on the 
 Spanish silver fleets. It was really a corporation of privateers. 
 The character of the company can be estimated from the 
 fact that it actually opposed peace between the Netherlands 
 and Spain; in its remonstrance of 1633 it said that the services 
 desired of it " for the welfare of our Fatherland and the destruc- 
 tion of our hereditary enemy could not be accomplished by 
 the trifling trade with the Indians, or the tardy cultivation of. 
 uninhabited regions, but in reality, by acts of hostility against 
 the ships and property of the King of Spain and his subjects." 
 
 The Dutch soon lost their possessions in Brazil and New 
 Netherland (New York), and the original company was dis- 
 solved; the possessions which the Dutch retained on the coast 
 of Guinea and in South America were unimportant. Small 
 islands in the Gulf of Mexico, which in themselves produced 
 little of value, served as stations for the Dutch carrying trade, 
 which continued to be considerable. 
 
 220. The East India Company. — The East India Company, 
 founded in 1602, which secured from the Dutch government 
 the monopoly of trade and rule from the Cape of Good Hope 
 to the Straits of Magellan, enjoyed a longer existence. It 
 established trading stations on various points of the Asiatic 
 coast and in South Africa, but found the mainstay of its power 
 in the rich islands of the Malay archipelago, especially in the 
 small group of spice islands and iii Java. Here it broke the 
 power of the Portuguese, and gained for itself a partial or total 
 monopoly of some of the products, which were among the most 
 highly prized luxuries of Europe. 
 
 In 1677 a fleet consisting of one small vessel and six large 
 ships, of which each carried a crew of about 100 sailors and 
 25 marines, brought a cargo booked at nearly two million 
 gulden (or several million dollars). The cargo included im- 
 mense quantities of pepper, nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon; 
 raw silk, and silk and cotton textiles from Persia and India; 
 indigo, borax, saltpeter, shellac, fine woods, etc. Neither tea 
 nor coffee appears in this list, but in the next century, when 
 
THE NETHERLANDS 
 
 193 
 
 the Dutch had developed their commerce with eastern Asia 
 and had stimulated the cultivation of new products in Java, 
 these and other wares became of the first importance. The 
 cargo of a fleet of 1739 included the following wares, in the 
 order of their value; tea, coffee, pepper, sugar, mace, nutmeg, 
 camphor, indigo, cloves, etc. 
 
 Note that several powers had established themselves on the coast of India ; the 
 British did not win the position of unquestioned superiority until toward 1800. 
 
 221. Leading position of the Dutch in European commerce. 
 
 — Historians often speak of this distant commerce of the 
 Dutch as forming the basis for their great prosperity in the 
 seventeenth r^entury. Figures are lacking which would enable 
 us to determine the exact proportion of this distant trade to 
 the total, but the importance of this new branch of commerce 
 was probably exaggerated by reason of the strong appeal it 
 made to the imagination of men of the time. Certainly the 
 Dutch were not dependent on the Indian trade for the position 
 they took among commercial nations then. In the seventeenth 
 century more than half of the Dutch ships sailed for some 
 13 
 
194 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 port on the North or Baltic seas. In 1640, 1,600 ships out of 
 a total of 3,450 passing through the Sound to the Baltic were 
 Dutch; and at this time a Dutch official declared that grass 
 would grow in the Amsterdam exchange and ships would be 
 sold for firewood if the Baltic trade were not kept free. 
 
 Thirty to forty Dutch ships went every year to Archangel, 
 then the chief port of Russia, and carried the products in 
 which the Hansa had formerly dealt to the Netherlands and 
 to the west coasts of France and Spain; Dutch ships almost 
 monopolized the trade between Spain and the northern coun- 
 tries after 1648, exporting 15,000 to 16,000 bales of wool a 
 year from that country while French and English together 
 exported but 3,000. Dutch exports reached a figure in the 
 seventeenth century which was not attained by the English 
 until 1740. Even the Dutch fisheries, which employed over 
 2,000 boats, were said to be more valuable than the manufac- 
 tures of France and England combined. A Dutch contem- 
 porary asserts, indeed, that as many persons were occupied in 
 the fisheries as in commerce. 
 
 222. Growth of business activity. — The prosperity of 
 Dutch foreign commerce was reflected in business activity at 
 home. The Netherlands rapidly outstripped the southern low 
 countries (now Belgium), which suffered cruel repression under 
 Spanish rule; and the great commerce of Antwerp passed to 
 Amst^irdam. Speculation and banking developed in their 
 various forms and the Netherlands became the money center 
 of Europe. Scholars find in the Dutch business life of this 
 period many features which are strikingly modern; speculation 
 in stocks, commercial crises, pools, and "trusts." Manufac- 
 tures felt the impulse of progress, and broke the bonds of the 
 old gild system for more modern forms of enterprise. Large 
 establishments grew up; new industries were introduced (hats, 
 silk, tanning, etc.); the Huguenot refugees expelled from France 
 were granted a welcome for which they gave a rich return. 
 
 223. Commercial decline of the Netherlands. — When and 
 why did the Netherlands lose the commanding position in 
 
THE NETHERLANDS 195 
 
 European commerce? What country took the lead away from 
 it? Those are questions which the student of the history of 
 commerce must face, and in the following paragraphs the 
 answers will be given. 
 
 There is no doubt about the last point; Netherland lost 
 the leadership to ^England. The time when this change oc- 
 curred can be stated with almost equal brevity; it was during 
 the one hundred years between 1650, roughly the date when 
 Cromwell gathered up the scattered forces of England to use 
 them for her commercial advancement, and 1750, when the 
 commercial supremacy of England could no longer be ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 The reasons for the change are as usual the hardest as 
 they are certainly the most valuable topics to be studied. 
 One reason can be stated here as a fact, to be proved after- 
 wards in detail, that England was growing stronger. On the 
 Dutch side, was the Netherlands growing weaker, or did it 
 simply fail to keep pace with the English advance? 
 
 224. Reasons for decline. — So far as the facts are known 
 Dutch commerce increased in amount till about_1730 and 
 maintained about the same figures_afterwards ; but world 
 commerce was growing so rapidly that relatively the Nether- 
 lands fell behind. Th e very siz e of the Netherlands told against 
 the country in a political contest with other powers. It im- 
 plied, too, a lack of native rescuiix^ tosupport commerce when 
 the hold of the Dutch on foreign trade was weakening. Fur- 
 thermore, the Netherlands was like the Hanseatic League in 
 that it lacked a strong centraL power andjolicy, and gave 
 great independence to the separate units of which it was 
 composed. The important units, in the economic aspect, were 
 cities7~~which were able to carry on a small-scale commerce 
 very successfully, but which could not unite to bring their 
 best people to the front in a big-scale organization which could 
 compete with that of other countries. The Dutch did not pull 
 together to make the most of what they had, and the ineffi- 
 ciency and corruption which had always characterized the 
 
196 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 local governments grew worse with time. Rule by family 
 rings brought with it favoritism and inordinately high taxes, 
 under which industries labored and dwindled. Manufactures 
 which had formerly flourished now declined. Weak at home, 
 and, in comparison with other European states of the eighteenth 
 century, weak abroad, the Netherlands fell from the first rank 
 of commercial states, retaining in its colonies and in its de- 
 veloped banking system only reminders of its former greatness. 
 
 225. Character of the Dutch East India Company. — In the 
 eighteenth century, when the Netherlands was struggling to 
 maintain its commercial position, it was hindered rather than 
 helped by the_East- India Company.. The company seemed 
 to have the chance to make stupendQus_profits, for it sold its 
 wares for very high prices in Europe, and it paid for them in 
 Asia very little or even nothing. It used its power to force 
 the natives to supply it with some of these wares at nominal 
 prices or absolutely gratis. The very fact, however, that the 
 company could get its wares in this way, as a state would get 
 them by taxation, suggests that the company had expenses 
 like those of a state and unlike those of an ordinary commercial 
 corporation. This was the fact; the company had to support 
 the^vil and military establishment of a regular government. 
 This government shared, to the full, the political evils of the 
 time; both at home and in the East it was corrupt and in- 
 efficient. It was strong enough to hold its own against the 
 Portuguese, or against the English when they began their 
 expansion in the East; but it was no match for the English 
 when their strength developed in the eighteenth century. 
 
 226. Decline of the Company after 1700. — After 1700 the 
 Dutch East India Company fell behind rapidly. It enjoyed 
 such a high reputation, and kept its condition secret so suc- 
 cessfully, that its credit was unimpaired, and it continued to 
 pay dividends by borrowing money. For nearly two hundred 
 years it declared dividends at rates ranging from 12^ per cent 
 to 20, 40, or even 50 per cent; the average dividend from 
 1602 to 1796 was over 18 per cent. The crash was bound to 
 
THE NETHERLANDS 197 
 
 come finally; the company paid its last dividend in 1782, and 
 was dissolved in 1798, leaving debts of over fifty million dollars, 
 which were assumed by the Dutch government. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Commerce and industry of the Netherlands in the fifteenth_cen- 
 tury. [Blok, vol. 2, chap. 12.] 
 
 2. Commercial considerations inv olved inLJhe revolt of the Nether- 
 lands. [Rogers, Holland, Cambridge Mod. Hist., or one of the older 
 books like Motley.] 
 
 3. Beginnings of Dutch commerce with the Indies. [Blok, vol. 3, 
 chap. 9.] 
 
 4. From what Dutch source were the names Tasmania, Van Diemens 
 Land, New Zealand, derived; when and how were they attached to coun- 
 tries later bearing them? [Encyclopedia.] 
 
 5. The Dutch in North America; was their commerce with New 
 Netherlands important, and did the loss of their possession affect seriously 
 their carrying trade? [See manuals of U. S. history and the references 
 given in them; note the effect of the English Navigation Acts.] 
 
 6. The Dutch in South America. [See Edmundson, Dutch trade on 
 the Amazon, English Historical Review, 1903, 18: 642-663, and later.] 
 
 7. The policy of the East India Company: trade and territorial ex- 
 pansion, monopoly, regulation of production. [Day, Dutch in Java, 
 chap. 2.] 
 
 8. The Dutch in the East Indies. [Rogers, Holland, chaps. 20, 22.] 
 
 9. Write a report on Dutch commerce at the height of its prosperity: 
 countries traded with, wares, shipping, fisheries. [Blok, History, vol. 4, 
 book 6, part 3, chap. 1, part 4, chap. 4 ; vol. 5, book 7, chap. 4.] 
 
 10. The Bank of Amsterdam; its peculiarities and historical impor- 
 tance. [Rogers, Holland, chap. 24; Adam Smith, Wealth of nations, 
 Book 4, chap. 3; C. F. Dunbar, Theory and history of banking, N.Y., 2d. 
 ed., 1903, chap. 8.] 
 
 11. Forerunners of modem trusts in the Netherlands. [A. Sayous 
 Early trusts in Holland, Political Science Quarterly, N. Y., 1902, 17: 
 369-380.] 
 
 12. The naval war of the English and Dutch in the time of Cromwell 
 and Charles II. [Manuals of English history.] 
 
 13. Dutch commerce in the period of its decline. [Blok, History, 
 vol. 5, book 8, chap. 5; vol. 6, book 9, chap. 3, book 10, chap. 4.] 
 
 14. Internal troubles of the Dutch. [Rogers, Holland, chap. 34.] 
 
 15. The "contingent system" of the Dutch East India Company. 
 [Day, Dutch in Java, p. 61 ff.] 
 
198 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 16. Organization of the Dutch East India Company, and its faults. 
 [Dutch in Java, chap. 3.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The English economist, James E. Thorold Rogers, has included in 
 his * Story of Holland, N. Y., Putnam, 1889, $1.50, several chapters on 
 topics of economic importance. A better, though larger and more ex- 
 pensive work, is Blok's ** History of the people of the Netherlands, 
 N. Y., Putnam, 1898 ff., $2.50 per volume, now in course of publication 
 in English; I have included questions based on the later volumes of the 
 work, on the assumption that they will soon be available in translation. 
 
 I have attempted to cover the colonial and commercial history of the 
 Dutch in their most important dependency in The Dutch in Java, N. Y., 
 Macmillan, 1904, $2. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 ENGLAND: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 227. Survey of England's position and resources about 1500. 
 
 — The importance which English commerce assumed in this 
 period and has since maintained, justifies us in pausing at the 
 start to consider the conditions prevaiUng at the beginning 
 of the period, about 1500. 
 
 England and Wales together had an area much smaller 
 than that of most of the important continental states, about 
 equal to the area of Illinois, and less than that of New England. 
 Ireland was a sort of colonial possession, counting for little; 
 Scotland remained till about 1700 an independent kingdom, 
 and continued to be relatively unimportant after the union. 
 England (a term which will be used roughly for other parts 
 of the United Kingdom as they were included) had from 
 nature one endowment of supreme advantage, separation by 
 the Channel from the Continent, which made unnecessary for 
 defense the government of a military absolutism, and allowed 
 an early development of popular freedom. 
 
 From the economic standpoint, however, the climate fa- 
 vored grazing rather than tillage, and the mineral resources, 
 aside from tin, were still of comparatively little use. England 
 was a poor as well as a small country in 1500, needing to rely 
 upon the energy of the people and upon their cooperation 
 among themselves and with the government to win a place 
 among the leading countries. 
 
 228. England's chief advantage ; her advanced organization. 
 
 — Progress had been made, however, in various lines of which 
 the importance was to appear as time went on. Serfdom had 
 disappeared from the country districts, and production was 
 
 199 
 
200 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 stimulated by a fair reward for work well done. On the basis 
 of their flourishing sheep industry the English had built up a 
 cloth manufacture which had outgrown the narrow restrictions 
 of the old gild system, and won the inestimable advantage of 
 an organization iike that of modern times; the industry was 
 not so much ruled by antiquated custom or by the laws of 
 politicians, as guided by specialists who had invested their 
 capital in manufacture or trade, and who linked their fortunes 
 with progress and extension. 
 
 229. Benefits of the English political constitution. — Finally, 
 in summing up the advantages which the English of this period 
 enjoyed, we must put as perhaps the chief and certainly a 
 very important one, their politi^^l development. They were 
 not only spared from the necessity of using their resources to 
 repel a foreign invasion, they had attained to nj^tional _unity 
 among themselves; and they had a government which, however 
 crude it may seem now, wais much more closely in touch with 
 the people than that of most states, and which proved capable 
 of further development at comparatively slight expense, meas- 
 ured in men and money. The student who, in estimating the 
 commercial assets of England during this period, left out of 
 account the English constitution would go wide of the mark. 
 Spanish inquisition and expulsions, Dutch corruption, French 
 oppression and revolution, German or Italian disunion — to 
 be free from these was worth great wealth. 
 
 230. Development of the English into an active commercial 
 people about the fifteenth century. — The English historian, 
 Seeley, combats the idea that it is " in theJblQod " of English- 
 men, that it is "the genius of .the race" to be a maritime and 
 colonizing people. During the Middle Ages, in fact, the English 
 were not great navigators, in spite of the facilities offered by 
 the excellent harbors and the rivers penetrating far inland; 
 English commerce was carried on largely by foreigners, as has 
 been said in a previous section. The advance of the English 
 from passive to active commerce came at the close of the 
 Middle Ages, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1400 
 
ENGLAND: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 201 
 
 English merchandise was mostly borne in foreign ships; in 
 1500, it is said, English vessels carried more than half of all 
 the cloth exported, and about three fourths of all the other 
 wares. 
 
 231. Agencies helping to extend English commerce. — 
 Among the influences aiding the development of English 
 commerce in this period we must put the skilful diploma^cy 
 of the sovereigns of the Tudor line, which secured important 
 privileges for English merchants in other countries, and the 
 energy of the fellowship of Merchants Adventurers, which 
 made the most of these privileges. The Merchants Adventurers 
 differed from the Merchants Staplers (see section 126), in three 
 important points, each of which marks an advance: they were 
 all native Englishmen instead of foreigners; they exported 
 
 ^ manufactured goods, chiefly cloth, instead of raw materials; 
 
 ^s^liey were not bound to a fixed staple but "adventured" to 
 different places. Though the association was not nearly so 
 close as that of later stock companies, it was strong enough to 
 protect the interests of English commerce against abuses by 
 individual merchants and attacks by foreigners; and was es- 
 pecially helpful in pushing English trade along the coast of 
 the North Sea (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany). 
 
 232. Enlargement of the commercial area. — Beyond these 
 nearby districts English merchants were building up an im- 
 portant trade with Spain and Portugal in the South, and with 
 the Scandinavian countries in the North, where the Hanseatic 
 League was now unable to hold its own. English ships were 
 voyaging further still. Bristol merchants like Sturmys and 
 Canning built up merchant fleets of considerable size, and sent 
 them as far as the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the 
 coasts of Iceland and Finland. A London grocer recorded in 
 his diary about 1550 ^the voyage of an English vessel to "Rus- 
 sierj^ laden with " English bookes of the Scriptures " and with 
 
 ' other wares which probably sold to better advantage. 
 
 Nor have we yet reached the limit of English voyages. 
 American readers are familiar with the exploits of the Cabots, 
 
202 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE ^ 
 
 which began a series of frequent voyage s to Aqi erica. and 
 which were followed by daring expeditions to the far North 
 in search of a passage to India, either east or west. These 
 distant voyages were too venturesome as yet to be the means 
 of regular Gommerce; they sought rather discoveries or plunder. 
 The English merchant who went outside the narrow circle of 
 civilized Europe turned his hand chiefly to smuggling, kid- 
 napping, robbery, and murder. John Hawkins shared with 
 Queen Elizabeth the profits of the African slave trade, and was 
 proud to add to his coat of arms a demi-Moor proper, bound 
 with a cord, to record his achievements. 
 
 233. Relative standing of the English ports. — An idea of 
 the relative rank in foreign commerce of the English ports can 
 be gained from the proportions which they contributed to the 
 customs revenue. The most striking fact is the immense lead 
 of London over other ports, like that of New York in the United 
 States now; it contributed half of the total in the time of 
 Henry VII (say 1500). The second port, Southampton, fell 
 in this period from 18 per cent to 9 per cent; the Flanders 
 galleys had ceased coming, and the Guinea trade, by which it 
 revived later, had not yet begun. Newcastle upon Tyne paid 
 5 per cent of the total, while the port of Bristol, destined to 
 be later the great haven for the American trade, paid only 
 3 per cent and was exceeded by Boston. No other port than 
 those named contributed as much as 3 per cent of the total 
 customs revenue. The list of minor ports comprises some 
 which had been great in the Middle Ages but which were now 
 rapidly declining in relative importance (Ipswich, Sandwich, 
 etc.), some, like Hull, which were destined to grow in impor- 
 tance, while great modern ports like Liverpool and Cardiff are 
 not yet heard of at all. 
 
 234. Partition of the field of commerce among companies. — 
 The reader will remember the discussion in a previous section 
 of the difficulties experienced in this period when commerce - 
 was left to individuals, and the reasons for the association of 
 the merchants who traded to any country. With that dis- 
 
204 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 cussion in mind the organization of English commerce in the 
 period of the later sixteenth century and following years will 
 not seem so strange as it may appear to be ^t first. An ordi- 
 nary Englishman could trade about 1 600 with only three 
 countries: France, Spain, and_ Poxtiigal. Commerce with the 
 rest of the world could be carried on only by members of 
 spec ific comp anies, who had mapped out and occupied the 
 routes of trade much as modern railroads divide the territory 
 inside a country. Beginning in the North and going around 
 the compass the companies were as follows: the Eastland 
 Company, trading to Scandinavia and the Baltic; the Russia 
 Company; the Merchant Adventurers, controlling trade from 
 Denmark to France, where the free-trade gap appears; the 
 Levant Company, trading in the Mediterranean; the Guinea or 
 African Company; the East India Company, with its immense 
 Asiatic field; and then the various companies familiar to stu- 
 dents of American History, the Virginia Company, the Ply- 
 mouth Company, later the Hudson's Bay Company, etc. By 
 means of the trade of these companies England marketed her 
 surplus wares, especially her woolen fabrics, and imported the 
 goods of which she stood in need — naval stores from the 
 Baltic, manufactures and wine from the Cojitinent, gold from 
 Africa (cf. the English "guinea" of twenty-one shillings), 
 Oriental products, and furs and fish from America. The 
 colonies which had been founded in the New World were still 
 too young to affect greatly the sum total of English trade in 
 the early seventeenth century, but increased rapidly in com- 
 mercial importance. 
 
 235. Characteristics of the companies. — In their organi- 
 zation and development these companies show such variety 
 that it is impossible here to do more than indicate some com- 
 mon features of their history. They tended to one of the two 
 types (jointrStock_or_regulated) which have been described, 
 and sometimes wavered between the two. The monopoly 
 which they enjoyed made them unpopular with the public, 
 who thought that it was used to secure unduly high profits. 
 
ENGLAND: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 205 
 
 and still more unpopular with private^merohants who were 
 prevented from sharing in the trade. These merchants who 
 could not gain admission to the companies, because of lack of 
 capital, or distance from London, formed a class of "inter- 
 lopers" or smugglers trading inside the companies' preserves. 
 Toward the close of the seventeenth century the feeling against 
 the companies grew so strong that reform was forced upon 
 them; entrance fees were lowered or exclusive privileges were 
 taken away and the trade was thrown open. Some of the 
 companies continued to exist, however; the greatest of them 
 all, the East India Company, kept its hold on the trade with 
 Asia, and other companies continued as semi-public or private 
 corporations after their chief privileges had been annulled- 
 The Levant Company was not dissolved till 1825, and the 
 Hudson's Bay Company is still in existence, as an ordinary 
 trading corporation. 
 
 236. Rapid growth of commerce in the eighteenth century. 
 — The period in which the companies were most active, roughly 
 the seventeenth centu ry^ was preparat orx Jbo the period ,of 
 individual enterprise which in the eighteenth century brought 
 England to the leading position among the commercial states. 
 The advance is shown by the following table, giving in mil lions 
 of pounds sterling (and a rough equivalent in dollars) the 
 annual average of trade in the different periods: 
 
 Average of 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 1698-1701 
 
 £ 5.5, $ 27 
 
 £ 6.4 $ 32 
 
 1749-1755 
 
 8.2 41 
 
 12.2 61 
 
 1784-1792 
 
 17.7 88 
 
 18.5 92 
 
 1802 
 
 31.4 157 
 
 41.4 207 
 
 The figures show that the foreign trade of England grew 
 between five and six fold in the course of the century; that it 
 advanced considerably in the first half, but moved with the 
 speed of a revolution in the second. 
 
 237. Relative share of different continents in English com- 
 merce. — An indication of the direction of the trade, and of 
 
206 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the relative importance of different elements in it, is given in 
 the following tables, the figures again being simplified to round 
 millions. The commerce of England was distributed as follows : 
 
 
 Europe 
 
 America | Asia | Africa 
 
 Total 
 
 1698-1701 . . 
 1749-1755 . . 
 1784-1792.. 
 . . . 1802 . . . 
 
 £ 9.2 $ 46 
 13.8 69 
 19.6 98 
 39.4 197 
 
 ;£ 1-7 $ 8 
 
 4.5 12 
 10.8 54 
 23.3 116 
 
 ;£ 0.8 $ 4 
 
 1.8 9 
 
 4.9 24 
 8.7 43 
 
 £ 0.1 $ .5 
 0.2 1 
 0.9 4 
 1.3 6 
 
 £ 12.0 $ 60 
 20.4 102 
 36.2 181 
 72.8 364 
 
 The student may perhaps need the caution that he should 
 not attempt to learn outright such statistics as are given here; 
 the attempt would be a waste of energy. The figures give 
 more concisely than any other method of description the 
 measurement of a country's commerce, and are valuable for 
 reference. They must, however, be translated into a more 
 simple' expression of facts before an ordinary student can 
 grasp their significance and hold it permanently in mind. In 
 the few lines of text following the first table the author has 
 suggested the most obvious conclusions to be drawn from it, 
 and will point out others applicable here. 
 
 The trade with Europe was stUl by far the most impor- 
 tant part of English commerce, being equal to more than all 
 the rest of the trade together. It grew steadily throughout 
 the eighteenth century, as the figures show, but still it was a 
 less important part of the whole in 1800 than it had been in 
 1700. At the earlier d*ate other continents furnished but one 
 fourth of the total; in 1800 they furnished nearly one half. 
 The two most important, America and Asia, were coming up 
 with nearly equal speed, their commerce increasing roughly 
 fivefold in the course of the century. America had a clear 
 lead over its older rival, while Africa counted for very little 
 in the total. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Town life and trade about 1500. [Soc. Eng., 3: 131-145.] 
 
 2. Economic and social conditions in England in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. [Harrison's Description, ed. by L. Withington, Londcfn, 1902, 
 
ENGLAND: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 207 
 
 readable but too diffuse for a student who has not learned to select what 
 he needs from a book.] 
 
 3. Significance of the "enclosures" in English agriculture. [Soc. 
 Eng., 3: 544-550; 4: 114-118, 239-241.] 
 
 4. Development of the manufacturing system, as seen in the cloth 
 trade. [Ashley, Eng. econ. hist., vol. 2, chap. 3.] 
 
 5. Political conditions about 1500. [Seebohm, Prot. rev., 46-55.] 
 
 6. The Merchants Adventurers; who were they, in what did they 
 trade and with what countries, principles of organization, services to 
 English commerce? [Lingelbach, Merchantes Adventurers, Univ. of Pa. 
 Pub., 2 series, vol. 2, N. Y., 1902, or Cunningham, Growth; brief account 
 in Cheyney, Eur. background.] 
 
 7. English discovery and exploration in the sixteenth century. 
 [Soc. Eng., 3: 20^228; 477-508.] 
 
 8. Write an account of the career of Hawkins. [Payne, Voyages; 
 J. A. Froude, English seamen, N. Y., Scribner, 1895.] 
 
 9. Write a similar report on Drake. [Same references, or Oxley, 
 chap. 5.] 
 
 10. Indicate on a sketch map the position of ports named in sect. 
 233, drawing a line by each port with a length proportional to the im- 
 portance_of_th§.port. What are the chief ports now? [See a later section 
 of this book and its note; Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 11. Select one of the companies named in sect. 234 and report in 
 detail on its commerce and career. [Hewins, Eng. trade; Cunningham, 
 Growth, with references. Brief narratives of the East India Company 
 and of the Hudson's Bay Company will be found in Oxley, chaps. 8, 9.] 
 
 12. Struggle between the East India Company and the interlopers. 
 [Cunningham; Hunter, Hist, of British India.] 
 
 13. Prepare a graphic chart of the figures in sect. 236 in the follow- 
 ing manner. Draw a perpendicular line at the left-hand edge of a sheet 
 of paper, mark off two equal spaces, and place the dates, one at the top, 
 one in the middle, and the last two on either side of the end of the line. 
 Lines are then to be drawn, horizontally, proportional to the figures of 
 trade at each date. This can readily be done with the aid of a foot rule, 
 divided into fractions of an inch. Choose first the largest figures of the 
 table, in this instance those for 1802, to be sure of having room enough 
 on the paper for all the lines. Let one of the small divisions of the rule 
 represent a sum of a miUion pounds or ten million dollars. If, for in- 
 stance, yV is taken to represent a million pounds, the line for the imports 
 of 1802 will be a little short of two inches (f^). Let this line then be con- 
 tinued by a dotted or wavy line to represent exports; the continuation 
 in this case would be a little over 2i inches, and the whole line would be 
 a little over 4^ inches (If). Pursue the same method with the other 
 
208 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 figures, and the result will be a graphic representation of the course of 
 trade during the period. 
 
 The scale may be varied to suit convenience, but of course figures 
 cannot be directly compared with each other unless they are plotted to 
 the same scale. 
 
 14. Prepare a chart by similar methods, but using different colors 
 or characteristic lines to indicate trade with different regions. 
 
 15. Reduce the figures of trade with different continents to percent- 
 ages of the total, at different periods. 
 
 Make up your mind as to the number of conclusions to be drawn from 
 the tables which you are capable of remembering — whether one, two, 
 or more; resolve to remember those and to refer back to the tables for the 
 others. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 As Gross, Sources, does not cover the modem period, the student in 
 search of more extended bibliographical information than that given here 
 must rely on less satisfactory guides. Cunningham, ** Growth, will be 
 the best for an advanced student; see the foot-notes and the bibliographi- 
 cal index. Traill's ** Social England contains less scholarly but per- 
 haps more useful bibliographies on commerce and kindred topics. Some 
 of the school manuals give classified references; Andrews' * History can 
 be especially recommended. 
 
 Of the general works on English history in the period under considera- 
 tion the following pay some consideration to commercial development, 
 and those which are starred present information that is valuable and easily 
 available: * Busch, Froude, Gardiner, Macaulay, Stanhope, * Lecky. If 
 a single work is desired for collateral reading the best is Traill's ** Social 
 England, to which I have in large part confined my references for topical 
 reading. 
 
 Cunningham, ** Growth, is indispensable for this period; I assume 
 that this book is in the hands of the teacher and that he will avail himself 
 of the abundant material it offers for reading and written reports. Be- 
 sides smaller books on English economic history, already mentioned, 
 the following can be made useful: Hewins, ** English trade; Seeley, * Ex- 
 pansion; Toynbee, Industrial revolution. Bourne, * English merchants, 
 is useful; his English Seamen is unfortunately out of print. There is a 
 considerable literature, however, on the war and merchant navy, espe- 
 cially in the sixteenth century (see references in Social England); and 
 Lindsay and Cornewall-Jones cover the entire period. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 ENGLAND: EXPORTS 
 
 238. Survey of topics to be considered in studying the 
 development of English commerce. — Such is the bare outHne 
 of the development of English commerce in the period pre- 
 ceding 1800. Two chapters will now be devoted to the dis- 
 cussion of facts which will fill in the outline and will explain 
 the development. That the reader may follow more intelli- 
 gently a survey will be given in this place of the topics to be 
 considered, and their bearing on the general question. 
 
 We must know (1) the character of English exports. The 
 exports of a country show in what lines it is strong enough to 
 compete with foreign producers, and are the means by which 
 it buys commodities-produced abroad. We shall then con- 
 sider (2) the advantages which enabled England to produce 
 these wares so efficiently that other countries were glad to 
 buy of her, and (3) the countries in which these wares found a 
 market. On the other side we want to know (4) the imports, 
 the wares which England wanted but could not herself produce 
 to advantage, and (5) the countries from which the imports 
 came. Another factor of importance will be (6) the develop- 
 ment of English shipping. Finally we have to consider (7) 
 the government policy by which statesmen sought to further 
 and regulate the development, as manifested in foreign policy 
 and wars, in the customs tariff, and in the colonial system. 
 
 239. (i) Analysis of exports. — The total export to foreign 
 countries of merchandise of English origin (i.e., not including 
 goods from other countries transshipped in England) amounted 
 about 1800 to a little over £29,000,000. The most important 
 items were as follows, in millions of pounds: manufactures of 
 
 14 209 
 
^TORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 wool, 7.7, or over one fourth of the whole; manufactures of 
 cotton, 4.1; manufactures of iron and steel, 2.0; haberdashery, 
 1.5; linens, 1. These five items include over one half of the 
 total, and no other item amounted to as much as one million. 
 It is noteworthy that all the raw materials together scarcely 
 exceeded one million. When we come to study the internal 
 development of England we must look, evidently, for a great 
 expansion in certain manufacturing industries to explain the 
 position which their products now took in trade. 
 
 240. (2) Development of production, explaining the growth 
 of the export trade. Agriculture. — Turning our attention now, 
 not to the foreign commerce of England but to the conditions 
 at home which made this commerce possible, we find that during 
 the two centuries following 1600 there was a steady develop- 
 ment of internal resources. The growth of population stimu- 
 lated improvement in agriculture; and cultivators managed, 
 by new crops and methods, to increase largely the output in 
 spite of the disadvantages of soil and climate. Root crops 
 (turnips and carrots) and clover were grown on fields which 
 before had been allowed to lie fallow, and the produce, con- 
 verted into meat and manure, was almost pure gain. By 
 better feeding and breeding the weight of a head of stock was 
 increased twofold or even more. Potatoes and other vege- 
 tables were introduced from America and the Continent. 
 Capitalist farmers effected such a revolution in the methods 
 of agriculture, that pasture farming became relatively much 
 less important, and the production of cereals increased so that 
 there was a food supply to maintain a manufacturing popula- 
 tion, and sometimes a surplus for export. 
 
 241. Internal commerce and means of transportation. — 
 The conditions of internal commerce, measured by the diffi- 
 culties and dangers of road transportation, were still bad at 
 the beginning of this period, but improved rapidly in the eigh- 
 teenth century. A writer said in 1767: "There never was a 
 more astonishing Revolution accomplished in the internal 
 system of any country than has been within the compass of 
 
ENGLAND: EXPORTS 211 
 
 a few years in that of England. The Carriage of Grain, Coals, 
 Merchandize, etc., is in general conducted with little more 
 than half the Number of Horses with which it formerly was. 
 Journies of Business are performed with more than double 
 Expedition. Improvements in Agriculture keep pace with 
 those of Trade." The canals, which were extended rapidly 
 after the success of the Bridgewater Canal, constructed in 
 1758 to connect Manchester with coal mines seven miles 
 distant, lowered the cost of transportation to one quarter or 
 less, in the districts which they served. As a result manufac- 
 turers could rely on a steady supply of raw material for their 
 works, and of food for their employees, and had also a chance 
 to put their finished goods on the market. The eighteenth 
 century, moreover, was a period of great development in 
 English banking, and the extension of credit operations was 
 at the same time an effect and a cause of 'the growth of trade. 
 
 242. Manufactures; advance from the gild to the domestic 
 system and its significance. — We turn now to the history of 
 English manufactures^ a topic which is not only, as we have 
 intimated, of great importance for the growth of English 
 commerce, but which is of general interest as showing the 
 stages of development through which other countries passed 
 later. 
 
 Gilds still persisted in England, but they had lost the power 
 of control which they had formerly had and which they still 
 maintained on the Continent. The more important industries 
 had passed into the stage known as the "domestic system." 
 The change, at first view, is not striking, for the manufacturing 
 was still done by petty artisans working at home with their 
 own tools. The ownership of the raw material, however, had 
 passed from the artisans to an employer, who took the risk 
 of the manufacture and reaped profits corresponding to his 
 success in conducting it. 
 
 Brain power now took a place in manufactures above hand 
 power. The new class of employers were men who could 
 devote their energy entirely to studying the larger questions 
 
212 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of production. They had the chance to look away from the 
 petty details of work, which had for centuries absorbed men's 
 attention, and to become both broad -sighted and far-sighted. 
 They studied the needs of the market, at home and abroad; 
 they bought the raw material wherever it could be had best 
 and cheapest; and then marketed the product, wherever it 
 would bring them the best returns. 
 
 243. The new employers aided by the immigration of 
 foreign laborers. — Success in manufacture still depended 
 largely on the quality of labor, and one great advantage which 
 England owed to her political and religious^freedom was the 
 immigration of skilled laborers seeking refuge from the perse- 
 cutions of the Continent. Refugees, of whom the Huguenots 
 from France were the most important, brought with them 
 improvements in the woolen manufacture and stimulated the 
 development of other industries: silk, linen, cotton, calico, 
 paper, etc. It is, however, hard to see how the labor of these 
 people could have had a great effect in extending foreign trade 
 if they had not been guided by their employers, who were men 
 of considerable capital, with broad views andjwide acquaint- 
 ance, willing to take large contracts and eager to extend the 
 market for their goods. An English pamphlet of the period 
 says that the towns in which the silk and cotton manufactures 
 developed owed their industries " to the public spirit of two or 
 three men in each." The development of this process, by 
 which artisans lost their former independence and came to 
 work for an employer, can be seen from a statement of the 
 economist Adam Smith, who wrote in 1776. "In every part 
 of Europe," he said, "twenty workmen serve under a master 
 for one that is independent." This was not yet true of "every 
 part " of Europe, and even in the western states of the Continent 
 the process had not advanced so far as in England, where the 
 author had made most of his observations. 
 
 244. Dependence of technical progress on the new class of 
 employers. — It is noteworthy that the great inventions to 
 which the modern development of manufactures has often 
 
ENGLAND: EXPORTS 213 
 
 been ascribed could not have been made of practical impor- 
 tance unless this system of organization had developed pre- 
 viously. The gilds were bitterly opposed to any changes in 
 their system of routine, and independent artisans would not 
 find it worth their while to introduce costly improvements. 
 Many inventions had been made before the eighteenth century 
 which would have been of the greatest importance in manu- 
 facture if there had been any one to take them up and put 
 them through; they fell dead, however, on the world of their 
 time, or were killed by the opposition of petty producers. An 
 illustration of the way in which premature inventions disap- 
 peared can be given from the experience of a man who, to all 
 appearances, had devised a repeating firearm before the end 
 of the sixteenth century. A German recommended to an 
 English statesman "one of his countrymen, who had invented 
 a harquebuse, that shall containe ten balls or pelletes of lead, 
 all the which shall goe off, one after another, having once 
 given fire, so that with one harquebuse one may kill ten theeves 
 or other enemies without recharging." The importance of 
 such an invention needs only to be suggested, but, so far as 
 the writer knows, nothing further was heard of it. 
 
 245. The domestic system preparatory to the great revolu- 
 tion in manufactures in the eighteenth century. — Not until the 
 latter part of the eighteenth century^jwere the times ripe for 
 the great technical changes in majiufacture, which the intro- 
 duction of machinery impIfedT^ Then the advance came with 
 the speed of revolutron. In the lifetime of an ordinary man 
 (1770-1840) the whole face of England changed; the great 
 textile towns and the "black country" of the coal and iron 
 industry grew up; canals and railroads cut through the agri- 
 cultural districts to connect the industries with each other 
 and with the outside world; a social and political revolution 
 accompanied the eaonmaif* No attempt can here be made 
 to describe the changes in detail, and the discussion of the 
 factory system and other features of the present organization 
 to which they gave rise can better be postponed. The fol- 
 
214 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 lowing paragraphs will suggest the development in some of 
 England's chief export industries. 
 
 246. Progress of the cotton manufacture. — The cotton 
 manufacture was the first to show the possibilities of the 
 application of machinery. Two main processes are to be 
 distinguished in the manufacture of cotton, as in that of 
 other textiles; first, the spinning of the yarn from the fiber, 
 and second, the weaving of the yarn into cloth. The first 
 great improvement was the invention by Kay in 1738 of the 
 fly-shuttle, which saved the time and energy of the weaver 
 and enabled him to double his output of cloth. Still, the 
 industry was small and grew slowly. The amount of raw 
 cotton imported from Turkey and the West Indies would seem 
 now perfectly insignificant, and was exceeded by the amount 
 of linen yarn imported from Ireland alone. The cotton manu- 
 facture was hampered especially by the slowness of cotton 
 spinning (six spinners working with the old-fashioned wheel 
 were needed to supply yarn to one weaver) ; and by the weak- 
 ness of the yarn, which required linen to be used for the warp 
 of cloth. Inventions which met these difficulties were the 
 spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, patented 1770, which enabled 
 a spinner to make eight threads at once instead of one (later, 
 twenty, thirty, even one hundred and twenty); and Ark- 
 wright's roller spinning frame, patented 1769, which made 
 cotton yarn strong enough for warp, by stretching the strand 
 before it was twisted. Improvements followed in other pro- 
 cesses (carding, printing, etc.); water-power was used more 
 generally, and a mere beginning made with the application of 
 steam. A Kentish clergyman, Cartwright, invented a power 
 loom which greatly increased the possibilities of weaving but 
 which did not become a practical success until the nineteenth 
 century; long after 1800 the hand -loom weavers kept up a 
 hopeless struggle in competition with it. 
 
 The full effect of all these changes was not felt until the 
 nineteenth century, but their importance in this period can be 
 measured by the imports of raw cotton. In the forty-three 
 
^*^,:>>-:^ 
 
 ENGLAND: EXPORTS ^ 215 
 
 years, 1741-1784, the annual imports rose from 4,000 to 28,000 
 bales, while in the sixteen years following they increased 
 to 150,000 bales (1800). 
 
 247. Slower development of the woolen manufactixre. — 
 No such rapidity of development as this can be traced in the 
 woolen manufacture, for it had long been England's mainstay, 
 and changed more slowly partly because it was so firmly 
 established. Little by little, however, the spinning-wheel was 
 displaced by the jenny, and other sources of power than the 
 human body were utilized. As in the case of cotton, power 
 weaving was not important until after 1800; but the manu- 
 facture of worsteds (in which the fibers are longer than in 
 woolens, and are kept parallel) was greatly helped by a second 
 invention of Cartwright, for wool-combing by machinery. 
 
 248. Development of the iron industry with the use of 
 pit-coal. — The only other industry of this period which our 
 space allows us to treat is that of iron. Until the eighteenth 
 century iron was made almost entirely by smelting with char- 
 coal, the primitive process which can be traced back to pre- 
 historic times. A ton of iron required two loads of charcoal, 
 and a load of charcoal two loads of wood, so that the industry 
 depended largely on the wood supply, and was carried on at 
 petty forges scattered through England, but established mainly 
 in the South. A large proportion of the English iron supply 
 was imported from Sweden. Coal, as we use the word, called 
 then pit-coal or sea-coal, had for centuries been mined for 
 domestic use, but had no importance in manufacture. Various 
 men tried to smelt iron by coal or coke, but their experiments 
 had no practical result till about 1760, when blast furnaces 
 using coal were successfully established, and the industry began 
 a period of rapid development, furthered about 1790 by the 
 application of steam-power to the blast. Henry Cort invented 
 in this period the processes by which pig was changed to 
 malleable iron in a coal- puddling furnace, and the malleable 
 iron was worked into bars by rollers instead of by the slow 
 action of forge hammers. The production of iron had increased 
 
216 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fourfold (17,000 to 68,000 tons) in the period 1740-1788, and 
 in the period of eight years following nearly as much again 
 was produced (125,000 tons in 1796). The industries depend- 
 ing on iron passed into a new stage, and the large export of 
 iron and steel in 1800 is explained. 
 
 249. (3) The chief markets for England's exports. — The 
 market for English wares varied, of course, according to the 
 country to which they were sent. The most favorable market 
 for manufactures was afforded by the colonies in America, 
 until the outbreak of the war of independence. The~coIomsts 
 were a high grade-of-eustximers ; they had cultivated tastes 
 and were willing to work hard to gratify them. By reason of 
 natural conditions even more than by legislation they found it 
 difficult to establish^ianufactures, and bought manufactured 
 wares of England with the raw products which their environ- 
 ment afforded in abundance. A book published just before 
 the revolution says that the "colonies are furnished from 
 England with materials for wearing apparel, household furniture, 
 silk, woolen, and linen manufactures, iron, cordage, and sails, 
 great guns, small arms, ammunition, lead, brass, iron, and steel, 
 whether wrought or unwrought; in a word England furnishes 
 them with almost everything needful for the luxuries, as well 
 as conveniences of life, except provisions." 
 
 In European countries English manufactures did not find 
 such a clear field. There were some branches (silk, linen, lace, 
 paper, tin-plate, etc.) in which other countries were distinctly 
 superior, and no European country depended on England as 
 did the colonies. English woolens, however, went practically 
 everywhere, and other products of the textile and metal 
 industries were sure of a ready market in most countries. 
 
 For exports to other continents the English had to choose 
 articles which would stimulate less civilized people to produc- 
 tion and exchange. Very considerable sums in gold and silver 
 were sent to Asia, and the half-savage Africans were tempted 
 with gunpowder, iron, rum, spirits, beads, etc. 
 
ENGLAND: EXPORTS 217 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Endeavor to get a clear understanding of the meaning of each of 
 the topics, and of their bearing on each other, by thinking of the present- 
 day commerce of the U. S. and asking yourself: what are the main facts 
 about (1) our exports, (2) our natural advantages, etc. Then ask your- 
 self how knowledge of any one of these topics will be of use to you in 
 understanding the others, and so understanding commerce in general. 
 For instance, what bearing has our tariff policy on our imports and ex- 
 ports, respectively? What are the weaker points in our system of pro- 
 duction as shown by imports; what countries are strong in those points? 
 The student is most earnestly advised to learn the contents of this manual 
 by understanding and not by memorizing. He should always be asking 
 himself: what use is this fact to me? 
 
 2. Transform the figures, sect. 239, into a graphic chart, and com- 
 pare the results with exports at the present day. [See Statesman's Year- 
 Book for recent figures.] 
 
 3. Development of English agriculture in the seventeenth century. 
 [Soc. Eng., 4: 115-122, 439-445; Prothero, * Pioneers and progress of 
 English farming, London, 1888.] 
 
 4. Development of agriculture in the eighteenth century. [Soc. 
 Eng., 5: 99-110, 301-305, 452-459; Prothero.] 
 
 5. Condition of English roads and of carriage by land. [Cunning- 
 ham, Growth, vol. 2, sect. 232, and references there; Smiles, Lives of the 
 engineers, vol. 1.] 
 
 6. Canals, and their benefits. [Soc. Eng., vol. 5, pp. 322-326; Cun- 
 ningham and references.] 
 
 7. Write an essay on the "domestic" system of manufactures, and 
 the contrast it presents with earlier and later systems. [Hobson, Capi- 
 talism, chap. 2, sect. 11; Cunningham, Growth, vol. 2, sect. 227 and 
 following.] 
 
 8. The influence on English industrial development of immigration 
 from the Continent. [Cunningham, Growth, vol. 2, sects. 172, 199, 229, 
 etc.] 
 
 9. Compare with sect. 244 sects. 283 ff., in the chapter on France, 
 to realize the advantages of the English at this period. 
 
 10. Write a report on English manufactures in one of the following 
 periods, from the descriptions in Social England. 
 
 (a) Seventeenth century [vol. 4, 122-130, 445-454, 581-588.] 
 (6) Eighteenth century, before the great inventions [vol. 5, 110-117, 
 305-322.] 
 
 11. Write a report on the history of one of the great industries (cotton, 
 woolen, iron), choosing one of the following aspects of it: methods of manu- 
 
218 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 facture, introduction of machinery, change in organization (domestic and 
 factory system, etc.), importance in commerce. [Besides references Hke 
 Cunningham and Social England the student will find the encyclopedia 
 and lire's Dictionary of manufactures helpful, and probably easier to 
 use.] 
 
 12. The great inventions. [Social England, 5: 459-474, 591-604.] 
 
 13. Write a biographical sketch of one of the following men: Richard 
 Arkwright, Edmund Cartwright, Samuel Crompton, James Watt. [En- 
 cyclopedia; Dictionary of national biography; or one of the popular 
 books on the history of invention.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 See preceding chapter, 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 ENGLAND: IMPORTS; SHIPPING; POLICY 
 
 250. (4) Analysis of English imports in the modern period. 
 — After this survey of one side of English trade we have to 
 consider the other, the imports which England purchased with 
 her surplus wares. In round millions of pounds the imports 
 at the end of the eighteenth century were as follows, in the 
 order of their values: sugar 7.1, tea 3.1, grain 2.7, Irish linen 
 2.6, cotton 2.3, coffee 2.2, wood 1.5, butter 1.0, tobacco 1.0, 
 hemp 1.0. These wares amounted to more than half of a 
 total import of 42.6. If the list were extended to less impor- 
 tant wares a number of manufactured goods would be found 
 on it, but these evidently could in general be produced .to 
 better advantage in England than anywhere else. England 
 had already made herself the "workshop-of the world," and 
 drew from other countries mainly raw materials and foods 
 which could not be produced at home. Some of the colonial 
 imports were shipped again, as will be shown later, but a 
 large proportion of them was consumed at home by a popula- 
 tion wliich was not only growing in size, but was enabled by 
 means of commerce to gratify its taste for products com- 
 paratively new (sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco). 
 
 251. (5) Sources of the imports. — At the period when 
 these figures were compiled war had interrupted the trade of 
 England with France and the Netherlands, but an active 
 commerce still continued with other parts of the Continent. 
 The imports from European countries were largely minor 
 manufactures, which do not appear in the list above, but raw 
 materials also were furnished by the less advanced European 
 
 219 
 
220 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 states. Wool came from Spain; hemp, flax, and tallow from 
 Russia; wood, iron, and copper from Scandinavia. 
 
 For some of the most important imports we must look to 
 countries outside of Europe. The trade with Asia supplied 
 all of the tea, and part at least of the other commodities (coffee, 
 cotton, sugar) which we now associate with America, as well 
 as a considerable amount of Indian manufactures, especially 
 textiles. This trade still rested Jn the control of the East India 
 Company, which had grown to be a great political power in 
 Asia, with a government and army of its own. At home it 
 had had a checkered career. As the result of bitter attacks 
 in the seventeenth century it widened its membership, but it 
 still maintained the monopoly of trade with Asia till 1793, 
 when it conceded to private merchants a certain share in the 
 trade with India. 
 
 252. Peculiar character of the English colonies. — It is to 
 the continent of America that we must turn for the field outside 
 of Europe that in its performances and in its promises offered 
 most to English commerce. After the early period of explora- 
 tion, treasure-hunting, and piracy, English colonization in 
 America developed in a form entirely its own. Emigrants 
 went out, not to seek gold mines or to establish trading stations, 
 but to found homes. Emigration was not so much a govern- 
 ment policy as a popular movement, that attracted some of 
 the best stock of English blood. There were great differences 
 between the people of the different coloni es on the Atlantic 
 coast, as every student of American history knows, and there 
 was again a difference between the colonies in the-South and 
 those on the -islands. But in general it may be said that no 
 European country could vie with England in the commercial 
 quality of its colonial population. Certainly none could rival 
 England in the quantity of colonists of European stock. The 
 first census of the United States in 1790 showed a population 
 (nearly four million), merely in this group of former English 
 colonies, amounting to nearly half that in England and Wales. 
 
 253. Resources and industries of the colonies in America. — 
 
ENGLAND: IMPORTS; SHIPPING; POLICY 
 
 Though the personal qualities of the English were duplicated -^m, 
 on the other side of the Atlantic, the physical environment "^ 
 was absolutely different. Products of the field, the forest, and 
 the sea, which were eagerly desired and hard to get in England, 
 were to be had in abundance in the New World. The condi- 
 tions for manufacture, on the other hand, were unfavorable; 
 capital and labor found such an attractive field in the extractive 
 industries (the production of raw material), that there was 
 little temptation for the colonies to engage in the finishing of 
 goods. In the plantation colonies of the South and the islands 
 almost nothing was manufactured. Even in the center and 
 North, where the difficulties of life and the talents of the 
 people made manufacture more practicable, most industries 
 were of a household character, rough clothing and implements 
 being made in the spare hours at home; or were ordinary 
 village trades, — milling, tanning, etc. All the fine manufac- 
 tures were bought from England with raw or semi-raw 
 products. j^. 
 
 254. Specialties of different colonies. — The island colonies 
 (Jamaica, Barbadoes^ etc.) sent plantation ^products. The 
 sugar-cane supplied sugar and molasses and, by a simple y 
 process of manufacture, rum. American cotton until Whitney's 
 invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 came almost entirely from . ^^ 
 the islands, and indigo and various drug3 .were secured from 
 
 the same source. The colonies on the mainland sup plied a 
 greater variety of products, by reason of their climatic differ- 
 ences. Nearly all of them contributed to the supply of- s kin s 
 and furs; and lumber and naval stores (pitch, tar, turpentine) 
 were secured from the forests all the way from New England 
 to Georgia. Different sections, however, had their specialties; 
 the Carol inas sent rifi£^ Virginia tobacco, New England codfish 
 and whale-oil. 
 
 255. Commerce with Africa. — There was a marked pecu- 
 liarity in the commerce with Africa. The exports to this 
 country always exceeded the direct imports by a considerable 
 sum. An English writer of the eighteenth century tells about 
 
222 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE ' 
 
 the manufactures which were sent out, and continues: "we 
 have, in return, gold, teeth_(t^e^ ivory), wax, and negroes; 
 the last whereof is a very beneficial traffic to the kingdom, as" 
 it occasionally gives so prodigious an„employment to our people 
 both by sea and land." His meaning is this: the slave trade 
 was so "beneficial" because the slaves which were purchased 
 with beads and rum were not brought to England but shipped 
 to the American colonies where they were put to work. The 
 English ^gured, therefore, that they got not only the price of 
 the slaves in American products, but also had the business of 
 carrying them to America, and could hope for a future return 
 from their labor intlieJB£ld. It is estimated that 20,000 slaves 
 a year were sent out during the eighteenth century, and the 
 chief port of the trade, Liverpool, emp loyed 190 ships as 
 slavers in 1771. 
 
 256. (6) Shipping and the carrying trade. — At the begin- 
 ning of the period which we are studying (1500-1600) the 
 English, as we have seen, were emancipating themselves from 
 their former dependence on foreign ships. In the course of 
 the period they learned to carry not only their own goods but 
 those of other nations as well, and took from the Dutch the 
 leadership in the carrying trade of the world. The reader will 
 note, if he refers to the figures showing the trade of England 
 about 1800, that the imports amounted to about 42 million 
 pounds, while the exports of British merchandise were but 
 29 millions. England would seem to have been gaining a 
 great amount of goods for nothing, or to have been going in 
 debt for them. The difference is to be explained in part by 
 the earnings of English freight, which other countries paid in 
 wares, but in the larger part by the export of goods which 
 were brought to England from other countries merely to be 
 transshipped and exported again. At the close of the century 
 foreign merchandise to the value of over 11 millions was 
 exported, the wares being mainly those of colonial origin 
 (coffee, sugar, Indian textiles, tobacco, tea, indigo, etc.). 
 
 257. Struggle of English seamen and government with the 
 
ENGLAND: IMPORTS; SHIPPING; POLICY 223 
 
 Dutch. — Two separate sets of forces were at work to raise the 
 English merchant marine, those of individuals and those of 
 the government. The English in the seventeenth century 
 could not navigate as cheaply as the Dutch, since they re- 
 quired larger crews for the same work, but they seem in the 
 eighteenth century to have been abreast or ahead of the gen- 
 eral development of navigation; and unusual facilities for 
 ship-building were offered to them in their American colonies. 
 The government, on the other hand, was eager to foster every 
 effort to extend English shipping, not only because of its 
 economic advantage, but because of the addition to the naval 
 resources of the kingdom in war with other powers. Until 
 after 1650 the English merchant marine, in spite of individuals 
 and government, was greatly inferior to the Dutch. State- 
 ments which are doubtless exaggerated give us still some 
 measure of the difference; the Dutch were said to own four 
 fifths of all the ships engaged in oceanic commerce, or as many 
 as eleven kingdoms of Christendom; ten Dutch ships traded 
 to Barbadoes for one English. The latter half of the seven- 
 teenth century is filled with a bitter struggle for supremacy 
 between the English and the Dutch, waged with all the weapons 
 both of peace and war. 
 
 258. The Navigation Acts; victory of English over Dutch 
 shipping. — "The first nail in the coffin o f Dutch gr eatness/^ 
 says an English historian, was the Navigation Act passed 
 under Cromwell in 1651»„ This was but one of a series of 
 measures extending before and afterward, designed to further 
 the English carrying trade at the expense of rivals. Briefly, 
 goods from a European country could" be brought to England 
 only in English ships or in ships of the country, so that, for 
 instance, the Dutch could not carry Baltic wares to England; 
 while the products of other continents could be imported or 
 exported only in English ships; and some wares that were 
 enumerated (sugar, tobacco, etc.) must be brought to England 
 before they could be exported to any other European country. 
 To maintain this policy the English engaged in a long contest 
 
224 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 with smugglers in America, and fought several great naval 
 wars with the Dutch. The result was, as we have seen, a 
 victory for English cornrnaccE-^w^er the Dutch, though it is 
 hard to say how much credit should be given the government 
 policy, and how much was due to the energy of the individuals 
 who were building up English business at this period. 
 
 The effect of the new oceanic trade was to build up the ports 
 in the West; Liverpool came into prominence in the eighteenth 
 century, and Bristol also grew. The distribution of trade 
 among the ports did not, however, change greatly. An esti- 
 mate of the eighteenth century gave to London still two thirds 
 of the total, while the remaining third was divided in equal 
 parts among the ports of the east, the south, and the west 
 coasts. 
 
 259. (7) Government policy. Commerce and war. — Just 
 as in shipping, so in other commercial interests, the efforts of 
 individuals to make money for themselv es we re restrained or 
 furthered by government regulations aiming to advance the 
 English people as a whole. Every matter of commerce was 
 at the same time a matter of politics. Mention was made in 
 an introductory chapter of the part played by England in the 
 great wars of the period. It will be remembered that English 
 policy in general was characterized by a shrewd recognition of 
 the commercial advantages to be gained in war, either by 
 territorial acquisitions or by trading privileges, and every war in 
 which England engaged ended, as a rule, with a treaty that 
 gave her some new colonial market or some advantages in 
 trade with a European country. England fought France con- 
 sistently, not because of old traditions of enmity, but because 
 France was a commercial rival, refusing English manufactures 
 and attempting to market her own in England, and because 
 France had possessions in America and India that England 
 desired. England allied herself with Portugal, on the other 
 hand, because the trade of the two countries was complemen- 
 tary rather than competitive. 
 
 260. Customs policy. — The customs policy of the period 
 
ENGLAND: IMPORTS; SHIPPING; POLICY 225 
 
 was governed by mercantilist ^ idea s, described in an earlier 
 chapter. The government drew a considerable portion of its 
 revenue from the customs duties, but nevertheless subordinated 
 the collection of revenue to other considerations in framing 
 the tariff, and regarded it chiefly as a means of building up 
 national power in contest with other states. To further this 
 end the importation of manufactured wares was in many cases 
 taxed or prohibited, that foreigners might not draw money 
 for work which Englishmen were thought competent to do. 
 Raw materials, like wool, which could be used as the basis of 
 English industries, were kept in the country by duties or 
 prohibitions on export ; while the export of other wares, which 
 put foreigners in debt to England, was encouraged. Other 
 measures, now inconceivable, were designed to stimulate cer- 
 tain industries ; an Englishman could be buried only in a woolen 
 shroud; a Scotchman only in Scotch linen; buttons and button- 
 holes were regulated by legislation; English ships must carry 
 English sails. 
 
 261. Burden of the tariff. — In a sense it is wrong to speak 
 of any "system" of customs policy at this time, for the tariff, 
 by constant changes, had become extraordinarily confused, 
 and included many inconsistencies. "The collection and ad- 
 ministration of such a complicated system was most wasteful; 
 while the taxes, when taken together, were so high as to inter- 
 fere seriously with the consumption of the article and to offer 
 a great temptation to the smuggler." The most rigorous 
 measures failed to stop the smuggling which brought into 
 England a large proportion of^the^gouds on which duties or 
 prohibitions were imposed. Reforms attempted by different 
 statesmen alleviated to some extent the burden of the tariff 
 on merchants, but left it still so heavy and cumbrous that 
 with the advances of the nineteenth century it was felt to be 
 intolerable. In this period almost no one thought of free 
 trade. The tariff undoubtedly stimulated the growth of certain 
 industries (silk, for example), but it is noteworthy that the 
 cotton industry, which was destined to become the most im- 
 15 
 
226 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 portant of any in England, grew up not only without any 
 favor but under actual discouragements. 
 
 262. Colonial policy. — An English historian who has been 
 quoted several times before said that England " conquered and 
 peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind/' implying 
 that the movement was one of natural expansion rather than 
 of conscious policy. This seems true when we contrast English 
 colonization with that of other powers. Still, the government 
 held from the first the idea that the colonies -were a part of the 
 home country, and should contribute in special ways to its 
 advancement, and these ideas grew stronger and took more 
 definite form as the colonies grew in size. The government 
 permitted the movement of men and capital to America under 
 the condition that the resources of the colonies should be made 
 to supplement, not compete with, the resources of the mother 
 country. We have to note here the regulations in which the 
 government ideas were embodied. 
 
 263. Restrictions on colonial enterprise, regarded as jus- 
 tifiable at the time. — By the application of the Navigation 
 Acts the colonists were required to employ English ships for 
 their commerce, and to send certain enumerated wares of their 
 production to England before they could be disposed of to 
 another country; and by other acts they were restricted in 
 the manufacture or exchange of certain articles (woolens, hats, 
 bar-iron, and steel) for which English manufacturers desired 
 to reserve the market. Aside from these restrictions the 
 colonists were left free to produce and to trade as they pleased. 
 They paid the usual duties, as a rule, on wares entering the 
 English ports, but were allowed a drawback when the wares 
 were exported again. 
 
 Comparing these restrictions with, for instance, those of 
 Spain, we are struck with their liberality; still more so^when 
 it is added that the government gave some special favors to 
 the colonists in the form of bounties, and colonial ships were 
 put on an equal footing with those built at home, so that New 
 England was a great gainer by the stimulus to ship-building 
 
ENGLAND: IMPORTS; SHIPPING; POLICY 227 
 
 and sailing. England was the natural market for most of the 
 colonial wares, and the colonists, as we have seen, had few 
 temptations to go into manufacturing. None of these restric- 
 tions, therefore, bore with great weight on the colonists, and 
 an attempt to interfere in their trade with the French We§t 
 Indies (by the Molasses Act of 1733) was evaded. The English 
 colonial system was accepted as natural and reasonable by the 
 colonists in general until shortly before the Revolution. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Make a graphic chart of imports and compare with present con- 
 ditions, as suggested above under exports. 
 
 2. Insert the wares named in 251 and the following sections in the 
 chart of imports according to continents, sect. 237. 
 
 3. History of the East India Company in the eighteenth century. 
 [Cunningham, Growth; B. Willson, Ledger and sword, London, 1903, 
 vol. 2.] 
 
 4. Compare the colonial market of England with that of Spain (see 
 chap. 20) and that of France (see chap. 25). 
 
 5. Write a report on the economic and commercial characteristics 
 of one of the thirteen colonies, in the period preceding the Revolution. 
 [See the chapters describing the condition of the separate colonies in 1765, 
 in Lodge, English colonies, N. Y., Harper, 1881, $3.] 
 
 6. English imports of naval stores, and schemes to stimulate exports 
 from America. [Lord, Industrial exper., part 2.] 
 
 7. Write a report on -the commercial history of one of the island 
 colonies, (a) Jamaica, or (6) Barbadoes. [See encyclopedia, and ref- 
 erences there; R. Montgomery Martin, History of the British colonies, 
 London, 1834, vol. 2, chap. 2, Jamaica; chap. 7, Barbadoes, chap. 16, 
 West Indian commerce; Amos K. Fiske, West Indies, N. Y., Putnam, 
 1899, $1.50, chaps. 18-19, Jamaica; chap. 37, Barbadoes.] 
 
 8. History of the African trading companies. [Cunningham, Growth, 
 vol. 2, sect. 194.] 
 
 9. History of the slave trade. [Cunningham, index, and references 
 in his notes; Weeden, index; Encyc. Brit.] 
 
 10. The plantations, the Royal African Company and the slave trade, 
 1672-1680. [E. D. Collins, in Rep. of Amer. Hist. Assoc, 1900, Washing- 
 ton, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 139-192.] 
 
 11. History of the merchant navy; development of ship-building and 
 navigation. [See the articles on the Navy, by W. Laird Clowes, Soc. 
 Eng., vols. 3, 4, 5. The student should endeavor to extract from these 
 
228 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 articles, which are rather fragmentary, only those facts which bear on the 
 merchant marine, and should guard against confusing this with the war 
 navy.] 
 
 12. Write an essay on the colonial and commercial aspects of Crom- 
 well's foreign policy. [Reference may be made to the following, among 
 the biographies of Cromwell: F. Harrison, Lond. 1888, chap. 13: Firth, 
 N. Y. 1900, chap. 19; John Morley, N. Y. 1900, book 5, chap. 8; Roosevelt, 
 N. Y. 1900, p. 225 ff. See also Frank Strong, The causes of Cromwell's 
 West Indian expedition, Amer. Hist. Review, Jan., 1899, 4: 228-245; 
 George L. Beer, Cromwell's economic policy, Polit. Sci. Quarterly, 1901, 
 16: 582-611; 1902, 17: 46-70.] 
 
 13. Of what country would ships have to be, according to the Naviga- 
 tion Acts, to carry: wool from Spain; gold from Africa; spices from India; 
 furs from America? 
 
 14. The policy of the Navigation Acts and their effects. [Cunning- 
 ham, Growth, vol. 2, sects. 204, 222.] 
 
 15. Rise of the port of Liverpool. [Encyc, and references there.] 
 
 16. Report on one of the three commercial treaties, of 1703, of 1713, 
 and of 1786, as illustrating the policy of the period. [Hewins, English 
 trade, chap. 5.] 
 
 17. Abuses of the customs duties, and the reform by the younger Pitt. 
 [Lecky, Hist., chap. 16, Cabinet ed., 5: 295 ff.] 
 
 18. The commercial legislation of England and the American colonies, 
 1660-1760. [See the article with that title by W. J. Ashley, Quarterly 
 Journal of Economics, 1899-1900, 14: 1-29; republished in his Surveys, 
 London., 1900. 
 
 19. American smuggling, 1660-1760: to what extent was it practised; 
 does it prove the English policy to have been oppressive? [Ashley, Surveys, 
 336-360.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter xxi. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 264. Natural advantages of France in the modem period. — 
 
 In preceding sections we have considered countries which for 
 a time took the leading place in commerce among the states 
 of Europe. We have now to study the development of the 
 other states, to understand the share they took in commerce, 
 and to note so far as possible the causes which kept them 
 below the leaders. 
 
 Taking first France, we find a country which throughout 
 the period enjoyed the reputation of being the richest state 
 of Europe. Not only in area and population did it greatly 
 exceed its traditional rival, England; it had also advantages 
 of soil and climate which caused it to be regarded as favored 
 beyond all others. Fronting both the Mediterranean and 
 Atlantic, with easy access to the North Sea and Baltic, it had 
 a better position for the sea commerce of the period than any 
 other country, while internal transportation was facilitated 
 by a remarkable system of navigable rivers, that brought the 
 interior of the country into easy communication with the 
 coast. Nor can we say that the French people of this period 
 were inferior to those of other countries in their economic 
 capacity. Before the beginning of the period and at intervals 
 during its course they give evidence of productive ability 
 which would have led to very different results under conditions 
 such as more favored people, like the English, enjoyed. This 
 holds true even of manufacturing, a branch of production in 
 which the French have commonly been considered inferior by 
 natural bent to the English. 
 
 265. The chief reason why France did not rise to leadership. 
 
 229 
 
230 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 — In spite of size, resources, and population, France did not 
 rise above the second place mainly through the fault of the 
 French or aanization^ the arrangements that the French nation 
 had for working together. We may compare the French state 
 to a modern industrial corporation, which has a large capital 
 invested in a valuable plant, and has good business openings; 
 but in which the business is wrecked by quarrels arnong_lhe 
 st^ockholders, and by such a poor organization that president 
 and directors can disregard the interests of the stockholders, 
 can conduct affairs for their selfish profit, and can waste the 
 company's resources in enterprises that do not pay. The 
 point will be made more clear if, as an introduction to the 
 history of commerce in France, we sketch the general history 
 of the country from the later Middle Ages to the French 
 Revolution of 1789. 
 
 266. Progress checked by the Hundred Years* War with 
 England, and by religious conflicts. — In the fourteenth century 
 it seemed as though France were going to lead Europe in the 
 development of a new period. Agriculture and manufactures 
 were flourishing; internal trade was active; and French ship- 
 owners, growing accustomed to longer voyages, ventured far 
 down the west coast of Africa and established trading stations 
 even on the coast of Guinea. The country was plunged again 
 into a condition of medieval chaos by the Hundred Years' War 
 (1336-1453), a war that hurt France vastly more than England 
 because it was fought entirely on French soil. French and 
 English armies, and "free companies" of organized bandits 
 ravaged the country; the weight of taxes grew; trade dwindled, 
 cities declined, and artisans emigrated. 
 
 The country had hardly recovered from this war (which 
 ended in 1453), when it was again disturbed, this time by a 
 series of civil wars between Protestants and Catholics, attended 
 by the same unfortunate economic effects. The religious con- 
 flict was finally closed by a settlement which was even more 
 disastrous; the French Protestants, to the number of nearly 
 half a million and making up the most valuable industrial 
 
FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 231 
 
 element in the population, were expelled from France as the 
 Jews and Moriscoes had been expelled from Spain. The loss 
 to France can be measured by the gain of other countries; the 
 establishment and development of important manufactures can 
 be traced in each of three countries, England, Prussia, and the 
 Netherlands, to the influx of the Huguenot refugees. 
 
 267. Effect of the absolute monarchy on French develop- 
 ment. — France secured finally freedom from foreign invasion 
 and from internal dissension, but at a terrible cost. The 
 whole power of the state was vested in the hands of the king. 
 The stockholders lost all power ta4H'edrthe concerna-ef-the 
 
 company:. ^^Rarely this power was exercised by a king both 
 
 wise and strong, like Henry IV. During the long reign of 
 Louis XIV it was wielded by a king who was strong but who 
 was not wise; who wasted the rich resources of his country in 
 fruitless wars, while he neglected the opportunities for reforms 
 at home and for commercial expansion abroad. Too often 
 the rule was held only in name by the king, but in fact by the 
 royalN^ayontes, worthless adventurers who by pleasing the taste 
 of the sovereign gained the power to direct as they chose the 
 policy of this great country. This evil is especially marked 
 in the eighteenth century, when England was prepared to take 
 advantage of every mistake of France, in building up her 
 world power. 
 
 268. Failure to reform conditions inherited from the feudal 
 period. — The absolute monarchy played a vital part in the 
 history of French commerce, not only by its disregard of com- 
 mercial interests abroad, but by its lack of business sense in 
 home affairs. As the details will appear in the following pages 
 it is necessary here to. call attention only to some general 
 points. The kings did not complete the unification of the 
 country by breaking down the feudal toll barriers, of which 
 some remained until the Revolution. They encouraged the 
 separation of classes^ just as they allowed the separation of 
 sections; the French were split into groups, mutually jealous 
 and hostile, which lacked the feeling^of common interest, and 
 
232 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 were unable to cooperate. The most serious distinction be- 
 tween classes was in regard to taxation. Nobles and clergy 
 were granted privileges, often of a kind that hindered produc- 
 tion, while they paid very little to the public treasury. The 
 productive classes, on the other hand, the business men and 
 laborers, bore nearly the whole burden. The weight of this 
 burden was tremendous, for the machinery of government had 
 become more and more complicated and more and more in- 
 efficient with the passage of time, so that the government had 
 to demand a great deal from the taxpayers to accomplish very 
 little in the public service. An idea of the condition in the 
 eighteenth century can be gathered from the fact that the 
 peasant is estimated to have paid from one half to four fifths 
 of his gross income to a government which gave him almost 
 nothing in return. 
 
 269. Bloom of French commerce in the fifteenth century as 
 shown in the business of Jacques Coeur. — Returning now from 
 this political survey to the history of commerce proper, we 
 find before the year 1500 one name standing out prominently 
 in the history of French commerce, that of Jacques Coeur, a 
 merchant of Bourges. A contemporary says of him: "His 
 ships carried to the East the cloths and merchandise of the 
 kingdom. On their return they carried back from Egypt and 
 the Levant different silk stuffs, and all kinds of spices. On 
 their arrival in France some of these ships ascended the Rhone, 
 while others went to supply Catalonia and the neighboring 
 provinces, competing in this way with the Genoese and the 
 Catalonians in a branch of trade that up to that time they 
 alone had exploited." At the height of his fortunes, about 
 1450, he had a silk factory in Florence, did business with 
 England and thought of establishing an office in Flanders also. 
 The work of Coeur survived him, and French commerce devel- 
 oped rapidly in the intervals of peace following. Great interest 
 was felt in France in the explorations of the sixteenth century, 
 and though the French were behind the Spanish and Portu- 
 guese in the work, they led the English and Dutch, and the 
 
FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 233 
 
 names of \errazano (an Italian in the French service) and 
 Cartier testify to their energy. 
 
 ^6. The bulk of French commerce still with nearby coxm- 
 tries. — France was still unprepared, however, to engage ex- 
 tensively in oceanic commerce. The chief part of its trade 
 in the sixteenth century was with its immediate neighbors; 
 it found the best market for its exports in Spain, and it sought 
 a large part of its imports in Italy. French military expedi- 
 tions to Italy about 1500 had far more effect at the time than 
 the discovery of the New W orld or of the sea route to India; 
 the Italians stimulated and gratified new tastes and introduced 
 new methods in business. The best days of the Levant trade 
 had passed away, but the number of French ships engaged in 
 it increased rapidly, until the outbreak of the religious wars 
 at home. France shared with Venice the profits of its trade, 
 and was the first of the European states to secure from the 
 Sultan at Constantinople a " capitulation " in the modern form, 
 defining the condition on which foreigners could trade. 
 
 271. Decline during the period of the religious wars. — The 
 promising development was checked by the rel yious war s of 
 the later sixteenth century; France must endure a period of 
 anarchy at home and powerlessness abroad. French commerce 
 declined at its source, as production languished; and was 
 attacked abroad by competitors and by the pirates who in- 
 fested the coasts. About 1600 the French merchant marine 
 had almost disappeared from the Atlantic; voyages to foreign 
 lands had ceased, and even the coasting trade had passed into 
 the hands of the English, Flemish, and Dutch. Marseilles 
 still maintained relations with the Levant, but the French 
 merchants there were being mercilessly bled by Turkish gov- 
 ernors, and were being rapidly driven out of the market by 
 the English and Dutch. France seemed actually saved from 
 ruin by the few years of peace and good government given by 
 Henry IV and his minister Sully. 
 
 272. Recovery after i6oo. — The first three quarters of the 
 seventeenth century, until the disastrous foreign wars of 
 
234 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Louis XIV, were on the whole a period of peace and progress, 
 Under Henry IV taxes were low, the means of internal com- 
 munication by land and water were restored and improved, 
 and new industries were introduced. The revival of trade 
 was shown in the prosperity of fairs. The great foreign min- 
 ister, Richelieu, was interested niainly in questions of politics, 
 and hampered the development of French resources by heavy 
 taxes, but in some ways he continued the work of Henry IV. 
 The English of this period called themselves "Kings of the 
 ^ea" and termed Richelieu a "fresh-water admiral"; French 
 ships, afraid to refuse the English a salute and unwilling to 
 accord it, sailed under the Dutch flag. Richelieu said, in the 
 government newspaper, "France, bounded by two seas, can 
 maintain herself only by sea power,'' and began the construc- 
 tion of a navy which would give confidence to the merchant 
 marine. 
 
 273. Founding of commercial companies, and colonial ex- 
 pansion. — The revival of French commerce was evidenced 
 by the incorporation of companies designed to trade with 
 distant parts of the world, and by the encouragement and 
 growth of colonization. The list of commercial companies 
 founded, 1599-1642, including reorganizations, amounted to 
 twenty-two, including in its scope Canada, the West Indies, 
 Guinea, the west coast of Africa, Madagascar, East India, 
 and the Malay Archipelago (Java, etc.). The government 
 accorded great privileg^s^ 4^o the companies, and the royal 
 influence was exerted in every way to help them; men were 
 forced even by intimidation to invest in them, and nobles 
 were allowed to participate without lowering the dignity of 
 their order. The colonies were likewise pushed by the force 
 of the government ; emigration was encouraged and discharged 
 soldiers and poor girls were sent out by the government to 
 further the growth of population. The number of Europeans 
 in Canada was perhaps 2,500 in 1660, and increased to 10,000 
 in the next twenty years; a considerable number of French 
 settled also in various islands of the West Indies. France 
 
 / 
 
FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 235 
 
 stood next to Spain as a colonial power, measuring merely by 
 the area to which she could lay claim. 
 
 274. Reasons for the failure of these enterprises. — Most 
 of these commercial and colonial enterprises were failures. 
 They showed the characteristic faults of the time: inefficiency 
 of organizatLori,^ failure to appreciate the difficulties of their 
 task, and impatience in their attempts to solve the problems. 
 They had special elements of weakness, moreover, in their 
 rather artificial character, and in the fact that they carried 
 with them abroad the class distinctions and prejudices of the 
 home country. Still, the seventeenth century was for all 
 nations a time of experiment in distant commerce and coloni- 
 zation; a large proportion of failures was natural, and the 
 French had attained a sufficient measure of success before 
 1700 to have enabled them to enter the international compe- 
 tition of the eighteenth century with good prospects. Their 
 prospects were blighted, and France lost its opportunity to 
 become a "world-power" by the fault of the French political 
 constitution, which put the interests of the people at the 
 mercy of one man, the king. 
 
 275. Mistaken policy of Louis XIV. — The " Great Mon- 
 arch,;' Louis XIV; did not lack good advisers. The philosopher 
 Leibnitz proposed, at this critical period in French history 
 when the country could choose to be either a land or a sea 
 power, that it should select the latter alternative, and base its 
 greatness on control of the sea and of commerce. He said 
 that France needed peace at home to permit an expansion of 
 its powder abroad, where the richest prizes of power were to be 
 had; and he urged the occupation of Egypt, to give France 
 the control of trade to the Levant and the" far East. But 
 Louis thought that the French frontier was too near to Paris 
 and saw tempting morsels of territory on the other side of it; 
 he found the arrogance of the Dutch galling to his pride; he 
 wanted to raze the Pyrenees by putting a French prince on 
 the Spanish throne. He engaged, therefore, in a series of 
 continental wars continuing nearly fifty years, which returned 
 
236 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 little or no gain in Europe, and destroyed the power of France 
 in the other continents. Louis' policy prompted his biographer 
 to a comment of sad significance, "The inhabitants of the 
 several nations of Europe have scarce ever any interest in the 
 wars of their sovereigns." 
 
 This sovereign found France vigorous and offering brilliant 
 promises of development; he left her weighted with taxes and 
 debt. A distinguished Frenchman said toward the close of 
 this reign that a tenth of the people were reduced to beggary, 
 and of the remainder over one half were in no condition to give 
 alms, they were so near to* beggary themselves. 
 
 276. Decline of the French colonial empire in the eighteenth 
 century. — The colonial possessions which France surrendered 
 to England atjhe close of the wars (the Hudson's Bay Terri- 
 tory, Nova^cotia, and Newfoundland) seem comparatively 
 unimportant, but their loss was significant. The two countries 
 had chosen different paths. England continued to build up 
 a coloni5J_empire; France continued to spend her resources in 
 continental wars, at the cost of her commerce and her colonies. 
 The Seven Years' War, ending in 1763, marks practically the 
 end of the conflict. France surrendered all her possessions on 
 the North American continent, and some of those in the West 
 Indies aruL. Africa; and abandoned forever the hope, at one 
 time most promising- of building up an empire in India. So 
 little were the colonies appreciated in France that some good 
 Frenchmen rejoiced at their loss, and only wished that, more 
 of "those wretched possessions" might have been transferred, 
 to ruin the enemy! 
 
 277. Growth, notwithstanding, in the commerce of France. 
 — The reader must not infer from preceding paragraphs that 
 French commerce was stationary or declining in the eighteenth 
 century. Colonial expansion was often a long-time invest- 
 ment, from which a country could hope to recover the full 
 return only after the lapse of generations, sometimes after the 
 colony had established its freedom. The full effect of the 
 French policy is apparent only in the nineteenth century, and 
 
FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 237 
 
238 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 elements which we have not yet considered must be taken 
 into account to explain why France has been passed by other 
 countries in the race for industrial supremacy. In the eigh- 
 teenth century, in spite of a misguided foreign policy, in spite 
 of burdensome taxes, and in spite of 'a vicious organization of 
 internal trade and manufactures which will be described later, 
 France profited by her size and resources to build up a great 
 foreign trade. Some features of this trade will be apparent 
 from the following table, to which the same remarks apply 
 that have already been made on the subject of statistics. 
 The figures show in millions of livres (and a rough equivalent) 
 the trade of France with the various continents in 1716, when 
 the country was just recovering from war and commerce was 
 unduly depressed, and 1787, when a short period of unusually 
 active trade preceded the French Revolution. 
 
 Commerce of France by Continents 
 
 278. Analysis of French commerce in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. — Without attempting to draw too much from figures 
 which are known to be inaccurate, we can base on this table 
 some few important conclusions. The commerce of France 
 grew at a rate not far from that of England's in the eighteenth 
 century. The commerce of France, however, continued in 
 much greater degree to be European; the chief trade of the 
 country was with its neighbors, Italy and Germany, and, 
 after them, with England and the Baltic. To these countries 
 France sent manufactures amounting to less than one third 
 of the total exports (122 million), the remainder being made 
 up. of articles of food and drink and various other raw materials. 
 
^b 
 
 FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 239 
 
 The failure of France to manufacture goods which would hold 
 their own in the world market must be regarded as her vital 
 weakness. We see it especially well illustrated in the trade 
 with the United States. During the later years of the Revo- 
 lution (1781-1783) France sent to the United States exports 
 amounting to over eleven million livres a year. A few years 
 afterward (1787-1789), when the restoration of peace should 
 have stimulated the trade, it had dropped to less than two 
 millions. The French had sent poor wares, and could not 
 hold the trade when the English were free to compete again. 
 
 279. Value of the French sugar colonies. — It was the 
 fortune of the French to keep of their colonies in America 
 just those which were capable of the most rapid economic 
 development. They were West India islands in which sugar 
 was produced by slave labor. Comparatively few Frenchmen 
 had settled in the islands, and in the long run they were to 
 prove of little advantage to the home country, but in the 
 eighteenth century they were veritable gold mines. The lead- 
 ing position in sugar production, which had first been taken 
 by the Portuguese in Brazil, passed early from them to the 
 English, and was taken before 1750 by the French, who soon 
 controlled the European market. A part, also, of the imports 
 from Africa comprised sugar from islands in the Indian ocean, 
 while the African slave trade was exploited for the benefit of 
 American planters. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Striking characteristics and chief weaknesses of the political 
 system of France. [Seebohm, Prot. rev., 40-46, 210-212; Cheyney, 
 Eur. background, 115-121; Taine, Ancient regime.] 
 
 2. Effect of the Hundred Years' War (a) on the people, (6) on the 
 power of the king. [Adams, Growth, chap. 9.] 
 
 3. Effect upon France of the religious wars, and the emigration of 
 the Huguenots. [Adams, 180 ff., 227 ff.] 
 
 4. Write a report on the career of Jacques Cceur. [Encyc. Brit.] 
 
 5. Write a report on one of the French explorers. [Manuals of U. S. 
 history and references; Thwaites, France in Amer., chap. 1: Parkman, 
 Pioneers of France.] 
 
240 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 6. Write a brief report on the history of the commerce of Marseilles. 
 [Encyc] 
 
 7. Reforms under Henry of Navarre. [Adams, Growth, p. 183 f¥.; 
 P. F. Willert, Henry of Navarre, N. Y., Putnam, 1893, $1.50, chap. 8.] 
 
 8. Reforms by Richelieu, 1624-1642. [J. B. Perkins, Richelieu, 
 N. Y., Putnam, 1900, $1.50, chaps. 6, 9.] 
 
 9. Economic organization and commerce of the French in America. 
 [Bateson in Camb. mod. hist., vol. 7, chap. 3; Thwaites, France, chap. 8; 
 Parkman, Old regime, part 2.] 
 
 10. Make a written summary of the wars of Louis XIV, showing 
 gains and losses of territory, in Europe and in the rest of the world. 
 [Adam Growth, p. 216 ff.] 
 
 11. Opportunity lost by Louis XIV to build up an empire by sea 
 power. [Mahan, Sea power, chap. 2, and pp. 141 ff., 198 ff., 219 ff.] 
 
 12. Prepare a written summary of the results of the French wars of 
 the eighteenth century. [Adams, Growth, chap. 14.] 
 
 13. Prepare a graphic chart from the table of figures, sect. 277, as 
 suggested above in the case of England, and study the conclusions to be 
 drawn from figures and chart. 
 
 14. Combine the charts for England and for France, and draw con- 
 clusions from the comparison. Endeavor, if possible, by extending your 
 reading, to settle the questions which this comparison will suggest. Note, 
 however, that the figures refer to different dates, that they are a far less 
 accurate index of the facts than you would suppose, and, finally, that the 
 reduction to modern currency is very rough. 
 
 15. Write a report on the history and commerce of one of the follow- 
 ing West India islands under French rule: (a) San Domingo, (6) Guade- 
 loupe, (c) Martinique. [Encyclopedia; Homans' Cyc. of commerce; 
 C. B. Norman, Colonial France, or Bryan Edwards' History, if that book 
 is available.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Of the general works on French history, Adams, ** Growth of the 
 French nation, is excellent. 
 
 Of the works on particular periods all the books of James Breck Per- 
 kins can be highly recommended for the attention paid to economic con- 
 ditions; I refer above only to the small book on Richelieu. See the A. L. A. 
 Catalogue for titles of others. Paul Lacroix, The XVIIIth century, Lon- 
 don, no date, is a popular illustrated work, with a chapter on commerce, 
 of no great importance. Books discussing the conditions leading to the 
 French Revolution are valuable for the light they throw on the organiza- 
 tion of France in the period of modern history. Books by Taine, E. J. 
 Lowell, and R. H. Dabney will be useful in this connection; and vol. 4, 
 
FRANCE: SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 241 
 
 no. 5, of the Univ. of Penn. Translations (Typical Cahiers of 1789) is a 
 convenient selection from sources. 
 
 A bibliography of French colonial history in America will be found in 
 the Guide of Channing and Hart, in the Cambridge mod. hist., vol. 7, pp. 
 766-771, or in R. S. Thwaites, France in America, N. Y. Harper, 1905. 
 The last named book is not so serviceable for purposes in view here as 
 others in the same series; and the student will turn by preference to Cam- 
 bridge mod. hist., vol. 7, chap. 3, where the subject of the French in 
 America (1608-1744) is treated by Miss Mary Bateson, with due regard to 
 economic interests. Of Parkman's works see especially The old regime, 
 Boston, Little, 1902, $2. Norman, Colonial France, London, 1886, covers 
 briefly the history of all the French colonies; the French West Indies are 
 included in A. K. Fiske. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 FRANCE: POLICY 
 
 280. History of the French customs tariff. — After this 
 survey of the development of French commerce we can gain 
 an appreciation of the opportunities for still greater growth 
 that were lost, by considering the obstacles with which the 
 nierchant had to contend. 
 
 » First of all, as a matter of course, there was the customs 
 tariff on the frontier. This went through the normal course 
 of development in the period under consideration. The gov- 
 ernment attempted to reduce to some sort of system the 
 scattered duties of the earlier period; and under the influence 
 of mercantilist doctrines it ceased to use the duties chiefly for 
 raising revenue. The idea of using the tariff to protect home 
 industries, which was at first held vaguely and applied only 
 occasionally, gained strength with time and was made by 
 Colbert, a minister of Louis XIV, the chief point in the tariff 
 system. In 1664, and again three years later, the duties were 
 raised to protect home manufactures; duties were raised two- 
 fold and more, and when wares were found still entering the 
 kingdom they were in some cases absolutely prohibited. The 
 high tariff led to reprisals on the part of other countries, and 
 strained political relations with them; it was one of the causes 
 of open war with the Dutch. It remained throughout the 
 period a serious obstacle to commerce with advanced industrial 
 countries like England and Netherland; the breaches made in 
 it by commercial treaties were comparatively unimportant; 
 and smuggling formed in France as in England the real safety- 
 valve of the commercial system. 
 
 281. Persistence of customs frontiers inside France. — Far 
 
 242 
 
FRANCE: POLICY 243 
 
 more serious than the frontier tariff were the customs duties 
 inside of France. The French kings had made their country 
 by the political union of feudal fragments, and had never 
 used their great power to abolish the evidences of former 
 separation and to unify their territory for the purposes of 
 commerce. We must distinguish three different sections of 
 the country. The North, roughly speaking, was an area in 
 which internal trade was free, i.e., in which the provinces were 
 not separated by customs barriers. The South, on the other 
 hand, was composed of provinces "reputed foreign" which 
 had kept their tariffs, so that trade here was not free, and 
 wares passing between this and other parts of France had to 
 pay duty. Still a third section was the East, "provinces 
 foreign in fact''; these provinces did not form part of Fraiice 
 at all, commercially speaking, for they were outside the national 
 customs frontier, enjoying free trade with other countries and 
 paying duties when they sent wares to other parts of France. 
 If the reader will recall the economic evils that resulted in the 
 Middle Ages from the separation of districts he will readily 
 appreciate how much France lost by carrying over a medieval 
 system to modern times. It was impossible for a district to 
 make the most of its resources by specializing in production. 
 A producer did not have France for a market ; a consumer did 
 not have France for his source of supply; each was bound by 
 provincial restrictions. 
 
 282. Persistence of local toll barriers. — Still the picture 
 is not complete. There were not only provincial tariffs inside 
 of France but also local customs inside the provinces. Let us 
 consider the case of a merchant of Paris who desired to export 
 a package of cloth to England in the sixteenth century. He 
 had to pay not only the national export duty, but also at 
 fifteen places on the way down the Seine he had to pay local 
 customs; at Rouen he must pay provincial customs; and we 
 must add to his list of expenses freight, pilotage, etc. Wine 
 carried from Bercy (near the Swiss frontier) to Paris, in the 
 next century, had to pay sixteen different dues on the way to 
 
244 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 market. In the sixteenth century there were over a hundred 
 tolls or customs on the Loire; in the next century there were 
 still twenty-eight on the stretch from Orleans to Nantes; and 
 some persisted till the French Revolution. Conditions im- 
 proved in the course of time, as the above figures suggest, 
 but improvement was obstructed by the opposition of local 
 interests and retarded by the delay of the law; and the Revo- 
 lution was needed to wipe away these remnants of the Middle 
 Ages with many others. 
 
 283. Manufactures; the gild system maintained in spite of 
 its bad effects. — Before we leave the commercial history of 
 France in this period we must consider still another subject, 
 the organization of manufacturing, to understand why the 
 country did not make better use of its resources, and why it 
 entered the nineteenth century handicapped in competition 
 with a country like England. Three general topics will be 
 considered: (1) the gild system; (2) the national regulation of 
 manufactures; (3) the royal or privileged manufactures. 
 
 (1) The gilds which in England during this period gave 
 place to a more modern and more efficient system persisted 
 in France and even extended their influence. When the 
 government was in want of money it found the gilds mere 
 convenient subjects of taxation than scattered artisans; for 
 fiscal reasons, therefore, and not for any economic advantages, 
 it encouraged and even compelled artisans to unite in gilds 
 on the old model. The result was a rigid separation of allied 
 trades and a complication of processes which would seem 
 incredibly stupid to a modern merchant or to the head of a 
 modern factory. 
 
 284. Separation of trades. — At Amiens there were nine 
 distinct corporations, each with its specific regulations, engaged 
 in the manufacture of wOolens alone. Every gild watched 
 jealously to see that another gild did not infringe on its petty 
 field, and there was an interminable bickering among them 
 over the question of monopoly. The quarrel of the goose- 
 roasters and the poulterers lasted half a century, and went 
 
FRANCE: POLICY 245 
 
 against the pQulterers, who were restricted to the sale of 
 uncooked game; but the roasters emerged from the conflict 
 only to meet another foe, the cooks, who were flushed with a 
 recent triumph over the gild of " vinegarers-mustarders " (who 
 made sauces); and after another half-century the cooks suc- 
 ceeded in limiting the right of the roasters to sell cooked meat. 
 This is an example of the conflicts which all the time absorbed 
 the energy and the resources of people who were engaged in 
 kindred lines of retail trade and manufactures; cobblers and 
 shoemakers; old-clothes men and tailors; watchmakers and 
 clock-makers; bakers and restaurant-keepers; and so on through 
 a list that seems interminable. Some tradesmen had a specially 
 long list of enemies. The mercers, for instance, who dealt in 
 certain lines of dry-goods, in the course of a century had 
 sixteen decisions of the supreme court (Parlement) in their 
 conflict with the glovers; and fought also the "bonneters- 
 cappers," and nearly all the other tradesmen whose wares they 
 sold. The question, who had the right to make and sell buttons, 
 rose nearly to the dignity of a question of state; search was 
 made in private houses for illegal buttons, and private individ- 
 uals were arrested in the street for wearing them. 
 
 285. Influence of the gilds in preventing technical progress. 
 — Space is lacking for a description of all the evils that the 
 gild system entailed on French industry in this period, and 
 the reader is referred to the general discussion of the gilds in 
 a previous chapter, with the assurance that all the evils there 
 enumerated were well represented in France. We cannot leave 
 the topic, however, without notice of the obstacles which the 
 gilds put in the way of inventions and technical improvements. 
 A coppersmith who devised a new helmet was set upon by 
 the armorers; a hatter, who improved his wares by mixing 
 silk with the wool, was attacked by all the other hatters; the 
 inventor of sheet lead was opposed by the plumbers; a man 
 who had made a success in print-cloths was forced to return 
 to antiquated methods by the dyers. The gildsmen opposed 
 not only new wares and methods, but also the use of machinery 
 
246 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and production on a large scale. A Lyons silk-weaver could 
 keep only four Ipoms; a Lille serge-maker secured the right to 
 have twenty looms, that he might carry on experiments looking 
 to improvement of the manufacture, only by special privilege 
 and against the vigorous protest of the city government. In 
 spite of all opposition there was improvement, but the diffi- 
 culties were so great that nine reformers must have failed 
 where one succeeded. The history of the French gilds of this 
 period is a history of wasted opportunities. 
 
 286. Narrow restrictions imposed on manufactures by the 
 government. — (2) Industries were tied down not only by the 
 narrow regulations of the gilds but also by laws of the central 
 government. Every government believed in this period that 
 it was" unwise to let manufacturers follow their own ideas in 
 all respects, to stand or fall according to their success in pleasing 
 the public. Even England had an extensive system, prescrib- 
 ing the standards for the products of certain manufactures. 
 The English system, however, did comparatively little harm, 
 if it accomplished little good, while there can be no question 
 that a similar system in France was carried so far that it was 
 a serious check to industrial development. This excessive 
 growth of government regulation was most marked under 
 Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV, to whom reference has 
 already been made as a leader in the extension of the protec- 
 tive tariffs; and the system continued throughout the period. 
 Taking the cloth manufacture for an illustration, Colbert fixed 
 by law, for each kind of cloth, the length and breadth, the 
 dimensions of the selvage, the number of threads in the warp, 
 the quality of the raw materials, and the method of manufac- 
 ture. His instructions for dyeing contained 317 articles, to 
 which dyers must conform. To fix responsibility and force 
 compliance all cloth had to bear the special marks of the 
 weaver, dyer, and finisher, the seal of the gild, and sometimes 
 another mark. These regulations grew constantly more com- 
 plicated; an official said in 1787 that the regulations on manu- 
 factures filled eight volumes in quarto. 
 
FRANCE: POLICY 247 
 
 287. Burden of these restrictions on manufactures. — There 
 can be no question, either of the honesty of Colbert's intentions 
 or of the energy he showed in carrying them out. He sent out 
 agents everywhere to study industries and to talk with the 
 manufacturers, that he might legislate to the best advantage. 
 One man, however, cannot know a hundred businesses better 
 than the men who are carrying them on. Colbert and his 
 successors were ignorant of many points, were deceived in 
 many others. The result was a mass of regulations of which 
 many were utterly bad, injuring both producer and consumer. 
 The regulation prescribing a minimum breadth for cloth would 
 have killed an industry in one part of France that wove strips 
 for flags, an industry in another part that could sell cloth 
 cheaper by weaving so narrow a breadth that one man could 
 tend the loom. These industries, after a tedious and expensive 
 delay, secured exemption from the law; others, less fortunate, 
 were destroyed. A manufacturer ran always the risk of having 
 his wares confiscated, not because they were bad and people 
 did not want them, but because they failed to conform in some 
 point to hide-bound regulations. An official inspector, shortly 
 before the French Revolution, said that in every week of years 
 past he had seen 80 or 100 pieces of cloth, good except from 
 the government standpoint, cut in pieces or burned because 
 they were irregular. Even the French revolted at some of the 
 regulations, and half of the laws were evaded with the con- 
 nivance of officials. 
 
 288. Special privileges granted to certain manufactures; 
 resulting—abuses. — (3) While the government restricted in 
 this fashion the natural development of manufactures, it 
 granted not only exemption from its own rules but liberal 
 grants of money taken from taxpayers to stimulate favored 
 industries. This practice, begun in the sixteenth century, 
 grew under and after Colbert. It enabled certain industries 
 to expand as they would otherwise have been unable to do, 
 and to reach the higher grade of organization which was 
 coming as a natural growth in England. Unfortunately, how- 
 
248 A mSTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ever, the privileges went not to the most deserving but to the 
 loudest and most adroit claimants. To gain the privileges, 
 which included everything from exemption from taxes and 
 handsome subsidies down to titles of nobility, the manufac- 
 turer did not need to show that he had some technical improve- 
 ment to introduce; it was sufficient if he promised to bring in 
 a foreign industry or even to extend one already in existence 
 at home. The royal factories abused their power to raise 
 prices to the consumers and to lower the wages of the laborer. 
 Some of them came to be regarded as public calamities. They 
 showed in general the characteristics of the hothouse plant, 
 which cannot thrive unaided, and most of them failed after a 
 longer or shorter career. We can say of them as of many other 
 manifestations of the French policy of the period; some good 
 may have resulted in ways unknown to us, but the evils are 
 apparent, and justify us in calling the policy bad. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. The protective policy, as applied by Colbert. [Palgrave's Diet.; 
 A. J. Sargent, Economic policy of Colbert, N. Y., 1899, chap. 4.] 
 
 2. Measure on a map the length of one or more of the stretches on 
 which tolls were levied, sect. 282; estimate the average distance separating 
 toll barriers; apply to a map of your own vicinity. 
 
 3. If you are familiar with the organization of some modem manu- 
 facture write an essay showing how efficiency would be impaired by- 
 insisting on the separation of allied trades. [The advanced student will 
 find helpful and suggestive on this and similar topics, Bucher, Indust. ev., 
 chaps. 6, 7, 8.] 
 
 4. Write a report on any instances known to you of bad results fol- 
 lowing the strict division of occupations among trade unions. 
 
 5. Write a report on any instances known to you of opposition to 
 technical improvements, the introduction of machinery, etc., by modern 
 trade unions. 
 
 6. Attempt of Colbert to establish regulations for manufacturers: 
 object, methods, variety of regulations, results. [Sargent, Colbert, 
 chap. 3.] 
 
 7. With what object and to what extent do governments now seek 
 to regulate manufactures? [Farrer, State in relation to trade, London 
 & N. Y., Macmillan, $1.] 
 
FRANCE: POLICY . 249 
 
 8. Compare with the French the English experience with privileged 
 manufactures. [Hewins, Eng. trade, chap. 1; Encyc. Brit., article Mo- 
 nopoly.] 
 
 9. Origin and early history of the modem system of patents for in- 
 ventions. [Same references; Encyc, article Patents.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See preceding chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 THE GERMAN STATES 
 
 289. Political survey of Germany about 1500. — After con- 
 sidering a country in which the central government was, so 
 to speak, too strong for the interests of commercial develop- 
 ment, it will be instructive to take up countries in which it 
 was certainly too weak, Germany and Italy. 
 
 Germany presented a striking contrast in its political and 
 in its economic development at the beginning of the period, 
 about 1500. In political organization, the central government 
 had almost no power; it was the mere shadow of a reality. 
 The real power rested in hundreds of petty states, of which 
 some were but a few square miles in extent. There was no 
 authority which could keep in order these little states and the 
 different classes of people which composed them. The history 
 of Germany in this period is a sad story of conflicts between 
 classes, — peasants, burghers, knights, and princes; conflicts 
 between Catholics and Protestants; conflicts between the states 
 themselves. In these struggles the best energies of the Ger- 
 mans were absorbed; they were marking time or even going 
 backward while the more fortunate peoples of Europe were 
 advancing. The Germans learned at last to despair of realizing 
 their dream of a national government. Not all parts of the 
 country, however, were equally unfortunate; some came under 
 the rule of princes who managed to build up a strong power at 
 home and abroad. Two of these local states are of especial 
 importance, for between them they have divided the fragments 
 of the old Germany, and made great states in modern Europe. 
 One of them, Prussia, is the nucleus of what we now call 
 Germany. The other, Austria, which included the Germans 
 
 250 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 
 
 251 
 
 of the South, added to them fragments of territory peopled 
 by other races, and made the state of Austria-Hungary. 
 
 290. Development of the economic organization. — There 
 was a contrast, it was said, between the political and the eco- 
 nomic development. The very lack of a central power had 
 
 GERMANY ^ Ei^E ^^ X^ ^^^^ 
 
 540 18th GENTUEY '^-v^N^ 1 .^=l& ^^J^^ ^-V'' ^ ^ \\ 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 fXl 
 
 
 :) ^KAf 
 
 y^^^^^^ A 1 
 
 ^^R3J 
 
 ^-^—Long^ua. _ 
 
 ' EMt Irom 1 
 
 i\ GrwnwicKCy^^ln" _ Ig-O BOgiiAY ENS. CO |l 
 
 The objects of the map are: (1) to show the possessions of the Hohenzollerns (Prussian) 
 and Hapsburgs (Austrian); (2) to show the small fragments of which remaining Ger- 
 many was composed. To preserve clearness, many of the smaller fragments are not 
 indicated. Note that the Empire included some states not German (Flanders), and 
 did not include all German states (East Prussia, Silesia). 
 
 enabled some of the sections and classes to advance rapidly 
 by freeing them from control. In the fifteenth century the 
 agricultural classes, who had been serfs in the Middle Ages and 
 who were to be reduced again to serfdom later by the political 
 oppression to which constant wars gave rise, were free and 
 
252 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 prosperous. The cities were more rich and populous than 
 those of any other country north of Italy. Not only had 
 manufacturing and mining made rapid progress, but banking 
 and commerce too. The Fuggers and the Welsers of southern 
 Germany were great promotors and financiers, with interests 
 extending over all Europe, from which they drew enormous 
 wealth. German merchants showed the most enterprise and 
 energy of any north of the Alps; they distributed among other 
 countries of the Continent the Levant wares which they secured 
 from Venice, and they controlled the commerce of the West of 
 Europe with the North and East. We shall begin our sketch 
 of the decline of German commerce by returning now to the 
 history of the Hanseatic League, which we left in full control 
 of this last branch of trade. 
 
 291. Condition of the Baltic trade. — The Baltic trade 
 suffered in the period about 1500 from influences over which 
 merchants had no control. The Protestant Reformation 
 caused a decline in the demand for some of its staple wares: 
 wax, which had been largely used for candles in church ser- 
 vices, and fish, of which the consumption had been greatly 
 furthered by the Catholic periods of fasting. The most valuable 
 fish, moreover, the herring, ceased to enter the Baltic Sea, and 
 by limiting their feeding ground to the North Sea enabled the 
 Dutch to become leaders in the fishing industry. Imitation 
 of Italian fashions in dress, with which the French became 
 acquainted about 1500, caused less demand for furs. All these 
 changes hurt the Baltic trade, but they were far from destroying 
 it. This trade grew, in fact, throughout the period; it could 
 afford to dispense with the luxuries of commerce for it con- 
 trolled the necessaries, grain and meat, lumber and naval 
 stores. The reasons for the decline of the Hanseatic League 
 are to be sought not in the character of the trade but in the 
 character of the League itself. 
 
 292. Decline of the Hanseatic League. — The League lacked 
 organization. The many towns of which it was composed 
 were so separated by physical distance and by divergence of 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 253 
 
 interests that they could not cooperate efficiently. They were 
 strong enough to crush other towns which sought to enter 
 their field, but they were unequal to the contest with national 
 states; and the political consolidation of the countries of 
 northern and western Europe raised up enemies with whom 
 they could not compete. In nearly twenty years (1476-1494) 
 only one common meeting of delegates was held. Dissensions 
 broke out inside the towns, and they began to quarrel among 
 themselves. Liibeck, in the center, put forth claims opposed 
 to the interests of towns on the edge of the League, on the 
 lower Rhine and in Prussia. Rising commercial towns in the 
 western part of the Netherlands, like Rotterdam and Amster- 
 dam, grew up outside the League and in opposition to it. 
 The turning-point in the decline may be put at 1535, when 
 Denmark and Sweden were strong enough to break the Hansa's 
 monopoly by opening the passage into the Baltic to the ships 
 of all peoples. Soon other states were carrying the war into 
 the enemy's country. Sweden threw the larger part of the 
 Russian trade to the Dutch. The English built up a prosperous 
 trade in the Baltic Sea and on the Arctic Ocean at Archangel. 
 They flooded the German market with English cloths, and 
 when the Hansa resisted, Elizabeth expelled the members of 
 the League from England. In 1601 an Englishman could say 
 of the Hansa towns: "Most of their teeth have fallen out, the 
 rest sit but loosely in their head." Of the great League soon 
 only three towns remained as Hanseatic members, Liibeck, 
 Bremen, and Hamburg. 
 
 293. Decline of the commerce of south Germany. — While 
 the cities of north Germany were losing their hold on a growing 
 commerce, the cities of the South found a large share of their 
 trade taken from them by the discovery of the ocean route to 
 India. The German cities (Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, etc.) 
 fought with desperation to maintain their commerce, and 
 proof exists that they carried on an active commerce with 
 Italy after they ceased to obtain there the Oriental wares, and 
 had to content themselves with Italian products. Even this 
 
254 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 trade, however, fell to a large extent into the hands of the 
 Italians, who flooded southern Germany and drove native 
 Germans out of business. 
 
 The Germans were not entirely unprepared for the changes 
 following the discoveries, for they had long gone in considerable 
 numbers to the Spanish peninsula, by land through southern 
 France or from a French or Italian harbor to Barcelona. 
 Many Germans had settled in Portugal, and for a time the 
 great merchants of south Germany shared in the Indian trade 
 at its source, in Lisbon. The great German financiers shared 
 also for a brief period in the commerce of the New World. 
 The Ellingers and Welsers leased the copper mines of San Do- 
 mingo; the Crombergers had silver mines at Sultepeque; the 
 Tetzels exploited the copper mines of Cuba. The Welsers 
 founded Venezuela by a military expedition which they financed, 
 and held the country for a few years. 
 
 294. The chief cause of decline of German commerce in 
 this period was political. — The most obvious explanation of 
 the failure of Germany to take a place with the other states in 
 the commercial expansion following the discoveries is the 
 disadvantage of her position. It has been said that the diver- 
 sion of commerce to the oceanic routes exposed the countries 
 of central Europe (Italy, Germany, etc.) to a condition of 
 commercial glaciation, such as Norway would experience 
 physically if it lost the warm current of the Gulf Stream. The 
 difference in distance of a few hundred miles in voyages of 
 thousands does not explain the matter. No physical differ- 
 ences suffice to explain why Amsterdam rose and why Hamburg 
 fell so rapidly. The weakness of Germany was not physical. 
 Nor was it economic; German merchants of this period had 
 more free capital, more business ability and greater energy 
 than the merchants of any other country. Germany's weak- 
 ness was political. The payments which merchants and other 
 Germans made in the form of taxes and loans to political 
 authority did not form a single fund which could be used for 
 furthering German interests at home and abroad. The money 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 255 
 
 went to a great number of rival governments, and was con- 
 sumed in their particular quarrels, not helping but actually 
 hurting German business interests. 
 
 295. The natural outlets of commerce stopped by hostile 
 states. — The political weakness of Germany enabled other 
 states, now rising to power, to crumble off fragments of the 
 country, in which they established a commercial policy hostile 
 to German interests. Before long the mouth of every one of 
 the large rivers which were the natural commercial outlets of 
 the country had passed under foreign control. The Rhine was 
 Dutch; the Weser Swedish; the Elbe Danish; the Oder Swedish; 
 the Vistula Polish. Tolls hampered the passage of wares as 
 effectually as though Germany were surrounded by a physical 
 barrier on the sea side; and German ships almost disappeared 
 from the ocean. 
 
 German commerce suffered especially by the rise of the 
 Dutch to an independent position. So long as Antwerp was 
 the great market of the Continent Germans traded freely with 
 it, and through it to Lisbon. The substitution of Amsterdam 
 for Antwerp was a most serious blow to German interests. 
 The Dutch had very different ideas from those of the Flemish; 
 they wanted to do all the trade themselves and to force other 
 people to a position of commercial dependence on them. They 
 made the lower Rhine practically useless for their rivals, 
 raising the tolls sixfold and more, and thereby coming into a 
 control of the trade as far as Frankfort on the Main. 
 
 296. The damage done by internal dissensions and by the 
 Thirty Years* War. — Germany was not only cut off from the 
 outside world by tariff barriers, but cut up inside by the tolls 
 of cities and territories. Every city on a trade route wanted 
 to make itself a "staple," i.e., have all goods passing the 
 vicinity brought there for taxation and for sale. Frankfort 
 on the Oder, for instance, demanded that all boats passing 
 down the river Warthe should come up to Frankfort before 
 they could continue their journey down the Oder to Stettin. 
 The cities of Stettin, Frankfort, and Breslau, all situated on 
 
256 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the Oder, instead of using that river for peaceable exchange, 
 made bitter commercial war on each other with tolls and 
 prohibitions. Conditions grew still worse after the Thirty 
 Years' War (1618-1648), a terrible conflict which, without 
 exaggeration, cost Germany one hundred, perhaps two hundred, 
 years of development. The physical means of transportation 
 declined. On the Elbe, for instance, the dikes ceased to be 
 repaired, the tow-path disappeared, the banks crumbled; and 
 sand bars and snags became so common that navigation was 
 difficult and costly. Tolls not merely doubled; they increased 
 fivefold and more. Space is lacking for a description of all 
 the evils; they were practically a reproduction of the conditions 
 which happier states had left behind them five hundred years 
 before. 
 
 297. Restriction of manufactures by the gilds. — German 
 manufactures followed about the same course as that of the 
 French which we have traced above. The gilds merited the 
 term given them by an economist of the seventeenth century 
 who said they were the "curse of Germany"; they seem to 
 have been in some respects even more narrow than the French 
 gilds. The same old evils reappear, but the reader must be 
 asked to take these for granted and to direct his attention to 
 some new aspects of the gild organization. Specially note- 
 worthy are the obstacles put in the way of any man who 
 desired to become a full member of a gild. Many gilds suc- 
 ceeded in making the exercise of the trade a family monopoly 
 by the regulation that no man could become a master who 
 did not marry the daughter or the widow of a master. One 
 gild expelled a man because he had married a wife whose 
 grandmother was alleged to have come from a shepherd's 
 family; other gilds expelled members because they had ridden 
 an executioner's horse or drunk with an executioner. A man 
 had at best to pay very high fees to become a master, and 
 this artificial restriction on the number of full members not 
 only kept the ordinary workmen in a wretched position, but 
 also raised the price of goods to the consumer. 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 257 
 
 The monopoly of the gilds became more oppressive all the 
 time. Most of their money, except the considerable part they 
 spent in carousing, they used in lawsuits and in quarrels with 
 rivals. For miles around a German town the gilds permitted 
 no competitors, and they made it a regular part of their busi- 
 ness to hunt down and exterminate independent producers. 
 
 298. The eighteenth century marked by general depression, 
 with some signs of improvement. — In Germany, in general, 
 there was little improvement in conditions in the eighteenth 
 century. The country was still intersected with tariff barriers. 
 The Rhine was cut into four sharply defined parts, and the 
 Elbe, by reason of tolls, had lost its trade in some wares of the 
 first importance: steel, iron, copper, olive oil, wine, fish, etc. 
 To the conflicts between cities there was still no end. The 
 cities of southern Germany, weighted with taxes and sur- 
 rounded by closed markets, declined still more in commercial 
 importance. There were, however, some hopeful signs of 
 progress. Two cities of the interior, Frankfort on the Main 
 and Leipzig, were building up a business which rested not only 
 on trade in wares but on dealings in bills of exchange, currency, 
 commercial loans, etc. Beside the rise of these banking centers 
 special importance attaches to the revival of commerce on 
 the coast of the North Sea. Hamburg and Bremen seized the 
 opportunity offered by the American Revolution and the 
 European wars to which it gave rise to extend their trade as 
 neutral carriers, and had soon passed their old rivals, the 
 Dutch. 
 
 299. The rise of Prussia important mainly from the political 
 standpoint. — Taking German commerce as a whole, we leave 
 it in 1800 still depressed and sluggish. The picture would be 
 incomplete, however, if nothing more were said. In one part 
 of Germany there had been great activity for centuries; in 
 the North and East, namely, where the ancestors of the present 
 Emperor William II were building up the state of Prussia. 
 This activity, however, was mainly political, and the history 
 of it does not belong here; we can refer to it only as a most 
 
 17 
 
258 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 remarkable example of state-making, in which commercial and 
 industrial interests were made subordinate to the establishment 
 of a strong government over a united people. The Hohen- 
 zollern rulers did not succeed in making a rich state out of a 
 group of scattered territories of which some were, in natural 
 resources, among the poorest in Germany. They did make a 
 strong state, which won for itself a place among the great 
 powers, and later took the lead in unifying Germany. 
 
 There was a moment in the history of the Hohenzollerns 
 when it seemed possible that they might anticipate the idea of 
 William II: "Our future lies upon the water." If the Great 
 Elector (1640-1688) had secured the Pomeranian coast of the 
 Baltic or kept even Stettin, he might have realized the plans 
 he held to turn Prussia into a sea power, with fleet, colonies, 
 and transmarine commerce. Fortune fixed the interests of 
 the state on land, however, and when a good Baltic harbor 
 was secured later it was too late to change. Frederick the 
 Great was urged, a century afterward, to direct his policy to 
 the sea, and actually founded some companies for trade with 
 the East, but the time had passed, or had not yet come, for 
 the success of Prussia in oceanic trade. 
 
 300. Reforms in Prussia favoring economic development. — 
 In regard to their internal conditions, however, the territories 
 of the Prussian state enjoyed a great advantage over others 
 in Germany. The obstacles to trade in the form of tolls and 
 staples were removed when political interests did not require 
 their maintenance. The tariff systems, enormously compli- 
 cated and cumbrous, were revised. The growth of manufac- 
 tures was furthered by attracting skilled artisans from other 
 countries; and the city of Berlin received a great stimulus 
 from the Huguenots who found a refuge there. Some of the 
 worst abuses of the gilds were reformed, and manufactures 
 were protected, as in France, by customs duties and by royal 
 privileges. New methods were applied in agriculture, and 
 new land was opened to settlement and cultivation; a large 
 number of the laborers, however, still remained unfree. It 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 269 
 
 would be easy to add many details, but in closing this section 
 on Germany the reader is again advised that the important 
 side of Prussian history in this period was political, not eco- 
 nomic. Prussia was preparing herself for the work of unifying 
 Germany, and to accomplish that work a strong government 
 was needed rather than a rich people. The riches have come 
 to Germany in our own time. 
 
 301. Contrast of Prussia and Austria. — Prussia was a 
 state which started in the heart of Germany (near Berlin), 
 and remained almost entirely German as it spread. Austria, 
 on the other hand, was originally a territory on the southern 
 border of the German people, the rulers of which managed by 
 skill and luck to extend their power over fragments of adjoining 
 peoples of a different stock, over Bohemians and other Slavs 
 (relatives of the Russians), and over the Magyars or Hun- 
 garians (relatives of the Turks). These other peoples were 
 behind the Germans in their industrial development; they had 
 come into Europe later, had been less subject to civilizing 
 influences and more exposed to internal quarrels and wars. 
 Furthermore, the Austrian Germans were behind the other 
 Germans, on whom they were industrially dependent in the 
 sixteenth century. Germans from the North took their manu- 
 factures into Austria for sale, carried on the trade of Austria 
 and controlled the mines of Austria. 
 
 302. Political factors hindering development of the lands 
 subject to Austria. — The territories subject to the ruling 
 family of Austria, the Hapsburgs, began the period, therefore, 
 in a backward condition, and they had no opportunity through- 
 out the period to catch up. Internal trade was hindered not 
 only by the national diversity of German, Slav, and Magyar, 
 but also by the persistence of provincial tariffs, which under- 
 went no important reform until nearly 1800, and which were 
 not abolished even then. Austria did not suffer so much as 
 Germany from civil war, but like Germany went through the 
 crisis of the religious wars, which nearly ruined Bohemia; and 
 had a plague of its own in resisting the advance of the Turks 
 
260 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 from the Balkan Peninsula. Austria suffered like France, 
 moreover, from an absolute government which too often used 
 the national resources in the interests of the royal family and 
 not in the interests of the people as a whole. 
 
 303. Slow progress of industry and commerce. — It is, 
 therefore, not surprising that in 1700 Austria stood commer- 
 cially in about the same position it had occupied two centuries 
 before. The country exported the raw products of industry, 
 wool, flax, linen, hides, copper, etc., and received them again 
 after they had been manufactured by other peoples. An 
 economist of the time said that the total manufactures of 
 Austria were not equal to those of a single Dutch city like 
 Leyden. Even this small amount of manufacture was con- 
 trolled by gilds, and suffered from the characteristic faults of 
 the gild system. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, however, the government began 
 to appreciate the importance of national commercial develop- 
 ment. It fought the claims to monopoly put forward by the 
 gilds, and encouraged manufacturers to extend their business, 
 by premiums and privileges, as in France and Prussia. Aus- 
 trian iron and steel wares made a place for themselves in 
 commerce; the cloth industry of Bohemia, once ruined by war, 
 revived again under the factory system; stockings, glass, 
 porcelain, etc., were produced in increasing quantities. 
 
 304. Attempts of the govermnent to stimulate development. 
 — The government stimulated the development 'of manufac- 
 ture by its customs tariffs as well as by its internal policy. 
 The duties on articles which the government thought could be 
 made at home were raised rapidly, especially after 1700, and 
 became in many cases prohibitory. Undoubtedly the growth 
 of manufactures was furthered by this policy, though many 
 industries betrayed the weakness of their origin by failing 
 after a short period of apparent prosperity. The tariff gave 
 rise, however, to much smuggling and corruption, and injured 
 greatly some parts of the country: the Tyrol, which lies between 
 Italy and Germany and had prospered on the transit trade; 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 261 
 
 and sections like Hungary which produced only raw mate- 
 rials, 
 
 To atone in some measure for these necessary results of a 
 protective system, the government attempted also to extend 
 aid to foreign commerce. Triest and Fiume were made free- 
 ports, i.e., they were put on the outside of the tariff frontier 
 to attract trade. Venice was forced to renounce her claim to 
 the exclusive right to navigate the Adriatic, and commercial 
 treaties were made with Turkey, Russia, and states in northern 
 Africa. Consuls were sent out to represent Austrian interests 
 in foreign counries, and attempts were made to secure a share 
 even in the trade with India. 
 
 305. Austrian commerce still backward in 1800. — Still 
 Austrian trade attained no great development. The govern- 
 ment which gave with one hand took w^th the other. Special 
 privileges did not make up for the general weakness of the 
 productive organization. Rulers complained that in spite of 
 all their efforts commerce languished. Most of the foreign 
 trade was absorbed by five companies, which divided the field. 
 Two of them were limited locally, trading with Turkey and 
 with Asia Minor respectively; while the other three traded in 
 special wares with various countries. One imported colonial 
 wares like sugar; another exported linens; while the third 
 exported various raw materials to Italy, France, and Spain. 
 During the wars beginning in 1776 Austrian merchants 
 attempted to build up a trade with North America, and an 
 agent of the government was installed at Philadelphia in 1783, 
 but during the following years of peace Austria had no chance 
 of success in competition with trade rivals. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Write a report on the political constitution of Germany at the end 
 of the Middle Ages, and the resulting conditions. [Baring-Gould, Story 
 of Germany, chaps. 46, 52; Seebohm, Prot. rev., 26-33; Janssen, Hist., 
 vol. 2, book 4, chap. 1; Freytag, Pictures, XVIIIth cent., vol. 1, chap. 4.] 
 
 2. Development of business and business methods at the beginning 
 of the period. [See above, chap. 18; Cunningham's chapter on Economic 
 
262 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 change in Cambridge mod. hist., vol. 1; Janssen, Hist., vol. 2, book 3, 
 chap. 3; Freytag, Pictures, XVth cent., vol. 1, chap. 10.] 
 
 3. Condition of manufacturing. [Janssen, Hist., vol. 2, book 3, 
 chap. 2.] 
 
 4. Condition of agriculture. [Janssen, Hist., vol. 1, book 3, chap. 1.] 
 
 5. Decline of the Baltic trade. [Zimmern, Hansa towns, period 3.] 
 
 6. Decline of the Hansa in England. [Zimmern, 324-353 ] 
 
 7. Write a brief report on the commercial history of (a) Nuremberg, 
 (6) Augsburg. [Encyc; Guide books of south Germany.] 
 
 8. Class conflicts, political and economic troubles about 1500. [See- 
 bohm, ** Prot. rev., 136-140; Janssen, Hist., vol. 4, book 7; Frank 
 Goodrich, * A social reformer of the fifteenth century, Yale Review, 
 Aug., 1896, 5: 168-181.] 
 
 9. Do the Germans control the mouths of all the rivers mentioned 
 in sect. 295 at the present time? 
 
 10. Write a report on the effects of the Thirty Years' War, from the 
 economic and commercial standpoint. [S. R. Gardiner; Thirty Years' 
 War (Epoch Ser.), N. Y., 1874, 217-221; Anton Gindely, Hist, of the 
 Thirty Years' War, N. Y., 1884, vol. 2, chap. 11; Freytag, Pictures, XVth 
 cent., vol. 2, chaps. 3, 5, 6.] 
 
 11. Write a brief report on the commercial history of one of the 
 following towns: Frankfort on the Main, Leipzig (or Leipsic), Hamburg, 
 Bremen. [Encyc; Homans, Cyc. of conunerce, for the early nineteenth 
 century.] 
 
 12. Effect of the protective tariff in building up the Prussian silk 
 industry. [Schmoller, Merc, syst., pp. 81-91.] 
 
 13. Indicate on a sketch map of Austria-Hungary the spaces occu- 
 pied by the following peoples: Germans, Bohemians, Ruthenians, Hun- 
 garians, Southern Slavs. [Atlas, Encyc] 
 
 14. The wars with the Turks: how long did they last; how far did the 
 Turks penetrate Europe; what was the effect on industry? [S. Whitman, 
 Austria, N. Y., Putnam, 1899, $1.50, chap. 16; E. A. Freeman, Ottoman 
 power in Europe, London, 1877, chaps. 4, 5.] 
 
 15. Reforms in Austria in the eighteenth century, and their effect. 
 [L. Leger, Hist, of Austro-Hungary, N. Y., Putnam, 1889, 379 ff., 388 ff.]. 
 
 16. Write a brief report on the commercial history of Vienna. [Encyc] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Writings in German are voluminous; English books on the history of 
 the period are concerned almost entirely with political affairs. The 
 translation of Janssen 's * History, St. Louis, Herder, 1897 ff., can be 
 recommended for the beginning of the period, and Freytag's * Pictures of 
 German life, London, 1862, contains some readable and useful descriptions. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 ITALY AND MINOR STATES 
 
 306. Political condition of Italy in the modem period. — In 
 
 the history of Germany we have seen the fate of a country 
 that entered the modern period lacking a political organization 
 that would enable it to hold its own in competition with rivals. 
 The history of Italy in this period presents the same conditions 
 and the same results. At the 
 end of the Middle Ages there 
 were five important states in 
 the peninsula: Milan, Venice, 
 Florence, Rome, and Naples. 
 None was strong enough to 
 unite the country; each was 
 strong enough to prevent 
 another from reaching that end. 
 The border territory of Savoy, 
 whose rulers have united the 
 peninsula in recent times, re- 
 solving, in the words of one, to 
 "treat Italy as an artichoke, to be eaten leaf by leaf," counted 
 as yet for little. The quarrels of the Italian states invited inter- 
 ference by stronger neighbors, Spanish, French, and Austrian; 
 and Italy became the prey of adventurers and tyrants who 
 lived as parasites on the resources that should have nourished 
 industry and commerce. 
 
 307. Position of Venice at the beginning of the period. — 
 Venice, which had enjoyed the commercial primacy among the 
 Italian states, saw in the Portuguese discoveries a threat to 
 her prosperity which only the strongest measures could avert. 
 
 263 
 
264 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 There was no physical reason why Venice should not adopt 
 the sea route to India, and, if necessary, fight with the Portu- 
 guese for the Indian trade at its source. All her traditions, 
 however, pointed the other way; all her investments were 
 tied up in the route through Egypt; and, most important, all 
 her resources were required in the Mediterranean. The island 
 city had been drawn into an expansion on the mainland which 
 involved her in continental intrigues and sapped her strength 
 at sea, at the very time when her sea power was of the greatest 
 importance; the navy of the Ottoman Turks was rapidly de- 
 veloping and the scourge of the Barbary pirates (from the 
 Mediterranean coast of Africa) had begun. 
 
 308. Blows at Venetian trade both by sea and land routes 
 to India. — For a moment Venice halted undecided between 
 the two routes. Venetian ambassadors were especially in- 
 structed to procure maps, letters from voyagers, and all other 
 information that would help the home government determine 
 its policy with respect to the recent developments. Venice 
 made repeated attempts to buy from Portugal the right to 
 dispose of all the spices brought to Lisbon, a proposition that 
 naturally was declined. Venice had to buy in small lots, on 
 what terms the Portuguese chose to set; more and more silver 
 flowed from Italy to Lisbon, and it became increasingly difficult 
 to get spices in Venice. Meanwhile the government was 
 sending explorers eastward, in the hope of opening one of the 
 old routes to trade, and seriously considered for a time the 
 piercing of the Suez isthmus with a canal. The position of 
 Venice in Egypt was finally ruined in 1517, when Cairo was 
 taken by the Ottoman Turks, and Venetian merchants in the 
 Levant were weighted with new dues and regulations. 
 
 309. Relative decline of Venetian commerce. — From this 
 time the energies of Venice were absorbed in an unequal 
 conflict with the Turks in the eastern Mediterranean. Venice 
 had prepared herself in a measure for the Turkish advance, by 
 removing her chief staple from Alexandria to the island of 
 Cyprus, but this too was lost in 1571 after a heroic defense. 
 
ITALY AND MINOR STATES 265 
 
 The battle of Lepanto and others following it were empty 
 victories; on the east coast of the Mediterranean Venice had 
 to surrender, and consent to trade on the terms which the 
 Turks imposed. Trade was still maintained. Aleppo became 
 in the later period a market in which the Venetians had great 
 establishments, drawing thence the wares that came by caravan 
 from Bagdad, Persia, and India. Venice herself became con- 
 stantly more beautiful, and was in the seventeenth century, 
 as now, one of the show-places of Europe, where foreign visitors 
 flocked by thousands. Her manufactures of glass and silk 
 and many artistic luxuries remained unexcelled. It is, how- 
 ever, by quantity and not quality that we measure the greatness 
 of a state's commerce; Venetian trade scarcely entitled the city 
 id a place even in the second rank of commercial states, when 
 it finally lost its independence in 1797. 
 
 310. Decline of commerce and industry in Tuscany. — The 
 history of decline in other parts of Italy must be dismissed 
 more briefly. Florence, which at the beginning of this period 
 ranked next to Venice in manufactures, trade, and banking, 
 found the markets of northern Europe closed by the Dutch 
 revolution, by the religious wars and by the tariff barriers 
 of the protective policy. Bankruptcy became frequent in the 
 latter part of the sixteenth century. The woolen manufac- 
 tures of Florence, which, it is said, employed 30,000 men in 
 1338, employed 971 in 1767. Hampered not only by weakness 
 abroad but also by restrictive legislation at home, the Tuscan 
 people declined to poverty and indolence. Prosperity was to 
 be found in only one spot, the city of Leghorn, which had 
 been made a free port; but this city prospered just because it 
 had been placed on the outside of Tuscany, and the riches 
 amassed there went largely into the hands of foreign residents. 
 
 311. Decline in other parts of Italy. — South of Tuscany 
 conditions grew still worse. The Roman territory had never 
 been of commercial importance, and the Neapolitan territory 
 lost in this period what prosperity it had once had. Under a 
 Spanish government, which was almost incredibly bad, the 
 
266 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 national resources were wasted abroad while Turks ravaged 
 the coast, kidnapping slaves, at home; and the producing 
 classes were crushed by heavy and unfair taxes. 
 
 North of Tuscany conditions were little better. The report 
 of a commercial agent who was sent by the Austrian state to 
 investigate upper Italy in 1754 shows commercial weakness 
 everywhere. The country was divided by tariff barriers into 
 a great number of distinct territories, of which scarcely any 
 were large enough to give play for the development of indus- 
 tries which they were endeavoring to protect. The forces of 
 industry and commerce were scattered and lost among a great 
 number of small towns, and trade was largely controlled by 
 foreigners, both Jewish and Christian. 
 
 312. Conditions in the Scandinavian countries. — It would 
 be unprofitable to attempt here to trace the course of com- 
 merce in all the other states of Europe during this period, and 
 this part of the book will close with a brief description of 
 commercial conditions in the North and East. The districts 
 included in Scandinavia are already familiar to the reader as 
 forming an important field for the Hanseatic trade in the 
 Middle Ages. The population was sparse, industry was unde- 
 veloped, towns were few and small; the knowledge and capital 
 necessary for an active independent trade were lacking, and 
 people were content to stay at home and let foreign merchants 
 come to them with manufactures and take away their surplus 
 products. The iron industry of Sweden, favored by rich ores, 
 extensive forests for fuel and abundant water power, attained 
 considerable importance; but the exports continued in general 
 to be raw materials, especially those used in food and for ship 
 building. Governments attempted to hurry the development 
 of tlieir peoples by protective duties and by the founding of 
 commercial companies, with slight success. Gustavus Adol- 
 phus, a king of Sweden in the seventeenth century, formed the 
 bold project of making the Baltic "a Swedish lake," by control 
 of the entrance and the coasts, but his successors proved unable 
 to maintain the position which he won. The keys of the Baltic 
 
ITALY AND MINOR STATES 267 
 
 fell into the hands of Denmark, and that country made a good 
 profit by collecting tolls on the flow of a trade to which it 
 contributed little itself. 
 
 313. Rise of Russia to a position among the European 
 states about 1700. — Russia was even more backward than 
 the Scandinavian states. Like them it had been dependent 
 on the Hanseatic merchants for its commerce with western 
 Europe, and remained passive after their fall, accepting what 
 wares reached it overland or through the port of Archangel on 
 the Arctic coast, whither English and Dutch shippers ventured. 
 Until Peter the Great opened his "window on the West," by 
 the founding of St. Petersburg on the Baltic about 1700, Russia 
 was hardly a European state. Peter attempted, with remark- 
 able energy, to bring Russia to the European standard in 
 commerce and industry as well as in politics. He reformed, 
 though he did not abolish, the system which gave the Czar a 
 monopoly of trade in the most important wares; he revised 
 the tolls on trade; he sent young men abroad to study com- 
 merce, and tried in other ways to elevate the merchant class. 
 Peter did not succeed in his attempt to free Russian commerce 
 from its dependence on western merchants, and his attempt 
 to build up a merchant marine was a failure. In the East, 
 Russian commerce fared better. Occasional caravans had 
 gone before this from Siberia to China. The Czar now sent 
 on his own account caravans which consumed three years on 
 the long trip from Peking to Moscow; and individuals developed 
 the trade which the crown had stimulated. 
 
 314. Character of Russian commerce in the eighteenth 
 century. — Russia could be regarded in the eighteenth century 
 as a European state. It belonged, however, to the Europe of 
 the Middle Ages rather than of the modern period. Most of 
 the population, including even the few who were occupied 
 with manufacturing, were serfs. The people as a whole were 
 on a low standard of living, and were densely ignorant. Com- 
 mercial law was undeveloped, and trading practices were those 
 of a half civilized community. The government interfered 
 
268 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 with exchange by arbitrary and vexatious restrictions. The 
 country could export, with rare exceptions, only raw products. 
 From China it imported tea, silk, gold, jewels, etc., of which 
 only a part was kept at home; while it was dependent on 
 western Europe for most of its colonial wares (sugar, coffee, 
 spices, and drugs), and for all the finer manufactures (textile, 
 metal, pottery, paper, etc.). 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Condition of Italy about 1500. [Seebohm, Prot. rev., 21-26, 
 with sketch-map.] 
 
 2. Venice about 1500: commerce, government, policy on sea and 
 land. [Horatio F. Brown, Venice, chaps. 16, 17; or Cambridge mod. hist., 
 vol. 1, chap. 8, by the same author.] 
 
 3. Contest of Venice with the Turks. [Brown, Venice, chap. 19.] 
 
 4. Decline of Venetian commerce. [Brown, Venice, p. 408 fP.] 
 
 5. Attempt of Gustavus Adolphus to make of Sweden a great power. 
 [Encyc. Brit., Gustavus II.] 
 
 6. Social and economic conditions in Russia about 1700. [W. R. 
 Morfill, Story of Russia, N. Y., Putnam, 1900, $1.50, chap. 13; H. M. 
 Thompson, Russian politics, N. Y., 1896, chap. 2.] 
 
 7. History of Russia in the eighteenth century. [Manuals of Euro- 
 pean history; Thompson, chap. 3.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Aside from fragmentary sections in the current manuals the reader 
 of English will find little literature available on the history of commerce 
 in the minor states. Such suggestions for collateral reading as are given 
 above will probably satisfy the needs of students who are not sufficiently 
 advanced to use foreign languages. 
 
 TOPICS FOR REVIEW 
 
 After covering the history of commerce in different countries the 
 student will find it profitable to review certain general topics, piecing 
 together what he has learned of their local history and endeavoring to get 
 a clear conception of the general development. The following are sug- 
 gested for study in the modern period (1500-1800) : (a) shipping ; (6) trans- 
 portation on roads and rivers ; (c) production and exchange of foodstuffs; 
 id) production and exchange of textile materials (flax, wool, cotton, 
 silk); (e) production and exchange of finished textiles (linen woolen, 
 
ITALY AND MINOR STATES 269 
 
 cotton, silk); (/) production and exchange of iron; (gr)' development of the 
 system of manufactures (gild, domestic and factory systems); (h) develop- 
 ment of banking; (i) effect of wars on the commerce of different countries; 
 (/) European colonial systems; (k) commercial policy; (Z) trade of Europe 
 with Asia; (m) trade of Europe with North and South America. 
 
PART IV. -RECENT COMMERCE 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 COMMERCE AND COAL 
 
 315. Statistical survey of development since 1800. — In 
 
 entering the nineteenth century the student approaches the 
 period in which commerce has achieved the most notable 
 progress. Great as former advances may have seemed to the 
 people in whose time they occurred, these sink almost to 
 insignificance when compared with the growth of commerce 
 since 1800. A recent estimate by a German author pictures 
 the progress of the export and import trade of the commercial 
 countries of the world as follows, in milliards of marks (roughly, 
 units of 250 milliondollars) : 1700,0.5; 1750, 1.0; 1800, 6; 1850, 17; 
 1899, 76. Some of the striking features of recent growth are 
 shown in the following table. It is necessary, however, to 
 warn the student that these figures, especially those for the 
 earlier part of the century, can be regarded only as approxima- 
 tions to the truth. It may not be out of place, further, to 
 advise the student to turn to the end of the chapter for sug- 
 gestions as to the best way of studying the figures. 
 
 316. Great growth of foreign commerce. — Assuming, for 
 purposes of discussion, a fair degree of accuracy in the figures, 
 some conclusions from them may be pointed out. The com- 
 merce of the world increased in this century at the astonishing 
 rate of 1,233 per cent. We have before encountered instances 
 of remarkable commercial expansion, in particular countries, 
 but we must bear in mind that the figures here are supposed 
 to include the whole world, the backward as well as the pro- 
 gressive countries, the many millions in the interior of great 
 continents who scarcely trade at all, and the Chinese, perhaps 
 in themselves a quarter of the world's population, who trade 
 
 270 
 
COMMERCE AND COAL 
 
 271 
 
 still to but a slight extent. Clearly the growth of commerce 
 in some countries must have been enormous to raise the total 
 figures to the point at which we find them. 
 
 Foreign Commerce and Production of the Countries 
 OF THE World 
 
 Year 
 
 Aggregate 
 
 Commerce 
 
 Thousand 
 
 Million Dollars 
 
 Per 
 
 Capita 
 
 Commerce 
 
 Dollars 
 
 Coal 
 
 Production 
 
 Million 
 
 Tons 
 
 Pig Iron 
 
 Production 
 
 Million 
 
 Tons 
 
 1800 
 
 1.4 
 1.6 
 1.9 
 
 2.7 
 4.0 
 7.2 
 10.6 
 14.7 
 17.5 
 19.9 
 
 2.31 
 
 2.13 
 
 2.34 
 
 2.93 
 
 3.76 
 
 6.01 
 
 8.14 
 
 10.26 
 
 11.80 
 
 13.27 
 
 11.6 
 17.2 
 25.1 
 44.8 
 81.4 
 
 142.3 
 
 213.4 
 
 340 
 
 466 
 
 610 
 
 n 4 
 
 1820 
 
 1 
 
 1820 
 
 1 .*> 
 
 1840 
 
 26 
 
 1850 
 
 44 
 
 I860 
 
 7 1 
 
 1870 
 
 11 9 
 
 1880 
 
 18 1 
 
 1890 
 
 25.1 
 37.1 
 
 1898 
 
 
 317. Increase in the relative importance of commerce. — 
 
 Not less striking than this growth in absolute quantity, as 
 measured in current values, is the growth compared with the 
 estimated increase of the world's population. The value per 
 capita ("by head") of a country's commerce is secured by 
 dividing the total amount of trade by the number of inhabi- 
 tants; it shows the average share of each person in commerce, 
 .and furnishes, therefore, some index of the relative importance 
 of commerce in different times and places. Now, even if this 
 value per capita had remained the same we should regard the 
 absolute increase in commerce as a very important fact. Com- 
 merce, however, has actually increased much faster than popu- 
 lation; the share of the average human being in the world's 
 trade has grown nearly sixfold. Let the student reflect on 
 the difference it would make to him whether he had $2 or $12 
 for spending money in a given time, and consider the extra 
 articles he could buy with the larger sum; he will then be better 
 
272 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 able to appreciate the broadening and deepening of the com- 
 mercial current in recent times. 
 
 318. The world now passing through a commercial revolu- 
 tion. — The student is now in a position to understand the 
 significance of the statement of an English writer, that "the 
 commerce of the world may almost be said to be the creation 
 of the past seventy-five years." We are living in the midst 
 of a vast, though silent, revolution. Reference to the figures 
 will show that the process of change quickened strikingly in 
 the latter half of the century, and at its close we still do not 
 dare to say when the movement will slacken. The change 
 which we find so marked in commerce affects equally other 
 sides of human life. An American author, Adams, writing in 
 1871, could say with truth that "the discoveries of Guttenberg 
 and Columbus have produced more startling and more clearly 
 defined results upon the destinies of the human race within 
 the last twenty-five years than in any other equal period of 
 time during the four previous centuries." Have the results 
 been less startling in the quarter-century that followed? An- 
 other American economist. Wells, said about 1890, " When the 
 historian of the future writes the history of the nineteenth 
 century he will doubtless assign to the period embraced by 
 the life of the generation terminating in 1885 a place of im- 
 portance, considered in its relations to the interests of humanity, 
 second to but very few, and perhaps to none, of the many 
 similar epochs in time in any of the centuries that have preceded 
 it." Is the generation terminated in 1905 willing to admit , 
 that it takes a less important place in history than its pre- 
 decessor? 
 
 319. Share of modem countries in the commerce of the 
 world. — It is unnecessary, I hope, to say more to impress 
 upon the student the fact that a period of great change in 
 the world's history, which began half a century ago, still con- 
 tinues; and that the coming generation will be called upon to 
 carry on this change, and guide it for the welfare of humanity 
 in the future. Leaving, therefore, general discussion and spec- 
 
COMMERCE AND COAL 273 
 
 ulation, and returning to the concrete and well-defined facts 
 that form the subject of our study, I insert in this place, as 
 likely to be of use for reference later and of interest now (though 
 not deserving painstaking study as yet), a table showing the 
 share of different countries in commerce about 1900. 
 
 [Millions of Dollars] 
 
 Great Britain 4,165 Switzerland 380 
 
 British Colonies 2,618 China 305 
 
 Germany 2,468 Spain 282 
 
 United States ^ 2,118 Argentine 280 
 
 France 1,618 Sweden 275 
 
 Holland 1,332 Japan 238 
 
 Austria-Hungary . 856 Brazil 238 
 
 Belgium 785 All Others 4,264 
 
 Russian Empire 642 • 
 
 Italy 571 Total 23,800 
 
 A similar statement, showing the relative rank about 1850, 
 would present only one very striking change; France held at 
 that time the place second to that of the British Empire, and 
 Germany came after the United States. 
 
 320. Possible explanations of recent commercial develop- 
 ment. — One topic of prime importance demands our attention 
 as we enter on the study in detail of the commerce whose 
 growth has been sketched above. What were the causes of 
 this great commercial development? When we know them 
 we shall truly understand the commercial history of the past 
 century, and shall be prepared to face the problems of the 
 present and the future. 
 
 The topic will be discussed under the heads which have 
 been employed previously in similar discussions. The advances 
 have been achieved either by a gain in the power of man to 
 control nature and natural forces (technical progress); or by 
 the more efficient cooperation of men in business (industrial 
 
 ^ Note. — According to U. S. Treasury returns 2,340. 
 18 
 
274 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and commercial organization), or in politics (political organi- 
 zation, domestic and foreign policy). 
 
 321. Prime importance of technical factors, especially the 
 use of coal. — Hard as it is to disentangle these different 
 factors, all of which have contributed much to the recent 
 progress of the world, there need still be no question which 
 has been of the leading importance during the nineteenth 
 century. This century has been the great era of material 
 invention, of scientific discovery, and of the increase in power 
 of man over nature. Technical progress, therefore, is the 
 first subject to be studied. 
 
 Again, there need be no question as to which feature of 
 technical progress holds first place. Electrical appliances? 
 Machinery? The steam-engine? Applied chemistry? All 
 those things, with the vast benefits which they confer on 
 humanity, rest now on practically one basis: coal. Vegetable 
 matter of past geological ages, that has beconle fossilized, has 
 undergone mysterious chemical changes and has shrunk to 
 one tenth of its former bulk, furnishes now, after hundreds or 
 thousands of centuries, the means by which we maintain and 
 develop our material civilization and our great commerce. 
 
 322. Power in coal. — Coal offers men what all men seek, 
 power. There is "spring " enough in it, when properly applied, 
 to raise a million times its own weight a foot high. A man 
 who sends a horse and cart to fetch a ton of coal, occupying 
 four hours on the way, secures a power in the coal theoretically 
 2,800 times that expended in bringing it; and can probably 
 get from it an amount of useful force exceeding by 100 times 
 or more that of the horse employed in carting. A few decades 
 ago (1865), when the output of coal was far less than it is now, 
 an English economist calculated that forests of an area two 
 and a half times as large as that of the United Kingdom would 
 be required to furnish even a theoretical equivalent of the 
 annual coal produce; practically, of course, the use of wood 
 for an equivalent is out of the question. It was estimated, 
 somewhat later (before 1880), that if the whole area of England 
 
COMMERCE AND COAL 275 
 
 were good land, devoted solely to raising forage, it would not 
 support a horse-power equal to that obtained from the English 
 coal mines; and that an area perhaps ten times as large would 
 be required for the mere food supply of human beings of 
 equivalent force. 
 
 323. Dependence of modem industry on coal. — It would 
 be a great mistake to consider coal necessary now only in its 
 most common application, that of generating steam for engines. 
 The chemical industry depends largely, though not entirely, 
 on the heat obtained from coal, to break down its raw ma- 
 terials and build up its finished products. Metallurgical indus- 
 tries would shrink almost to infinitesimal proportions if they 
 were denied the use of coal. It has been estimated that the 
 manufacture of a ton of pig iron requires the use of two tons 
 of coal or more; while an equal quantity of steel requires six 
 to eight tons. Still, the use of coal for the steam-engine is 
 undoubtedly its most important application; and we can gain 
 some conception of the place that coal has taken in the world^s 
 economy by considering the growth of steam power. 
 
 324. Importance of coal, estimated in steam horse-power. — 
 A horse-power, the technical unit adopted for measuring the 
 working capacity of an engine, is for practical purposes equal 
 to the force that can be got from several (perhaps three) horses, 
 or from a number of men variously estimated at ten to twenty- 
 four. Now in round numbers the steam horse-power of the 
 world was a million and a half in 1840, and had increased, at 
 the end of the century, to jifty times that amount. A simple 
 operation in arithmetic will show the amount of work, in 
 human equivalent, now done by steam. Taking, for example, 
 a modern country, Germany, we find engaged in industry and 
 transportation slightly over ten million people, while we find 
 engaged beside them another population of mechanical iron 
 slaves (steam-engines), variously estimated as equivalent to 
 one hundred to two hundred and fifty million people. These 
 slaves cost for food (coal), attendance, doctor's bills (repairs), 
 and burial expenses (including the cost of replacing them 
 
276 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 once in twenty-five years), only about $2.50 a year apiece. 
 Admit some exaggeration in the figures, and still the contrast 
 with the cost of human labor is most striking. 
 
 325. Technical history of the steam-engine. — The steam- 
 engine has been in practical use in Europe since about 1700. 
 The earliest engines, however, seem ludicrously crude now, 
 and could be used only for pumping water. Progress was 
 slow until the last part of the eighteenth century, when James 
 Watt introduced improvements (separate condenser, double- 
 acting piston, use of cut-off, etc.), which greatly increased the 
 efficiency of the engine, and caused a gradual extension of its 
 use from mining to manufactures. The introduction of the non- 
 condensing, high-pressure engine about 1800 prepared the way 
 for the use of steam on railroads. The compound engine, in 
 which the steam passes through two or more cylinders before 
 it is allowed to escape, was invented about the same time, 
 though it was not brought into general use until about 1850. 
 Since then improvements in details of the engine and in the 
 form of boilers have enhanced still further the efficiency of steam 
 power, until it now produces about two thirds of the work 
 possible under ideal conditions. Practical engineers expect 
 now no rapid progress or startling changes. Some measure of 
 the progress achieved is furnished by the fact that Watt's 
 engines required ten pounds of coal an hour for each horse- 
 power, the engines of the next generation required five, while 
 the best modern engines require but one and a half, or, in 
 rare cases, one. 
 
 326. Importance of steam greatest in the most recent 
 period. — A short paragraph may well be used to caution the 
 reader against the idea that steam became suddenly, after 
 Watt's inventions, a great power in the world. The extension 
 of the use of steam-engines was very gradual; the cooperation 
 of multitudes of men, working through many years, was 
 necessary to make steam power a great practical success. 
 The period after 1850 is that in which steam has worked its 
 greatest changes. The statement above, as to the growth 
 
COMMERCE AND COAL 277 
 
 of steam horse-power, and the growth of coal production, 
 shown in the table at the opening of the chapter, indicate the 
 period of the true importance of steam. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Do not attempt to remember any of the figures in sect. 316, unless 
 possibly the first two of the last line. 
 
 Prepare a graphic chart in the following way. Lay off the time periods 
 on the horizontal line at the bottom of your paper, and on the perpen- 
 dicular, near the right-hand margin, lay off the figures of the last line of 
 the table. This will insure space in the chart for all the lines. Divide 
 the perpendicular into, say, twenty units. Each unit may then be made 
 to represent: 1,000 million doUars of value; $1 per capita; 40 million tons 
 of coal; 2 million tons of iron. Indicate the figures for 1898 on the 
 perpendicular (commerce 20, per capita commerce 13, coal 15, iron 19); 
 and perform the same operation for the figares on perpendiculars above 
 each of the other dates. Use for each item a characteristic mark, 
 (cross, circle, triangle, square), which will enable you to distinguish it 
 from the others. Then unite the marks of each kind by a curved or 
 crooked line. Choose a characteristic form of line (dotted, wavy, or 
 colored) for each item. If the chart be made on a large scale and with 
 sufficient neatness, later tables of statistics (development of railroads, 
 trade of particular countries, etc.), can be entered upon it. 
 
 With regard to each one of the items : when was the increase (measured 
 by the slope of the line) greatest? When least? What relation is apparent 
 in the increase of different items? Many of the questions suggested by a 
 study of the figures will be treated in later sections. 
 
 2. Prepare a small chart of the figures, giving the estimated value 
 of commerce 1700-1899; note the enormous gains made in the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 3. Development of printing, especially of periodical pubUcations, in 
 recent years. [Encyc, preferably the new International or Supplement 
 to the Britannica, under Printing, Newspaper, etc. Cf. Scribner's Maga- 
 zine, 1897, vol. 22, p. 447 ff., on the modem newspaper business; Taylor 
 in Depew, One hundred years, chap. 25, Williams in same, chap. 26.] 
 
 4. Divide the perpendicular on the right-hand side of your chart into 
 spaces, indicating the shares of the chief countries in commerce. (The 
 difference in the total of the world's commerce in the two tables is due 
 partly to the fact that the figures refer to different years, 1898 and 1901, 
 partly to variations in the estimates on which the figures depend.) 
 
 5. Make out a list of three changes coming under each one of the three 
 heads discussed. Example: technical progress, wireless telegraphy; 
 
278 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 business organization, trusts; political, international arbitration, rec- 
 iprocity. 
 
 6. Early history of the coal trade. [R. L. Galloway, The rise of the 
 coal trade, Contemporary Review, 1892, 62: 569-578.] 
 
 7. Industrial and commercial importance of coal. [Edward Atkin- 
 son, Coal is king, Century Magazine, 1897-98, 55: 828-830.] 
 
 8. Effect of a stoppage of the coal supply. [Stephen Jeans, The coal 
 crisis and the paralysis of British industry, Nineteenth Century, 1893, 34: 
 791-801.] 
 
 9. How does the increase in steam horse-power compare with the in- 
 crease in the output of coal? With the growth of commerce? 
 
 10. Earliest history of the steam-engine (to about 1700). [Thurston, 
 chap. 1, sect. 1.] 
 
 11. Earliest applications of the steam-engine. [Thurston, chap. 1, 
 sect. 2.] 
 
 12. Development of the engine before Watt. [Thurston, chap. 2.] 
 
 13. Development by Watt and his contemporaries. [Thurston, 
 chap. 3.] 
 
 14. Recent improvements. [Thurston, chap. 6; lies, chap. 5.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Bibliographical aids become broader in the recent period. The 
 great literature scattered through periodicals, in which articles of lasting 
 value are often to be found, is made accessible by Poole's Index and its 
 continuations; books in print, if not too technical for the general public, 
 will be found in the A. L. A. (American Library Association) Catalogue, 
 which supplies full titles and prices; economic literature is covered (up to 
 1891) by Bowker and lies. 
 
 Various cyclopedias and dictionaries of commerce have been pub- 
 lished in the nineteenth century; they are useful repositories of informa- 
 tion, especially of statistics. Among them the following, in English, may 
 be mentioned: McCulloch, ** Dictionary, various editions; Waterston, 
 Cyclopaedia, 1847; Macgregor, * Commercial statistics, 1850; Homans, 
 Cyclopaedia, 1858. Statistics are brought up to date in various year- 
 books and periodicals; the ** Statesman's Year-Book is an indispensable 
 annual, and will meet all ordinary demands of teacher and class. The 
 Commercial Year-Book, an annual of the Journal of Commerce, has ceased 
 publication since 1901. The U. S. Monthly summary of commerce and 
 finance has included, since about 1897, not only current statistics of U. S. 
 commerce, but also monographs on various commercial topics. The num- 
 ber for April, 1904, vol. 11, No. 10, contains a statistical abstract of the 
 world, pp. 3723-3957, with convenient tables on the commercial develop- 
 ment of various states. 
 
COMMERCE AND COAL 279 
 
 There is no thoroughly satisfactory account, in English, of the com- 
 mercial history of the century. Yeats, Recent and existing commerce, 
 Boston, Boyle, $2, may be made of service, though it was compiled a 
 generation ago. A book which in many respects is better is Gibbin's 
 
 * Economic and Industrial progress of the century, Edinburgh, 1903; 
 it lacks nice discrimination in the selection and connection of facts, but 
 covers the ground more fully than any other book in English. Wells, 
 
 * Recent econ. changes, contains much interesting material on the recent 
 development of commerce; and Wilson, Resources of modem countries, is a 
 valuable survey of the conditions of commerce about 1878. Rand's 
 
 * Econ. hist, contains useful chapters. See also * Webster, and manuals 
 on the commerce of various countries, which will be noticed later. 
 
 The student of the history of commerce is often forced to turn to 
 narrative political histories for information. Among the general his- 
 tories of Europe in the nineteenth century two deserve special mention: 
 C. M. Andrews, * Modem Europe; N. Y., Putnam, 1899, $2.75; Seignobos, 
 ** Pol. hist. The former is more readable; the latter is better arranged 
 for purposes of the readers of this book. 
 
 Much has been written, of course, on the progress of the century in 
 various technical lines. Ure's Dictionary, various editions, describes the 
 advances of the first part of the century; and the student will probably 
 find one of the modem encyclopedias (Britannica, with Supplement; 
 International) the most satisfactory source of information on recent 
 progress. No attempt can be made in this or the following chapters to 
 cover the great field of technical literature. Jevons' ** Coal question 
 should, however, be mentioned as still of great interest and value. Nicolls, 
 
 * Story; Edward A. Martin, * Story of a piece of coal, N. Y., Appleton, 
 
 1896, $.35; or R. Meldola, * Coal and what we get from it, N. Y., Young, 
 
 1897, $1, can be assigned for reading by the class. On the steam-engine, 
 Robert H. Thurston's History, N. Y., Appleton, 1902, $2.50, will probably 
 be found most useful. The biographies by Samuel Smiles are a valuable 
 history of technical progress, interesting and trustworthy. Of more 
 recent books, designed for popular reading, George lies. Flame, electricity 
 and the camera, N. Y., Doubleday, 1900, $2, contains attractive accounts 
 of many features of technical progress. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES 
 
 327. Development of agriculture. — Pursuing now our sur- 
 vey of the technical advances of the century, we must notice 
 first the oldest and perhaps the most important branch of 
 production, agriculture. An American reader does not need 
 to be told that farm work has been greatly changed by the 
 introduction of improved tools and machinery. Even an im- 
 plement so old and apparently so simple as the plow will do 
 now better work with half the force formerly required. Culti- 
 vating and harvesting machines of various kinds spare land 
 and labor. The introduction of artificial fertilizers has given 
 new freedom and efficiency to the agriculturist. 
 
 328. Progress less in agriculture than in other branches of 
 production. — Still, when all is said, agriculture is the branch 
 of production which has been affected least by the changes of 
 the century. The farmer is still bound to the soil and subject 
 to the weather. Steam power has not made for itself the 
 place which sanguine men once thought it would win. In 
 Europe reforms have been effected in sweeping away anti- 
 quated institutions affecting the personal liberty and property 
 rights of cultivators, who now, in free association, can work 
 far more efficiently than before. In other continents the 
 extension of the modern transportation system has effected a 
 revolution in the choice of crops and the means of marketing 
 them. Neither transportation, steam power, nor machinery, 
 however, has vitally affected the methods by which crops are 
 grown; and when the first fertility of new land has been ex- 
 hausted and a growing population clamors for a cheap food 
 
 280 
 
MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES 281 
 
 supply, the world will find that one of its great problems is 
 still unsolved. 
 
 329. Function of machinery. — For the great changes 
 effected by the use of steam we look, of course, not to agricul- 
 ture but to manufactures and transportation. These changes 
 have been wrought through the medium of machinery, and 
 the reader is asked to give particular attention now to the 
 part which machinery plays in modern life. I spoke above of 
 coal as offering power to men. How can you apply this power 
 to a useful purpose? First, you must burn the coal under a 
 boiler to produce steam; second, you must translate the ex- 
 pansive power of steam into regular forceful motion in an 
 engine; finally, you must apply the force and the motion in 
 just the way that is wanted by means of a machine. Evidently 
 machinery does not depend altogether upon steam. Rude 
 machines, mills for grinding grain, for example, were run by 
 wind or water power long before the steam-engine was invented ; 
 water power is being transmitted by electricity in increasing 
 quantities at present; and men hope that we shall be able to 
 use the heat of the sun or the force of the tides to run machinery 
 in the future. 
 
 330. Advantages of machines. — Practically, however, the 
 great extension in the use of machinery has depended on the 
 power obtained from coal through steam. Only in the period 
 since the adoption of improved forms of steam-engine have 
 we realized the possibilities of machines. They can be applied 
 only to certain classes of work, especially that involving the 
 constant repetition of an operation which can be easily regu- 
 lated either by the machine itself or by a laborer supervising it. 
 We can use machines, for instance, to make cloth and even 
 to make clothes, but we do not use them in the operations of 
 dressing and undressing. In their proper field, however, they 
 are indispensable. They will accomplish tasks which are too 
 great or too small for human hands. They repeat a process 
 or copy a model with absolute fidelity. They never grow 
 tired and they have no human failings; they often economize 
 
282 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 time and materials. Finally, and this is the point of decisive 
 importance, in many lines of work they furnish the product at 
 a cost far below that of hand labor. 
 
 331. Revolution in old industries effected by machinery. — 
 To describe the manifold applications of machinery in the 
 nineteenth century, within the limits of this manual, is impos- 
 sible. Let the reader glance from the book to the objects 
 surrounding him, and make a list of the ten objects which 
 first attract his attention. If he will trace their history he 
 will find, in all probability, that they are all the products of 
 complicated machinery, which has been developed from the 
 simplest beginnings in the course of the century. He will 
 probably experience "difficulty in finding a familiar object 
 which has not been subjected to machine processes unknown in 
 1800. Machinery has heightened human productivity in cer- 
 tain lines a hundred or even a thousand fold. At the Atlanta 
 Cotton Exposition of 1881, two carders, two spinners, and one 
 weaver, from the mountain region of Georgia, could produce 
 eight yards of coarse cotton cloth in a day of ten hours. The 
 same number of persons in a modern cotton factory could 
 produce 800 yards by machinery. The cotton goods pro- 
 duced for home consumption in the United States by 160,000 
 laborers at that time, would have required the services of 
 16,000,000 laborers without machinery. Again, a skilful 
 woman can knit 80 stitches a minute by hand; a machine 
 enables her to make 480,000. 
 
 332. Introduction of new industries. — Machinery has not 
 only revolutionized old industries; it has created many new 
 ones. A distinguished American economist expressed the 
 opinion, about 1890, that half of all those who were then 
 earning their living by industrial pursuits did so in occupa- 
 tions that not only had no existence, but which had not even 
 been conceived of, a hundred years before. I may write with 
 a steel pen, with a fountain pen, or with a typewriter; which- 
 ever choice I make I am giving employment to a group of 
 mechanical laborers who did not exist in 1800. Taking a 
 
MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES 283 
 
 particular city as an example, the industrial specialities of 
 Leipzig are said to have increased from 118 in 1751 to 557 in 
 1890, a growth of 372 per cent. Nor must we limit our view 
 of the effects of machinery to the mechanical pursuits which 
 are carried on about us. Increased efficiency due to the use 
 of machinery has set men free from other pursuits to engage 
 in commerce, education, domestic service, etc. 
 
 333. Importance of iron in the age of machinery. — One 
 particular industry deserves special consideration here, by 
 reason of the quality of its product rather than of the quantity 
 of laborers employed or the mere exchange value of the output. 
 Without iron the modern age of machinery would be, at best, 
 of stunted growth. Jevons characterized admirably the mod- 
 ern industrial system when he said that steam is its motive 
 power and iron is the fulcrum and the lever. It is safe, I 
 think, to challenge the ordinary, reader of the present day to 
 name a machine which is not composed largely or almost 
 wholly of iron. The whole structure of our modern industry 
 depends on the means of getting cheap iron. "Without it 
 the engine, the spinning-jenny, the power-loom, the gas- and 
 water-pipe, the iron vessel, the bridge, the railway — in fact, 
 each one of our most important works — would be imprac- 
 ticable from the want and cost of material." 
 
 334. Scarcity of iron before the nineteenth century. — Re- 
 turning to the period about 1800 we find ourselves in a different 
 world. I have described in a previous chapter the improve- 
 ments effected in the manufacture of iron in the eighteenth 
 century. Great as was the promise of these improvements, it 
 waited long for full realization; well into the nineteenth cen- 
 tury iron remained relatively scarce and dear and was spared 
 in every possible way. A youth destined to play a leading 
 part in the iron age (Joseph Nasmyth) visited the Carron 
 Iron Works in 1823, and here is the description which he gives 
 of a celebrated foundry and machine shop, associated with the 
 construction of the first working steam-engine by Watt. 
 "Much of the machinery continued to be of wood. Although 
 
284 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 effective in a general way it was monstrously cumbrous. It 
 gave the idea of vast power and capability of resistance, while 
 it was far from being so in reality." If this was the condition 
 at the Carron Iron Works, what must it have been in ordinary 
 factories? 
 
 336. Development of machine tools for working iron. — 
 Iron was little used, partly because it was hard to get and 
 partly because it was hard to work. There were in England 
 about 1800 only three good machine shops, where small steam- 
 engines were built. The equipment of even the best machine 
 shop would seem now wretchedly inadequate, and Stephenson 
 was greatly hampered, in building his first locomotive, by the 
 lack of good machine tools, for working metals. William 
 Fairbairn said in his presidential address before the British 
 Association at Manchester, "When I first entered this city 
 [about 1813] the whole of the machinery was executed by 
 hand. There were neither planing, slotting, nor shaping 
 machines; and, with the exception of very imperfect lathes, 
 and a few drills, the preparatory operations of construction 
 were effected entirely by the hands of the workmen." About 
 1825 to 1830, however, with the growth in demand for iron- 
 working apparatus, there began a rapid development of this 
 branch of manufacture, one step in advance leading rapidly to 
 another. We may trace the process in the description that 
 Nasmyth gives us of his first machine shop, a shed measuring 
 24 by 16 feet. "I removed thither my father's foot-lathe, to 
 which I had previously added an excellent slide-rest of my 
 own making. I also added a 'slow motion,' which enabled 
 me to turn cast-iron and cast-steel portions of my great 
 Mandsley lathe. I soon had the latter complete and in action. 
 Its first child was a planing machine capable of executing 
 surfaces in the most perfect style; it was 3 feet long by 1 foot 
 8 inches wide. Armed with these two most important and 
 generally useful tools, and by some special additions, such as 
 boring machines and drilling machines, I soon had a progeny 
 of legitimate descendants crowded about my little workshop, 
 
MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES 285 
 
 so that I often did not know which way to turn." Nasmyth 
 himself made one specially important contribution to iron- 
 working machinery, by the invention of the steam hammer in 
 1839; the old " bit by bit " system of welding became henceforth 
 unnecessary. 
 
 336. Steel, character and utility. — While the limits of our 
 space will not permit us to trace further the development of 
 machine tools, which have been made marvelously efficient in 
 recent years, and while we must also forego a study of the 
 details of iron production, the topic of steel manufacture 
 certainly deserves some consideration. Ordinary cast iron, 
 while strong and hard enough for many purposes, still is brittle 
 by reason of the large proportion of carbon and other impurities 
 which it contains. These impurities may be burned out in 
 the puddling process, and the nearly pure iron thus obtained, 
 called malleable or wrought iron, has a toughness enabling it 
 to resist far greater strains than cast iron can stand. Inter- 
 mediate between the two irons, and containing one per cent of 
 carbon, more or less, is still another product, steel, which may 
 be made even more tenacious than wrought iron, or even 
 harder than cast iron. Its peculiar property of "taking a 
 temper" is probably known to most readers. The valuable 
 properties of steel have been known and prized for ages, but 
 till well into the nineteenth century it could be used only 
 sparingly; it was commonly manufactured by first making 
 wrought iron, by the tedious process of puddling, and then 
 heating the iron bars in contact with charcoal until they had 
 absorbed the proper amount of carbon. The expense of this 
 process prohibited the use of steel for most purposes; the 
 wrought iron cost $75 a ton and the finished steel $250 or 
 more; and the output would seem to-day inconsiderable. 
 
 337. Recent improvements in the manufacture of steel; 
 the Bessemer process. — Many men have contributed to bring 
 the manufacture of steel to its present efficiency, and we may 
 notice only the names associated with the greatest improve- 
 ments. An Englishman, Bessemer, patented in 1855 the idea, 
 
286 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 as simple as it is ingenious, of turning cast iron directly into 
 steel by blowing air through it when melted, and so consuming 
 the excess of carbon. It has not proved possible to make good 
 steel according to Bessemer's original idea, but with a slight 
 modification his process has been wonderfully successful; in 
 present practice all the carbon is burned out by the air current, 
 and then the requisite amount is added before the metal is 
 poured out. Ore containing a large amount of phosphorus is 
 treated by melting it in a converter lined with lime, which 
 removes this dangerous impurity ("basic process"). 
 
 338. The open-hearth (Siemens-Martin) process. — Still 
 another contribution to modern methods of steel manufacture, 
 known as the "open-hearth," or, from the names of its intro- 
 ducers, the Siemens-Martin process, has been of great impor- 
 tance since about 1870. The steel is made from ore or from 
 a combination of different kinds of iron, and, by peculiar 
 devices for economizing the heat of the furnace, the process 
 may be continued so long and regulated so carefully that a 
 product of high quality may be turned out at a moderate cost. 
 The result of all these processes has been to change steel from 
 a luxury to a necessity of modern life. Modern mild steel is 
 40 per cent stronger than iron, and is tough enough to be 
 tied in a knot or punched in the shape of a bowl when cold. 
 The increase in efficiency due to its substitution for iron in 
 machinery, railroads, ships, and structural work is simply 
 incalculable. 
 
 339. Development of the modem chemical industry. — In 
 detailing at such length as I have done the exploits of machinists 
 in the past century, I may tempt the reader to undervalue the 
 contributions of scientists. To guard against that error let 
 us consider briefly the development of the chemical industry, 
 which, like the iron industry, renders a service to modern 
 civilization beyond any measure of dollars and cents. The 
 Frenchman, Lavoisier, had established chemistry on a scientific 
 basis before 1800, but industrial chemistry used still the primi- 
 tive methods which had been employed for ages. Let us 
 
MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES 287 
 
 take, for instance, the single substance, carbonate of soda, of 
 prime importance in industrial chemistry, for on it depend 
 the various industries of glass, pottery, soap, photography, 
 paper, etc. This substance was still obtained in the eight- 
 eenth century, by burning seaweed and seashore plants and 
 treating their ashes; Spain had a considerable export of barilla, 
 and owed to this product whatever success she attained in the 
 soap manufacture. Leblanc emancipated the soda industry 
 from kelp and barilla, by introducing the process based on 
 sulphuric acid and salt; step by step improvements have been 
 made since then. Sulphuric acid, discarded in the soda in- 
 dustry, has grown in importance notwithstanding; it is the 
 controlling element in the manufacture of other acids, commer- 
 cial fertilizers, alum, ether, glucose, etc., and in oil refining; 
 and it is produced at a price and of a quality formerly unknown. 
 The discovery of the anilin colors, in 1859, has revolutionized 
 the art of dyeing. The chemist will make you, from coal tar, 
 almost any color or shade desired. He will make you perfumes 
 or flavors; and, if he has failed to construct quinine artificially, 
 he has at least learned, in his attempts, to make substances 
 such as antipyrin and phenacetin, of equal value for other 
 purposes. 
 
 340. Influences determining the local distribution of manu- 
 factures. — A review of the contents of this chapter, with its 
 discussion of the factors which have built up modern industry, 
 should suggest to the reader the countries which have enjoyed 
 exceptional advantages in the modern manufacturing period. 
 Resources of coal and iron, clearly, are of great importance. 
 That they are not decisive, however, is proved by the absence 
 of modem manufactures in China, where there are abundant 
 supplies of coal and iron, and their presence in districts like 
 the North of Ireland, where, for instance, a great ship-building 
 industry is fed with imported iron and coal. Factories can 
 exist at a considerable distance from their source of supply if 
 they are served by a transportation system which will fetch 
 raw materials and carry finished products cheaply; efficient 
 
288 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 transportation is essential. Many other elements might be 
 suggested as going to form the basis of national success in 
 manufactures, but of them all I desire here to emphasize only- 
 two: good government and intelligent men. Manufactures 
 cannot thrive in a country where unwise or corrupt methods 
 of taxation rob the investor of his gains. Nor can they prosper, 
 whatever other advantages a country may have, if it lacks 
 intelligent and steady laborers, or clear-sighted and energetic 
 leaders. The reader will have an opportunity, in later chapters, 
 to test the truth of these statements; meanwhile, in anticipa- 
 tion, attention may be directed to the United States, England, 
 and Germany, as those countries which have most signally 
 proved their fitness for manufacturing. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Development of the science and art of agriculture in the nineteenth 
 century. [Encyclopedia.] 
 
 2. Artificial fertilizers. [Peacock, in Cosmopolitan Magazine, Nov., 
 1895.] 
 
 3. A modem wheat farm. [Scribner's Magazine, 1897, vol. 22, p. 
 531 ff.; Edgar, Story of a grain of wheat. Note that "bonanza" farms 
 are not typical of modem agriculture in general.] 
 
 4. What use is coal without a steam-engine? What use is machinery 
 without a steam-engine? What use is a steam-engine without coal or 
 machinery? Which would the world give up most readily, coal, steam- 
 engine, or machinery ? 
 
 5. Character and advantages of machinery. [Hobson, Mod. cap., 
 chap. 3, sects. 1-3.] 
 
 6. How much have women gained by being relieved of the necessity 
 of making cloth for family use? [Read description of the labor of spin- 
 ning, weaving, etc., in colonial times; see Alice M. Earle, Colonial dames 
 and goodwives, Boston, 1895, or Syndey G. Fisher, Men, women and 
 manners in colonial times, Philadelphia, 1898.] 
 
 7. Effect of the introduction of machinery on the demand for labor 
 in different occupations. [Hobson, Mod. cap., chap. 8.] 
 
 8. The growth of factories. [Bourne, Romance, chap. 9.] 
 
 9. Organization of a modern factory. [P. G. Hubert, The business of 
 a factory, Scribner's Magazine, 1897, vol 21, p. 306 ff; Fred J. Miller, 
 The machinist, same, 1893, vol. 14, p. 314 ff.] 
 
MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES 289 
 
 10. Progress in the iron manufacture. [lies, chap. 4; R. R. Bowker, 
 A bar of iron, Harper's Magazine, 1893-4, 88: 408-424.] 
 
 11. Development of machine tools for iron working. [Sellers, in 
 Depew, One hund. years, chap. 49.] 
 
 12. Progress in the steel manufacture. [R. R. Bowker, A steel tool, 
 Harper's Magazine, 1893-4, 88: 587-602; Waldon Fawcett, The center of 
 the world of steel, Century Magazine, 1901, 62: 189-203.] 
 
 13. Write a biographical sketch of one of the following: Bessemer, 
 Siemens, Whitworth, Brown, Thomas, Snelus. [W. T. Jeans, The creators 
 of the age of steel, N. Y., 1884.] 
 
 14. Write a report on advances in the manufacture of one of the 
 articles named. [Encyclopedias; on coal tar products see Meldola.] 
 
 15. What conditions have led to the rise of the characteristic manu- 
 factures of your own vicinity? In what regions are their chief competitors? 
 What are the relative advantages of different places with respect to some 
 particular manufacture? [See the authorities at the back of the book for 
 references for a careful study of these questions.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 See the previous chapter for books of general reference. The modem 
 manufacturing organization and the influence of machinery have been 
 treated, from the economic standpoint, by Hobson, Modem capitalism, 
 and Schulze-Gaevemitz, The cotton trade, Manchester, 1895. A history 
 and analysis of the factory system by C. D. Wright was published in the 
 Tenth U. S. Census, 1880, vol. 2; further references to U. S. public docu- 
 ments will be given below, in the chapters on the United States. The 
 English parliamentary papers and accounts contain an inmiense amount 
 of material on this subject; the last volume of Cunningham, Growth, has 
 useful references to them. The technical history of manufacturers defies 
 compression. Much interesting material may be found in the reports 
 of the U.S. Commissioners to various world expositions. 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 ROADS AND RAILROADS 
 
 341. Commercial importance of the subjects of the chapter. 
 
 — " Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing-press 
 alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have 
 done most for the civilization of our species." Macaulay's 
 celebrated sentence applies to civilization in general. With 
 regard to the material civilization depending upon commerce, 
 certainly no factor has been of greater importance than im- 
 provement in the means of transportation and communication. 
 An improvement in these means has been effected during the 
 past century, without a parallel in the world's history; and a de- 
 scription of the changes deserves the most careful attention of 
 the student in the short space which can be allowed the subject. 
 
 342. Statistical survey of development. — For a convenient 
 means of reference I introduce, in this place, a statistical table 
 (on opposite page) showing the development of the most im- 
 portant modern instruments of transportation and communica- 
 tion. 
 
 343. Improvement in the condition of roads. — Aside from 
 the stretches of canal which had been brought into operation, the 
 universal means of inland transportation about 1800 was 
 the road. Some reference has been made in an earlier chapter 
 to the condition of English highways in the eighteenth century, 
 and to the improvements which marked that period. Condi- 
 tions on the Continent were worse than those in England. 
 French roads were mere tracks in the first part of the eighteenth 
 century, and for the most part were still hopelessly bad at its 
 close, when the system of maintaining the roads by forced 
 labor was abolished. 
 
 290 
 
ROADS AND RAILROADS 
 
 291 
 
 From near the close of the eighteenth century, however, 
 we may date the beginning of a period of rapid improvement 
 in the roads of western Europe. The turnpike system, which 
 allowed tolls to be charged for the use of improved highways, 
 encouraged the investment of capital in these undertakings. 
 The teachings of Telford and Macadam, two great road-engi- 
 neers who emphasized the necessity of using good materials 
 and securing proper drainage, were generally applied. In the 
 period from 1800 to 1850 the roads of Europe were reformed 
 
 
 Shipping 
 Million Tons 
 
 Railways 
 Telegraphs Cables 
 
 
 Sail 
 
 Steam 
 
 Carrying 
 Power 
 
 Thousand Miles 
 
 1800 
 
 4.0 
 
 5.8 
 
 7.1 
 
 9.0 
 
 11.4 
 
 14.8 
 
 12.9 
 
 14.4 
 
 12.6 
 
 11.0 
 
 .02 
 
 .1 
 
 .3 
 
 .8 
 1.7 
 3.0 
 5.8 
 9.0 
 13.0 
 
 4.0 
 5.8 
 7.5 
 10.4 
 14.9 
 21.7 
 25.1 
 37.9 
 48.8 
 63.2 
 
 
 
 
 1820 
 
 
 
 
 1830 
 
 .2 
 
 5.4 
 
 23.9 
 
 67.3 
 
 139.8 
 
 224.9 
 
 390.0 
 
 442.2 
 
 
 
 1840 - - 
 
 
 
 1850 
 
 1860 
 
 1870 
 
 1880 
 
 1890 
 
 1898 
 
 5. 
 99.8 
 281.0 
 440.0 
 767.8 
 933.0 
 
 .02 
 
 1.5 
 
 15. 
 
 49. 
 
 132. 
 
 168. 
 
 to meet the demands which commerce made upon them, before 
 the introduction of the railroad, and were put in the excellent 
 condition which attracts the attention of American travelers 
 to-day. The cost of freight transportation was reduced to 
 half or less of what it had been, and the speed of passenger 
 service increased correspondingly. An Englishman, Porter, 
 notes that in 1798 he occupied nineteen hours in traveling 
 eighty miles by what was considered a "fast coach"; when 
 he wrote, in 1838, the trip was made in eight hours. 
 
 344. Importance of roads in the present transportation 
 system. — A word of warning may be advisable before we 
 
292 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 leave this subject to study more recent means of transporta- 
 tion. Not many years ago a French economist estimated that 
 not one twentieth of the settlements of the inhabited world 
 were within less than a day's distance from a railroad. Even 
 in the most advanced countries the extent of roads far exceeds 
 that of railroads, and only in the rarest cases do products 
 reach the consumer without having traversed a stretch of 
 common road. The road, therefore, takes a place in our 
 modern economy more important than, in our carelessness, we 
 generally admit. 
 
 The unit for measuring the expense of transportation is the 
 cost of moving a ton one mile; on a modern American railroad 
 the average cost of a ton-mile is less than one cent. Even on 
 the excellent roads of Europe the cost is ten cents or more; 
 while it has been estimated that the average cost of moving 
 farm produce to market over the common roads of the United 
 States is twenty five cents per ton-mile. Assuming that the 
 average haul is twelve miles, and-n^ai three }iun<Jred'«iillionr' 
 tons are carried in a year, the expense reaches the e}\oprtious ^ 
 total of nine hundred million dolla^'a, surt\ greater than the 
 operating expenses of all the railroads of the United States in 
 1898. 
 
 It has been proved by actual test that the same force which 
 draws one ton on a muddy earth road will draw four tons on 
 a hard macadam road. One of the greatest improvements in 
 transportation is still, in large part, neglected by the American 
 people; and intelligent energy will find in no field richer results 
 than in the reform of our common roads. Such a reform 
 would economize time and force, would reduce wear and tear, 
 and would greatly better the business position of the farmer 
 by enabling him to choose his own time for marketing his goods 
 and making his purchases. 
 
 345. Advantage of transportation by water; canals. — The 
 student may, perhaps, remember that in the Middle Ages the 
 expense of transportation by road led people to choose rivers 
 for conveying their, goods, whenever this was practicable. It 
 
ROADS AND RAILROADS 293 
 
 has been estimated that a horse which could carry on its back 
 two or three centner (a centner is about 110 lbs.) could with 
 equal exertion drag twenty centner on a highway, or 1,200 
 through dead-water. This enormous gain in efficiency, result- 
 ing from the avoidance of the slightest difference in level and 
 from the reduction of force wasted in friction, suggested to 
 people in early times the idea of establishing channels for 
 water where none had previously existed, that is, of building 
 canals. Locks, for controlling the flow and level of the water, 
 were invented toward the end of the Middle Ages, and a con- 
 siderable extent of canals had been constructed *on the Continent 
 before the Bridgewater canal, described above, was opened in 
 England. The real era of the canal, however, was in the 
 period which may be limited roughly by the dates 1750 and 
 1850. 
 
 346. Development of canals, 1750-1850. — Immense 
 amounts of capital were invested in canals in this period of 
 their great importance; and the European and American 
 systems of barge canals were constructed substantially on the 
 lines which they have since retained. A traveler could then, 
 as now, voyage through most parts of central and eastern 
 Europe without leaving a canal-boat. Of a country like 
 England, endowed by nature with advantages for water com- 
 munication, it could be said in 1838 that no spot south of the 
 coupty of Durham was more than fifteen miles from the means 
 of water conveyance. Factories were established along the 
 canals, as now along the railroads. Canals relieved the high- 
 ways of a large part of the growing traffic, carried many raw 
 materials which could not have borne the expense of transpor- 
 tation by road, and enjoyed even a considerable share of 
 passenger traffic. 
 
 347. Relative decline in importance of canals. — Of canals 
 as of roads it may be said that their days of usefulness are far 
 from past. One class, indeed, that of the great ship canals, 
 has grown rapidly in importance in recent years. Many 
 economists believe that even the barge canals should be main- 
 
ROADS AND RAILROADS 295 
 
 tained and improved. There is still an active canal traffic in 
 Europe, especially in Germany, and in the last-named country 
 a notable project for extending the canal system is under 
 consideration. The future of canals seems to depend largely 
 on the introduction of improved forms of motor (electricity, 
 gasoline). 
 
 The canal has certainly yielded the place of first importance 
 in internal transportation to the railroad. Its great merit, 
 cheapness, has declined in importance with the reduction of 
 railroad rates, while its drawbacks are felt more and more 
 under the conditions of modern business. The canal is not 
 only much slower and more uncertain than the railroad; its 
 vital weakness is the fact that in temperate climates its use- 
 fulness is destroyed during at least a part of the winter. Since 
 1850 canal systems have grown slowly, if at all, and in some 
 countries they have declined greatly. Nearly half of the 
 English canals are now controlled by the railroads; some are 
 closed and out of repair, and traffic is diverted from others by 
 heavy tolls. 
 
 348. Origin of the steam railroad. — Soon after 1800 the 
 American inventor, Evans, asserted more than once that he 
 could manage to drive wagons on railways by steam. He 
 expressed an idea that was by no means new, and that was 
 then floating in the minds of many men. He said truly, how- 
 ever, that one step in a generation is enough, and that the 
 monstrous leap from bad roads to steam railways could not 
 be taken at once. Roads were improved, canals were extended, 
 and still there was a demand for better means of transportation. 
 Rails, first of wood and then of iron, had long been laid to 
 enable horses to draw heavier loads at mines and quarries. 
 George Stephenson, among others, conceived the idea of apply- 
 ing steam as the motive power on these railways, and distin- 
 guished himself above all predecessors by constructing, in 1814, 
 a locomotive. Puffing Billy, which proved capable of haul- 
 ing coal over a stretch of nine miles, from the mine to 
 tide-water. Stephenson improved his original model, es- 
 
296 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 pecially by the introduction of the steam blast to help the 
 draft and so increase the power of the boiler; and in 1825 
 secured the adoption of the locomotive on the Stockton and 
 Darlington Railway in Yorkshire. The call for this improve- 
 ment had now become pressing. The port of Liverpool and 
 the important manufacturing center, Manchester, distant only 
 about thirty miles, were now connected by three canals, yet 
 these were so crowded with traffic that it took sometimes a 
 month for cotton to reach the factories from the sea. The 
 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, 
 with a locomotive, the Rocket, which made twenty-nine miles 
 an hour, may be taken as the completion of the period of 
 experiment, and the beginning of the railroad era. 
 
 349. Early period of the railroad. — Though steam loco- 
 motion after 1830 was a proved success, and though railroads 
 were rapidly extended, and 1,600 miles had been brought into 
 operation in 1835, the men of the time had still much to learn 
 concerning their new instrument of transportation. Some men 
 expected from it a speed of 75 or 100 miles an hour, while the 
 State Engineer of Virginia took it as an admitted fact " that a 
 rate of speed of more than six miles an hour would exceed the 
 bounds set by prudence, though some of the sanguine advo- 
 cates of railways extend this limit to nine miles an hour.'' In 
 certain localities the steam railroad, from the start, performed 
 great service in freight carriage. At the Pennsylvania coal 
 mines, for instance, it reduced the cost of hauling a ton nine 
 miles to the river from $4.00 to $.25. Still the cost in general 
 was high; a charge of ten cents per ton-mile was authorized in 
 some early charters; and few people believed that the railroad 
 could compete successfully with the canal in the transportation 
 of ordinary freight. 
 
 360. Improvements in locomotives. — The technical im- 
 provements which have extended the usefulness of the railroad 
 far beyond the dreams of its earlier promoters have been com- 
 paratively simple. Mere increase in size of locomotives and 
 cars has been the greatest factor in increased efficiency. The 
 
ROADS AND RAILROADS 
 
 297 
 
 engine which Peter Cooper constructed for experiment on the 
 Baltimore and Ohio, about 1830, had a boiler the size of a 
 flour barrel, weighed less than a ton, and was about the size 
 of a modern hand-car. It was of little practical use. The 
 development from early engines of the class of the Rocket, to 
 those of modern American practice, is shown in the following 
 figures : 
 
 
 Weight 
 
 Hauling Power on Level 
 
 Early 
 
 Improved 
 
 Modem 
 
 5 to 6 tons 
 25 
 50 
 
 40 tons 
 1,200 
 2,400 
 
 Not only does a large locomotive put to more economical 
 use the heat applied; the large train, also, costs far less in 
 proportion for the services of men employed in running it. 
 
 351. Importance of steel in railroad construction. — To 
 many readers practical devices like the air-brake, further 
 reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of operation, 
 will be familiar. One factor in improvement, however, is not 
 so apparent, and deserves special attention by reason of its 
 commanding importance. The railroad in its modern form 
 would be impossible if Bessemer and others had not taught 
 the world to make steel cheaply. Iron rails, even under 
 comparatively light loads, wore out and had to be replaced 
 constantly. Steel rails, introduced gradually after 1860, could 
 bear double the load on each wheel, and still outlive many 
 iron rails. The modern rail, simple as it appears, is both in 
 material and in proportions a great feat of engineering, "a 
 beam whose every dimension and curve and angle are exactly 
 suited to the tremendous work it has to do." Steel rails and 
 steel bridges have made possible the economy of the colossal 
 locomotives of modern times. Steel has enabled men, instead 
 of building 10-ton cars to carry 10 tons of cargo, to build 
 
298 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 12-ton cars to carry 20, or 14-ton to carry 30; each improve- 
 ment of this kind represents a saving in the dead weight of 
 the train, and a consequent reduction in cost. Steel has 
 furnished a material for the bridges over which the cars are 
 carried, enabling a span of 500 feet to be constructed as readily 
 as a span of 250 feet, with the iron formerly employed. 
 
 GROWTH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EUROPEAN 
 KAILiROADS 
 
 The size of the small circles indicates the railroad mileage of each country at ten 
 year intervals. To facilitate comparison, the circles for 1850 are printed black, 
 and those for 1890 are shaded. Note the disproportion of mileage and area. 
 
 352. Development of the railroad system after 1850. — 
 Improvements in the construction, the equipment, and the 
 operation of railroads, for the mere suggestion of which there 
 
ROADS AND RAILROADS 299 
 
 is scarcely space here, explain the rapid growth of the railroad 
 system shown in the figures at the opening of the chapter. 
 It will be noted that over 99 per cent of mileage has been 
 constructed since 1840, and that even in 1850 the world had 
 made but a mere beginning in railroad construction. About 
 the middle of the century began a movement toward the 
 consolidation of existing lines, which had formerly been operated 
 in short stretches by independent companies. The student 
 should note that this consolidation proceeded largely along 
 the length of railroads, not in the modern fashion by the union 
 of parallel and competing lines; and it is almost impossible to 
 exaggerate the benefits that resulted, in increased efficiency of 
 management, improved service, and lower rates. About this 
 time (1854) the first railroad was built across the Alps; the 
 Union and Central Pacific route was opened in 1869, beginning 
 the era of the transcontinental roads; and investors and engi- 
 neers, who found the older and more advanced sections ade- 
 quately supplied with railroads, began now to build lines far 
 out into new territory, to open up fresh land and develop new 
 trade. 
 
 353. Importance of railroads at present. — Some attention 
 will be paid hereafter to the decisive influence which the 
 railroad has exercised on recent commercial development; and 
 in the history of commerce in particular countries the thought- 
 ful student will not fail to recognize this influence even when 
 it is not specifically pointed out. In leaving the subject at 
 this point, however, the student may be grateful for a sum- 
 mary estimate of the relative importance of railroads and 
 other instruments of production in our modern life. A good 
 authority has estimated that one quarter or even one third of 
 the total invested capital of civilized nations has taken the 
 form of railroads. It is doubtful whether the manufacturing 
 establishments of the world are equal in value to its railroads; 
 while the world's whole stock of money would buy but a 
 fraction of them. The railroads of the United States carried in 
 1900 a thousand million tons of freight at a cost of a thousand 
 
300 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 million dollars, and at the rate of less than three quarters of 
 a cent per ton-mile. The student may, from these figures, 
 estimate the service of railroads to the average individual in 
 the country, and may rest assured that the work they do 
 could not be accomplished by the means in use a century ago, 
 even if the whole annual product of the country were squan- 
 dered in the attempt to carry it on. 
 
 - QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. See the suggestion on the treatment of the statistics in sect. 315. 
 Combine the statistics of the sections 315 and 342 in one chart, if practi- 
 cable. See below, sect. 354, for the explanation of carrying power; a 
 steamer is estimated to have four times the efficiency of a sailing vessel, 
 in this table. 
 
 2. What is the cost of transportation over roads in your vicinity? 
 What system of construction and maintenance is pursued? 
 
 3. Write an essay on one of the following topics, from the circulars of 
 the Office of Road Inquiry, U. S. Department of Agriculture. (Copies 
 may probably be secured gratis on application.) 
 
 (a) The proper method of constructing and repairing earth roads- 
 [Circular no. 8.] 
 
 (b) Methods of constructing macadamized roads. [No. 21.] 
 
 (c) Repair of macadamized roads. [No. 30.] 
 
 (d The best system of maintaining roads. [No. 24.] 
 (e) Systems of State aid. [No. 32, Minn.; No. 35, N. Y.] 
 
 4. Effect on the agriculture of the U. S. of the present roads. [Re- 
 port of the U. S. Industrial Commission, 1900, vol. 10, pp. ccix-ccxvi.] 
 
 5. The place of canals in the transportation system of a modern 
 European state. [O. Eltzbacher, The lesson of the German water-ways. 
 Contemporary Review, Dec, 1904, 86: 778-797.] 
 
 6. Early history of the railroad. [See a biography of Stephenson, 
 by Smiles, or in one of the encyclopedias or biographical dictionaries.] 
 
 7. Early locomotives. [Thurston, Hist., chap. 4.] 
 
 8. American improvements in locomotives and cars. [Amer. Rail- 
 way, p. 100 ff.] 
 
 9. Improvements in railroad construction. [Same, p. 1 ff .] 
 
 10. Feats of railroad construction. [Same,, p. 47 ff.; Vemon-Har- 
 court, chap. 2.] 
 
 11. Modern bridges. [Vernon-Harcourt, chaps. 6, 7.] 
 
 12. Modern railroad management in the United States. [Amer. 
 Railway, 149 ff.] 
 
ROADS AND RAILROADS 301 
 
 13. Development of railroad organization and its effects. [Same, 
 pp. 344-359.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A good article on the history of highways will be found in the Edin- 
 burgh Review, 1864, vol. 119, p. 340 ff. See also Smiles' Lives of the 
 engineers, and, for conditions in England before the railroad, Stanley 
 Harris, Old coaching days, London, 1882, or W. O. Tristram's book on 
 the same subject, London, 1893. 
 
 For the bibliography of canals and railroads see Bowker and lies, 
 and Palgrave's Dictionary. Among the many books the following will 
 probably be most serviceable: E. J. James, Canal and railway; J. S. 
 Jeans, Water-ways; E. R. Johnson, * Railways; A. T. Hadley, * Railroad 
 transportation. All of these include historical and descriptive matter, 
 along with economic criticism. ** The American Railway, made up of 
 articles contributed by various authors to Scribner's Magazine, has much 
 matter of value and interest to the student of the history of commerce. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 
 
 354. Transportation by sailing vessels and steamers. — 
 
 Steam has won for itself, in the course of the century, the 
 commanding place in sea transportation as well as in land 
 transportation. The struggle with competitors has lasted 
 longer and the victory has been less complete. Steam navi- 
 gation, however, offers such advantages in sureness, safety, 
 speed, and cost, that sailing vessels have been forced out of 
 some of the most important branches of commerce, and must 
 content themselves with what the steamers leave them. Ref- 
 erence to the table at the opening of the preceding chapter 
 will enable the student to follow the development of the means 
 of transportation by sea in the course of the century, and to 
 observe the growth in importance of the steamer. In expla- 
 nation of the figures of carrying-power it should be said that 
 a steamer is regarded as having three or four times the efficiency 
 of a sailing vessel of equal tonnage; such an estimate is, of 
 course, a mere approximation, and, indeed, the figures of 
 tonnage, especially in the earlier part of the century, are 
 themselves very uncertain. 
 
 355. Development of sailing vessels. — European sailing 
 vessels at the opening of the century followed substantially 
 the clumsy lines of the old East Indiamen. The chief credit 
 for the improvement of wooden vessels is due to the Americans, 
 whose clipper ships, marvels of grace and speed, were without 
 rivals in their day. The clipper Dreadnought made the 
 passage from New York to Queenstown in less than ten days, 
 and in 1846 the American Tornado, starting from England 
 with an early steamer of the Cunard line, reached America 
 
 302 
 
MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 303 
 
 before her. The Great Republic, an American four-masted 
 clipper, was of 3,400 tons and was the largest sailing vessel in 
 the world; British ships of this period rarely exceeded a thou- 
 sand tons in register. 
 
 The suggestion of iron for building ships was met at first 
 with ridicule; some people, of course, thought that an iron 
 ship would surely sink, and more serious objections were found 
 in the cost, the derangement of the compass, and the fouling 
 of the ship's bottom. Iron, however, came gradually into use 
 for steamers, and, after 1850, was applied more and more 
 generally to the constructions of sailing vessels. Iron vessels 
 were actually superior in buoyancy to wooden, drawing less 
 water and carrying more cargo with a given tonnage; they 
 were cheaper in the long run, because they are stronger, more 
 durable, and less exposed to destruction by fire. Furthermore, 
 iron was absolutely essential if the size of ships was to be 
 increased. Builders of wooden ships were limited by the 
 average height of trees, and, in spite of all devices, could not 
 construct a frame sufficiently strong for a vessel exceeding 
 about 300 feet in length. The size of an iron or steel ship is 
 practically unlimited. The cost of ships constructed of metal 
 has decreased with advances in the manufactaire of iron and 
 steel; remedies, fairly satisfactory, have been found for the 
 derangement of the compass; and though it has been found 
 impracticable to apply copper sheathing to steel ships, the foul- 
 ing of the bottom is an evil of minor importance. 
 
 356. Relative decline of sailing vessels, notwithstanding 
 improvements. — During the second half of the nineteenth 
 century the wooden ship gradually disappeared from the seas, 
 giving place to vessels constructed first of iron and then of 
 steel. The country which suffered most from the change, as 
 will appear later, was the United States; the country best 
 prepared to profit by it was England. The English now 
 rapidly enlarged the dimensions of their ships, and improved 
 their rig and model. Some of the modern steel ships carry 
 5,000 tons of cargo, or even more. A study of winds prevailing 
 
304 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 on the ocean, to which an American officer, Maury, made 
 important contributions, enabled sailing vessels to choose a 
 course which, on many routes, shortened the duration of the 
 voyage a third or more. Steam has been applied for handling 
 the cargo, and for managing the rudder and sails. 
 
 In spite of all improvements the sailing vessel has not been 
 able to keep its share of sea-borne commerce. So much de- 
 pends on certainty in modern business that the merchant will 
 gladly pay a higher freight rate to be relieved of the element of 
 uncertainty which is bound to attend navigation by sails. 
 The vast merchant marine depending upon sails still finds 
 plenty of work to do. Sailing ships, for instance, carry the 
 wheat of California around Cape Horn to the Liverpool market, 
 and offer such low freight rates for ballast on the return trip 
 that Welsh coal and German rails are used on the Pacific Coast, 
 in spite of protective duties. About 1880 there were 1,782 
 sailing vessels engaged in carrying grain from the United 
 States. Ten years later, however, they took only thirty cargoes 
 from New York in the course of a year. Steamers now exceed 
 the sailing vessels of the world not only in tonnage, a'nd still 
 more in effective carrying capacity, but even in number also, 
 if only vessels of 100 tons and above are counted. 
 
 357. Steamers used at first chiefly for internal navigation. — 
 American inventors made a practical success of steam naviga- 
 tion soon after 1800; a brief notice of their work will be given 
 later. The steamer was used at first, however, chiefly for 
 internal navigation and for short coasting voyages. It was of 
 immense importance in furthering the development of the 
 Mississippi Valley in America; and it soon made a place for 
 itself on the European rivers. About 1840 there was a rapid 
 development of steam transportation on the German rivers, 
 and this has not ceased to grow in volume and efficiency. 
 Chains have been laid along some of the river beds; on the Elbe, 
 for instance, a chain extends all the way across Germany and 
 even into Bohemia; and by this means steamboats are enabled 
 to haul their barges up-stream against a strong current. The 
 
MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 305 
 
 application of steam to ocean navigation did not become of 
 great importance until about the middle of the century. At 
 that time only one fifth of the steam tonnage entering British 
 ports came from foreign ports; the rest was employed still in 
 the coasting trade. 
 
 358. Beginnings of steam navigation of the Atlantic. — The 
 credit for the first passage across the Atlantic by steam has 
 often been ascribed to the American ship Savannah, which 
 arrived at Liverpool in 1819 after a voyage of twenty-nine days. 
 This boat, however, should be classed as a sailing ship with 
 auxiliary engine, rather than as a steamer; the paddle-wheels 
 were arranged to be removed and hoisted on deck when the 
 wind was fair. It made most of the distance by sailing, and 
 the scanty supply of coal gave out before it reached its port, 
 so that, as the log reads, there was "no cole to git up steam.'' 
 A Canadian boat, the Royal William, actually did make the 
 whole passage under steam in 1833, but stopped at Pictou for 
 coal on the way; while the first regular steamship to cross 
 without recoaling was the Great Western in 1838. The con- 
 siderable intervals between these trips show that navigation 
 of the ocean by steam was still in its experimental stage. 
 Indeed, in the very year 1838, in which the Great Western 
 and the Sirius began the period of practical application, a 
 leading English scientist set out to prove by arguments and 
 statistics that the project of connecting Liverpool and New, 
 York by direct steamer trips was "perfectly chimerical." The 
 Cunard Company was founded the next year; and some measure 
 of the appreciation of the American people is given by the fact 
 that when Mr. Cunard arrived at Boston in 1840, on the first 
 trip of the new line, he received (it is said) no less than 1,873 
 invitations to dinner within twenty-four hours! 
 
 359. Improvement of the means of steam navigation. — 
 The early steamers were moved by paddle-wheels, which' offer 
 special advantages for use in shallow water, but which are not 
 so efficient as the screw propeller in the open sea. They re- 
 quire heavier and bulkier engines which must be placed in 
 
 20 
 
306 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the best part of the ship, they waste power, and they show the 
 effects of wear and tear more quickly. The Great Britain, 
 which made its first voyage in 1845, was noteworthy on two 
 accounts: it was the first large steamer (over 3,000 tons) to be 
 built of iron, and it was the first to introduce the screw in 
 ocean navigation. These two improvements were adopted by 
 the Inman line (1850) and were gradually accepted by other 
 builders. 
 
 In the second half of the century various improvements 
 have added still more to the efficiency of the ocean steamer. 
 Early steamers ran under such a low steam pressure that we 
 find recorded in the log-book of one, "Broke the larboard 
 steam-pipe, lapped it with canvas and rope-yarn and pro- 
 ceeded"! Higher pressures were introduced, and after about 
 1870 the steam was more fully utilized by compound- engines, 
 of which some have three or even four sets of cylinders. The 
 introduction of twin screws, first applied to the City of New 
 York (1889), has added rather to the safety than the speed of 
 a passage, by permitting further development of the system 
 of water-tight compartments. 
 
 360. Gains resulting from increase in size. — Another most 
 important factor in the development of efficient steamers has 
 been mere growth in size. A ship's carrying power varies as 
 the cube of her dimensions, while the resistance offered by the 
 water increases only a little faster than the square of her 
 dimensions. Large ships, therefore, consume less coal per ton 
 of cargo, and as large boilers and engines consume coal more 
 efficiently than small ones, there is a double gain. Here again, 
 as in the case of railroads, the introduction of cheap steel has 
 been of immense importance, and may fairly be said to have 
 revolutionized the art of ship-building since 1875. While in 
 1880 nine tenths of British steamers were still constructed of 
 iron, the proportion had sunk in 1890 to less than one twentieth, 
 and the employment of steel is now almost universal. From 
 steel are constructed the great cargo-carriers and the fast 
 express steamers of the modern oceanic service. Some concep- 
 
MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 307 
 
 tion of the progress that has been made can be got by a. 
 comparison with earlier conditions. In 1841 the total steam 
 tonnage of the British Empirawas 188,000; nowadays a single 
 steamer of 10,000 tons and over has ceased to be a rarity. 
 The horse-power of British steamers in 1841 was estimated at 
 75,000; nowadays a single steamer, like the Lucania, has 
 engines of 30,000. The boilers of a modern express steamer 
 (Teutonic) are required to evaporate 120 k)ns of water every 
 hour, yet so thoroughly is the heat utilized that it was said of 
 a steamer some years ago that the burning of a sheet of paper 
 would move a ton a mile. 
 
 361. Resulting decline in freight rates. — Even in 1884 a 
 competent writer could make this interesting statement: 
 twenty years before, a steamer of 3,000 tons had to allow for 
 coal and machinery on a given voyage 2,200 tons, and must 
 confine the cargo to the remaining space; at the date when 
 he wrote the great improvements had reversed the proportions, 
 so that only 800 tons were needed for motive power and 2,200 
 were devoted to cargo. Manifestly steamship owners would 
 be enabled by a change of this character to lower greatly the 
 charges for transportation, and freight rates have, in fact, 
 declined steadily in the course of the century. Lancashire 
 spinners now transport their raw cotton from the source of 
 supply in America at one sixteenth the cost which they had 
 to bear sixty years ago. Even in the last quarter of the 
 century ocean freight rates have dropped to one half, one third, 
 or even one fourth, of the figures prevailing in 1874. 
 
 Conditions such as have been thus briefly suggested explain 
 the immense increase in sea-borne traffic during the century. 
 For the carriage of that traflfic the merchant has now at his 
 disposal not only the sailing ship and the "tramp," the general- 
 utility steamer, but also a multitude of special boats for special 
 services: the tank-steamer for transporting liquids cheaply, 
 the cattle steamer for live stock, and the steamer with refrig- 
 erators for dead meat, the fruit steamer, etc. 
 
 362. Modem ship canals. — This survey of the develop- 
 
308 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ment of the means of navigation may fitly be closed by a 
 brief consideration of the modern ship canals and their con- 
 tribution to the growth of trade. There were, in 1900, a round 
 dozen of these canals, capable of receiving sea-going ships. 
 Some, serving special ports (Amsterdam, Manchester, etc.) 
 were of purely local importance. Others have disappointed 
 the expectations of their promoters. The canal across the 
 isthmus of Corinth has been a distinct failure, and the Kaiser 
 Wilhelm Canal, between the North and Baltic seas, has not 
 yet acquired the share of commerce which its projectors prom- 
 ised for it. Leaving aside the St. Mary's canal in America, 
 there is but one ship canal which has proved its commanding 
 importance, namely the Suez Canal. 
 
 A map of the world shows two narrow strips of land left 
 by nature almost as though with the design of stimulating 
 men to pierce them, the isthmus of Suez and the isthmus of 
 Panama. A canal at either point unites not countries or small 
 seas, but continents and great oceans, and saves thousands of 
 miles in the routes of trade. The American isthmus presents 
 great difficulties to the construction of a canal, but the Suez 
 route runs through a district composed almost entirely of 
 sand, with no elevation above 50 or 60 feet and with consider- 
 able parts actually below the level of the sea. 
 
 363. The Suez Canal, and its services to commerce. — The 
 scheme of reopening the route across the isthmus of Suez, 
 which, as said in the first chapter, had been made practicable 
 for small vessels before the time of Christ, and had been ren- 
 dered useless in the Middle Ages, was certain to rise as com- 
 merce between Europe and the East increased in volume. It 
 is said to have been entertained by Napoleon I among others, 
 but the credit for its accomplishment belongs to a French 
 engineer and promoter, Ferdinand Lesseps. After more than 
 ten years spent in preparation, work was finally begun in 1860, 
 and the canal was ready for use in 1869. 
 
 The success of the Suez Canal may be gaged, from the 
 investor's standpoint, by the fact that dividends have risen to 
 
MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 309 
 
 20 per cent, from the public standpoint by the fact that the 
 canal accommodates every year about eight million tons of 
 shipping, an amount approximately equal to that entering the 
 port of New York from foreign countries. The duration of 
 the voyage to India has been shortened by a third, and more 
 than half of the voyages to the East are now made through the 
 canal rather than around the Cape of Good Hope. The canal 
 has been an important influence in furthering the growth of 
 the world's steam tonnage, for it is practically barred to sailing 
 vessels by the difficulties of navigation in the Red Sea; no 
 sea-going sailing vessel has passed through it for years. It 
 has made possible the movement of bulky wares formerly 
 excluded from the trade with the East by the expense of trans- 
 portation: rice, wheat, petroleum, and coal. It has not, how- 
 ever, produced one result which was expected, the diversion 
 of trade to the countries of southern Europe, as in the time 
 before the passage around the Cape had been discovered. 
 Three quarters, in tonnage, of the ships using the canal have 
 been British, and ships from the countries of northern Europe 
 make up most of the remainder. 
 
 364. The postal service about 1800. — Increased facility in 
 sending communications to a distance has attended the im- 
 provement of the means of transportation by land and sea. 
 During the early part of the century the postal service was 
 still cramped by old methods and high charges. In England, 
 for instance, in the period after 1827 and before the reform, 
 postage of fourpence (eight cents) was charged for the car- 
 riage of a letter any distance not exceeding 15 miles, and the 
 postage increased with the distance: 8 pence for 80 miles, 
 12 pence for 300, 15 pence for 600, etc. The government 
 charged, in some cases, nearly five hundred times the actual 
 cost. Under these conditions little use, naturally, was made 
 of the post, and it carried, on an annual average, only three 
 letters for each member of the population. Many letters were 
 sent illicitly by private means of conveyance, and the postal 
 revenue remained nearly stationary for many years before 
 
310 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 1839, in spite of the growth of the country in population and 
 business activity. Conditions were better in some states of 
 the Continent, notably Germany, but would still be regarded 
 everywhere as backward. 
 
 365. Postal reforms and their results. — A new era in the 
 English postal system dates from the introduction by Rowland 
 Hill of the penny post; after 1840 a letter weighing not over 
 half an ounce could be sent to any place in the United Kingdom 
 if prepaid by a stamp costing one penny. Similar reductions 
 were adopted in other countries; and new facilities were ex- 
 tended for the mailing of cards, printed matter, and periodicals, 
 samples of merchandise, etc. An international Postal Union 
 was established in 1874 among the chief countries of the world, 
 which agreed on common rates of foreign postage, and arranged 
 to cooperate in carrying on the postal service. This Union 
 has improved greatly the means of distant postal communica- 
 tion, and has grown to include practically the whole civilized 
 world, with the exception of China. 
 
 It is easy to follow the effects of the various reforms and 
 improvements in the increased use of the mails. In the United 
 Kingdom, for instance, the number of letters sent per head of 
 the population has increased as follows: 1839, 3; 1840, 7; 
 1872, 28; 1882, 35. The post has developed from a luxury 
 into a social and industrial necessity, and .the extent to which 
 it is used in any country furnishes a fair index by which to 
 judge of the country's advancement. The following countries 
 may be taken as examples, the figures showing the number 
 of pieces of mail sent annually about 1900, per head of the 
 population: United States, 100; United Kingdom, 85; Ger- 
 many, 81; France, 55; Italy, 17; Japan, 13; Spain, 12; Russian 
 Empire, 5. 
 
 366. The telegraph before the application of electricity. — 
 In passing to another subject, electricity, we may still consider 
 ourselves as continuing the discussion of the applications of 
 steam, so dependent are we still on coal and steam for the 
 means of producing and using this new force. Among the 
 
MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 311 
 
 manifold applications of electricity in modern life we must 
 here confine ourselves to its use as a means of communica- 
 tion. 
 
 The telegraph, a word meaning "far-writing," existed long 
 before men thought of applying electricity to its operation. 
 The need of sending messages quickly to distant places had 
 led in many countries, before 1800, to a system of signaling 
 by means of instruments much like the semaphores of the 
 modern railroad. The crudeness of such a system is appardht. 
 Communication depended entirely on clear weather and careful 
 observers. Under favorable conditions the speed of signaling 
 was really surprising; a despatch could be sent, for instance, 
 from Paris to Strassburg, by 45 stations, in 6i minutes. It 
 was estimated, however, that of the messages received only a 
 quarter reached their destination promptly, another quarter 
 were from six to twenty-four hours late, while half had to be 
 forwarded by the ordinary post. Aerial telegraphy, therefore, 
 never attained to great importance, and was restricted largely 
 to government business. 
 
 367. The electric telegraph. — Practical telegraphy dates 
 from about 1840, when the inventions of the American Morse, 
 and the Englishman Wheatstone, made the use of electricity 
 possible wherever an insulated conductor could be laid. Im- 
 perfect as were the early instruments they accomplished their 
 purpose with remarkable success. The telegraph, indeed, has 
 probably undergone less change in the course of its extension 
 and practical development than any other invention of equal 
 importance. We must look, therefore, to explain the great 
 extension of its use, as shown in the statistics at the opening 
 of the chapter, not so much for technical improvements as 
 for a recognition of the value of the telegraph on the part of 
 the public. It found an immediate application on the rail- 
 roads, and provided them with a means of intelligence and 
 control almost as important as is the nervous system to a 
 human being. It was used at once, moreover, by governments. 
 Little by little it made its way into business life, where it has 
 
312 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 found its chief field of usefulness, and where it has effected 
 some most important changes, to be noted later. 
 
 368. Submarine telegraph lines. — The telegraph, which 
 soon became of national and international importance, was 
 still of restricted influence so long as it was confined to the 
 land lines. Experiments on a modest scale, about the middle 
 of the century, had shown the possibility of conducting the 
 electric current through an insulated cable under water, and 
 the world waited only for men of faith and energy to connect 
 continents by submarine lines. A group of prominent Amer- 
 icans, of whom Cyrus W. Field was the leader, took up the 
 project of an Atlantic cable, failed twice in their attempts to 
 lay it, and succeeded in 1858 only to find, after a few days of 
 successful operation, that the cable had ceased to work. The 
 project rested during the Civil War, but in 1866 was finally 
 accomplished. The extension of submarine cables since that 
 time may be followed in the statistics of the preceding chapter. 
 Cables now unite the peoples of all civilized nations, and form 
 an indispensable part of the modern world of thought, politics, 
 and commerce; and the new wireless telegraphy promises a still 
 further improvement in the means of distant communication. 
 
 Since about 1880 the telephone has made a place for itself 
 beside the telegraph, serving the convenience of individual 
 consumers as the telegraph serves the needs of the great 
 captains of industry and commerce. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. American clippers. [Marvin, Amer. merchant marine, chap. 12.] 
 
 2. Is it probable that steamers will drive sailing vessels entirely 
 from the seas? People once thought that railroads would cause a decline 
 in the demand for draft-horses; has that been the case? 
 
 3. The life of the merchant sailor. [W. Clark Russell, Scribner's 
 Magazine, July, 1893, 14: 3-19-1 
 
 4. Early voyages by steam across the Atlantic. [Fry, 33-42.] 
 
 5. Improvement of marine engines. [Thurston, chap. 5: Maginnis, 
 chap. 11 (technical, good plates and pictures); Chadwick in Ocean steam- 
 s' pp. 1-56.] 
 
MEANS OF NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION 313 
 
 6. The building of an ocean steamer. [Rideing, in Ocean steamships, 
 pp. 91-111.5 
 
 7. Freight traffic by ocean steamers. [Gould, Scribner's Magazine, 
 Nov., 1891, or in Ocean steamships, p. 217 ff.] 
 
 8. Passenger travel. [Same, Magazine, April, 1891, Steamships, 
 p. 112 ff.] 
 
 9. Steamship lines of the world.. [Hunt, Scribner's Magazine, Sept., 
 1891, Ocean steamships, p. 253 ff.; Encyc. Brit., supplementary vol. 32, 
 p. 834 ff.] 
 
 10. Write the history of one oi the great steamship companies: 
 Cunard, Inman, White Star, North German Lloyd, Hamburg American, 
 etc. [Fry, Maginnis.] 
 
 11. Engineering achievements in modern ports. [Vernon-Harcourt, 
 chaps. 9, 10.] 
 
 12. The Manchester ship canal. [Vernon-Harcourt, chap. 13; Porritt 
 in Yale Review, vol. 3, 295-310.] 
 
 13. The Corinth Canal. [Vernon-Harcourt, chap. 14; U. S. Monthly 
 Summary, Dec, 1901.] 
 
 14. Construction of the Suez Canal. [Vernon-Harcourt, chap. 14; 
 Encyc] 
 
 15. Effects of the Suez Canal. [Fairlie; U. S. Monthly Summary, 
 Dec, 1901.] 
 
 16. History of the project for a canal across the isthmus of Panama. 
 [Keasby. The Nicaragua Canal, N. Y., 1896; Colquhoun, The key of the 
 Pacific, London, 1895.] 
 
 17. Development of the English postal system in the nineteenth 
 century. [Social England. 6: 237-246; Ward, Reign of Queen Victoria, 
 2: lis'ff.] 
 
 18. The railroad mail service. [Amer. railway, p. 312 ff.] 
 
 19. From the figures of trade given in sect. 319 and from the figures 
 of population in the Statesman's Year-Book a table can be constructed 
 giving the commerce per head of the people of different states, for com- 
 parison with the postal statistics in the text. Note, however, that these 
 statistics include domestic mail, while figures of internal commerce are 
 lacking. The U. S., for instance, would seem to have but slight commerce 
 per capita, in spite of the active use of the mails, because the bulk of our 
 trade is internal and does not appear in statistics. 
 
 20. Development of the telegraph. [lies, chap. 13.] 
 
 21. Extension of the telegraph system in the United States. [Eckert 
 in Depew, One hund. years, chap. 19.] 
 
 22. History of the submarine telegraph. [lies, chap. 14; Charles 
 Bright, The story of the Atlantic cable, N. Y., Appleton, 1903, $1; U. S. 
 Monthly Summary, Commerce and Finance, Jan., 1899, pp. 1653-1675.] 
 
314 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 23. Construct a map of the cable lines of the world. [U. S. Monthly 
 Summary, Jan., 1899.] 
 
 24. Development of the telephone. [Hudson in Depew, One hund. 
 years, chap. 20.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 See Joseph R. Smith, Organization of ocean commerce, Univ. of Pa. 
 Puh., Boston, Ginn, 1905, $1.75, for a study of ocean commerce in its 
 general aspects; bibliography, pp. 149-150. 
 
 For the development of sailing ships, see Lindsay, Comewall- Jones, 
 and books cited later in chapters on the U. S. A thoroughly satisfactory 
 history of commercial navigation in English is still lacking. 
 
 Literature on steam navigation is better. Fry and Maginnis have 
 written good histories of the steam navigation of the Atlantic; and Ocean 
 steamships, a collection of articles from Scribner's Magazine, can be 
 warmly recommended for its treatment of various sides of the modern 
 steamship business. On ship canals see Fairlie, and consult periodical 
 literature on the various canals; .useful descriptions and statistics are 
 given in U. S. Monthly Summary, Commerce and Finance, Dec, 1901, 
 pp. 2145-2215, Great canals of the world. 
 
 Summary accounts of the development of the postal service, satis- 
 factory for the purposes of most readers of this book, will be found in the 
 encyclopedias. The various applications of electricity are fully treated 
 by lies. Other books aiming to describe electrical applications for the 
 general public are by Tunzelmann in the Contemporary Science Series. 
 Park Benjamin, and Philip Atkinson. Consult the A. L. A. Catalogue 
 for further references. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 THE WARES OF COMMERCE 
 
 369. Effect on commerce of technical progress. — It is now 
 
 time to discuss the effects on commerce of the technical changes 
 which have been described in preceding chapters. Following 
 back the substance of those chapters, the effects may be briefly 
 summarized as follows. First, an improvement in the means 
 of communication and transportation which has brought men 
 and goods of different regions vastly nearer to each other than 
 they have ever been before in the world's history. Second, a 
 control over the forces and materials of nature which has 
 enabled men to manufacture old wares more cheaply and new 
 wares which were before unknown. Third, as a result of the 
 development of the transportation system, the settlement of 
 new countries with virgin soil and rich mineral resources, and 
 the connection of these countries with each other and with 
 the countries of the Old World. 
 
 Of these three factors any one alone would be a powerful 
 stimulus to trade; the three working together account for the 
 astounding growth of commerce during the nineteenth century. 
 Comparing the present and earlier periods we may characterize 
 the advance by saying that in the Middle Ages commerce 
 concerned itself almost entirely with the luxuries of life; that 
 in the modern period (1500-1800) it served mainly men's 
 comfort; while in the recent period, since 1800, it has become 
 necessary to the very existence of a considerable part of 
 mankind. 
 
 370. Growth of the sphere of commerce and resulting 
 specialization of production. — The world has gone far toward 
 realizing the ideal of the early free trader, that wherever a man 
 
 315 
 
316 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 might be, he should share in the productive advantages of all 
 other men, wherever they might be. Customs tariffs have 
 been able to check the movement of commerce, they have 
 been powerless to stop it. The sphere of ordinary trade, 
 which was once the manor, a mere hamlet or village; which 
 grew in time to be the town with its surrounding country; 
 then included the whole nation; and became in the modern 
 period international, — this sphere of regular and ordinary 
 trade is now the world. Whole countries now specialize in 
 the production of different articles, as individuals or small 
 districts once did. 
 
 Northwestern Europe has become a great factory, drawing 
 its food supplies and raw materials from distant parts of the 
 world, and exporting manufactured products in exchange. 
 Beside Europe stands the continent of North America, supply- 
 ing in large part the needs of its own people for manufactures, 
 and producing a surplus for export. North America, indeed, 
 stands in one aspect above Europe, for it has unexhausted 
 stores of natural resources which it lavishes on other parts of 
 the world less richly endowed. The other continents take 
 subordinate positions. They are enabled by commerce to 
 procure from Europe and North America the manufactured 
 goods which they require, and specialize in the production of 
 various food supplies and raw materials for the means of 
 purchasing these goods. 
 
 371. Abolition of the slave trade. — The description of the 
 present world-organization of production, and of the exchange 
 of wares to which it gives rise, belongs to the department of 
 commercial geography. It is proper here, however, to call 
 attention to some of the marked changes in the wares of trade 
 which have taken place since 1800. 
 
 One ware which was, before 1800, of great commercial 
 importance, and which yielded immense profits to those who 
 dealt in it, has disappeared with the abolition of the slave 
 trade by all civilized nations. Long before the abolition of 
 slavery itself, humanity revolted against the horrors of the 
 
THE WARES OF COMMERCE 317 
 
 " middle passage," and the protests took effective form about 
 1800; the states of Europe and America agreed, one after 
 another, that the slave-trade under their flags, and for the 
 supply of their territories, should cease. 
 
 372. The great wares of commerce. Coal. — For the pur- 
 pose of a summary survey the most important wares of com- 
 merce before 1800 can be designated as belonging to the two 
 classes, colonial products and textiles. We shall have to note, 
 in ensuing sections, striking changes affecting both of these 
 classes, and the addition to the important wares of commerce 
 of two new classes, mineral products and foodstuffs. 
 
 Taking first the mineral products, and including coal with 
 them, as common usage justifies us in doing, we find, at first 
 sight, that this article takes a far lower rank among the modern 
 wares than we should expect from its commanding importance 
 in industrial life. There has been, it is true, a great growth in 
 the coal trade, and considerable quantities are exported from 
 England, Belgium, Germany, on occasion the United States, 
 etc., for use in countries lacking coal mines, or at sea. There 
 is an immense internal commerce in coal. In 1900 more than 
 half of the tonnage carried on the railroads of the United 
 States consisted of mining products; and of these coal certainly 
 formed a very considerable, perhaps the major, part. Still, 
 coal does not rank among the chief wares of foreign trade. 
 
 373. Metals and manufactures. — An explanation of the 
 comparative insignificance of coal in foreign trade is found in 
 its bulk. An active industrial people can compress the value 
 of coal, as it were, by using it near the mines for the production 
 and transformation of other materials. Coal is transmuted into 
 iron and manufactures, and so loses its identity, though it 
 remains still the real power behind exports of that character. 
 
 Commerce in iron and steel, and the manufactures depending 
 on them, has increased enormously in the course of the century, 
 as the reader may readily suppose. Supplies of iron and 
 machinery flow from the centers of production to the less 
 advanced countries, and the simpler tools penetrate every 
 
318 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 nook and corner of the earth. Copper has grown greatly in 
 importance, as its use for electrical appliances has extended, 
 and now forms a considerable item in exchanges of countries 
 like the United States and Germany. 
 
 374. Petroleum. — Nor is the new commercial significance 
 of mineral products confined to the metals. In the last half 
 century the trade in mineral oil (petroleum, "kerosene") has 
 become a necessary part of the world's economy. One result 
 of the great improvements in manufactures and transportation 
 was a demand, from all sides, for more light. Artificial illu- 
 mination was needed for the full utilization of machinery and 
 means of transportation; and to provide light for the newspaper 
 reading, study, and recreation to which people gave themselves 
 in increasing numbers. The first half of the century witnessed 
 many improvements: the invention of matches, the introduc- 
 tion of glass lamp-chimneys, the spread of gas lighting, and 
 the use of new oils for illumination. No previous advance, 
 however, compares in importance with the discovery that 
 crude petroleum could be made the source of a cheap and 
 efficient means of illumination. The development of the 
 petroleum trade in the space of little more than a generation 
 is a matter of common knowledge, and is readily explained by 
 the importance of the service which it performs. 
 
 375. The grain trade ; slight development before i8oo. — 
 Important and characteristic as the trade in mineral products 
 has grown to be in the nineteenth century, it is still far from 
 first place among the branches of the world's commerce. The 
 primacy belongs, without question, to the trade in foodstuffs, 
 especially grain. 
 
 Before the development of the modern system of transpor- 
 tation commerce in foodstuffs concerned itself largely with 
 the condiments rather than the aliments, with spices and 
 seasoning rather than the substantial food staples. Even at 
 a freight rate of 15 cents per ton-mile (and the expense of 
 transportation on European roads before 1800 was certainly 
 far above that), wheat at $1.50 a bushel would be limited to 
 
THE WARES OF COMMERCE 319 
 
 a trade-radius of 330 miles; the whole value of the wheat would 
 be consumed in transporting it that distance. Transportation 
 by sea was, of course, much less costly, and enabled limited 
 amounts of food to be imported under favorable conditions. 
 Still, food has to be grown on land, and often on land distant 
 from any means of water carriage; and the countries of Europe 
 were forced in general to a policy of self-sufficiency, raising the 
 requisite supplies of food at home under conditions however 
 unfavorable. We may appreciate the short space of time 
 separating us from this state of affairs by noting that in France, 
 even in 1817, people were dying of famine in Lorraine, while 
 wheat was abundant in Brittany; the carriage of provisions 
 from one province to the other quadrupled prices. In Russia, 
 even later (Pskov, 1845), the same conditions prevailed. 
 
 376. Extent and importance of the grain trade at present. — 
 Grain formed, therefore, one of the least considerable of the 
 wares of foreign commerce before 1800. A French economist 
 estimated the international trade in grain at 30 million bushels 
 at most. From that figure, comparatively insignificant, the 
 grain trade of the world had risen, even in 1887, to over 1,500 
 million bushels; grain formed then, in value, almost one tenth 
 of the total of the wares of trade, and in importance far ex- 
 ceeded any other ware. The expense of transportation had 
 undergone such a vast diminution that one day's wages of a 
 common laborer would pay for the carriage over a thousand 
 miles of all the grain and meat which he needed for a year's 
 subsistence. 
 
 It would be interesting, if time permitted, to note the 
 far-reaching social and political effects of this revolution. We 
 must, however, confine ourselves to its economic aspect. The 
 English people, to take the most striking example, depend for 
 more than half of their food supply, perhaps two thirds of 
 their wheat supply, on imports from abroad. It is said that 
 in every month in the year wheat is harvested in some country, 
 of the northern or of the southern hemisphere, for the English 
 market; a Floating Cargoes List reported 163 vessels bound 
 
320 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 for England with cereals, at sea at one time. As formerly the 
 citizens of London depended on the farmer of a nearby county 
 for the supply of his daily bread, so now the inhabitants of 
 England in general depend upon people in the Dakotas, in 
 California, in the Argentine Republic, in Egypt, in India, or 
 in Australia. The Englishman is enabled, by commerce, to 
 share in the agricultural advantages of any and all those 
 countries; he applies himself to his specialty and exchanges 
 the product for his food. 
 
 377. Commerce in other foodstuffs. — In some respects 
 even more striking, though on the whole of far less importance, 
 has been the growth of foreign commerce in stock and meat. 
 About 1800 the common way of marketing meat was to drive 
 it to market on the hoof; the trip might consume a number of 
 days, and the animal would arrive in poor condition and with 
 weight diminished. For transportation to distant countries 
 meat had to be preserved by pickling in brine. Fresh meat 
 of good quality was a luxury, and the average consumption of 
 meat was small. Modern progress has solved the problem of 
 using the great grazing spaces of North and South America 
 and Australia for the supply of distant peoples, in two ways. 
 Improvements in transportation by land and sea have allowed 
 the carriage of live-stock for thousands of miles, in good con- 
 dition. The use of refrigerating appliances, especially artificial 
 refrigeration by means of steam power, has permitted the 
 carriage of dead meat the same distance without deterioration. 
 Furthermore, the application of scientific principles to the 
 preservation of meat has enabled supplies of that article to 
 be utilized which would otherwise be wasted, and has contrib- 
 uted a new form of ware to modern trade. Other foodstuffs 
 (fruit and fresh vegetables) have profited by similar advances 
 in the means of transportation and preservation. 
 
 378. The textiles ; changes in relative importance. — In this 
 brief survey only two more classes of wares may be noted, the 
 textiles, and colonial products Trade in wares of both these 
 classes has undergone a great development and important 
 
THE WARES OF COMMERCE 321 
 
 transformation in the course of the century, though it presents 
 no such revolutionary changes as in the case of wares described 
 above. 
 
 The textiles have continued to be among the most important 
 wares of commerce. A population, advancing rapidly not only 
 in numbers but in average purchasing power, has demanded 
 constantly increasing supplies of clothing material. There has 
 been, however, a noteworthy change in the kind of fabric 
 demanded. Measuring by the weight of the raw material 
 consumed, the English textiles about 1800 were composed as 
 follows : over two fifths woolen, over two fifths linen, consid- 
 erably less than one fifth cotton. Note now the change as 
 shown by conditions about 1880: wool made up one fifth of 
 the total, linen little more than one tenth, while cotton had 
 risen to two thirds. For some purposes cotton fabrics are 
 better than those of any other material, for other purposes 
 they present a cheap and satisfactory substitute; and conse- 
 quently they have been able to displace other textiles to a 
 large extent. 
 
 379. Commerce in raw materials for the textile manufac- 
 ture. — The rise in importance of cotton is partly, not entirely, 
 responsible for a great change in the character of the textile 
 trade. With the exception of silk, which has always, because 
 of its high price, been of restricted use, the raw materials for 
 the textiles had formerly been produced in the country of 
 manufacture. England and the Netherlands, it is true, had 
 begun before 1800 to import wool from Spain, but wool was 
 then an object of internal rather than foreign trade, in general, 
 and flax was raised for home consumption in practically all 
 the European countries. The introduction of the cotton manu- 
 facture in Europe introduced a change, for in the case of this 
 textile the raw material as well as the finished product was 
 necessarily a ware of foreign trade. The past century has 
 witnessed a vast increase in the commerce in raw cotton, and, 
 moreover, the establishment of an important trade in raw 
 wool. In 1850 Europe still supplied four fifths of the wool 
 21 
 
 C 
 
322 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 consumed, and has continued since that date to produce about 
 the same quantity as then. The proportion which it contributes 
 to the total supply has, however, declined to less than one 
 third. There has been an immense increase in the production 
 of wool in South America and Australia, and a less notable 
 advance in the amounts furnished by Africa and Asia. At the 
 present time, therefore, raw wool flows to Europe from all the 
 other continents, and returns to them in the form of finished 
 goods. 
 
 380. Colonial products. — The last class of wares to engage 
 our attention will be that of the so-called colonial products, 
 of which tea, coffee, and sugar are familiar examples. The 
 wares received their name because, before 1800, Europe de- 
 pended entirely on distant parts of the world for their supply. 
 The reader will remember what an important part they played 
 in the commerce of countries like England and France, in the 
 modern period. 
 
 At least one ware of considerable commercial importance 
 has been added to the list of colonial products in the course 
 of the century. Rubber (using that word to cover also gutta- 
 percha, an article with somewhat different qualities), counted 
 for little in commerce before 1830. Soon after that time, 
 however, it was regarded as "promising," and the discovery 
 of the vulcanizing process by Goodyear enabled manufacturers 
 to gain the full benefit of its valuable qualities, elasticity, 
 impermeability, etc. It is now an indispensable article in 
 many applications, and though the production has risen to a 
 hundred million pounds a year the demand for it has increased 
 still more rapidly, and the price has risen. 
 
 The old wares have not only retained but also increased 
 their importance as elements in human consumption. The 
 people of Germany consumed, on an individual average, about 
 2 pounds of coffee in 1840, 6 pounds in 1900; 4 pounds of 
 sugar in 1840, 30 pounds in 1900. Figures from other coun- 
 tries present, with some variations, the same growth in de- 
 mand. The people of the United States now demand over 
 
THE WARES OF COMMERCE 323 
 
 10 pounds of coffee per capita, and over 70 pounds of 
 sugar. 
 
 381. Rise of beet sugar, and effect on commerce. — One of 
 the colonial wares, sugar, demands special attention. The 
 methods of production have undergone a complete change in 
 the course of the century, and the former currents of trade in 
 sugar have, in some cases, actually been reversed. Before 
 1800 people relied entirely for their sugar supply on the cane 
 plantations of the colonies. It was known already, however, 
 that beets contained a large percentage of sugar, and during 
 the Napoleonic wars, when the Continent was closed in large 
 part to colonial imports, an attempt was made to secure sugar 
 from this native source of supply. The attempt was sufficiently 
 successful to stimulate further efforts. With the aid of liberal 
 protection from the governments a beet sugar industry was 
 established on the Continent in the first half of the century. 
 That industry supplied in 1860 one quarter of the total amount 
 of the sugar of the world, in 1882 one half, in 1900 nearly 
 two thirds. 
 
 The change in the method of manufacturing sugar has had 
 far-reaching effects on commerce. Countries with cane plan- 
 tations have seen the price of sugar fall under the increased 
 output of European factories, equipped and operated with 
 scientific accuracy; they have lost a large part of their former 
 market; some of them have been almost ruined. England, 
 which once made great profit by importing cane sugar and 
 distributing it among the other European countries, now, on 
 the contrary, goes to the Continent for the larger part of its 
 sugar supply; and continental states like Germany and France 
 export sugar instead of importing it. 
 
 382. The European sugar bounty system. — The reader 
 should, however, note carefully that these changes are due in 
 large part to a system of protection which has grown to for- 
 midable proportions. European governments have found in 
 sugar a convenient object of taxation, but have desired at the 
 same time to further the growth of the home sugar industry, 
 
324 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and to secure for it a market in foreign countries. They have 
 sought to combine the two objects by taxing the home con- 
 sumer, and by remitting the tax and giving special premiums 
 to the exporter. A pound of sugar costs far more in a country 
 of Europe where it is manufactured, than in the country to 
 which it is exported; every pound sold at home has to bear a 
 tax, and every pound sent abroad receives a premium which 
 enables it to be sold more cheaply. The orange marmalade 
 industry, for which the town of Dundee is famous, can flourish 
 in spite of the expense of transporting the fruit from Spain to 
 Scotland, because sugar is artificially cheap in the English 
 market. Such a condition of affairs is admitted to be un- 
 wholesome; in some aspects it is absurd. The burden of the 
 bounty system has become intolerable in recent years, and 
 the governments of the Continent have been seeking a way of 
 escape from it. A convention at Brussels provided for some 
 measures of reform, which were to go into effect in 1903, but 
 at the time of writing it is too early to tell what effect these 
 measures may have on the beet sugar and cane sugar trade 
 of the world. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Make a brief written summary of the contents of preceding chap- 
 ters under the heads of section 369. 
 
 2. On an outline map of Europe indicate areas corresponding to the 
 sphere of commerce in different periods, with approximate dates, 
 
 3. Suppression of the slave trade. [Schuyler, Amer. diplomacy, N. Y., 
 1886, chap. 5.] 
 
 4. Recent slave trade in Africa. [Biography of a modern missionary 
 or explorer.] 
 
 5. The coal trade at the close of the century. [Special Consular 
 Report, No. 21, 1900, part 1, Foreign markets for American coal; U. S. 
 Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance, April, 1900, vol. 7, no. 10, 
 pp. 2815-2927, or Sept., 1902, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 663-757.] 
 
 6. On the wares of 373 and the following sections prepare reports. 
 Indicating, where it is possible, the following points: total amount of the 
 world's product; the leading countries (perhaps six), the share of each, 
 and their relative advantages; the chief importing countries; peculiar 
 characteristics of the trade. [Commercial geographies, encyclopedias, 
 
THE WARES OF COMMERCE 325 
 
 Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, The International Year-Book of Dodd, 
 Mead and Co. The Commercial Year-Book of the N. Y. Journal of Com- 
 merce, 6 annual vols, to 1901]. 
 
 7. Report on one of the following topics: 
 
 (a) Development of the uses of petroleum. 
 
 (b) History of the production and transportation of petroleum. 
 
 (c) The Standard Oil Company. 
 
 [Martin, Coal; encyclopedias; Gilbert H. Montague, The rise and pro- 
 gress of the Standard Oil Company, N. Y., Harper, 1903, $1; Ida M. Tar- 
 bell, The history of the Standard Oil Company, N. Y., 1904.] 
 
 8. Indicate on an outline map the distance from your home to which 
 wheat could profitably be carried by different means of transportation. 
 [See below, sect. 385, for convenient statistics.] 
 
 9. Character and value of wheat. [Edgar, Story, chaps. 1, 2.] 
 
 10. Arrange in parallel columns the names of the six countries lead- 
 ing in wheat imports and the six leading in exports; indicate by lines of 
 proper length the amount imported or exported by each. [See above, 
 sect. 373; U. S. Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance, Jan., 1900, 
 vol. 7, no. 7, pp. 1955-2075, Grain trade of U. S. and world.] 
 
 11. Wheat in modem commerce. [Edgar, Story, chap. 4.] 
 
 12. Provision trade of the world. [U. S. Monthly Summary, Feb., 
 1900, vol. 7, no. 8, pp. 2297-2347.] 
 
 13. American canning interests. [Judge in Depew, One hund. years, 
 chap. 57.] 
 
 14. What amount does an American household, your own for instance, 
 spend in a year for each of the chief textiles: cotton, wool, linen, silk? 
 
 15. The cotton trade of the United States and of the world. [See 
 above, sect. 376, for suggestion of a simple mode of treating a large sub- 
 ject; the topic may be amplified as time permits. F. Wilkinson, Story of 
 cotton, N.Y., Appleton, $1; Statistics in U. S. Monthly Summary, vol. 
 7, no. 9, pp. 2543-2635.] 
 
 16. The wool trade. [Cf. references in sect. 373; bibliography in 
 Bulletin of Nat. Assoc, of Wool Manufacturers, June, 1891, vol. 21, p. 118.] 
 
 17. Write a history of one of the following, as a ware of commerce in 
 the nineteenth century: rubber, tea, coffee. [Cf. sect. 373.] 
 
 18. History of sugar as a commodity. [See the doctor's dissertation 
 by Ellen D. Ellis, Philadelphia, 1905.] 
 
 19. What amount of tea, coffee, and sugar does your household con- 
 sume in a year? (Note that sugar is frequently purchased in preserves, 
 cake, etc.) 
 
 20. History of beet sugar, [Encyclopedias; index to periodical 
 literature; U. S. Monthly Summary, Jan., 1902, vol. 9, no. 7, pp. 2585- 
 2763.] 
 
326 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 21. Some effects of the system of sugar bounties. [Charles S. Parker, 
 Free trade and cheap sugar, Fortnightly Review, 1898, 70: 44-53.] 
 
 22. The Brussels sugar conference. [Economic Journal, June, 1902, 
 12: 217 fif.; same, March, 1904, 14: 34 ff.; Quarterly Journal of Economics, 
 Nov., 1902, 17: 1 ff.; Contemporary Review, Jan., 1903, 83: 75.; bulletin 
 of the U. S. Dep. of Agric. on the sugar situation.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 As this chapter touches the field of commercial geography I refer 
 for bibliography and general reading to the current manuals on that sub- 
 ject: C. C. Adams, Text-book, N. Y., 1901, Appleton, $1.30; G. S. Chisholm, 
 Handbook, 6th ed., N. Y., 1906, Longmans, $4.80. 
 
 References in quantity sufficient for ordinary students are given in 
 the Questions and Topics above, and in the authorities cited at the end 
 of the book; further references will be given when the history of the com- 
 merce of specific countries is considered. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 
 
 383. Qualities of modem commerce. Certainty. — The 
 
 changes in the instruments and objects of commerce, described 
 in preceding chapters, have had far-reaching effects on com- 
 mercial 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 im- 
 portant 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 con- 
 sumed. 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 con- 
 stant. 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 
 
 327 
 
328 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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. 
 
 384. 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 pro- 
 ducers are encouraged to make their preparations, and the 
 whole body of people is stimulated to new activity and effi- 
 ciency. 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." 
 
 385. 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 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 329 
 
 in kilometers (about five eighths 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 Indian 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. 
 
 386. 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 six- 
 teenth 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 
 
330 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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 inter- 
 ruptions of commerce, by the outbreak of epidemic diseases 
 or by such forces of nature as were displayed in the Charleston 
 earthquake of 1886 or the blizzard of 1888, 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. 
 
 387. 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 illus- 
 trated 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 deter- 
 mined 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 
 servic.e had, of course, a great advantage over their competitors, 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 331 
 
 buying and selling with full knowledge of what the rate would 
 be. With the introduction of the cable, however, all mer- 
 chants shared alike in such information, and, furthermore, by 
 the continuous communication thus .established, the former 
 violent fluctuations in rates became a thing of the past. 
 
 388. Services of the telegraph to the modem 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 mer- 
 chants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both con- 
 sumers 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 re- 
 markable 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. 
 
332 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 389. 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 en- 
 gaged 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. 
 
 390. 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 signifi- 
 cance 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 imprac- 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 333 
 
 ticable. 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 every- 
 thing. Most wholesale merchants are content to confine them- 
 selves 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 impos- 
 sible, in this book, to do more than suggest the complex com- 
 mercial 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. 
 
 391. Insurance and speculation. — The practice of insur- 
 ance 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 
 
334 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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. 
 
 392. 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 specu- 
 lation 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 differ- 
 ence 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 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 335 
 
 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. 
 
 393. Decline of the market and fair, and rise of the produce 
 exchange. — I spoke above of the regularity of modern com- 
 merce 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 pro- 
 visions, 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 per- 
 manent 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 w^orld-wide 
 significance, seem to have continued to the present time the 
 principle of periodical recurrence, but a tendency to perma- 
 nence 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 expo- 
 sitions 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 indispen- 
 sable 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 
 
336 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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. 
 
 394. 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. 
 
 395. More efficient utilization of capital in modem 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 predeces- 
 sors 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 re- 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 337 
 
 suited 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. 
 
 396. 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 advan- 
 tage. 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 15usiness. 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 accord- 
 ing 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 insti- 
 tutions, 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. 
 
 397. 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 
 
 22 
 
338 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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. 
 
 398. Crises before 1850. — The tendency of the commercial 
 organization to these interruptions in its regularity of opera- 
 tion, 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 Eng- 
 land, 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. 
 
 399. 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 dis- 
 covery of gold in California (1848) and in Australia (1851) led 
 to an immense increase in the world's stock of gold, which is 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 339 
 
 said to have doubled in littljs 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. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. In the example given, sect. 384, distinguish the producer, the 
 transporter, and the consumer. Show how each one of these gained by 
 the advance in organization. Did any one lose by it? 
 
 2. Of what wares are large amounts still kept in storehouses, and 
 why? [Cf. U. S. Monthly Summary, Oct., 1903, vol. 11. no. 4, pp. 1033- 
 1095, Warehousing industry in U. S.] 
 
 3. Study, from newspaper accounts, the effect of an interruption of 
 commerce by one of the causes suggested in the text. 
 
 4. Distinguishing producer, middleman, and consumer, show what 
 has been the effect on each of the introduction of the telegraph. 
 
 5. Service of the postal system to commerce. [James in Depew, One 
 hund. years, chap. 5.] 
 
340 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 6. Development of the modem system of advertising. [Ayer in 
 Depew, One hund. years, chap. 13.] 
 
 7. Nobody complains because the farmer who grows wheat or wool 
 does not also make flour or cloth. Is there any ^ood reason why the man 
 who makes the flour or cloth should also market it? 
 
 8. Study the biography of some great merchant, and find out whether 
 he made money out of people, or made money for people and kept only 
 a share for himself. [James Burnley, Millionaires and kings of enterprise, 
 Lond. and Phila., 1901; Fortunes made in business, London, 1884, 2 vols.] 
 
 9. Make a genealogical chart, showing how, from a single ancestor 
 (the medieval artisan) the many specialists in modem manufactures and 
 trade have proceeded. [Small and Vincent, Introduction to Study of 
 society, contains a chart of this character, which may be used for 
 guidance. See the U. S. Census or a business directory for suggestions 
 of the present organization.] 
 
 10. If you have personal knowledge of some trade or manufacture, 
 write a report on the development of its organization and the resulting 
 specialization. 
 
 11. Write a report on the advantages to society of (a) fire insurance, 
 or (b) speculation. [Hadley, Economics, chap. 4, or other manual of 
 economics; H. C. Emery, Speculation on the stock and produce exchanges 
 of the United States, N. Y., 1896, Columbia Studies, 7: 283-512.] 
 
 12. Write the history of any institution for periodical trade, like a 
 market or fair, which has ever existed in your neighborhood. Has it any 
 commercial importance at present? [Residents of the original thirteen 
 colonies and of the older States will find in local histories and early legisla- 
 tion much information on this subject.] 
 
 13. The London exposition of 1851. [McCarthy, Hist., vol. 1, chap. 
 21.] 
 
 14. Write the history of some produce exchange. [Emery, Specula- 
 tion; local history and biography, reports of the exchange.] 
 
 15. Note, in connection with sect. 394, that the industrial organi- 
 zation has become so complex in recent times that this book cannot follow 
 out topics which were treated in earlier periods. For the importance of 
 capital and of large scale enterprise at present see the books on economies, 
 on railroads, trusts, etc. 
 
 16. Advantages of the modern department store. [Scribner's Maga- 
 zine, 1897, vol. 21, p. 4fT.; restrictions of space forbid the treatment of 
 the organization of retail trade in the text, but many interesting and 
 fruitful topics may be found in studying it.] 
 
 17. The business of a modem bank. [Scribner's Magazine, 1897, vol. 
 21, p. 575 flF.; manuals on economics and banking.] 
 
 18. The benefits of commercial and credit agencies. [Question 
 
THE MODERN ORGANIZATION 341 
 
 bankers and business men; I find no historical treatment of the topic 
 available in English.] 
 
 19. Character and course of a commercial crisis. [Manuals of eco- 
 nomics.] 
 
 20. Write the history of some particular crisis. [Bibliography in 
 Jones, Bowker and lies, and Palgrave; consult narrative histories of the 
 period, and periodical articles.] 
 
 21. Effect of the gold discoveries about 1850. [Rand, Ec. hist., 
 chap. 10, from Caimes.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 This chapter touches so closely the field of economics that it seems un- 
 necessary to duplicate the references which are supplied in abundance 
 by the manuals on that subject. See for bibliography Bowker and lies, 
 and Bullock's Introduction to the Study of Economics, N. Y., 1897. A 
 full classified bibliography of commercial crises will be found in Edward D. 
 Jones, Economics crises N. Y., Macmillan, 1900, pp. 225-245. The 
 book which covers most fully the topics treated here is Wells, ** Recent 
 econ. changes. References on special topics are given above. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 COMMERCIAL POLICY 
 
 400. War and peace in the nineteenth century. — Although, 
 for the convenience of a round number, the date 1800 has been 
 chosen in this booli to fix the beginning of the recent period, 
 the great changes which marked the passing of previous con- 
 ditions began with the French Revolution of 1789. The effects 
 of the revolution were soon felt outside the country in which 
 it started. In a few years the powers of Europe were engaged 
 in a war which, with slight intermission, endured for almost 
 the period of a generation, and ceased finally only with the 
 defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Since 1815 commerce has 
 enjoyed singular freedom from the vexation of war, and our 
 attention will be occupied in this chapter mainly with the 
 commercial policy of states at peace. The convulsive struggle, 
 however, in which the century began, has such importance, 
 commercial as well as political, that it demands more than 
 passing comment. 
 
 401. French privateers and English commerce. — The com- 
 mercial interest of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars 
 centers in the contest between France and England. These 
 two powers were the greatest commercial states of Europe, 
 and France still retained important colonial possessions. 
 England, however, had specialized in the development of 
 sea power, while France now followed the course to which 
 she had long been tending and sought to win the victory by 
 the development of her power on land. After 1795 France 
 abandoned the policy of maintaining great fleets to oppose 
 the British, sacrificed the merchant vessels flying the French 
 flag, and sought to destroy the commerce on which the life 
 
 342 
 
COMMERCIAL POLICY 343 
 
 of England depended by sending out inumerable privateers to 
 prey upon it. France enjoyed, apparently, an extraordinarily 
 favorable position for making this policy effective. The port 
 of London carried on more than half of British foreign trade; of 
 the ships which contributed to its annual record of thirteen 
 or fourteen thousand entries and departures, two thirds had 
 to pass through the English Channel; and French privateers, 
 sailing at sundown from a home port, could reach their cruising 
 ground before it was light again. Some of the French priva- 
 teers inflicted very serious loss on the British. A large one, 
 captured in 1799, is said to have taken 160 prizes in four years, 
 and to have cleared for her owners in Bordeaux five million 
 dollars. English ships were forced to gather in convoys, sailing 
 under the protection of ships of war. Fleets of 200 or 300 
 vessels were not unusual, and sometimes 500 or 1,000 were 
 seen together, in dangerous places like the Chops of the Channel 
 or the entrance to the Baltic. This system consumed the time 
 and money of English merchants, and did not entirely prevent 
 losses, which amounted perhaps to 2 per cent or more of the 
 total volume of British trade. Still, the effort of France to 
 crush her enemy by this means was clearly futile. France, on 
 the other hand, saw her commerce decline until, as a literal 
 fact, not a single merchant vessel flying the French flag was on 
 the seas. In 1800 France received directly from Asia, Africa, 
 and America less than $300,000 worth of goods altogether, 
 and exported to those continents only $56,000. 
 
 402. Napoleon and the Continental System. — A new period 
 in the war against commerce can be dated from the reopening 
 of hostilities, after a brief interval of peace, in 1803. Napoleon, 
 now the ruling spirit in France, found that a direct contest 
 with the English on their own element, the sea, was hopeless. 
 His schemes for the conquest of his great enemies may be 
 summarized as follows: first, direct invasion, from which he 
 was always deterred by the English sea power; second, a blow 
 at England through her eastern empire, to which the Egyptian 
 expedition was preparatory; and finally, the "commercial 
 
344 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 strangulation " of England by the exclusion of her goods from 
 Europe. This last scheme, to which his efforts finally nar- 
 rowed themselves, simply continued a policy which had already 
 been applied in France, of excluding the wares and ships of 
 British commerce. Napoleon was able, however, by his extra- 
 ordinary successes on land, to extend the system of prohibition 
 far beyond the bounds of France, and make it truly deserving 
 of its name of Continental System. By 1809 he had closed to 
 English trade all Europe except Turkey, Sicily, and Portugal. 
 Decrees named from the place at which they were issued 
 (Berlin, Milan), sought with savage thoroughness to stop all 
 openings through which the English might carry on their 
 trade and recruit their resources for the war against him. 
 Commerce with Europe, according to Napoleon's plan, was to 
 be carried on exclusively by his allies or by neutrals like the 
 Americans; and the English, by being totally excluded, were 
 to be starved into submission. 
 
 403. English reprisals ; the position of neutrals. — To these 
 measures England replied with various Orders in Council which 
 matched in spirit Napoleon's decrees. As Napoleon sought to 
 exclude England from European commerce, so England sought 
 to drive the commerce of Napoleon's allies from the sea, and, 
 furthermore, to make neutral commerce aid her in her measures 
 against him. An order of 1807 required any neutral trading 
 with the Continent to stop at a British station both going and 
 coming, to land and reship the cargo, and to pay certain duties. 
 Its purpose was to make England the center and warehouse of 
 the world's commerce. Neutrals were placed between the upper 
 and the nether millstone. In obeying the orders of either 
 belligerent they exposed themselves to the punishment of the 
 other. The merchants of the United States, who had profited 
 by the early stages of the war to extend their commerce greatly, 
 were forced into the seclusion of the embargo (to be described 
 later), and were led in 1812 to the declaration of open war 
 with England. 
 
 404. Failure of the Continental System. — England scarcely 
 
COMMERCIAL POLICY 345 
 
 needed political allies in a contest in which the material 
 interests of most of the people of Europe were allied with her 
 own. The obstacles to commerce with the Continent caused 
 the prices of articles like the colonial wares to rise to double, 
 triple, even tenfold, what they were in England. The reader 
 will remember that the practical beginnings of beet sugar 
 manufacture can be dated from this period of dearth. Com- 
 mercial forces were too strong for any political restrictions, 
 and smugglers brought goods to the people who wanted and 
 would pay for them, despite all penalties. At a time (1809-10) 
 when all the great ports from Riga to Triest were closed, goods 
 reached the interior still, through the Greek islands, Malta, 
 parts of Spain, the Channel Islands, and Heligoland. Napoleon 
 had himself to recognize the impossibility of making the 
 Continental System effective. He clad his own armies in 
 English cloth, sold constantly licenses to evade his own decrees, 
 and sought to win the profits away from smugglers by allowing 
 the introduction of colonial products on payment of duties 
 equivalent to the smugglers' gain. Certain branches of pro- 
 duction and manufacture were furthered on the Continent by 
 the restrictions on trade, but the Continental System, on the 
 whole, resulted only in loss to the people and in the defeat of 
 Napoleon's own plans. It furnishes a signal example of the 
 futility of attempting to crush a sea power like England, 
 without meeting it on its own element. 
 
 405. Effect of the war on England and France. — The effect 
 of the war and the prohibitive system was necessarily injurious 
 to British commerce, and showed itself in a decline of British 
 exports. The injury, however, far from being mortal, was 
 extremely slight. Smuggling was incessant, and if one opening 
 to British trade was closed another was quickly found. When 
 Holland became allied to France and hence closed to England, 
 British exports to Germany increased rapidly; the German 
 people were not consuming more British goods, but acted 
 merely as distributing agents, through whom the goods reached 
 their old markets. Napoleon could not forever coerce a whole 
 
346 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 continent, and his blockade was generally evaded in northern 
 Europe, with the connivance of the governments, before 1810. 
 On the last day of that year the Czar of Russia bade open 
 defiance to the Continental System; and it crumbled beyond 
 hope of repair after the failure of the Moscow campaign. Even 
 the losses which England suffered were made up, in considerable 
 part, by the profits which she secured from the expansion of 
 neutral trade. England gained valuable additions to her 
 maritime empire (Malta, Heligoland, Cape Colony, Ceylon, 
 etc.), and entered the nineteenth century with her commercial 
 primacy established beyond dispute. France, on the other 
 hand, emerged from the struggle weakened at home and shorn 
 still further of possessions abroad. Hayti (or San Domingo) 
 had been lost by a native revolt; the Louisiana territory had 
 been ceded to the United States ; and some of her small islands 
 had passed into the hands of England. 
 
 406. Other wars of the nineteenth century. — After the 
 conclusion of this great war the world enjoyed a long interval 
 of peace. The nineteenth century has been marked by in- 
 ternal political development, rather than by international 
 strife. The growth of the spirit of nationality, the idea that 
 people conscious of likeness in language, religion, etc., should 
 be grouped under the same government, has led to several 
 sharp struggles between states; but these have, in general, 
 been short and of no great commercial significance. More 
 important, from the commercial standpoint, has been the revo- 
 lution in South America, which has enabled the people, for- 
 merly bound by the restrictions of the colonial system, to 
 establish independent trade relations. Commerce was seriously 
 affected, moreover, by the Civil War in the United States, 
 which closed to the world for a few years its great source of 
 supply of cotton. Other countries proved incapable of supply- 
 ing the lack; a considerable portion of the English people 
 (one fifth, it was said then), supported by the cotton manu- 
 facture, suffered from the stoppage of work; and consumers 
 were forced to adopt other clothing materials, and did not, 
 
COMMERCIAL POLICY 347 
 
 for many years, use cotton as freely as before. Of all the 
 wars since 1815, however, that which will probably in time 
 prove to be of the greatest commercial significance is the war 
 between Japan and Russia, at the opening of the twentieth 
 century; this will be noticed briefly later. 
 
 407. Removal of old obstacles to commerce. — The greatest 
 benefit which Europe enjoyed from the French Revolution and 
 the ensuing wars was the removal of many remnants of feudal 
 institutions which had persisted, petrified as it were, to this 
 late period of history. Of these remnants none was more 
 harmful to commerce than the feudal institution of the staple. 
 This flourished especially in the German states, and resulted 
 in depriving of a large part of their commercial value the 
 German rivers, which were by nature the cheapest and best 
 means of transportation. It was impossible to travel far on 
 any German river without reaching a staple, where the boat- 
 man was subject to delay, inconvenience, and considerable 
 expense. On the Rhine, for instance, there were thirty-two 
 stations of this character where dues were still levied in 1800. 
 As far as regarded the effect on commerce the flow of the rivers 
 might as well have been interrupted by cataracts. It was a 
 great step in progress, therefore, when these interruptions 
 were removed, as little by little they were in the first half of 
 the nineteenth century. The principle of free navigation was 
 extended gradually to include important international rivers 
 like the Scheldt and the Danube. The reader will remember 
 that in the Middle Ages various countries tried to monopolize 
 parts of the sea itself. Denmark had kept its hold on the 
 straits leading into the Baltic Sea, and required ships to stop 
 at Elsinore and pay toll, until 1857, when it sold out its right 
 to levy toll on the payment of a large lump sum by the countries 
 interested in free navigation. 
 
 408. Customs tariffs; the prohibitive system. — The most 
 important topic which remains to be considered in this chapter 
 is that of commercial policy as shown in the customs tariffs. 
 The details of tariff policy must be left to later chapters, in 
 
348 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 which the different states will be considered separately; place 
 can be found here only for a brief review of the general course 
 of development, and for a consideration of some of the factors 
 which explain the great changes. 
 
 Only a few years before the outbreak of the French Revo- 
 lution France and England had agreed to a commercial treaty 
 which marked a great departure from the restrictive principles 
 of the old mercantilist policy, and seemed to promise a new 
 era of freedom in trade. The outbreak of war destroyed the 
 new system almost as soon as it had been carried into effect, 
 and changed the relations between the two states into that 
 attitude of fierce antagonism which has been described above. 
 The return of peace found the tariff systems of both France 
 and England set in the old lines. The tariffs included a vast 
 number of duties, both on imports and on exports; the rates 
 were high and often prohibitive; the protection of national 
 shipping by navigation acts was maintained. Similar char- 
 acteristics marked the tariffs of other European states, and 
 this period may fitly be termed the era of prohibition in recent 
 commercial policy. 
 
 409. The period of free trade, i860- 1880. — The prohibitive 
 system held its ground, however, only by force of custom and 
 by the active support of small groups whom it favored. The 
 writings of French and English economists, of whom Adam 
 Smith was the great representative, had convinced thinking 
 men that the people and countries of Europe would benefit by 
 greater freedom of trade, and governments waited only for 
 favorable conditions, political and economic, to lower their 
 customs duties. The movement toward reform was at first 
 local, finding place especially in England and Germany. Soon 
 after the middle of the century, however, it became general in 
 Europe, and led to such sweeping changes that the period 
 extending, roughly, from 1860 to 1880 has often been called 
 the free-trade period in commercial history. This was the 
 time when the technical inventions, especially the application 
 of steam on a large scale to manufactures and transportation, 
 
COMMERCIAL POLICY 349 
 
 were first showing their full power in increasing productiveness. 
 At this time a state which secluded itself commercially seemed 
 to be renouncing the chance to share in the great movement 
 of progress. Industrial states sought markets for their manu- 
 factures and sources of supply for their food and raw materials. 
 Agricultural states found the offers for their surplus products 
 too tempting to be refused. So many profitable openings 
 appeared everywhere that there was little dread of competition 
 and little call for protection. 
 
 410. Reduction of customs duties. — In this period, there- 
 fore, there was a general overhauling of the old tariffs. Export 
 duties disappeared. Prohibitions were dropped, and import 
 duties were reduced. Narrow restrictions, designed to favor 
 merchant shipping, were reformed. Liberal commercial trea- 
 ties became the fashion, and Europe was soon covered with a 
 network of them after England and France had set the ex- 
 ample in 1860. These treaties became of especial importance 
 because they now included generally the clause of "the most 
 favored nation," by which a participant in the treaty was 
 assured that it should share, without delay and without need 
 of recompense, in any favors that might be granted to other 
 states. The slightest concession, therefore, effected a general 
 reduction of duties in Europe. An English author, writing in 
 1882, found that in the period from 1860 to 1880 tariffs had 
 been raised in only two of the sixteen European states. Apart 
 from these two exceptions, which were not important, tariffs 
 had undergone substantial reductions; of 2,140 items existing 
 in 1860 only 136 had been raised, while 900 had remained the 
 same and no less than 1,104 had either been lowered or re- 
 moved altogether from the list. These reforms were undoubt- 
 edly responsible in part for the remarkable growth of the 
 world's commerce in the period which they covered. 
 
 411. The return to protection. — The free-trade movement 
 has been followed, in the last quarter of the century, by a 
 decided reaction to protection. Since about 1880 increase in 
 the customs duties has been the rule in Europe, and reductions 
 
350 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 have been exceptional. No single cause can be held respon- 
 sible for this change. The growth of national feeling and of 
 international tension in Europe since 1870 has undoubtedly 
 disposed governments to listen more readily to the complaints 
 of citizens who suffer from competition, and ask for protection 
 against foreigners. Competition, moreover, has widened its 
 range of action and become more keen. The countries which 
 gained new markets for their agricultural products, and flour- 
 ished during the period of development of steam transportation 
 in Europe, have lost their foreign markjets and find their home 
 markets menaced, as the transportation system has grown to 
 embrace other continents and now brings cheap products from 
 across the seas to the door of the European consumer. Coun- 
 tries which willingly accepted the manufactures of advanced 
 industrial states when their own industries were in a primitive 
 stage of development have since aspired to establish modern 
 factories of their own at home. 
 
 In spite of the return to higher duties the present protec- 
 tionist policy has retained many of the changes of the period 
 of free trade. The statesmen who guide the commercial policy 
 of European countries have discarded prohibitions, and use 
 duties discriminating against particular countries only excep- 
 tionally. Down to the close of the century they have con- 
 tinued to grant to nations in general the treatment accorded 
 to the most favored nation, and in some ways have extended 
 the scope of this practice. The general level of duties, more- 
 over, though it may seem high in comparison even with the 
 general average of the period of prohibitions, offers a much 
 less effective bar to trade, because of the reduction of the 
 expense of transportation. It is impossible to state accurately 
 the relative height of various tariffs. The following table 
 gives an estimate of the tariffs on some important manufac- 
 tures towards the close of the century: Russia 130 per cent. 
 United States 72 per cent, France 30 per cent, Germany 25 per 
 cent, Belgium 13 per cent. New Zealand 9 per cent, etc. 
 
 412. Colonial policy. — Colonial policy, a topic which has 
 
COMMERCIAL POLICY 351 
 
 had for some years a leading place in public discussion, can 
 receive only brief consideration in this history. The colonial 
 ventures of the recent period may in time bring forth the 
 commercial results which their projectors promise; up to the 
 present the results have been small. Until far into the century 
 European governments showed little interest in the expansion 
 of their people or the extension of their power in distant parts 
 of the world. Their attention was absorbed by the problems of 
 domestic and foreign policy in Europe. The colonial ques- 
 tion, however, like every other political and economic question, 
 assumed a new aspect under the changes wrought by steam 
 and the telegraph. Distant continents were, by those changes, 
 brought nearer to European capitals than parts of the home 
 territory had been before. The immense increase of trans- 
 marine commerce which marked the latter part of the century 
 was carried on largely by English-speaking people, and seemed 
 to promise to states of the Continent similar results if they 
 could spread broadcast their people and power as England 
 had done. The best parts of the world had already been occu- 
 pied, it is true, but great stretches of territory were still free 
 from claimants of European descent. France began to raise 
 her flag over new territory in Africa, Asia, and Oceanica; the 
 Belgian king established his authority in the region of the 
 Congo; the movement quickened to a scramble in the '80's; 
 and soon all parts of the habitable world except certain coun- 
 tries in Asia and Africa had been brought under the sovereignty 
 of European powers. The colonial question — what to do 
 with these possessions now that they have been secured, how 
 to govern them — has not yet become a part of history; it is 
 still a question of the day. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Prepare a chronological table of the wars of the nineteenth century, 
 from a manual of recent history. 
 
 2. The Enghsh navy during the Napoleonic wars. [Social England, 
 vol. 5, pp. 391-401, 541-544; the sea stories of Captain Marryat.] 
 
 V 
 
352 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 3. The Continental System and its effects. [Levi, Hist. Brit, com- 
 merce, part 2, chap. 4, reprinted also in Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 5.] 
 
 4. The question of neutral rights. [Schuyler, Amer. diplomacy, 
 chap. 7.] 
 
 5. The movement for independence in South America, and its com- 
 mercial results. [Helmolt, Hist, of the world, vol. 1; History of South 
 America, transl. by Adnah D. Jones London (N. Y., Macmillan), 1899.J 
 
 6. The English cotton famine during the American Civil War. [See 
 references in authorities at end of this book.] 
 
 7. Review, in connection with sect. 407, previous sections on the 
 evils resulting from obstacles to internal trade. 
 
 8. Free navigation of European rivers. [Schuyler, Amer. diplomacy, 
 chap. 6, p. 345 ff.]. 
 
 9. The Sound Dues. [Same, p. 306 ff.]. 
 
 10. Study sections 426 ff., 486 ff., for examples of tariffs in the first 
 part of the century. 
 
 11. Study sections 489 ff., as typical of the free-trade movement. 
 
 12. Divide your graphic chart of commercial statistics into blocks, 
 to correspond with periods of commercial policy; dates may be chosen as 
 follows, 1800, 1860, 1880, 1900. Be cautious, however, about any con- 
 clusions that may suggest themselves. 
 
 13. Relative share of different factors in recent commercial progress. 
 [Cf. W. E. Gladstone, Free trade, railways, and the growth of commerce, 
 Nineteenth Century (Magazine), Feb., 1880, 7: 367-378; but do not regard 
 this article as settling a problem still unsolved.] 
 
 14. For examples of recent protectionist tendency see below, sections 
 469, 481-2, 493-4, 521, 539 ff. 
 
 15. Continental opinion regarding a proposed Middle European 
 tariff union. [G. W- Fisk, in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, Hist, and Pol., 
 Nov.-Dec, 1902.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 For general bibliography see Bowker and lies, and Palgrave. Tariff 
 controversies at various periods have called forth an immense amount 
 of literature, of which a large part is of little value. 
 
 For special references see the authorities cited at the end of this book. 
 The best general reference is Bastable's Commerce of nations, which 
 treats international trade, the theory and the history of commercial 
 policy, briefly but with admirable clearness. The history of the com- 
 mercial policy of particular countries will be covered in following chapters. 
 
 For a survey of modem tariff systems see U. S. Monthly Summary of 
 Commerce and Finance, Feb., 1902, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 3093-3167, or March, 
 1904, vol. 11, no. 9, pp. 3331-3431: a brief historical introduction is in- 
 
COMMERCIAL POLICY 353 
 
 eluded. J. W. Root, Tariff and trade, Liverpool, 1898, includes a general 
 discussion of the tariff question and a survey of the recent tariff policy of 
 important commercial countries. 
 
 Colonial policy can receive but scant treatment in this book. The 
 student is referred to the bibliography by A. P. C. Griffin, List of 
 books relating to colonization, Washington, second ed., 1900, and to the 
 references there given. 
 
 23 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1860 
 
 413. Importance of the commerce of England. — In return- 
 ing to the study of the development of commerce in different 
 countries we shall take up first the country which at the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century, and at its end as well, held 
 the leading position, England, An English author has made 
 the statement that "in the eighteenth century foreign trade 
 was of so little importance to the majority of the inhabitants 
 of England, that with one important exception (wheat) the 
 whole of it might have been destroyed without making any 
 appreciable change in the habits or wealth of the people." 
 This statement is an exaggeration which can hardly be sup- 
 ported, but yet it suggests a truth of great importance; English 
 commerce in 1800 was merely an aid to the development and 
 welfare of the country, while it had become in 1900 absolutely 
 necessary to the mere existence of the people. 
 
 414. Statistics of the growth of commerce, 1800-1850. — 
 The period of most rapid growth was the second half of the 
 nineteenth century, and this period will be reserved for special 
 consideration a little later. The development in the first half 
 of the century is set forth in the accompanying table, which 
 gives the figures for imports retained in the country, and for 
 the exports of home produce, according to the system of 
 valuation in use in this period, with the sum of these items. 
 
 As the population doubled in this period it is apparent that 
 foreign commerce, which more than doubled in value, was 
 taking a more important place in the national economy than 
 before. In the first quarter of the century, when England 
 was passing through the struggle of the Napoleonic wars and 
 
 354 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1850 355 
 
 was recovering from their effects, trade was nearly stagnant, 
 but it made up in the twenty-five years that followed for the 
 time that had been lost before. If we measure commerce not 
 by the value of the wares, but by their physical quantity, the 
 increase was far more striking; prices of many articles, espe- 
 cially of the manufactures exported, fell during this period, 
 and consequently the same bulk of trade would be represented 
 by much smaller figures in pounds sterling. If we returned to 
 the old method of measuring trade, which retained "official" 
 values that did not change with the movement of market 
 prices, and which therefore affords a means of measuring an 
 increase in the bulk of trade, we should find, comparing the 
 two years, 1800 and 1849, that exports grew from 24 million 
 to 190 million pounds sterling, giving the enormous increase 
 of 682 per cent. 
 
 Annual Average Trade of the United Kingdom 
 (Millions of Pounds and Dollars) 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 Total 
 
 1801-05 
 1806-10 
 1811-15 
 1816-20 
 1821-25 
 1826-30 
 1831-35 
 1836-40 
 1841-45 
 1846-50 
 
 £ 28 
 
 $ 140 
 
 £ 33 
 
 $ 165 
 
 £ 61 
 
 30 
 
 150 
 
 37 
 
 185 
 
 67 
 
 29 
 
 145 
 
 45 
 
 225 
 
 74 
 
 20 
 
 100 
 
 40 
 
 200 
 
 60 
 
 26 
 
 130 
 
 37 
 
 185 
 
 63 
 
 33 
 
 165 
 
 35 
 
 175 
 
 69 
 
 36 
 
 180 
 
 40 
 
 200 
 
 76 
 
 47 
 
 235 
 
 50 
 
 250 
 
 97 
 
 57 
 
 285 
 
 54 
 
 270 
 
 111 
 
 72 
 
 360 
 
 60 
 
 300 
 
 133 
 
 305 
 335 
 370 
 300 
 315 
 345 
 380 
 485 
 555 
 665 
 
 415. Change in the relative importance of different exports. 
 
 — We can expect, by studying the details of exports in this 
 period, to find the branches of production in which the English 
 were strong enough to enable them to supply other people 
 and to extend their commerce. Taking the figures for 1850, 
 we find the evidence of some important changes. The old 
 
356 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 staple of the English export trade, woolen manufactures and 
 yarn, had increased since 1800 in value, and still, more in quan- 
 tity. It had ceased, however, to be the standby of the English 
 exporter; this item formed now less than one seventh of the 
 exports instead of over one fourth. It had been thrust into 
 the second place by the rival textile cotton, which had become, 
 as it was destined to remain throughout the century, the 
 leading item among English exports. Cotton yarn and manu- 
 factures made up 28 out of a total of 71 million pounds sterling. 
 Among other changes in the list we note the growth of the 
 iron and steel, the hardware and the coal exports. Some 
 items are interesting because they are still so small; among 
 those which remained below the million-pound mark were 
 steam-engines and machinery, pottery, and tin plate. 
 
 416. Development of English manufactures. — It is ap- 
 parent that this period was marked by a rapid development 
 of English manufactures. Taking two manufactures, typical 
 of an advanced industrial state, iron and cotton, we find that 
 the increase in production is estimated at over tenfold or 
 more than 1000 per cent; as the quantity of population had 
 merely doubled it is apparent that its quality, or the character 
 of its occupations, underwent a revolutionary change. It is, 
 in fact, in this first half of the nineteenth century that the 
 enormous possibilities latent in the inventions of the eighteenth 
 century became apparent and were realized. The great inven- 
 tions were not enough, in themselves, to transform industry. 
 They needed to be developed by practical business men, who 
 could secure the necessary capital to utilize them to the best 
 advantage, who had the talent for organization enabling them 
 to build up an efficient force of laborers, who could stimulate 
 further technical improvements necessary to supplement the 
 great inventions, and who could develop a mercantile system 
 enabling them to buy and sell large quantities to good advan- 
 tage. Some English manufactures remained "domestic" in- 
 dustries, carried on in the home of the workman, but the most 
 important advanced to the factory system, and were thus 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1850 357 
 
 enabled to get the full advantage from technical improve- 
 ments. 
 
 417. Introduction of machinery. — It is in this period that 
 the knowledge and experience necessary to the proper handling 
 of machinery spread from narrow circles to broad groups of 
 men. The market for machinery was thus established, and 
 the manufacture of tools and machines underwent a correspond- 
 ing development; in 1836 it was "difficult to point out any 
 leading mechanical process, the details of which have not been, 
 by this means, simplified, and the article produced brought 
 nearer to perfection." Inventors from other countries sought 
 British shops to perfect their devices, and British factories in 
 which to introduce them. Some of the best textile machinery 
 of this period was invented in the United States and other 
 countries, but was first put to practical use in England. 
 
 418. Steam power and railroad transportation. — It is in 
 this period, also, that the steam-engine became a practical 
 force in English manufactures. The steam-engine had been 
 introduced in Birmingham in 1780, but the number of engines 
 in that rising center of manufactures was in 1815 only 42 and 
 in 1830 still only 120, while in the nine years following the 
 number rose to 240, or doubled. In 1835 the textile factories 
 of England employed only a little over 50,000 mechanical 
 horse-power, and of this total nearly a quarter was still obtained 
 from water-wheels. The beginnings of transportation by steam 
 railroads can be dated, as said before, from about 1830. 
 
 419. Gradual development of the cotton manufacture. — 
 The statement in a previous paragraph, that time was needed 
 to develop the inventions before they could be made to serve 
 the interests of manufacturers and merchants, is borne out 
 by the history of the most important manufacture, that of 
 cotton. Most of the basic inventions in cotton machinery 
 were made in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. As 
 early as 1812 a man, using the improved appliances, could 
 produce 200 times as much as could be got from the old 
 spinning-wheel. Yet it was not until 1820 or 1830 that cotton- 
 
358 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 spinning machinery had been practically developed and intro- 
 duced on such a scale that the yarn exports began to show the 
 full strength of this new force; while power weaving came 
 even later, and the exports of cloth increased most rapidly in 
 the second quarter of the century. Other processes connected 
 with the textile manufacture present the same history. Cotton 
 printing, for instance, had been practised in the eighteenth 
 century, but in 1800 only 32 million yards a year were printed, 
 while in 1830 the figure had risen to 347. The growth of the 
 cotton manufacture was reflected in the development of towns 
 like Manchester, Bolton, and Liverpool, which increased 
 immensely in population. 
 
 420. Character of the import trade. — It will be instructive 
 to glance now at the other side of England's commercial 
 balance sheet, and observe the wares imported about the 
 middle of the century. In 1854 the values were as follows, 
 in round millions of pounds sterling: total 152.3, of which the 
 chief items were grain 21.7, raw cotton 20.1, timber 10, sugar 
 9.6, raw wool 6.4, tea 5.5, raw silk 5.3. While it is not safe 
 to make a direct comparison between these values and those 
 given previously to show conditions about 1800, a striking 
 change is apparent in the relative rank of the items. A great 
 growth in the importance of the imports of breadstuffs is 
 noticeable. We shall see a little later that the English in 
 this period gave up the attempt to produce their food at home, 
 and resigned themselves to depending on foreign countries for 
 supplies which they could purchase with their manufactures. 
 Wares like sugar, tea, coffee, and tobacco had declined in 
 relative importance. The actual amount of these commodities 
 imported for consumption at home had increased much more 
 than would appear from a comparison of the figures, and their 
 use was constantly extending among the common people; but 
 they were now overshadowed in trade by other items. The 
 chief group of imports was formed of raw materials for the 
 English textile manufacture. The cotton imports, had, of 
 course, grown immensely; the home supply of wool, which had 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1850 359 
 
 been almost sufficient for manufactures in 1800, needed now 
 to be supplemented by large imports from abroad; silk had 
 taken the third place on the list of textiles away from flax 
 and hemp. 
 
 421. Increase in importance of trade with distant continents. 
 • — If we attempt to trace the changes in the direction of English 
 trade in the first half of the nineteenth century, we find, in 
 the maze of figures presented for study, some facts standing 
 out as evident and important. The trade with other countries 
 in Europe grew steadily, but grew slowly as a rule, and did not 
 keep pace with the progress which English trade was making 
 in other parts of the world. Most of the continental states 
 looked with jealousy on England's industrial development, 
 and checked the free exchange of commodities by severe 
 restrictions. We must look outside of Europe for the field of 
 expansion of English trade. Africa still remained unimportant 
 from the commercial standpoint, but America, Asia, and 
 Australia dealt in increasing measure with the British merchant. 
 
 422. Great importance of the trade with the United States. 
 — The United States was, far and away, England's best cus- 
 tomer, taking, near the beginning of the century, when the 
 ports of the continent were closed by Napoleon, as much as 
 one third of the total English exports, and at the middle 
 (1849) nearly one fifth. "It affords strong evidence of the 
 unsatisfactory footing upon which our trading relations with 
 Europe are established," wrote an English author in 1838, 
 "that our exports to the United States of America, which 
 with their population of only twelve millions are removed to 
 a distance from us of 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, have 
 amounted to more than one half of the value of our shipments 
 to the whole of Europe, with a population fifteen times as 
 great as that of the United States of America, and with an 
 abundance of productions suited to our wants, which they 
 are naturally desirous of exchanging for the products of our 
 mines and looms." The United States paid for the wares by 
 an export mainly of raw materials, and especially of cotton. 
 
360 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 During most of this period England drew three fourths of her 
 supply of raw cotton from the southern States. 
 
 423. Trade with other distant countries. — Other American 
 countries were good customers of the British manufacturer; 
 Brazil, for instance, bought more from England in 1849 than 
 did England's nearest neighbor, France. Among other inde- 
 pendent states China deserves mention. Trade with that 
 country had been included in the monopoly of the East India 
 Company until 1834, when it was thrown open to British 
 merchants in general; the trade grew rapidly thereafter, but 
 suffered from the restrictions imposed by the Chinese until, 
 as a result of the so-called Opium War of 1842, the English 
 secured the cession of Hong-Kong and the opening of a number 
 of ports. 
 
 424. Trade with British dependencies : India. — In 1850 
 between one fourth and one third of the exports of the mother 
 country were sent to British dependencies. Among these 
 British India, almost a continent itself if we consider its area, 
 its population almost equal to that of Europe, and the com- 
 plexity of its peoples, took the leading place. British India 
 alone took about one tenth of the English exports. So long 
 as the trade with this country was controlled by the East 
 India Company it remained small; and the company declared 
 that because of the backwardness and peculiar customs of the 
 natives it could not be increased. The privilege of trading 
 with India was granted to individual merchants in 1793, but 
 under such burdensome restrictions that it led to slight results; 
 and the nineteenth century opened with the Indian trade still 
 but a small item in England's total. In 1813, however, the 
 trade was at last thrown open, and the effect was immediately 
 manifest; in the first year of the new policy private merchants 
 exported more than did the company, and soon they had 
 developed the trade to an extent undreamed of by the monop- 
 olists. India proved to be just the country which English 
 merchants were seeking as a market for the expanding cotton 
 manufacture. In the eighteenth century protection was de- 
 
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 N 
 
 \ 
 
 WILKES LAND 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1850 361 
 
 manded in England against the competition of Indian textiles, 
 but soon the tables were turned, and manufacturers in India 
 complained that they were being ruined by the importation 
 of English cotton goods; about 1850 British India took more 
 cotton manufactures than any other country, and nearly one 
 sixth of the total exports of this most important commodity 
 of England. 
 
 425. Colonies in North America and Australasia. — Next in 
 importance to British India came the two groups of the North 
 American and the Australian colonies. The colonies on the 
 continent of North America were, in spite of their political 
 allegiance, a far less important market than the republic on 
 their southern border which had declared its independence in 
 1776. They supplied, however, a fairly steady and a growing 
 demand for English products which put them in sharp contrast 
 with the West Indian colonies. These island colonies had 
 been, in the early part of the century, the field of rich returns 
 in trade, but their productiveness depended on a system of 
 slave plantations, and when slavery was abolished in them in 
 1833 their commerce declined rapidly. 
 
 Thanks to the wide extent of her colonial dominions, 
 England could hope to gain in one part of the world if she 
 lost in another, and the development of the Australian colonies 
 in this period promised to atone for any decline in the West. 
 The British flag was first raised on Australia in 1788. The 
 young colonies were out of the track of the trade of the time, 
 and seemed of such small importance that one was made a 
 penal settlement, but the natural resources, especially the 
 fitness for sheep-raising, induced a steady growth of popula- 
 tion, and a considerable trade, even before the gold discoveries 
 in the middle of the century. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 1. What do we mean when we speak of the "importance" of a coun- 
 try's commerce? The reader who reflects upon this question will find 
 that at least three different standards are taken to measure importance. 
 (l)Mere bulk or value. The commerce of the British Empire would be 
 
362 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 called the most important in the world, because it is larger than that of 
 any other state. (2) The needs of the people of the country. A consider- 
 able number of Englishmen would starve without commerce. In this 
 sense commerce is even more important to the miners of Alaska, for 
 they would practically all starve without it. (3) The needs of other 
 countries for the exports of a given country. In this sense the United 
 States has perhaps the most important commerce in the world, because 
 it supplies so much of the world's need for cotton, copper, foodstuffs, etc. 
 Endeavor to find examples, in this book or in others, of the different 
 uses of the word ; apply it in different uses to different countries. 
 
 2. Treat the statistics in sect. 414 as suggested previously, by graphic 
 representation. How did British commerce compare in growth with world 
 commerce? Did England keep her share in the world's trade? Try to 
 find in English history reasons for the ups and downs of trade, and for its 
 gains and losses in comparison with the world's trade. Beware, however, 
 of hasty conclusions; many pitfalls are concealed in commercial statistics. 
 In the table in the text, for example, the early figures are those of total 
 exports and imports of merchandise, including wares simply passing 
 through English hands to foreign customers; the figures for 1816 and 
 the following years show only exports of British produce and manufacture, 
 and imports retained in the country. This change in the method of 
 measurement, rather than the crisis following the Napoleonic wars, ex- 
 plains the drop in the figures. This last method of measurement will be 
 followed in later tables. 
 
 3. The following list gives the value, in millions of pounds, of all 
 items over 1.0, in total exports of 71.3. Coal, etc., 1.2, cotton yarn, 6.3, 
 cotton manufactures 21.8, haberdashery and millinery 1.4, hardware and 
 cutlery 2.6, linen manufactures 3.9, iron and steel 5.3, woolen yam 1.4, 
 woolen manufactures 8.5. (If various other items were grouped we 
 could add: copper about 2., silk about 1.) 
 
 Arrange these items and represent them by spaces on a line, for help 
 in realizing their relative importance, and for comparison with earlier 
 and later conditions. [See Statesman's Year-Book for present trade. 
 Note that these items include only home produce and manufactures, so 
 foreign produce, such as colonial wares, should be excluded in making 
 the comparison with another period. Statistics of this period give only 
 quantities, not values, of foreign and colonial merchandise exported. 
 Values of foreign and colonial merchandise exported are available for 
 1854 and the following years. In 1854 the items over one million pounds 
 were: cotton 2.3, indigo 1.2, wool 1.4. Among the items under one 
 million were: coffee .7, wine .7, raw silk .7, tea .5, rice .5, guano .5, raw 
 sugar .3, unstemmed tobacco .3. What changes are suggested by these 
 figures, in comparison with those of about 1800?] 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1800-1850 363 
 
 4. Review the substance of sections 245 ff., or read the account of 
 the great inventions and their effects in Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 2. 
 
 5. Mining and metal production up to 1846. [Traill, Soc. England, 
 6: 194-199.] 
 
 6. Coal mining. [Same, 6: 367-379.] 
 
 7. Development of the English transportation system. [Same, 6: 
 199-211; McCarthy, Hist. vol. 1, chap. 4; Ward, Reign, 2: 83-111.] 
 
 8. Development of the textile manufactures. [Soc. England, 6: 69- 
 75.] 
 
 9. Study the items in sect. 420 in the way suggested for sect 415. 
 
 10. Review sect. 408, on the tariff policy of the period in Europe; 
 note that the United States had a low tariff, and that trade in the other 
 continents was practically free. 
 
 11. The Opium War. [McCarthy, Hist., vol. 1 chap. 8; Robert K. 
 Douglas, China, N. Y., Putnam, $1.50, 1899, chap. 8.] 
 
 12. East India Company in the nineteenth century. [Willson, 
 Ledger and sword, vol. 2, chaps. 12, 13.] 
 
 13. Commerce of British India. [William W. Hunter, The Indian 
 Empire, third ed., London, 1893, chap. 19; same author, The Marquess 
 of Dalhousie, Oxford, 1890, chap. 10.] 
 
 14. The Hudson's Bay Company in the nineteenth century. [George 
 Bryce, Remarkable history of the Hudson's Bay Company, N. Y., Scrib- 
 ner's, 1900; Willson, The great company, London (N. Y., Dodd), 1900, 
 vol. 2, chap. 36; G. R. Parkin, The great Dominion, London, Macmillan, 
 1895, chap. 8.] 
 
 15. Slave plantations in the British West Indies. [A. K. Fiske, 
 The West Indies, N. Y., 1899, chap. 10; James Rodway, The West Indies, 
 London (N. Y., Putnam), chaps. 7, 10.] 
 
 16. Emancipation of the slaves and its results. [Rodway, chaps. 14, 
 15.] 
 
 17. Development of Australia. [Encyclopedia; Helmolt, Hist, of 
 World, vol. 2, p. 252 ff.]. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Useful references can be obtained on England, as on other countries 
 to be considered later, by consulting the Subject Index of the British 
 Museum Library for books published in the ten years preceding 1902; and 
 the A. L. A. Catalogue for books in print, of a popular character. 
 
 Of the general histories of England in the nineteenth century, that by 
 * Spencer Walpole, 5 vols., London, Longmans, 1878-86, devotes consider- 
 able attention to economic developments, and is worth the teacher's 
 attention. Justin McCarthy^ * History of our own times, is better suited 
 to attract the student; it is divided into short topical chapters, and written 
 
364 ' A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 in an interesting style. A shorter history has been published by McCarthy 
 in the Story of the Nations Series, 2 vols., N. Y., 1899. The last volume 
 of Traill's Social England pays but scant attention to commerce. 
 
 The best history of English commerce is that of ** Leone Levi, ex- 
 tending from 1763 to 1878; it is, unfortunately, out of print. Cunningham 
 notices some of the important commercial changes in the first half of the 
 century, but devotes most of his last volume to other topics; and the 
 smaller manuals of English economic history pay comparatively little 
 attention to commercial development. *Bowley's small volume is a 
 useful contribution, noteworthy for a number of graphic charts; it is, 
 however, too statistical in treatment to serve the needs of the ordinary 
 reader. Chapman's book, like Bowley's an outgrowth of a successful 
 essay written for a Cobden prize, is confined to a special aspect of the 
 trade with a particular country. 
 
 A book which is indispensable for a careful study of the commerce 
 of this period is Porter's ** Progress of the nation, comprising statistics 
 and text of great value. M'CuUoch's ** Commercial dictionary can be 
 ranked as of almost equal value; various editions have been published. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 ENGLAND: REFORM OF COMMERCIAL POLICY 
 
 426. Burden of tariff on trade and manufactures. — After 
 this survey of the development of English trade in the first 
 half of the century we must attend to a most important change 
 in English commercial policy, which lies mainly in this period. 
 We shall consider three groups of topics: the reform of the 
 general tariff; the repeal of the corn laws, protecting agricul- 
 tural products, especially wheat; and the repeal of the navi- 
 gation laws, protecting shipping. 
 
 England entered the nineteenth century with a cumbrous 
 mass of tariff regulations inherited from the past, from which 
 only the worst excesses had been pruned by statesmen like 
 Walpole and Pitt. Customs laws had accumulated for 500 
 years to the amount of 1,500 statutes, "often confused, often 
 contradictory, sometimes unintelligible." Hardly any ware 
 which was obtainable abroad, whether it was a raw material or 
 a manufactured product, escaped the duties levied under one 
 or another of these laws. The duties were heavy and were 
 enforced with unreasoning severity; a man who imported a 
 mummy from Egypt was told that it was a non-enumerated 
 manufacture, dutiable at nearly $1,000. Internal taxes reached 
 articles which escaped the customs tariff. The taxes on the 
 publication of books were so heavy that they amounted on an 
 ordinary edition to one seventh of the whole cost, and exceeded 
 the remuneration of the author. The cotton manufacturer 
 had to pay not only an import duty on his raw cotton (higher 
 when it was brought in a foreign ship); he had to pay an 
 excise or internal tax on calico which he printed; and he had 
 to pay taxes, in one form or another, on all the important 
 
 365 
 
366 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 materials he used in manufacture, — flour, starch, leather, 
 soap, dyestuffs, paper, timber, brick, tiles. A man could not 
 build a factory, or run it, or feed and clothe his workmen, 
 without paying taxes at every step. 
 
 427. Prevalence of smuggling. — A partial relief from the 
 burden of the customs was obtained by smuggling. Tariffs 
 could hinder but could not absolutely stop the natural move- 
 ment of commodities. Smuggling was a regular profession, 
 with a tariff modeled on the regular tariff, but enough lower 
 to invite business; the smuggler's charge varied ordinarily 
 from 15 to 40 per cent ad valorem. Large numbers of the 
 common people were leagued with the smugglers to defy the 
 law, and the upper classes, even the legislators themselves, 
 accepted smuggling as a matter of course. A member of the 
 House of Commons once flourished his silk bandanna hand- 
 kerchief before the House, saying : " Here is a foreign ware that 
 is totally prohibited. Nearly every one of you has a similar 
 illicit article in his pocket. So much for your prohibition." 
 The government framed its duties with an eye to the ease of 
 evading them; it laid a higher duty on fancy silks than on 
 plain, because the smugglers were at a disadvantage in hand- 
 ling the former, which had to be brought in at once, before the 
 fashions changed, while plain goods could wait the smuggler's 
 convenience. 
 
 428. Beginning of the reform movement, 1820. — More and 
 more as time went on, and England's commercial capacity 
 increased, were the evils and abuses of the system appreciated. 
 By 1820 the times were ripe for a change, and the movement 
 to reform was initiated in that year by a petition from a group 
 of London merchants. The petition urged the principle of 
 free trade which the economist Adam Smith had supported in 
 his "Wealth of Nations" (published in 1776), and prayed that 
 all restrictive regulations, not imposed on account of the 
 revenue, including all duties of a protective character, might 
 be repealed at once. 
 
 429. Reform of the tariff under Huskisson. — The early 
 
ENGLAND: REFORM OF COMMERCIAL POLICY 367 
 
 stages of tariff reform, effected under the leadership of Hus- 
 kisson about 1825, included the following: (1) The simplifica- 
 tion and condensation into manageable form of the customs 
 laws. (2) Reduction or removal of the duties on raw mate- 
 rials. (3) Reduction of the duties on manufactures, generally 
 to 30 per cent or less, on the principle that such a duty was 
 ample for protection, if a ware could be made at home to 
 advantage. (4) The removal of most of the restrictions on 
 export. These restrictions had affected raw materials, partly 
 manufactured goods, and even artisans themselves. The gov- 
 ernment had tried to keep skilled workmen at home, but found 
 that it merely made them discontented, forced them to evasions, 
 and kept them from coming back when they had once left the 
 country; it left them henceforth free to emigrate. It was still 
 unwilling to allow machinery to be exported freely, for fear 
 that other countries would build up a competition in manu- 
 factures, but it recognized the difficulty of making its restric- 
 tions effective, and relaxed them greatly. 
 
 430. Results and later completion of the reform. — The 
 results of the reform exceeded anticipations. Not only did 
 those industries benefit which (like cotton, for instance) had 
 previously been taxed for the support of others, but the pro- 
 tected industries themselves gained by the revision of the 
 laws. The export of woolen stuffs increased rapidly after the 
 removal of the prohibition on the export of raw wool. The 
 silk manufacture, which had made slow progress and secured 
 only a small market under the system of high duties and 
 prohibitions, advanced more rapidly now in a decide than it 
 had done before in a century. 
 
 The work of reform was, however, still far from complete; 
 the tariff retained many incongruities and was felt still to be 
 oppressive by the business interests of the country. The 
 second stage in the advance to free trade was effected under 
 Sir Robert Peel, who in 1842 secured the reduction of duties 
 on 750 articles, and in 1845 abolished 430 out of a total of 
 813 import duties. Peel's reforms left still a considerable 
 
368 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 element of protection in the tariff, and the final acceptance of 
 free trade waited till Gladstone's laws of 1853 and 1860, which 
 lowered and then swept away import duties by the hundred, 
 and left the English tariff substantially in its present shape. 
 The system of " free trade " which England has since maintained 
 does not imply a complete lack of import duties; more than 
 one fifth of the total revenue from taxes is now yielded by 
 the customs. Import duties, however, have been restricted 
 to a very few commodities, and are "revenue," not "protec- 
 tive" duties, in the sense that they do not encourage the 
 production in England of anything which can be produced 
 more cheaply abroad. 
 
 431. The com laws and their effects. — Previous to the 
 great changes which turned England into a manufacturing 
 country, the agricultural interests which controlled Parliament 
 had assured themselves a good measure of protection in framing 
 the tariff laws. The importation of grain was prevented by 
 high duties; and the export was favored by bounties when the 
 supply was relatively plentiful and the price fell below about 
 $1.50 a bushel. Export became more and more rare as the 
 home demand for foodstuffs grew with the increase in the 
 industrial population; and toward the close of the eighteenth 
 century it became ever a more serious question whether Eng- 
 land could produce at home sufficient food for her growing 
 people. An attempt was made to arrange the laws so as to 
 keep the price of wheat steady at about 48s. a quarter ($1.50 
 a bushel), but the laws did not succeed in preventing violent 
 fluctuations in the price. At the close of the great wars, in 
 1815, English agriculturists demanded a continuance of the 
 protection which the stoppage of commerce had afforded them 
 and the import of foreign wheat was prohibited so long as the 
 price at home did not rise above 80s. (about $2.50 a bushel, 
 or about $.30 for the quartern loaf of bread). Landlords got 
 high rents as a result, but farmers who leased their land suffered 
 when prices fell to a reasonable level, and consumers were 
 forced to pay extortionate prices for a prime necessity. Hun- 
 
ENGLAND: REFORM OF COMMERCIAL POLICY 369 
 
 dreds of thousands of the working classes were brought to the 
 verge of starvation in 1817 by the price of wheat rising to 
 112s. (about $3.50 a bushel). 
 
 432. Movement of English manufacturers for a repeal of 
 the com laws. — The House of Commons, even after the elec- 
 toral reform of 1832, afforded but little representation to the 
 manufacturing and mercantile classes; four fifths of its members 
 belonged to the landed interests, and though they made some 
 slight concessions they refused to grant adequate relief. It 
 was necessary for the opposition, which organized under the 
 name of the Anti-Corn-Law League, to carry on its campaign 
 outside of Parliament; it could report, at the annual meeting 
 of 1843, that nine million tracts had been distributed, and 
 meetings had been held in 140 towns. Inside of Parliament 
 the movement engaged the energies of orators like Cobden 
 and Bright, who saw in it a question of life and death for 
 English manufactures. How was the manufacturer to pay 
 the wages which such a costly food supply required? To 
 whom was he to sell his goods when so large a proportion of 
 English incomes had to be expended for bare necessaries, and 
 when England refused to take from foreign countries the 
 commodities which they offered in exchange? Even among 
 the agricultural classes the landlords were the sole gainers. 
 The agricultural laborers were wretchedly poor; Cobden as- 
 serted that none of them spent more than about $7.50 a year 
 in manufactured articles, if shoes were excepted, and that 
 they bought a smaller amount of English manufactures than 
 the people of Brazil. 
 
 433. Repeal of the com laws and its significance. — With 
 the passage of time and with the growth of the industrial 
 population conditions changed from bad to worse. The com- 
 bination of a bad harvest and bad times in business in 1841 
 forced thousands of the manufacturing population to seek 
 poor relief, while other thousands were estimated to be earning 
 on the average less than a shilling a week. It needed only a 
 shock like that given by the crop failure in the first year of 
 
 24 
 
370 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the Irish famine, 1845, to force the change which had come 
 gradually to be recognized as inevitable. Peel's act of 1846 
 left a slight protection for a few years; but after 1849 only a 
 nominal duty was to remain, and even this was abolished later. 
 
 The repeal of the corn laws was a momentous act in English 
 history. It marks the formal and final recognition that Eng- 
 land had grown from an agricultural to an industrial and 
 commercial state. It threw England, as an English economist 
 said, from corn to coal as the staple product of the country. 
 Manufactures and trade thenceforth developed freely. Even 
 the agricultural interest gained in ways which it had not 
 foreseen: the consuming population increased rapidly both in 
 numbers and in purchasing power, and demanded increasing 
 quantities of meat, dairy produce, vegetables, and fruit. The 
 full effect of the change on commerce will be apparent when 
 we review the history of the last half of the century. 
 
 434. Reform of the navigation acts. — This survey of the 
 course of English policy in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century will be closed by the consideration of a third topic, 
 the laws protecting shipping. Reference to a previous chapter 
 will show how severe were the restrictions meant to prevent 
 the competition of foreign shipping, in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. The period now under consideration was 
 marked by the removal of all these restrictions, and by a great 
 growth, notwithstanding, in the English merchant marine. 
 
 The establishment of the independence of the United States, 
 and later of the Spanish American republics, overthrew the 
 colonial theory on which many of the navigation acts were 
 based, and forced numerous revisions. The long wars of the 
 Napoleonic period, also, led England to grant privileges to 
 neutral powers in the carrying trade. Important breaches, 
 therefore, had been made in the old system before the century 
 was far advanced, and it was in no condition to withstand the 
 assaults directed against it by people both abroad and at 
 home whose interests it injured. The United States adopted 
 a policy of reprisal which forced England to admit American 
 
ENGLAND: REFORM OF COMMERCIAL POLICY 371 
 
 ships freely to English ports, and threats of similar action by 
 European countries led in 1824 and the years immediately 
 following to a series of treaties putting foreign ships on an 
 equality with English. 
 
 435. Final repeal of the navigation acts. — The navigation 
 acts had grown into a most complicated system, and it is 
 impossible to describe in detail their gradual relaxation. By 
 1830 English ships had lost all their privileges except in the 
 coasting trade, and in the trade with and between the colonies. 
 Even this amount of protection came to be regarded as a burden 
 not only on commerce but on shipping itself, and was abolished 
 in 1849 and 1854. Every step in the reform of the navigation 
 acts was bitterly fought by adherents of the old system, who 
 prophesied ruin to English shipping if it were denied protection 
 and left to make its own way. How groundless were the 
 fears of those who opposed reform can be seen in the following 
 table, giving in millions the tonnage of English ships in the 
 period 1800-1850: 1800, 1.6; 1810, 2.2; 1820, 2.4; 1830, 2.2; 
 1840, 2.5; 1850, 3.5. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Are all taxes of equal amount equally burdensome? Would a 
 country fare as well if it raised its revenue by taxing saws and chisels 
 instead of cigarettes and playing cards? 
 
 2. What are the effects of smuggling on (a) the public revenue, (6) 
 honest merchants, (c) consumers? 
 
 3. How do the rates of the English tariff, as established at this time, 
 compare with the rates of the present tariff of the United States? 
 
 4. On what articles are import duties still levied in Great Britain? 
 [See Statesman's Year-Book, index, Great Britain, customs.] 
 
 5. The corn laws and their effects, [Morley, Cobden, chap. 7; Rand. 
 Ec. hist., chap. 9.] 
 
 6. English agriculture under the com laws. [Traill, Soc. England, 
 6: 75-84, 211-217.] 
 
 7. The agitition for repeal of the com laws. [McCarthy, vol. 1, 
 chap. 14; Morley, Cobden, chap. 6.] 
 
 8. The repeal of the corn laws. [McCarthy, vol. 1, chap. 15.] 
 
 9. English agriculture after the repeal. [Traill, Soc. England, 6: 
 404-421, 599-607.] 
 
372 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 10. What were the main features of the navigation acts? [See 
 above, sect. 358, or study the main provisions in Rand, Ec. hist., appen- 
 dix 1.] 
 
 11. Conditions at the time when the Acts were repealed.' [Lindsay, 
 vol. 3, chap. 6.] 
 
 12. Development of the merchant marine. [Traill, Soc. England, 
 6: 392-404; Ward, Reign, 2: 111-118.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 From the considerable literature on the course of English policy in 
 this period may be selected Mongredien, * History of the free-trade move- 
 ment; it is comprehensive and well done. A book which is not so full in 
 this special period, but which covers the whole course of British policy 
 from early times to the later nineteenth century, is Armitage-Smith, 
 ** Free-trade movement; it is well suited to topical assignment. Similar 
 in scope is W. Cunningham, ** Free-trade movement, with concluding 
 chapters on the proposed changes in customs policy. A bibliography of 
 the Com Laws was published in the N. Y. State Library Bulletin, May, 
 1902. J. S. Nicholson has written an excellent short * History of the 
 English corn laws; it is worth study but is not suited to topical reading. 
 The best account, on the whole, is to be found in Morley's ** Life of 
 Cobden. The navigation acts are treated at length in the third volume 
 of Lindsay. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1850-1900 
 
 436. Development of English commerce in the last half 
 century. — An accompanying table sets forth the course of 
 English trade in the second half of the nineteenth century. 
 The figures refer, as in the previous table, to imports for con- 
 sumption in the country, and to exports of British and Irish 
 produce; and I give the sum of their items, as before. To 
 indicate, however, the share of commerce which the English 
 enjoyed merely as middlemen I add a column of re-exports, 
 foreign and colonial wares imported but shipped away again. 
 If the amount of these wares be doubled (since they figure 
 both as imports and exports) the sum gives the gross foreign 
 trade (excluding that in precious metals). The system of 
 valuation of imports changed in 1854; under the old system of 
 "official" values the imports of that year would have been 
 entered at twenty-eight million pounds less than under the 
 new system of giving the " real " values. This table, therefore, 
 is not directly comparable with the table of the preceding 
 chapter; and to remind the student of this I have left a few 
 years vacant, making a gap between the two tables. 
 
 A mere glance at this table will be sufficient to show the 
 progress that has been made since 1850. Some idea of the 
 importance of this trade, not only to England but to the 
 world at large, can be gathered from the fact that it amounted, 
 about the middle of the period, to nearly one fourth (23 per 
 cent) of the estimated total foreign trade of the world, and 
 toward the close of the period, in spite of the commercial 
 progress of other countries, it was still nearly one fifth. If we 
 extend our view to embrace not only the little islands in 
 
 373 
 
374 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the North Sea, but all the countries depending on them and 
 forming the British Empire, we find the trade of this group 
 not far from one third of the trade of the world. 
 
 Annual Average Trade of the United Kingdom, in Millions, 
 Sterling, with Rough Equivalents in Millions of Dollars 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Uf 
 
 Domestic ex- 
 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 Total 
 
 Ih 
 
 ports per 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^l 
 
 head i£ s d) 
 
 1855-59 . . . 
 
 £m 
 
 $ 730 
 
 ;C116 
 
 $ 580 
 
 ;£262 
 
 $1310 
 
 m 
 
 £i s2 dA 
 
 1860-64... 
 
 193 
 
 965 
 
 138 
 
 690 
 
 331 
 
 1655 
 
 42 
 
 4 14 8 
 
 1865-69 . . . 
 
 237 
 
 1185 
 
 181 
 
 905 
 
 418 
 
 2090 
 
 49 
 
 5 19 
 
 1870-74... 
 
 291 
 
 1455 
 
 235 
 
 1175 
 
 526 
 
 2630 
 
 55 
 
 7 7 3 
 
 1875-79... 
 
 320 
 
 1600 
 
 202 
 
 1010 
 
 522 
 
 2610 
 
 55 
 
 6 
 
 1880-84. . . 
 
 344 
 
 1720 
 
 234 
 
 1170 
 
 578 
 
 2890 
 
 64 
 
 6 13 2 
 
 1885-89... 
 
 318 
 
 1590 
 
 226 
 
 1130 ■ 
 
 544 
 
 2720 
 
 61 
 
 6 3 8 
 
 1890-94... 
 
 357 
 
 1785 
 
 234 
 
 1170 
 
 591 
 
 2955 
 
 62 
 
 6 2 11 
 
 1895-99 . . . 
 
 393 
 
 1965 
 
 238 
 
 1190 
 
 631 
 
 3155 
 
 60 
 
 5 19 
 
 . 1900 . 
 
 460 
 
 2300 
 
 283 
 
 1415 
 
 743 
 
 3715 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 
 437. Chief causes of the rapid development of English 
 commerce. — The causes of this development may be sum- 
 marized briefly as follows: (1) The English people were the 
 most advanced, in industrial and mercantile ability, of any 
 people in the world. They had the start on others in manu- 
 factures and trade, and reaped the benefits of their early 
 training in this period. (2) The geographical situation of 
 England, and the physical resources of the country, especially 
 its coal, made the English superior to most peoples and equal 
 to any, in this age of transportation and manufacture by 
 steam. (3) The commercial policy of the government allowed 
 the people to make the most of their advantages. Toward 
 the close of the eighteenth century an English statesman had 
 told Benjamin Franklin of his idea "to make England a free 
 port, for which he said the English were especially fitted by 
 nature, capital, love of enterprise, maritime connections, and 
 position between the old and new world, and the north and 
 south of Europe, and that those who were best circumstanced 
 for trade could not but be gainers by having trade open." 
 This idea waited long for its realization, but on that account 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1850-1900 375 
 
 led to the more rapid progress when it was carried into effect. 
 Within five years of the repeal of the corn laws exports rose 
 fifty to one hundred million pounds sterling per annum; manu- 
 factures and trade developed by leaps and bounds. Free trade 
 alone cannot be credited with all the progress that England 
 made in this period. It was, perhaps, the least of the three 
 factors enumerated, but still it was of such importance that 
 the other two factors would have been of much less effect 
 without it. 
 
 438. Character of English exports. — This trade had now, in 
 a more pronounced form, the characteristics which it had been 
 gradually assuming and which make it the most remarkable 
 example of advanced commerce in the world. Considering 
 first the exports, we find that three quarters of them (in value) 
 have consisted of wholly manufactured wares. Adding to 
 these the partly manufactured wares, we find less than one 
 tenth of the exports to be ranged under the head of foodstuffs 
 and raw materials; and in this last class, of raw materials, the 
 one item, coal, is all important. 
 
 439. Leading items among the exports. — Cotton piece- 
 goods kept their place at the head of the list of exports, com- 
 prising more than one quarter of the total. England now 
 exports the enormous sum of over five thousand million yards 
 of cotton cloth a year. The exports of iron and steel rose in 
 this period to the second place; England was now purveying 
 to other nations the means of raising the structure on which 
 modern manufactures and transportation are based. The 
 growth in the exports of machinery is especially striking; this 
 item increased over fivefold within the fifty years. Below 
 these leading items come others with which we are already 
 familiar (woolen and linen manufactures) and some which 
 had gained promotion on the list of exports; leather goods, 
 chemicals, jute manufactures, pottery, etc. 
 
 440. Imports ; prominence of foodstuffs. — The fact sug- 
 gested by the list of exports, that England has specialized 
 more and more in manufactures, is borne out by the list of 
 
376 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 imports during the past half century. Since the adoption of 
 the free-trade policy the English people has been freed from 
 dependence on the home supply of food and has supplied its 
 necessities by purchases abroad. Among the imports, there- 
 fore, we find that the largest item is that of foodstuffs, which 
 has grown rapidly both in its absolute value and in its propor- 
 tion of the total imports. In contrast with the medieval 
 period, when only luxuries like wines and spices could pay for 
 their transportation, we find now the great food staples flowing 
 to England from countries thousands of miles distant. Im- 
 provements in transportation, due especially to the use of 
 steam, have enabled bulky cargoes to pay for their passage, 
 and the weight of the imports in tons has increased much 
 more rapidly than their value. Improved means of trans- 
 portation and preservation have moreover enabled the English 
 to import perishable articles like meat, fruits, and vegetables, 
 and dairy products; and the imports of these wares have 
 increased from ten to twenty fold in weight. 
 
 441. Imports of raw materials and manufactures. — The 
 same conditions have affected the imports of raw materials. 
 A century ago the manufacture of iron from imported ore 
 would have been thought an absurdity, but it has become a 
 regular practice now that freights are so low; and the import 
 of minerals is a respectable item in a list in which the raw 
 materials for the textile industry are still, of course, most 
 important. Free trade has encouraged also a great increase 
 in the imports of manufactures, which have grown nearly 
 tenfold in the fifty years, though they still are less important 
 than foodstuffs and raw materials. The largest item among 
 them is silk, for the manufacture of which other nations have 
 always shown more aptitude; but the list includes woolens, 
 hardware, leather (boots and shoes), paper, and many other 
 items. 
 
 442. Explanation of the excess of imports over exports. — 
 A feature of England's foreign trade deserving comment and 
 explanation is the great excess of imports over exports. It is 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1850-1900 377 
 
 natural to expect that these two items, which seem to represent 
 the two sides of a balance sheet, should be nearly equal to 
 each other; but in fact the value of exports has for many years 
 been far below that of imports, and the difference in the years 
 toward 1900 has amounted to the enormous total of $700,000,- 
 000 to $900,000,000 a year. "The excess of imports is to be 
 accounted for in the trade of a country like England in several 
 ways, principally by the fact that England is a ship-owning 
 country, and does a large business all over the world in carrying 
 goods and passengers. This work is really in itself in the 
 nature of an export, giving the country a credit for so much 
 in its dealings with other countries. In addition, England is 
 a country which earns large commissions of different kinds in 
 its trade with different countries as the commercial and mone- 
 tary center of the world's trade. Last of all, England is one 
 of the countries which has become entitled to the receipt of 
 large interest and profits from other countries on account of 
 capital which it has invested, and business which it carries on, 
 in such countries, including the sums receivable by English 
 subjects in the service of a dependency like India." 
 
 443. Growth of the merchant marine. — England was the 
 leader among nations in the carrying trade in 1850, and re- 
 tained her position still unchallenged at the close of the cen- 
 tury; about half of the total shipping of the world sails under 
 the British flag. The number of ships in the English merchant 
 marine has actually decreased in this period of progress, but 
 the carrying capacity has grown immensely (over sevenfold) 
 by the increase in size of the ships and by the substitution of 
 steam for sailing vessels. It will be remembered that the 
 protection afforded by the navigation acts was removed before 
 the beginning of this period. The government has made 
 generous payments for the carriage of mails, but still has re- 
 fused to pay regular subsidies or bounties for the encourage- 
 ment of shipping. English shipping, nevertheless, has more 
 than held its own. While soon after 1850 the English merchant 
 marine carried not much more than half of the foreign commerce 
 
378 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of the country, the proportion has grown in later years to two 
 thirds and nearly three quarters. 
 
 444. Relative rank of English ports. — The great commerce 
 of the United Kingdom is very unequally distributed among 
 its parts, nine tenths of it going to England and Wales and 
 most of the remainder to the lowlands of Scotland. London 
 still keeps its place as the chief port not only in the United 
 Kingdom but in the world, mainly by reason of its import 
 trade; it is exceeded in the amount of exports by the second 
 port, Liverpool, which has distanced all rivals in the important 
 trade with the United States. An immense gap separates 
 these two leading ports from the others, Hull, Glasgow, South- 
 ampton, etc. Ports whose names were famous in the Middle 
 Ages and even in later times have dropped into obscurity, 
 with fortunate exceptions like Harwich and Grimsby, which 
 have recovered their positions in recent times. Their places 
 are taken by ports from which cotton and coal products are 
 shipped; Manchester, once an inland village but now united 
 with the sea by a ship canal and standing sixth on the list, 
 the Tyne ports, Cardiff, etc. 
 
 445. Relative share of different countries in England's 
 commerce. — Taking up now the direction of England's trade 
 abroad and the changes in its course during the last half of 
 the century, we find ourselves approaching a question of the 
 day, bristling with details of fact and with arguments. We 
 shall have to face this question presently, but we may mean- 
 while note some points of general importance. England still 
 finds the trade with her European neighbors the most impor- 
 tant part of her commerce, making up about two fifths of the 
 whole; this trade has increased by over one half during the 
 last forty years of the century. Next in importance to it is 
 the trade with the British dependencies, a little less than 
 one quarter of the whole, which has increased somewhat more 
 slowly. In the third place we may put, not a continent or 
 group of countries, but one country, the United States, between 
 which and England the trade is greater than between any 
 
ENGLAND: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 1850-1900 379 
 
 other two countries on earth. England bought from the 
 United States in 1901 more than twice as much as she bought 
 from the next largest seller (France) ; and she sold the United 
 States in that year more than she sold to all the countries 
 embraced in her great Empire. This part of English trade, 
 moreover, has grown more rapidly than any other, increasing 
 by once and a half in the period. Grouping together all 
 countries beside those enumerated, we find that the trade 
 with them has remained nearly stationary, and now amounts 
 only to about one eighth of the total. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Treat the statistics, sect. 436, by graphic representation, in the 
 manner that has already been suggested. 
 
 2. Compare the reasons given for the increase of British commerce 
 with reasons that may suggest themselves to you for the growth of the 
 commerce of the United States. [See sect. 320 for a reference to Glad- 
 stone's views.] 
 
 3. The following list gives, in million pounds, the value of the chief 
 exports of home produce in 1900: cotton manufactures 62.0, do. yam 7.7, 
 woolen manufactures 15.6, do. yam 6.1, linens and yam 7.1, jute and yam 
 2.4, apparel and haberdashery 6.8, ships 8.6, iron and steel 32.0, hardware 
 and cutlery 2.1, copper 2.9, machinery 19.6, coal, etc., 38.6, chemicals 9.2. 
 Total exports of home produce 291.4, exports of foreign and colonial 
 produce 63.0, grand total 354.5. Treat the figures as suggested under 
 sect. 415. [The figures are from the preliminarj'^ report for 1900, States- 
 man's Year-Book, 1901, pp. 85, 87; details of iron and steel exports will be 
 found p. 88.] 
 
 4. Development of the iron industry. [Social England, 6: 363-7; 
 Bell in Ward, Reign, 2: 196-237; Jeans in Ashley, Brit, ind., 2-37.] 
 
 5. Development of the textile industry. [Soc. England, 6: 589-599.] 
 
 6. The cotton industry. [Slagg in Ward, Reign, 2: 153-195; Helm in 
 Ashley, 68-92.] 
 
 7. The woolen and worsted industries. [Hooper in Ashley, 93-119.] 
 
 8. Linen and flax. [Patterson in Ashley, 120-150.] 
 
 9. Pottery. [Soc. England, 6: 379-392.] 
 
 10. England as a wheat market. [Edgar, Story, chap. 5.] 
 
 11. The food supply of London. [Quarterly Review, Oct., 1899, 
 190: 467-486; Jan., 1900, 191: 117-137.] 
 
 12. England's food supply in time of war; need of the navy. [H. 
 
380 ♦ A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Seton-Karr in North Amer. Review, 1897, 164: 651-663; W. E. Bear, in 
 National Review, 1896, 27: 133-144.] 
 
 13. Project of national granaries for storing a supply of food. [R. B. 
 Marston, in Nineteenth Century, 1898, 43: 879-889; Yerburgh, in National 
 Review, 1896, 27: 197-207.] 
 
 14. British capital abroad. [Mulhall in North Amer. Review, 1899, 
 168: 499-505.] 
 
 15. Development of the merchant marine. [Ginsburg in Ashley, 
 173-195; Taylor in Forum, 1900-01, 30: 463-477.] 
 
 16. British shipping subsidies. [Root in Atlantic, 1900, 85: 387-394.] 
 
 17. Growth of the English ports. [Ackland in Nineteenth Century, 
 1897, 42:411ff.] 
 
 18. The port of London, and improvements required. [Quarterly 
 Review, 1903, 197: 252-269; Marchant in National Review, 1902-3, 40: 
 715-737, with map; Miller in Fortnightly Review, 1902, 78: 796-805.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The course of English commerce has attracted interest in increasing 
 measure, and publications upon it multiply, as we approach the end of the 
 century. Only a few books can be noticed here; the reader is referred to 
 the topics and list of authorities for references to other books and periodi- 
 cal articles. 
 
 Ward, * Reign of Queen Victoria, contains good chapters on the 
 industrial development of the reign. Stephen Bourne, * Trade, popula- 
 tion, and food, London, 1880, is a careful analysis of the decade 1870-80, 
 and furnishes a good starting-point from which to survey the course of 
 recent trade. Two books by T. H. S. Escott, Social transformations of 
 the Victorian age, London, 1897, 6 sh.; England, London (N. Y., 1880, 
 Holt, $4), comprise some matter of commercial interest along with much 
 on social and political life. J. W. Root, Trade relations of the British 
 Empire, Liverpool, 1903, provides a survey of English commerce at the 
 close of the period, with special reference to the pending question of 
 tariff changes. ** British industries, edited by W. J. Ashley, is, however, 
 the book deserving of the warmest recommendation; nowhere else will 
 the reader find such good descriptions of the leading industries of Great 
 Britain. Each industry is described by a specialist of recognized authority, 
 and though the book does not go far into history it gives indispensable 
 information on the present results of historical development. More 
 popular and less valuable is Great industries of Great Britain, London, 
 Cassell, no date (about 1880?), 3 vols. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 ENGLAND: PRESENT AND FUTURE 
 
 446. Relative decline in value and quality of English exports 
 in recent years. — The question agitating the minds of English 
 business men and politicians at the opening of the twentieth 
 century rises from a consideration of the immediate past and 
 of the future of English commerce. While the country has 
 enjoyed a full measure of prosperity in recent years, and has 
 witnessed a considerable increase in the quantity of its foreign 
 trade, the quality of this trade awakens forebodings. The 
 increase has been almost entirely confined to imports. Since 
 1872 the exports, though they have increased in bulk, have 
 remained almost stationary in value; they have kept pace 
 neither with the growth of population in England, nor with 
 the growth in value of the exports of other countries. In the 
 twenty years, 1881-1900, foreign countries enlarged their pur- 
 chases (imports) by 11 per cent, while England augmented 
 her sales to them (exports) by only 4 per cent; the British 
 possessions enlarged their purchases by 17 per cent, while 
 English sales to these dependencies showed an actual decrease 
 of 1 per cent. The exports of which England has been most 
 proud, as indicating her superior industrial strength — the 
 textiles, and iron and steel — have either increased slowly or 
 shown an actual decline. On the other hand, the exports, 
 which have increased in value are of a kind which the English 
 view with disfavor. Many of them (apparel and slops, pre- 
 serves, soap, furniture, etc.) are the product of cheap and 
 unskilled workers and seem to show a degradation of English 
 labor. Others of them, potter's clay and especially coal, are 
 
 381 
 
382 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 raw materials which the English would prefer to use in their 
 own industry at home. 
 
 447. Significance of the decline, and three possible expla- 
 nations of it. — The relative decline in English exports does 
 not imply that the country is approaching industrial bank- 
 ruptcy, but it does mean, if long continued, the loss of industrial 
 leadership; and the causes of this decline and remedies pro- 
 posed to meet it are worthy of careful attention. The decline 
 in exports may be attributed to one of three factors: (1) weak- 
 ness in manufacturing the wares which form the staple of the 
 export trade; (2) weakness in marketing these wares, when 
 they have been made; (3) the adverse influence of protective 
 tariffs in other countries. 
 
 448. (i) Competition in manufactures by low-grade labor. 
 — Considering the first of these factors, we find English manu- 
 factures menaced by competition from two different directions: 
 from the East (countries like India and Japan), and from the 
 West (countries like Germany and the United States). Eastern 
 competition threatens especially England's staple manufacture, 
 cotton. The English laborer is superior in every point to his 
 Asiatic competitor, but not enough better to earn his higher 
 wages when employed in the manufacture of coarse goods. 
 England has built up a serious and growing competition by 
 exporting machinery and sending out skilled managers and 
 foremen to superintend it. During the past generation there 
 has been an immense development in the textile manufactures 
 of India and Japan, and these countries are able now not 
 only to supply a large proportion of their own demand, but 
 also to reach out into neutral markets like China. 
 
 449. Competition in manufactures of high-grade labor. — 
 More serious, because capable of far greater extension, is the 
 competition which the Englishman has begun to experience 
 from advanced western peoples. This confines itself to no one 
 branch of production, but spreads over the whole broad field 
 of manufactures. Americans and Germans have begun to 
 supply not only the British dependencies but England herself 
 
ENGLAND: PRESENT AND FUTURE 383 
 
 with manufactured wares, in increasing measure. Some of 
 the reasons suggested to explain their superiority are as follows : 
 (1) Elementary education has been developed only recently in 
 England, and has been hampered by sectarian questions; the 
 average laborer in Germany and the United States is better 
 equipped for modern methods of manufacture than is the 
 Englishman. (2) It is asserted that trade unions have se- 
 riously detracted from the productiveness of English manufac- 
 tures, by preventing the introduction of improved machinery 
 and by limiting output. (3) Technical education is even more 
 backward than general education; improved processes are 
 introduced earlier and developed further in other countries, 
 for lack of a class of trained manufacturers in England. (4) 
 Finally, and probably the most important point of all, the 
 directing class in English manufactures have either lost or 
 have never acquired the push and energy characterizing their 
 competitors, especially in America. A good critic detects "a 
 certain supineness and languor"; the manufacturer works 
 short hours and stops for afternoon tea. The manufacturer 
 retains old machinery; he asks "Will it do?" and not, "Can it 
 be improved?" He pays his responsible subordinates nig- 
 gardly salaries, as little as they will take, not as much as they 
 can prove they are worth. An English expert who investigated 
 the American cotton industry reports that there is a great 
 difference in the energy, intelligence, and adventurousness of 
 the managing class in the two countries, all to the advantage 
 of the United States. 
 
 450. (2) Alleged weakness of the English mercantile organ- 
 ization. — In the preceding paragraph we have suggested 
 various elements of weakness in English manufactures, which 
 in greater or less degree are bound to affect the power lying 
 behind the English export trade. We have now to consider 
 another set of conditions, which are easily confused with the 
 foregoing, but which are better kept separate. English manu- 
 facturers might be strong, and still they would have but a 
 small export trade if they were not informed as to the wants 
 
384 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of their customers, and did not study their customers' tastes 
 in supplying goods. This set of conditions, which may be 
 termed mercantile, the business of the merchant rather than 
 of the manufacturer, we may study under two heads: (a) 
 finding out what is wanted; (6) selling a suitable ware when 
 it has been made. 
 
 451. Insufficient knowledge of the needs of foreigners. — 
 (a) The complaint is general that the scouts of British com- 
 merce, the commercial travelers, are too few in number and 
 that they are ill prepared, especially in their knowledge of 
 foreign languages. The English exporter ships goods which 
 he thinks are suitable, without knowledge or regard of the 
 desires of his customers. A business man who had had seven 
 years' experience with trade in the Empire said, "There is a 
 universal complaint : ' You English will not make your goods to 
 suit our markets. You send your samples and tell us to take 
 them or leave them — you don't care which. If we ask you 
 to alter things you either refuse to do it or else you demand 
 prohibitive prices.' " In countries where English is not spoken 
 (Persia, Sumatra, South America, etc.) the conditions are still 
 worse. The Merchandise Marks Act, the origin of the familiar 
 "Made in Germany," was designed to protect the British 
 colonist from having foreign-made goods palmed off on him as 
 English, and thus help the English manufacturer; but it 
 served only to advertise foreign manufactures, and led the 
 colonists to import goods directly from foreign countries, 
 instead of taking them through English hands. 
 
 452. Unwillingness to adopt foreign trade customs. — (b) 
 Finally, when wares suited to sale in any market have been 
 manufactured, they need to be sold, to maintain trade. Eng- 
 lish exporters are criticised for allowing their wares to be driven 
 out of foreign markets by other wares, no better in themselves 
 but for some reason more attractive to the customer. Here 
 again the commercial traveler is at fault, but part of the blame 
 lies on the exporter. Sales must be made in small lots and on 
 long credit in some countries, if they are to be made at all; 
 
ENGLAND: PRESENT AND FUTURE 385 
 
 and the English have shown a disinclination to adapt them- 
 selves to such conditions which has enabled others (especially 
 Germans) to take trade from them. When other things are 
 nearly equal slight differences in packing and shipping may 
 turn the scale. The English lost trade in Australia because 
 they sent tacks in paper packages instead of in cardboard 
 boxes, because they sent cartridges in lots of one hundred 
 instead of lots of twenty-five. An interesting example of an 
 opportunity well met occurs in the career of an Englishman 
 who left the field of manufacture to become a leading states- 
 man — Joseph Chamberlain. He found that the trade with 
 France in his product, wood -screws, was small; he introduced 
 the metric system of measurement, put up the screws in 
 packages of the size usual in France and wrapped in blue paper 
 familiar to the French customer, and developed a large export 
 trade. If there were now more men like Chamberlain in 
 manufactures in England there would be less need of the pro- 
 tective policy which he has recently been advocating in 
 Parliament. 
 
 453. Attempts to remedy these faults. — In the preceding 
 paragraphs we have covered some of the economic factors to 
 which the relative decline of the English export of manufac- 
 tures is attributed. If the English wish to hold in the future 
 that great share of trade which they have held in the past, 
 they must remedy their faults as individuals and as an organi- 
 zation, and keep pace with other peoples who threaten to 
 overtake and pass them. The English are alive to this fact; 
 they show a growing interest in elementary and technical 
 education; and are demanding more energy and resourcefulness 
 from their industrial and commercial leaders. Whether they 
 can repair their omissions of the past in time to stay the gains 
 of their competitors only the future can sho^ 
 
 454. (3) Adverse influence of foreign tariffsf^^proposals to 
 revise the English policy of free trade. — Meanwhile, as is 
 natural, they look to the government to help them. A con- 
 siderable party in England asserts that the reasons for the 
 
 25 
 
386 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 recent decline are political rather than economic, resulting 
 from the protective tariffs of other states; and this party 
 asserts that a change in the tariff policy of England and of the 
 colonies is needed to rescue British commerce. 
 
 There can be no question of the main fact, that protective 
 tariffs have increased considerably during the last generation. 
 It is estimated that the principal English exports are burdened 
 with duties equivalent to 10 to 30 per cent ad valorem in most 
 states, but amounting to far more than that in some cases (72 
 per cent in United States, 130 per cent in Russia). There can 
 be no question that England suffers from these restrictions; 
 every commercial state suffers from them. It is, however, 
 open to grave doubt whether England can help herself by a 
 change in policy; and the question of what change, if any, 
 ought to be made, is entirely unsettled. 
 
 455. Demand for customs duties as a means of defense 
 and retaliation. — One group of " tariff reformers " clings to 
 the ideal of free trade, and favors its maintenance as the policy 
 of the country in general. It would, however, permit devia- 
 tions from it in particular cases. The adherents of this view 
 assert that England stripped herself of the armor and the 
 weapons of commercial war when she adopted complete free 
 trade. She can make no effective protest when other nations 
 raise tariffs against her, marked perhaps by offensive discrimi- 
 nations; she must suffer everything because she is forbidden 
 to retaliate. The adherents of this view lay particular stress 
 on the practice of "dumping," as it is called. The manufac- 
 turers of protected nations, themselves, secure from England's 
 competition, market their surplus output in England at prices 
 which do not cover the costs, much less the profits, of produc- 
 tion. It is cheaper to do this than to break prices in the pro- 
 tected market at home; it kills the English industries and 
 enables foreign manufacturers in the long run to raise prices 
 to a profitable level in the English market. For retaliation 
 against protective countries, and for defense against "dump- 
 ing," this school demands that the English government be 
 
ENGLAND: PRESENT AND FUTURE 387 
 
 armed with the power to impose heavy duties, to be temporary 
 in character and to be removed as soon as their immediate 
 object has been accomplished. Such a policy has been adopted 
 in Canada. 
 
 456. Proposal of an imperial customs union. — Another 
 school of tariff reformers, led by Joseph Chamberlain, accepts 
 in general the views just indicated, but lays particular stress 
 on another possibility in shaping English commercial policy. 
 It would make the whole great group of English dependencies 
 not only a political unit but a commercial unit as well, bound 
 together in an imperial customs union (Z ollverdn) , so that 
 trade would flow from place to place within the Empire instead 
 of crossing its frontier. It is not possible here to discuss the 
 various aspects of this proposal, of which some of the most 
 important are political rather than commercial in character. 
 The attractiveness of the plan is at once apparent ; it promises 
 to assure to England a market for her manufactures in the 
 colonies, and to the colonies a protected market for their raw 
 materials in England. The practical weakness of the plan is, 
 however, equally apparent ; no law would be necessary to secure 
 this result if the various parts of the Empire found it advan- 
 tageous to trade with each other, and the mere suggestion that 
 a law is necessary shows that trade would be cramped and the 
 interests of people hurt by such an arrangement. 
 
 457. Obstacles to a customs union. — The course of trade 
 has, in fact, taken lines more and more opposed to the scheme 
 of a customs union*. During the first part of the century, 
 when England was still protectionist, and when the mother 
 country made the laws for its dependencies, the plan could be 
 carried out with comparatively little friction; the colonies were 
 engaged chiefly in the production of raw materials, and were 
 glad to exchange these for English manufactures. Since about 
 1850, however, both the political and the economic organization 
 of the Empire have changed. The self-governing colonies have 
 received the right to make their own laws, and have used it 
 to raise protective tariffs, against England as well as against 
 
388 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 other countries; and have developed a considerable manu- 
 facturing industry behind these barriers. They are now 
 unwilling, therefore, to open their markets to English manu- 
 factures, and they have shown an increasing tendency to buy 
 what manufactures they do import from other countries than 
 England. They are unable, on the other hand, to supply the 
 English demand for raw material, and any measure tending 
 to restrict English supplies to this source would hurt the 
 producer and consumer at home. The colonies have made 
 some concessions, in the form of differential duties favoring 
 the English, but the effect so far has been small, and there 
 seems little likelihood that the hopes of those who favor a 
 customs union will be realized. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Note the different senses in which the commerce of a country 
 may be described as "declining." (1) Other things remaining the same, 
 there may be an absolute decrease in the quantity and value of both 
 exports and imports. (2) The decrease may affect only one side of the 
 balance, while the total figures may remain the same. Why is the de- 
 crease viewed with especial apprehension if it affects exports? (3) Other 
 things remaining the same, including the quantity of wares, there may 
 be a decrease in the value of a country's commerce, due to a change in 
 the level of prices. (4) The quantity and value of a country's commerce 
 may remain the same, and yet be regarded as "declining" if the popula- 
 tion of the country increases; the share of each person in commerce would 
 be diminishing. (5) Similarly, a country's commerce may keep pace 
 with its population, and yet be termed "declining" if the commerce of 
 other countries increased more rapidly, so that the given country conducted 
 a diminishing share of the world's trade. (6) Previous standards of 
 "decline" have been based on quantity, measured either in bulk or value, 
 but there may also be a decline in quality. A scientist might gain more 
 income if he adopted the trade of an artisan, but he would be thought, 
 nevertheless, to lose in rank. Endeavor to make clear to yourself the 
 significance of each one of these various changes, and be prepared to dis- 
 tinguish them as you study the commercial tendency of different countries. 
 Find examples of as many of them as you can. 
 
 2. Pick from following sections a concrete example to illustrate 
 each of the three heads suggested in sect. 447. 
 
ENGLAND: PRESENT AND FUTURE 389 
 
 3. English industry and Eastern competition. [R. S. Gundry, in 
 Fortnightly Review, 1895, 64: 609-620.] 
 
 4. Recent history of elementary education. [Matthew Arnold in 
 Ward, Reign, 2: 238 ff.] 
 
 5. How trade unionism affects British industries. [E. A. Pratt, 
 Trade unionism; B. Taylor in North Amer. Review, 1901, 173: 190-207; 
 other references in authorities; in defense of trade unions cf. Edwards in 
 Contemporary Review, 1902, 81: 113-128.] 
 
 6. Technical education in England. [See references in authorities.] 
 
 7. Reasons for decline of the English silk trade. [Parker in National 
 Review, 1895, 26: 212-225.] 
 
 8. Relative strength of modem countries in manufactures. [Schoen- 
 hof in Forum, 1901, 31: 89-104 (statistical); Browne in National Review, 
 1899, 33: 568-580 (espec. U. S.).] 
 
 9. Faults of English mercantile organization. [Lambert in Nine- 
 teenth Century, 1898, 44: 940-956; Greenwood in same, 1899, 45: 538- 
 547; cf. authorities.] 
 
 10. Meaning of "dumping"; effects; means of prevention. [Ashley, 
 Tariff problem.] 
 
 11. Balfour's view of the commercial situation. [A. J. Balfour, 
 Economic notes on insular free trade, N. Y., Longmans, 1903, $.30; 
 Tariff reform, $.10.] 
 
 12. Criticism of Balfour's proposals. [Quarterly Review, 1903, 
 198: 613-648.] 
 
 13. Chamberlain's view of the commercial situation. [Chamberlain, 
 The policy of imperial preference. National Review, 1903-4, 42: 351-370.] 
 
 14. Discussion of Chamberlain's proposals. [Nelson in North Amer. 
 Review, 1903, 177: 183-191; Goschen in Monthly Review, 1903, 12: 
 July, 38 ff.; Quarterly Review, 1903, 198: 246-278; Edinburgh Review, 
 1904,200:449-476.] 
 
 15. The project of an imperial customs union. [Mahan in National 
 Review, 1902, 39: 390-408; Colquhoun in North Amer. Review, 1903, 
 177: 172-182; Giffen, in Nineteenth Century, 1902, 51: 69^-705; Bastable 
 in Econ. Journal, 1902, 12: 507-513.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I cannot attempt a survey or appreciation of the vast literature which 
 has sprung in recent years from the discussion over the proposal to change 
 the present commercial policy of England. English publishers, both of 
 books and of periodicals, have turned out from their printing presses 
 such a mass of literature on the subject that the difficulty is not so much 
 to find it, but rather to escape it. References in quantity, sufficient, 
 
390 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 probably, for readers of this book, will be found in the topics and authori- 
 ties. A. bibliography of 38 pages compiled under the supervision of 
 A. P. C. Griffin, Select list of references on the British tariff movement 
 (Chamberlain's plan), was published at Washington, 1904. For a defense 
 of the protective policy the reader may see Ashley, Tariff problem; for 
 representative statements of the free trade views see William Smart, 
 The return to protection, London, Macmillan, 1904; and L. G. C. Money, 
 Elements of the fiscal problem, London, King, 1903. Considerable his- 
 torical importance attaches to the books by Gastrell and Williams, which 
 did much to arouse interest in the great commercial question of the day. 
 For discussion of one of the factors alleged to explain decline in English 
 industrial efficiency see Edwin A. Pratt, Trade unionism and British 
 industry, London, Murray, 1904. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 THE GERMAN STATES 
 
 458. Connection of the commercial and the political devel- 
 opment of Germany. — Standing next to England in the extent 
 of its commerce about 1900 is a country which at the beginning 
 of the century, if not among the last, was certainly far below 
 the leaders. This country is Germany. We shall have to note, 
 in this sketch of commercial development in the nineteenth 
 century, two remarkable examples of commercial expansion. 
 One of them, furnished by the United States, was due to the 
 spread of a people originally small, over a great area rich in 
 resources. The other, furnished by Germany, was due to 
 different causes. The Germans of 1800 occupied a territory 
 not greatly different from that which composes the Germany 
 of to-day, and to which nature has given but a moderate 
 endowment of resources. There was no Germany at the earlier 
 date, however; the people were divided up among a great 
 number of petty states, and their economic forces were cramped 
 thereby so as to hinder their development. The commercial 
 progress of the century has depended largely on the reform of 
 these political conditions. 
 
 459. Summary of the political development. — It will be 
 necessary, therefore, in the following pages, to refer frequently 
 to the events of political history, and for the convenience of 
 the reader a brief summary is here given of the course of that 
 history. The Napoleonic wars wiped out the smallest and 
 most backward of the German states, reducing the number 
 from over three hundred to about forty. Then, until near the 
 middle of the century, progress depended on negotiations 
 between these states by which the worst effects of their separa- 
 
 391 
 
392 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 tion were removed. In 1848 a liberal movement reformed the 
 government of some of the important states on modern lines, 
 and strengthened the demand for a unified Germany, leaving 
 still undecided, however, the question whether Prussia or 
 Austria was to be the leading state. The war of 1866 between 
 the two states gave the leadership to Prussia; and the war of 
 1870 with France led finally to the foundation of the modern 
 German Empire, under which at last the people found room 
 for commercial expansion and advanced with astonishing 
 rapidity. 
 
 460. Conditions of Germany about 1815. — In spite of the 
 service which Napoleon did Germany by abolishing the smallest 
 states, the country was still splintered into pieces in 1815. 
 A network of tariff frontiers covered the land, cutting the 
 great rivers and the natural high-roads of coiAmerce, and 
 preventing the movement of wares. Not only did each state 
 have its own tariff; some had internal tariffs in addition. The 
 single state of Prussia had altogether some sixty tariffs. Some 
 of the states were made of scattered pieces, interspersed among 
 the territories of their neighbors; even a small state might 
 consist of eight or ten fragments. A merchant, to reach the 
 center of the country from the national frontier, crossed about 
 sixteen tariff boundaries. 
 
 Not only the customs tariffs consumed time and money. 
 The separatism which they represented spread into all parts of 
 the organization; there were seventeen different postal systems 
 in the country; nearly threescore different laws on bills of 
 exchange; hundreds of different coins. 
 
 461. Backwardness of commerce and manufactures. — The 
 difficulties of internal commerce were so great that the life 
 of the people was arranged in large part to enable them to 
 exist without trade. Most of the people were engaged in 
 agriculture and supplied themselves with nearly all the neces- 
 saries of life. Manufactures were still carried on almost 
 exclusively by scattered artisans. The German governments 
 still clung to the old ideas of the gild system and public regu- 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 393 
 
 lation. Little by little these ideas fell into the background in 
 the first half of the nineteenth century, but it is important 
 to note that they were still a living force in Germany when 
 England had discarded them and was in the full rush of the 
 developing factory system. 
 
 462. Factories dependent on antiquated sources of power. — 
 Hindered in development by the persistence of old institutions, 
 and by the lack of any considerable market for the product, 
 German manufactures remained on the same stage on which 
 they had been for centuries previously. Even the textile and 
 mining industries were conducted according to the time-honored 
 methods of the past; little progress had been made in the 
 application of machinery, and the steam-engine was practically 
 unknown. In Electoral Saxony, the seat now of a great cotton 
 and woolen manufacture, all spinning was done by hand up 
 to 1786, and in 1812 the small factories were still dependent 
 on this source of power. The factories of medium size got 
 their power from oxen and horses; only the large factories 
 were run by water; and no spinning was as yet done entirely 
 by steam. 
 
 463. Commerce small, and marked by the export of raw 
 materials. — No statistics exist which would give an accurate 
 picture of the development of German commerce in the early 
 part of the nineteenth century, but we can gain some idea 
 of its backwardness from an estimate made for so late a date 
 as 1842. At this time German foreign trade was little over 
 one tenth of what it was in 1900, and it must have been con- 
 siderably less in earlier years, before the reforms which will be 
 described immediately. The fact that the country was pre- 
 dominantly agricultural is shown in the fact that the most 
 important items in export were raw materials and foodstuffs, 
 especially grain. The industrial population had not advanced 
 far enough to work up even the raw wool produced in the 
 country, of which considerable quantities were exported to 
 England. Germany did export, it is true, a number of manu- 
 factured wares, but they were in general those which could be 
 
394 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 made from raw materials produced at home, and in the manu- 
 facture of which cheap hand labor was still the important 
 factor. In the products, however, affected by the improve- 
 ments which had been introduced in English factories, Germany 
 confessed her weakness, and purchased large quantities of 
 yarn and iron of English manufacturers for use inside the 
 country. 
 
 464. Formation of the Zollverein (customs union). — Such 
 
 conditions called forth, naturally, remonstrances from the 
 mercantile classes. Business men and manufacturers in all 
 parts of Germany began soon after 1815 to agitate for a reform. 
 We must content ourselves with noting only the main steps. 
 Tariffs inside the separate states were reformed, and the navi- 
 gation of the great rivers was made easier. Finally, and most 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 395 
 
 important, the separate states began to draw together in 
 groups, forming a customs-union (Zollverein), with a common 
 tariff on the frontier and with free trade inside. The move- 
 ment, slow at first, culminated rapidly in 1828, when three 
 such groups were formed, one in the North (Prussia and others), 
 one in the South (Bavaria and Wurtemberg), and a third 
 including states from central Germany to the coast. No state 
 liked to remain isolated when consolidation had once begun. 
 Out of this transition stage there had developed by 1834 one 
 great union, embracing about two thirds of the area and 
 population out of which the German Empire was later to be 
 formed. From this time the union grew more slowly, but the 
 people within it could now afford to wait, utilizing its new 
 commercial opportunities, and confident that the other Germans 
 could not long resist its attractions. 
 
 465. Development following the formation of the Zollverein. 
 — The introduction of free trade inside of Germany was 
 opposed then, as the establishment of free trade in the world 
 at large would be now, by producers who feared the competi- 
 tion of others in the same line of business. Some producers 
 lost by the change, and were compelled to seek other lines of 
 work. Many manufacturers, however, who opposed the change 
 because they feared it would hurt them, found that it led 
 actually to a great increase in prosperity; it extended their 
 market and gave a rich reward to those who best served their 
 customers. German manufactures developed and began to 
 supply a demand which before had been met by purchases 
 abroad. The importation of foreign manufactures was checked, 
 while there was an increase in the imports of raw and half 
 manufactured materials (dyes, coal, iron) and of colonial 
 products (sugar, coffee), indicating a growth in industrial 
 power and in welfare. The non-industrial population gained 
 both as consumers, by the better supply of manufactured 
 wares, and as producers, selling products to the developing 
 industrial class. 
 
 466. Protection and the free-trade movement. — The tariff 
 
396 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of the Zollverein of 1834, based on the liberal Prussian tariff 
 of 1818, was less restrictive and less complicated than that of 
 most of the European states of the time. Duties which had 
 been moderate, however, at the time when they were framed, 
 became protective or prohibitory as prices fell; and some 
 changes toward protection were made consciously to stimulate 
 manufactures or to retaliate against other countries. About 
 the middle of the century the current set in the other direc- 
 tion. Germany was still an agricultural country, exporting 
 grain, and the agricultural classes secured the aid of merchants 
 and of political liberals in a contest for lower duties. 
 
 467. Political factors in the tariff question. — The free-trade 
 movement was curiously intermixed with matters of national 
 politics, especially the question which was acute from 1848 
 to 1866, whether Prussia or Austria was to lead in the unifica- 
 tion of Germany. Austria had not entered the Zollverein, 
 partly because the Austrian government had retained the pro- 
 tective or prohibitive duties of the previous century, and was 
 unwilling to reduce them by entering the German customs 
 union. It was the policy of Prussia, therefore, to keep the 
 duties low and to make them even lower, that Austria might 
 be excluded from influence on the other German states. Neg- 
 lecting the details, which are extremely complicated, we may 
 note only the result, which was a victory for Prussian states- 
 manship and for the free-trade party. Treaties with France 
 and with many other states reduced the duties far in the 
 direction of free trade. 
 
 468. Reaction in customs policy after the founding of the 
 German Empire. — At the time of the foundation of the present 
 German Empire, therefore, the tariff was low and the free-trade 
 movement was in the ascendant. The free traders gained one 
 more victory, in 1873, by securing the abolition of the duties 
 on iron; and in 1877 about 95 per cent of all imports entered 
 duty free. This victory of the free traders was their last. 
 The founding of the empire stimulated the growth of national 
 feeling, and " Germany for the Germans " was a rallying cry of 
 
THE GERMAN STATES 397 
 
 which the protectionists made good use. A great commercial 
 crisis, following the war and the expenditure of the huge 
 indemnity received from France, caused urgent demands for 
 relief from the manufacturers who had greatly extended their 
 works and found now that they could not market the product 
 at profitable prices. Of the iron producers it was said that 
 one third could continue under the existing tariff, that one 
 third could continue only with the aid of protection, and that 
 one third were bound to be ruined whether they received pro- 
 tection or not. 
 
 469. Return to protection in 1879. — Even the agricultural 
 classes now joined the protectionists; they found their foreign 
 market appropriated and their home market threatened by 
 grain imports from Russia, America, and India; they were 
 largely in debt and were paying the heavier taxes of the empire. 
 Finally, political factors united with the economic to induce a 
 change. Bismarck found it politic to reverse his position and 
 to advocate protection instead of low duties or free trade; 
 with remarkable adroitness he engineered the change which 
 was realized in the tariff of 1879. The existing duties on 
 manufactures were raised; old duties which had been abolished 
 were restored; and duties protecting agricultural products were 
 introduced. This tariff, with changes which we shall notice 
 later, has formed the basis of the existing tariff. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Review in one of the smaller manuals of European history the 
 course of political development in Germany during the century. 
 
 2. Political condition of the German states at the beginning of the 
 century. [Seignobos, first parts of chaps. 12, 14; Henderson, vol. 2, 
 chaps. 6, 7; Bigelow, vol. 3, chap. 1.] 
 
 3. The ZoUverein. [Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 8; Bigelow, vol. 3, chap. 
 4; Seignobos, end of chap. 14.1 
 
 4. The Prussian tariff of 1818. [Bigelow, vol. 3, chap. 17.] 
 
 5. The conflict between Prussia and Austria. [Henderson, vol. 2, 
 chap. 9; Seignobos, chap. 15. 
 
 6. The return to protection. ["Veritas," chap. 5.] 
 
398 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 A bibliography of Germany, including references to a number of 
 articles in English will be found in Homans, Cyclopedia of commerce, 
 N. Y., 1858, p. 814. The student who is confined to reading in English 
 must seek in Homans, M'Culloch and similar books, or in the general en- 
 cyclopedias published before 1870, the descriptions there given of Ger- 
 man commerce in the earlier parts of the century. Most of the English 
 reading which is readily available takes up economic development only in 
 connection with political history. Topical references have been given 
 above to the general narrative histories: ** Seignobos; Ernest F. Hen- 
 derson, A short history of Germany, 2 vols., N. Y., Macmillan, 1902; 
 Poultney Bigelow, History of the German struggle for liberty, 3 vols., 
 N. Y., Harper, 1896-1903. An anonymous book, by "Veritas" The 
 German Empire of to-day, London, Longmans, 1902, $2, includes chap- 
 ters on the history of German commercial policy which make it a 
 convenient source of information to readers of English. The best book 
 in English, however, on German commercial policy is W. H. Dawson, 
 ** Protection in Germany, London, King, 1904, 3s. 6d., which covers 
 the whole century; it is a book to be studied, not merely read. A valu- 
 able summary of the history of German American commercial relations 
 throughout the nineteenth century is given by G. M. Fisk in Review of 
 Reviews, N. Y., March, 1902, 25 : 323-328. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 GERMANY UNDER THE EMPIRE 
 
 470. Effect on economic development of the establishment 
 of the Empire. — Leaving now the topic of commercial policy 
 until we return to it in a concluding paragraph, we must 
 attend to the material development of Germany. Down to 
 the foundation of the Empire in 1871, progress, if steady, still 
 was slow. The best energies of the people were absorbed in 
 the great political conflicts out of which united Germany was 
 to emerge; delicate questions of the relations between the 
 German states had to be settled, and much needed still to be 
 accomplished in the reform of industrial legislation inside the 
 states. As late as 1862 it was estimated that five eighths of 
 the people were still engaged in agriculture or in other extract- 
 ive industries. In comparison with this period of preparation 
 the progress which Germany has made since 1871 is startling. 
 The direct gains which Germany made in the war with France, 
 the acquisition of the rich provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, 
 and the receipt of about $1,000,000,000 as a war indemnity, 
 were large, but still they were less than the indirect results: 
 the establishment of national unity on a lasting basis, freeing 
 the people from political anxieties, and encouraging them to 
 face their economic problems with a new energy and pride in 
 their strength, and with a new hope in the future. This 
 political factor, vague and intangible as it may be, is still most 
 important; without it the recent economic development of 
 Germany could be regarded only as a miracle. 
 
 471. Development of commerce, 1870-1900. — While the 
 population of Germany has increased by less than a half, 
 rising from 41 to 56 millions, in the period since the founding 
 
 399 
 
400 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of the Empire, the foreign trade of the country has about 
 doubled. A change in the method of compiling the statistics 
 of commerce prevents us from seeing the details of development 
 through the whole course of the period, but the following 
 table presents an outline since 1880: 
 
 Special Commerce of Germany, Selected Years 
 IN Millions of Dollars 
 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 Total 
 
 1880 
 
 670 
 
 688 
 
 1,358 
 
 1885 
 
 699 
 
 680 
 
 1,379 
 
 1890 
 
 986 
 
 791 
 
 1,777 
 
 1895 
 
 980 
 
 789 
 
 1,769 
 
 1900 
 
 1,372 
 
 1,097 
 
 2,469 
 
 While in 1871 60 men out of 100 were engaged in agriculture, 
 the proportion had fallen in 1900 to 35. The change was 
 brought about not by an absolute decline of the number in 
 agriculture, though sometimes that was observable, but by 
 the young men leaving the country for the mines, factories, 
 and commercial centers. Germany had in 1840 only 12 cities 
 of over 100,000 inhabitants, while at the end of the century it 
 had 28, of which the chief, Berlin, was growing more rapidly 
 than Chicago. The industrial development during the genera- 
 tion ending in 1900 may be inferred from the following: coal 
 production increased over 250 per cent, pig iron production 
 nearly 400 per cent, and shipping 500 per cent. 
 
 472. Character of present German commerce. — Of the 
 total imports of Germany now only about one fifth are manu- 
 factures. The important items are raw materials and food- 
 stuffs. If we arrange the wares imported in the order of 
 their value we do not find a manufactured ware appearing 
 among the imports until we reach the item of woolen yarn, 
 which occupies the nineteenth place on the list. On the 
 other hand, the export of raw materials and food products 
 
GERMANY UNDER THE EMPIRE 401 
 
 has declined so that it makes now but one third of the 
 total exports; of the 29 leading articles exported in 1901 
 coal was the only raw material occupying an important place 
 on the list, and the other items which might be ranked as 
 raw materials (hides, furs and skins, leather, coke) were insig- 
 nificant in comparison with the great manufactures. We shall 
 need first of all, therefore, to study the development of Ger- 
 many's manufactures. 
 
 473. Rapid development of factory industry. — Before the 
 founding of the Empire most of the people engaged in manu- 
 factures in Germany still worked at home, with simple ma- 
 chinery and no steam power. In Saxony, for instance, now 
 one of the industrial centers of the country, the manufactures 
 of cloth, stockings, lace, etc., w^ere still carried on outside of 
 factories in 1868. The proportion of people working in this 
 simple way is still large in Germany, but the number has 
 declined in many lines of work (weaving, milling, shoemaking, 
 etc.), and the great growth of the recent period has been in 
 the modern factory industry. Since 1882 the rate of growth 
 of the factory population has been about fourfold that of the 
 general population. The results of this development have 
 been indicated in the previous paragraph, and they furnish a 
 striking contrast to conditions as they were at the time of the 
 Centennial Exposition of 1876, when the German representative 
 reported that in the industrial field Germany had received a 
 defeat equal to two Sedans, that German industry produced 
 only articles of poor quality and of slight value ("schlecht und 
 billig"), and that Krupp guns were the only product of which 
 the Germans could be proud. 
 
 474. Resources of coal and iron. — Germany has been 
 favored by some important physical resources in building up 
 its modern industry. The country has a rich supply of coal, 
 the great source of modern power, and takes now in Europe 
 a place second only to England in coal production. Germany 
 is well supplied also with the raw materials for the staple 
 products, iron and steel; it has developed its iron resources 
 
 26 
 
402 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 with a rapidity exceeded only in the United States, and while 
 it produced only one twenty seventh of the world's iron supply 
 in 1866 its share had risen to one sixth at the end of the cen- 
 tury. In the output of steel it has passed England and stands 
 next to the United States. 
 
 475. Quality of the people. — The richest resource of Ger- 
 many, however, is its people. The past poverty of the country 
 and the trials through which it has gone have nurtured a 
 steadiness and thriftiness among the working classes which 
 makes them admirable members of the modern productive 
 organization. An effective system of elementary education 
 was established in parts of Germany long before a similar 
 step had been taken in most other countries; and now prac- 
 tically all the people have not only the rudiments of education, 
 but also, what is perhaps more important, a respect for knowl- 
 edge, a desire to learn and to make the best use of their learning, 
 which are in striking contrast with the careless spirit of other 
 peoples. It has been said that it was the primary school- 
 teacher who won for the Germans the victories of 1866 and 
 1870; and the Germans can hope now to beat their industrial 
 rivals as they beat their military opponents, by method and 
 steady application rather than by brilliancy and dash. 
 
 476. Superiority in technical training. — The effects of 
 careful training are as evident in the class of the responsible 
 managers of Germany's industries as in the laboring class. 
 Nowhere in Europe has technical education reached so high a 
 development. Not only are the appliances, methods, and 
 system of organization superior to those of other states; the 
 technical schools reach a larger part of the population, training 
 them not only in the fundamental subjects of science, but also 
 in the special branches of production (mining, weaving, dyeing, 
 etc.). 
 
 The results are everywhere apparent in German industry; 
 to instance chemicals, sugar, glass, and electrical appliances is 
 to pick only a few examples from a list which could be greatly 
 extended. Especially noteworthy is the readiness of the 
 
GERMANY UNDER THE EMPIRE 403 
 
 Germans to adopt a new process or machine which was first 
 brought out in some other country. Englishmen invented 
 processes to make a fast black aniline dye, to manufacture 
 potassium cyanide for the reduction of gold, to make steel by 
 the basis process; all these inventions were developed first 
 into commercial successes in Germany. The Germans import, 
 if necessary, foreign machinery and foreign foremen to super- 
 intend its action, until they have mastered the principles of 
 operation and have firmly established the industry in its new 
 home. 
 
 477. Efficiency of the mercantile organization. — Similar 
 considerations account for the success of the Germans in 
 commerce, and explain the rapid development of their export 
 trade. They take pains to find out what wares their customers 
 want, and to sell them when they have been made. The 
 report of a consul of the United States in Chile suggests the 
 methods which have led to their success. " Thirty years ago," 
 he says, "the trade coming to the Pacific ports was monopo- 
 lized by the British and a few American houses. The Germans 
 were represented only by jobbers and shopkeepers in the coast 
 towns. The Germans, appreciating the importance of this 
 trade, made well-conceived plans to gain it. They carefully 
 trained a number of able young men. When these were versed 
 in commercial affairs and in the language of the people among 
 whom they were to live, considerable shipments of goods were 
 made to the British and American houses, and the young men 
 found places as clerks and were given special charge of these 
 consignments. They remained there till they acquired a com- 
 plete knowledge of the coast trade; then they were provided 
 with ample funds and stocks and opened German houses, with 
 brilliant success. In many branches they now have a monop- 
 oly, and the British and American houses no longer attempt 
 competition." 
 
 478. Commercial travelers and trade papers. — No country 
 in the world has commercial travelers so well trained, especially 
 in the command of languages, as Germany. The Germans are 
 
404 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 said to be the only foreign people who have a thorough knowl- 
 edge of Russia in a business way; they are able to meet the 
 demand for long credits in that and other eastern countries, 
 and so build up their trade and still avoid serious losses. The 
 exporters are not content with sending abroad their ordinary 
 trade catalogues, as are the English, Americans, and others; 
 they send personal representatives speaking the language of 
 the country, or at least reach a prospective customer by some 
 communication in his own language. Trade papers for foreign 
 circulation are printed in Germany in the following languages: 
 English, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, 
 Japanese, and Chinese. 
 
 479. Other factors in commercial development. — We must 
 add still other influences aiding the development of German 
 commerce. In no other country has the practice of using the 
 exposition of trade samples to sell wares reached such develop- 
 ment as in Germany. German banks have given valuable 
 support in extending foreign trade. The government has lent 
 its 'political influence for the same end, and though the German 
 consular service is less efficient than the American, the services 
 of special experts have in recent times b^en granted freely to 
 aid the merchant. The government, moreover, has taken an 
 active part in furthering colonial enterprises, and has acquired 
 an immense area in distant parts of the world. The results, 
 to the present, have been disappointing; the colonies require 
 expenditures greater than the total volume of trade which 
 they afford. 
 
 A factor of far greater importance has been the development 
 of the German transportation system. The country is endowed 
 with a greater extent of navigable rivers than any other Euro- 
 pean country except Russia, and has supplemented them with 
 an admirable system of canals, still in process of growth. 
 Railroad transportation has been developed with an efficiency 
 which would once have been thought impossible under the 
 system of government control; and the railroad tariffs are 
 said to be models for the help they give in furthering export 
 
GERMANY UNDER THE EMPIRE 405 
 
 trade. German shipping, moreover, has grown with remark- 
 able rapidity, aided not only by the technical skill of the people 
 but also by favors accorded from the government. German 
 shipping is gaining a strong hold on distant commerce; and 
 the two largest steamship companies in the world are German. 
 
 480. Examples of German success in trade. — If we add all 
 these influences helping Germans to market their goods, to 
 those which enable them to manufacture to advantage, we can 
 understand the development of the German export trade, and 
 can see why German wares, even when they are no better than 
 the wares of other countries, win foreign markets. A French 
 brewery got the first prize at Baden Baden, but German beer 
 is sold all along the Parisian boulevards. German brewers 
 send an increasing amount of their beer to the British colonies 
 and India, because they have learned not only all that English 
 brewers can teach them, but they have learned, too, the tastes 
 of their customers in distant countries, and have adapted their 
 product to suit these tastes, while English brewers cling fast 
 to the old methods. They have greatly extended their trade 
 in textiles, carpets, etc., "not so much because they are cheaper, 
 as because they are quicker and more dexterous in fitting 
 their supply to the changing demands of the market." They 
 have taken away a large part of the French export trade in 
 dolls, by taking pains to fit the doll for the country to which 
 it is going, getting English cloths in which to dress a doll for 
 England, reproducing exactly national types of furniture, etc. 
 German wares, wrote the British consul at Paramaribo, dis- 
 placed Sheffield wares in his district, not because they were 
 more serviceable, but because they were cheaper, were polished 
 and painted, and arranged for display in shop windows, while 
 the English wares were laid away in brown paper on a shelf. 
 
 481. Development of the German tariff; the agrarian party. 
 — It would be unprofitable to attempt here to forecast the 
 future of German commerce, but one factor in its development, 
 which will certainly be of importance, should be noticed before 
 we leave the subject. This factor is the tariff policy. Ger- 
 
406 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 many, by its past history and its present position, is a military 
 state, and the government is bound to conciliate the active 
 political groups in the country, whose support is necessary to 
 enable it to carry out its plans. One group which has been 
 especially prominent is that of the agrarians, representing the 
 large land-owners of eastern Germany. This group, which 
 advocated free trade so long as it exported grain, changed to 
 protectionism, as shown, when it began to feel the competition 
 of the products of other countries. It secured a duty on wheat 
 in 1879, and twice afterwards (1885, 1887) it caused the duty 
 to be raised. Still discontented, especially as the commercial 
 treaties framed about 1890 looked toward greater freedom of 
 trade, it formed a fighting political organization in 1892, and 
 since then has struggled for still higher protection. Under 
 pretexts based on considerations of public health it has re- 
 stricted the importation of meat, which was brought largely 
 from the United States, so as to raise considerably the prices 
 paid by consumers; and in the tariff of 1902 it forced the hands 
 of the government and won still further concessions. American 
 wheat, for instance, was formerly subject to a duty of about 
 22 cents a bushel; but under the new tariff the minimum 
 rate is 35 cents, while the maximum, charged on wheat from 
 countries that have no special treaties with Germany, is 48 
 cents. The duties on other articles have been raised even 
 more. 
 
 482. Questions involved in the German tariff policy. — This 
 agrarian protection is urged by its advocates on several different 
 grounds: that the country dwellers must be supported for 
 political and military reasons; that the protection is only 
 temporary, to tide over a crisis; that Germany is going ahead 
 too fast, anyway. Whatever strength these arguments may 
 have, it is certain, if this protection is maintained or intensified, 
 that the industrial and commercial progress of Germany will 
 receive a severe check. The higher cost of living will involve 
 either higher wages or a lower grade of welfare and efficiency, 
 and either result will hurt producers in competition with 
 
GERMANY UNDER THE EMPIRE 407 
 
 foreigners. Germany, moreover, cannot extend her exports 
 unless she is willing to take the wares which other countries 
 offer in exchange. The terms of the tariff of 1902 are to some 
 extent capable of modification by special treaties, and until 
 these have been framed the tariff will not go into effect. Judg- 
 ing from the past, however, there seems little likelihood that 
 the tariff will be applied in a liberal spirit, and there is danger 
 that there may be a serious breach of Germany's commercial 
 relations with other countries. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. What other examples can you find of countries apparently in- 
 vigorated by a war for independence or national unity? 
 
 2. Recent political development of Germany. [Seignobos, chap. 16; 
 Dawson, chap. 11; Schierbrand, chap. 6.] 
 
 3. Development of commerce under the Empire. [Whitman, chap. 
 12; references in authorities-! 
 
 4. Prepare, in the manner suggested in the chapter on England, 
 graphic representations of the chief imports and exports. [Statistics in 
 Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 5. Recent and existing commerce of Germany. [Schierbrand, chap. 
 13; Amdt, Germany in international commerce, International Monthly, 
 1902, 5: 526-546; Bernstein, Growth of German exports. Contemporary 
 Review, 1903, 84: 775-787; Williams, Made in Germany — five years 
 after, National Review, 1901-2, 38: 130-144; Gastrell, chap. 8 (statistical).] 
 
 6. Development of factory industry and condition of factory labor. 
 [Dawson, chap. 3.] 
 
 7. The Krupp iron works. [Schierbrand, chap. 14.] 
 
 8. Methods and results of education. [Dawson, chap. 6 Schier- 
 brand, chap. 18.] 
 
 9. Various reasons alleged to explain German superiority in manu- 
 factures and commerce. [Williams, Made in Germany, chap. 7.] 
 
 10. The German chemical industry, [O. Eltzbacher, in Contem- 
 porary Review, 1904, 85: 627-639; cf. authorities.] 
 
 11. Effect of education on the mercantile organization. [Findlay, 
 Genesis of the German clerk. Fortnightly Review, 1899, 72: 533-536; cf. 
 authorities.] 
 
 12. The German colonial movement. ["Veritas," chap. 7; Schier- 
 brand, chap. 20; Birchenough in Nineteenth Century, 1898, 43: 182-191; 
 Keller in Yale Review, 1901-2, 10: 30-52, 390-415.] 
 
408 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 13. Development of German shipping. [Bashford in Fortnightly 
 Review, 1903, 79: 287-302; Schierbrand, chap. 15.] 
 
 14. German transportation system and policy. ["Veritas," chap. 6.] 
 
 15. German tariff policy to about 1890. [Villard in Yale Review, 
 1892-3, 1: 10-20.] 
 
 16. Commercial treaties about 1890. [Farnam in same, 1 : 20-34.] 
 
 17. The agrarian movement. [Schierbrand, chap. 9.] 
 
 18. Recent tariff policy. [Schierbrand, chap. 12; Schoenhof in Forum, 
 1901-2, 32: 105-115; Eltzbacher in Nineteenth Century, 1903, 54: 181- 
 196; H. Dietzel in Quarterly Jour, of Econ., 1902-3, 17: 365-416; W. H. 
 Dawson in Econ. Jour., 1902, 12: 15-23.] 
 
 19. The commerce of the United States and Germany. [Forum, 
 1899-1900, 30: 493-502.] 
 
 20. German-American "most favored nation" relations. [G. M. 
 Fisk in Jour. Pol. Econ., March, 1903, 11: 220-236.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Readers of English will find the recent commercial development of 
 Germany treated more fully than that of any other country of the Conti- 
 nent. Besides the book by "Veritas," mentioned in the preceding chap- 
 ter, may be named: S. Whitman, Imperial Germany; Chatauqua, 1901, 
 $.75; W. H. Dawson, German Hfe, N. Y., Putnam, 1901, $1.20; W. von 
 Schierbrand, ** Germany, N. Y., Doubleday, 1902, $2.40; [1905?] $1.00. 
 .The book last mentioned should be procured, if possible, in the first edi- 
 tion; the current dollar edition omits the chapters most important for our 
 purposes. Dawson, Protection, will continue to be of service in this period. 
 G. A. Pogson, Germany and its trade, London and N. Y., Harper, 1903, 
 is little more than a compilation of statistics. Statistical purposes are 
 served also by the section on the development of the German Empire, in 
 U. S. Monthly Summary, Commerce and Finance, Jan., 1899, vol. 6, no. 7, 
 pp. 1677-1719. 
 
 References to the abundant literature in periodicals and in foreign 
 languages are given in the topics and authorities. 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 FRANCE 
 
 483. Condition of France before the Revolution. — France 
 was considered, as the reader will recall, the richest and most 
 powerful state of Europe till near the end of the eighteenth 
 century. The population of the country was more than double 
 that of Great Britain, the resources were envied by all other 
 nations, the commerce was exceeded only by English commerce 
 and surpassed that in some respects. The French sugar colo- 
 nies were considered the most valuable colonial possession in 
 the world, and France surpassed England in trade with her 
 direct neighbors (some of the German states, Italy, Spain). 
 Under the political and economic system, however, which had 
 fastened itself on the country in the course of time, growth 
 was hampered; and opposition rose until it burst out finally 
 in the Revolution of 1789. Then followed a period of twenty- 
 five years of rapid political change and of bitter war, ending 
 finally with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. 
 
 484. Effect of the Revolution. — The losses of France 
 during this period in men, money, and colonial territory 
 need only to be suggested; the effect of the wars on French 
 commerce has already been described. It is proper here to 
 emphasize the good of the Revolution. In appearance, at 
 least, it swept away all the old institutions, and liberated the 
 people from burdens which they had been bearing for cen- 
 turies. It abolished the former class divisions and inequalities 
 in taxation; it freed the agricultural classes, and extended the 
 ownership of land; it amended the former restrictions on the 
 pursuit of manufactures and handicrafts; and it established 
 perfect freedom of trade inside the country. 
 
 409 
 
410 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 485. Backward features of industry and commerce. — No 
 
 country can make an entire breach with its past, and France 
 after 1815 was more like France before 1789 than the" reader 
 may suppose. The people had not acquired the skill and 
 boldness in industry and commerce which the English had 
 won by generations of experience. The government after 1815 
 was still highly centralized, with strong absolutist tendencies, 
 and moved more by personal influences than by far-sighted 
 views of the welfare of the whole people. These facts appear 
 in the course of commercial policy followed after the Restora- 
 tion. France had made only the barest beginnings in the 
 modern industries depending on coal and iron, and on the 
 application of machinery, at the time of the Revolution, and 
 though industries developed when commerce was interrupted 
 by war, they were weak in organization and technique, and 
 loudly demanded protection when peace returned, and oppor- 
 tunities for commerce developed. 
 
 486. The French tariff in the first part of the century. — 
 The result was a tariff system which goes far to explain the 
 sluggish development of French commerce in the first part of 
 the nineteenth century. It gave protection to shipping, to 
 agricultural products, from wheat to sumac and garden roses, 
 to the raw materials as well as the finished products of industry. 
 Colbert's tariff of 1664 and 1667 has often been cited as an ex- 
 example of high protection, but the French tariffs of the 
 period before 1850 imposed still higher duties on some of the 
 most important raw materials of industry (wool, cotton, flax, 
 pig and bar iron, steel, alum) ; many duties had risen to a pro- 
 hibitive height, and there were many actual prohibitions. 
 
 487. Sluggishness of industrial development. — At the time 
 when England was building up her system of manufactures, 
 when every decade was marked by some important step in 
 industrial progress, France resolutely excluded herself from 
 the influences which would have stimulated progress at home. 
 While England was endeavoring to keep her improved ma- 
 chinery in the country, by forbidding export, France aided her 
 
FRANCE 411 
 
 by imposing on machinery duties running up to 100 per cent. 
 Means to spin linen by machinery were invented by a French- 
 man, Girard, in 1810, but were first utilized in England; and 
 England could show nearly a million and a half spindles in 
 1849, against a quarter of a million in France. A Frenchman 
 estimated in 1827 that the steam-engines in Great Britain 
 amounted to a force of 6,400,000 laborers, while they amounted 
 in France to but 480,000. About 1840 there were still less 
 than 2,000 steam-engines in France. The French iron industry 
 was far behind the English in efficiency and in output, but 
 was secured the home market by protective duties, and built 
 up large fortunes for the iron producers at a direct loss to the 
 country estimated to be $10,000,000 a year, and an indirect 
 loss far larger. 
 
 488. Effect of the tariff on commerce. — The effect of the 
 tariff in checking commerce between the two great states in 
 this period can be seen in the fact that in 1829 less than one 
 seventieth of British exports were declared for France; England 
 found better customers in Spain, in Turkey, or in Chile. The 
 amount of trade was in fact somewhat larger, for smugglers 
 evaded the restrictions of the tariff, and by a number of in- 
 genious devices (including the use of trained dogs), succeeded 
 in bringing wares to the people who wanted them. 
 
 This one example indicates how the French were losing the 
 opportunities for commercial expansion which this period offered 
 to them as to other peoples. No more striking commentary 
 on the history of the commerce of France at this time can be 
 furnished than the following fact: nearly sixty years after the 
 French Revolution the special commerce of the country was 
 only just beginning to exceed the figures which it had attained 
 at the earlier date. 
 
 489. Reform of the tariff by Napoleon III. — The astonishing 
 increase of French commerce in the decade 1850-1860 (from 
 less than two to over five milliards of francs) was due chiefly 
 to the reform of the tariff by Napoleon III. Attempts before 
 this time to lower duties had failed because of the determined 
 
412 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 resistance and the strong political organization of the pro- 
 tectionists, but the new Emperor enjoyed a position of excep- 
 tional strength, and was not fettered by the dependence on 
 the manufacturing class which had stopped action by the 
 previous government. By his mere decrees he lowered or 
 suspended duties on agricultural products and on important 
 raw material (coal, iron, steel, wool, etc.). 
 
 490. Effect of the reform on commerce. — French industry 
 and commerce, checked so long in their development, responded 
 with surprising quickness. In a period of little over ten years 
 (1847-1859) the steam power of France increased over three- 
 fold. The commerce with England, which in the previous 
 period of twenty years had merely doubled, now quintupled 
 in ten years. With Portugal and Greece commerce quad- 
 rupled; with Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, etc., it tripled; 
 with Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the United States, 
 etc., it doubled. French commerce recovered its lost ground 
 so quickly that, according to a French estimate, it amounted 
 to more than three fifths of English commerce about 1860, 
 and the country took easily second place among the trading 
 countries of Europe. 
 
 491. The free-trade treaty of 1860. — At the end of the 
 decade which we have been studying, in 1860, the movement 
 toward greater freedom of trade progressed still another stage 
 by the ratification of a treaty of commerce between France and 
 England. Free traders, of whom Richard Cobden was the 
 chief, convinced the Emperor that France would benefit by a 
 further reduction of duties. Cobden asserted that French 
 operatives worked 20 per cent more time for 20 per cent less 
 wages, and paid upwards of 10 per cent more for their clothing 
 than the same class in England; and promised the Emperor 
 that the French would share in the advantages of the English 
 if they would only adopt a similar commercial policy. The 
 Emperor, moreover, was desirous of winning the good-will and 
 support of the English to strengthen his international position; 
 and agreed to the proposals partly on this account. England 
 
FRANCE 413 
 
 a,bolished the duties on a number of articles of French origin, 
 and reduced the duties on wine and spirits; while France 
 removed all prohibitions on trade, and scaled duties down to 
 about half their former amount in commerce between the two 
 countries. This treaty, which was to last ten years from its 
 ratification in 1860, is one of the turning-points in European 
 commercial policy; it marked the extension of the free-trade 
 movement from England to the other states of Europe; and it 
 inaugurated a succession of similar treaties on the part of 
 France and other states on the Continent. 
 
 492. Results of the treaty of i860. — There had, of course, 
 been opposition in France to the further reduction of duties; 
 and many people prophesied that the movement to free trade 
 would entail the industrial ruin of the country. The results 
 did not justify these predictions. Commerce expanded greatly, 
 as was to be expected; it grew in the period 1859-1869 from 
 5.4 to 8 or from 3.9 to 6 milliards of francs, according as the 
 general or special trade of the country is taken as the standard 
 of measurement. This commerce, however, was serving French 
 industry and agriculture, and not destroying them. There 
 was a marked increase in the importation of the raw materials 
 of industry; the amount of wool and silk brought into the 
 country for manufacture more than doubled in ten years, and 
 in spite of the disastrous effects of the American Civil War 
 there was a considerable increase in the importation of cotton. 
 The use of coal and iron, both important indexes of industrial 
 development, extended largely; and the population engaged in 
 industry and commerce grew by nearly a million workers in 
 the period 1861-1866. The increase in the products of French 
 industry found a market both abroad and at home. The 
 exports of manufactures increased, it is true, but slowly except 
 in the case of special products; but the consumption of manu- 
 factures within the country extended greatly, as new purchasers 
 appeared for wares which formerly had been beyond their 
 means. 
 
 493. Return to protection after the war with Germany. — 
 
414 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 It has long been the misfortune of France to have her com- 
 mercial and industrial interests at the mercy of politics; and 
 at this point in her growth her progress was stayed by the 
 outbreak of the great war w^ith Germany. From the direct 
 losses of the war the country recovered with a quickness 
 surprising to those who did not realize the thrift and saving 
 power of the French people. The war led, however, to the 
 overthrow of the government of Napoleon III, and in time to 
 the overthrow also of the liberal commercial system which he 
 had established. Though the commercial treaties were allowed 
 to continue for a few years, the tendency was strongly toward 
 protection. It was a period of bad times in business, and 
 French agriculture was beginning to feel the competition of 
 countries outside of Europe; the new French republic, with all 
 its merits, lent itself too easily to the representation of class 
 and sectional interests. 
 
 494. Growth of protective duties. — In 1881, therefore, a 
 new tariff was established, which raised many duties about 
 one quarter, though it allowed many of the higher rates to be 
 abated by treaties with other states. Proposals to increase 
 duties now multiplied. Not only manufacturing industry but 
 also agriculture became clamorous for protection. The duty 
 on a quintal (about 220 pounds) of wheat, which had been 60 
 centimes since 1861, was raised to 3 francs in 1884, to 5 in 1887, 
 to 7 in 1894. While in the past the agriculturists had been 
 free traders they had become by 1890 almost a unit for pro- 
 tection, whether they raised wheat or cattle, grapes or sugar- 
 beets, hemp or flax. In 1892 an entirely new tariff was adopted, 
 considerably higher than that of 1881, affecting some impor- 
 tant raw materials, and not affording the same freedom in the 
 negotiation of commercial treaties. 
 
 495. Attitude of the French toward commerce. — A writer 
 who published a study of the French tariff system in 1892 
 thought that public opinion would force a revision of the 
 recent tariff if it checked the country's commerce. Such seems 
 to have been its result; and still there seems no likelihood of 
 
FRANCE 415 
 
 a change toward greater freedom of trade. The French show a 
 spirit in striking contrast to that of their great commercial 
 rivals; they acquiesce in England's supremacy, and submit 
 even to be passed by Germany, with little thought, apparently, 
 of fighting to keep their share in trade. France, by reason of 
 its great agricultural resources, is better fitted than most of its 
 neighbors to renounce the advantages of trade; in many 
 respects it is self-sufficient. It is weak, moreover, in the raw 
 materials which form the basis of the great manufacturing 
 industry of to-day, coal and iron; and even now it produces a 
 large share of its manufactures in small workshops. This is 
 true even of its most important manufacture, that of silk. 
 
 496. Position of France in modem commerce. — In matters 
 of taste and of artistic finish, in which personal aptitude and 
 training are the important factors, the French are unrivaled; 
 in production on a large scale, in which elaborate organization 
 and the extensive use of machinery determine success, the 
 French cannot compare with English, Germans, or Americans. 
 Thus the French, though always assured a respectable 
 position in the commerce of the world, cannot hope to share 
 the progress which other nations have secured by the export 
 of cheap manufactures in great quantities. An Englishman 
 said of the trade between his country and France in 1878, 
 " Broadly it may be said France supplies us with our luxuries, 
 and we minister to the necessities"; even at the close of the 
 century this held true, in general, of the relations between 
 France and the other great countries. France supplies objects 
 of art, luxury, and fashion, delicacies and wines, and takes 
 from others in exchange the articles of solid utility, the product 
 of mines and of power machinery. 
 
 497. Failure of the government in its attempts to stimulate 
 commerce. — Attempts of the French government to stimulate 
 commercial expansion have not met the expectations of their 
 promoters. The government has built up a colonial empire 
 about sixteen times as large as France, but most of the depen- 
 dencies are in a backward condition, and their total commerce 
 
416 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 (including that of Algiers) is less than one tenth of that of 
 France. So far France has lost money on her colonial enter- 
 prises, and there seems no likelihood, in view of the extremely 
 small emigration from the home country, that she will recover 
 it. Nor can the results of attempts to build up the merchant 
 marine be regarded as satisfactory. Measures to protect 
 French shipping, which disappeared to a large extent during 
 the period of the movement to free trade, have been resorted 
 to again since 1880, and have led to the payment of two to 
 four million dollars a year to aid the building and renewing 
 of French ships. They have done no more than keep the 
 French fleet stationary while other merchant marines were 
 rapidly advancing, and seem to have hurt rather than helped 
 the interests of French commerce. It is noteworthy that of 
 the total output of merchant ships in France in 1901, 70 per 
 cent of the tonnage was in the form of sailing vessels, a means 
 of transportation now out of date for most purposes of foreign 
 commerce. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Burdens from which French commerce and industry were freed 
 by the Revolution. [Review chap. 25, above; Rand, Ec. hist., chap. 3; 
 Adams, Growth, chap. 15.] 
 
 2. Hayti as a French colony and as an independent state. [A. K. 
 Fiske, chap. 20 ff.; Spenser St. John, Hayti, Lond., 1884, chaps. 2, 3, 10.] 
 
 3. Backward political condition of France after 1815. [Adams, 
 Growth, chap. 18; Seignobos, chap. 5.] 
 
 4. Write a report on one of the following topics in French commerce 
 about 1850: import and export trade, manufactures, customs tariff, 
 colonial system. [Homans, Cyclopedia, p. 710 ff.]. 
 
 5. France under Napoleon III. [Seignobos, chap. 6.] 
 
 6. The commercial treaty of 1860. [McCarthy, Hist., vol. 2, chap. 
 41; Morley, Cobden, chap. 32.] 
 
 7. What is the difference between "general" and "special" com- 
 merce? [Statesman's Year-Book, France, Commerce.] 
 
 8. France under the third republic. [Seignobos, chap. 7.] 
 
 9. The protectionist reaction. [Herbert A. L. Fisher, in Econ. 
 Journal, 1896, 6: 341-355.] 
 
 10. The situation of France in international commerce. [Lebon, in 
 International Monthly, 1901, 3: 252-273.] 
 
FRANCE 417 
 
 11. French colonial policy in the nineteenth century. [Guy in Inter- 
 national Monthly, 1901, 4: 511-529; Chailley-Bert in Fortnightly Review, 
 
 1903, 80: 310-323.] 
 
 12. Criticism of colonial policy. [Doumet in Fortnightly Review, 
 1898, 70: 864-871; Adye in Nineteenth Century, 1899, 45: 56-66. ] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Considering the place which France has held in the world's trade 
 during the century, the history of French commerce has received but scant 
 attention from writers in English. Students are forced to depend largely 
 upon the manuals and general works which have already been noticed. 
 Even current descriptions of French life neglect the French economic 
 organization almost entirely. The only references which it seems worth 
 while to give in this place are on commercial policy: E. Levasseur, The 
 recent economic policy of France (from 1786), Journal of Political Econ- 
 omy, 1891-2, 1 : 20-49; H. O. Meredith, Protection in France, London, King, 
 
 1904, 3s. 6d.; U. S. Monthly Summary, Feb., 1902 or March, 1904, on 
 Modern tariff systems. The U. S. Consular reports offer miscellaneoua 
 material on recent commerce. 
 
 27 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 MINOR STATES OF CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 
 
 498. States of minor commercial importance. — At the end 
 
 of the nineteenth century four great states carried on more 
 than half of the foreign commerce of the world. Three of 
 these, England (including the British Empire), Germany, and 
 France, have already formed the subject of study, and the 
 fourth, the United States, will be considered at length in a 
 later section. We must now attend to the commercial develop- 
 ment in other countries, reviewing their history more briefly 
 as accords with their minor importance. We shall take up 
 first two countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, which stand 
 not far below the leaders, and which would even rank high 
 among them but for their small size. It may not be unneces- 
 sary to remind the reader that Belgium is a creation of the 
 nineteenth century; the country had formed a province subject 
 to Spain or Austria until the period of the French Revolution, 
 when it was for a time incorporated in France, then (1815) 
 joined to the Netherlands in a single kingdom, and finally, in 
 1830, established as an independent state. 
 
 499. Commerce of the Netherlands to 1830. — Dutch com- 
 merce had long passed its best days when, toward the close of 
 the eighteenth century, it received what seemed to be its 
 death blow in the war with England, growing out of the Amer- 
 ican war of independence. Before the Netherlands had begun 
 to recover from its reverses it was engulfed in the movements 
 of the French Revolution; was conquered and heavily taxed 
 by the French; suffered under the ban of Napoleon's continental 
 system; and lost for a time its most valuable colonial possessions. 
 At the close of the wars, in 1815, it recovered its colonies, 
 
 418 
 
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 419 
 
 except Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, and parts of Guiana, 
 which remained in the possession of the English, but it could 
 not recover its former commercial position. Other peoples had 
 learned to do for themselves what the Netherlands had once 
 done for them as a merchant and carrier; and Amsterdam and 
 Ratterdam saw their commerce pass to Lqndon, Hamburg, 
 and other ports. In striking contrast with the earlier period 
 the Netherlands had in 1824-5 only 7 large ships under con- 
 struction while England had about 800. The union with the 
 Belgian provinces, lasting from 1815 to 1830, increased the area 
 and the internal trade of the country, but was a hindrance 
 rather than a help to the development of foreign commerce. 
 The Belgian industries required protection, and the tariff, 
 framed to meet both their demands and a protectionist senti- 
 ment in the Netherlands which had grown up in the period of 
 decline, hampered free commercial relations with other states. 
 500. Dutch commerce since 1830. — The Netherlands, even 
 after the separation of Belgium in 1830, clung to the protective 
 tariff, and remained outside the great current of commerce. 
 A colonial policy known as the culture-system, adopted in 
 their East Indian possessions, especially Java, returned a large 
 revenue to the government, but prevented commercial develop- 
 ment there, while the West Indian possessions suffered severely 
 from the lack of labor following the abolition of slavery. 
 Meanwhile, however, a movement for free trade had grown 
 up which resulted, after 1850, in a lowering of tariff rates 
 until they were little more than nominal in amount. The 
 growth of the European railway system gave to the Netherlands 
 a new importance as a place of import for wares destined for 
 central Europe; and the country profited largely by the growth, 
 on either side, of the two great industrial powers, England and 
 Germany. In the last half of the century the growth of the 
 Dutch commerce has been rapid and nearly constant. A change 
 by the Dutch in the method of measuring makes exact statis- 
 tical comparisons impossible, but some idea of the develop- 
 ment, as seen in the total imports, may be gained from the 
 
420 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 following figures. The average annual value of the general 
 imports, in million dollars, was as follows in five-year periods, 
 1847 to 1871: 110, 140, 170, 190, 250. Continuing them, 
 from 1872 to 1896, but measuring by weight (thousand million 
 kilograms), the figures are: 6.7, 9.0, 11.6, 14.0, 17.6. 
 
 501. Position . of the Dutch in present commerce. — The 
 Netherlands suffers from a lack of mineral resources, as the 
 country is largely "made" land, composed of sand and silt 
 which the great rivers have deposited at their entrance to the 
 sea. The Dutch, therefore, have been handicapped in their 
 attempts to share in the development of modern industry, 
 and find in agriculture rather than in manufacturing their 
 chief occupation. They have succeeded in certain special 
 manufactures (diamond-cutting, chocolate, oleomargarine), in 
 gaining a leading place, but cannot compete with other nations 
 in the staple machine industries. They produce a surplus of 
 dairy products for export, and import raw materials and 
 manufactures which cannot be produced in sufficient quantity 
 at home; but the striking feature of their trade is the fact 
 that in general the same products appear among both the 
 imports and the exports. The Dutch, favored by their national 
 training and geographical position, and diverted from other 
 means of livelihood by lack of resources, are the middlemen 
 of Europe, arranging exchanges between other countries. 
 
 502. Belgium : early industrial development. — Belgium is 
 far more richly endowed with mineral resources; in spite of its 
 small area it produces nearly as much coal as France, and 
 has also rich supplies of ore of iron, and other metals. Even 
 before the full value of these resources was realized Belgium 
 was a distinctly industrial state, and for many centuries 
 Flanders and other districts have been noted for their manu- 
 factures. Belgium did not suffer, therefore, as did the Nether- 
 lands, from the period of French occupation; it was freed by 
 the French from many trammels on industry dating from the 
 gild period, and it found in France a market for its manu- 
 factures which enabled it to endure the restrictions of the 
 
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 421 
 
 Continental System. During the period of union with the 
 Netherlands (1815-1830) Belgium industries continued to 
 develop, with the aid of Dutch capital, commerce, and colonies; 
 the districts represented by Ghent, Brussels, Charleroy, and 
 Liege became widely known for the manufacture of textiles, 
 iron wares, etc. Progress was checked for a time by the 
 breach with the Netherlands (1830), but this was just the 
 period when steam began to be applied to manufactures and 
 to railroads, and with the aid of this new force Belgium quickly 
 recovered her former position. The prosperity of Antwerp, 
 the one important port of modern Belgium, was seriously 
 threatened by the act of the Dutch in closing the Scheldt to 
 navigation ; but the Belgians were willing to pay for this means 
 of access to the sea, and finally bought outright the privilege 
 of using it. 
 
 503. Belgian commercial policy. — During the first decades 
 of Belgian independence the tariff which had been inherited 
 from the period of Dutch rule was made more strict, and 
 before the middle of the century it had been changed so as to 
 grant considerable protection to agriculture, industry, and the 
 carrying trade. Belgium, however, like the Netherlands, is 
 too small a country to be able to afford high protection. After 
 1850 a free-trade movement led to lower duties and to liberal 
 commercial treaties, the policy which has since been followed 
 in the main. Many influences were at work in this period to 
 further commerce, chief among them the technical improve- 
 ments in manufactures and transportation; so it is dangerous 
 to argue that the prosperity of Belgium in the following period 
 was due to the policy of greater freedom of trade. It is certain, 
 however, that Beligan commerce could not have attained the 
 development it did without this policy. 
 
 504. Survey of the recent development of Belgian commerce. 
 — Giving figures roughly in millions of dollars, the total com- 
 merce rose in the protectionist period, 1840 to 1850, from 80 
 to 160. In the following ten years of transition it rose to 
 360; in 1881, after twenty years of nearly free trade, it had 
 
422 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 risen to 1,000, and in 1899 it stood at 1,400. The port of 
 Antwerp owes to this great commercial expansion its present 
 position as second on the Continent only to Hamburg. The 
 figures given above include all wares passing through Belgium. 
 If we examine the statistics of the special commerce, in which 
 the Belgians are engaged not merely as middlemen but as 
 producers or consumers, we find that their strength now, as 
 shown in exports, lies in manufactures (yarns and textiles, iron, 
 glass, etc.), while they are obliged to import a large part of 
 their food supply, and of the raw materials for their industries. 
 
 505. Switzerland : obstacles to industrial development. — 
 Another country, small in area but with a commerce exceeding 
 that of many greater states, is Switzerland. With its agricul- 
 tural capabilities restricted by the area covered by mountains, 
 and with no important mineral resources, Switzerland has to 
 depend upon the character of its people as its chief industrial 
 asset. In the early part of the nineteenth century it suffered 
 not only from the restrictive tariffs of the states surrounding 
 it, but also from the fact that it had itself not become a political 
 unit, and was cut into small pieces by dues and tolls on trade. 
 The hindrances to internal trade were finally swept away in 
 1848, when Switzerland became a federal republic; and the 
 people made use of their greater freedom at home and of the 
 lowering of tariff rates abroad to extend their commerce 
 rapidly. 
 
 506. Position of the Swiss in present commerce. — Switzer- 
 land has developed almost entirely along the line of manufac- 
 tures. The agricultural population has actually decreased 
 since 1870, as it has become easier to purchase food products 
 from abroad by the export of manufactured products : silk and 
 cotton textiles, clocks and watches, etc. Swiss industries have 
 not reached the development of those in more advanced 
 countries, and much of the work is still done outside of factories, 
 and with simple home machinery. These conditions imply 
 hard work and low returns, but the Swiss must choose between 
 securing in this way some share in the world's commerce, or 
 
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 423 
 
 starving in the vain attempt to support themselves by the 
 scanty resources of their own country. 
 
 507. Austria-Hungary: survey of commercial development. 
 
 — The state of Austria-Hungary, though it is in size the 
 third in Europe, ranked only fifth in commerce in 1901, taking 
 place between the Netherlands and Belgium. Reference to an 
 earlier chapter, describing conditions before 1800, will suggest 
 that Austria-Hungary entered the nineteenth century handi- 
 capped by its economic and political conditions. It required 
 roughly a full half of the century to remove the more serious 
 obstacles to progress, and the latter half of the century has 
 not given time enough to enable the people to win a place 
 with their more advanced neighbors of the West of Europe. 
 
 508. Obstacles to the growth of commerce and industry. — 
 Of the difficulties under which commerce labored the following 
 are among the most important: (a) the character of the gov- 
 ernment, which was a personal absolutism like that in France 
 before the French Revolution, absorbed by the family interests 
 of the ruling house and by questions of foreign policy, and 
 attending but slightly to the interests of the people as a whole; 
 (5) the system of prohibitive tariffs, which was maintained 
 more strictly than in any other state of central Europe; (c) the 
 separation of different parts of Austria-Hungary by tolls and 
 tariffs; (d) the slight development of manufacturing industry, 
 due not to the lack of natural resources but to the backward- 
 ness of the people and to the persistence of restrictions dating 
 from the period of the gilds. 
 
 509. Gradual removal of these obstacles. — (a) The revolu- 
 tion of 1848 began a movement for constitutional government, 
 which led in time to the fall of absolutism and the introduction 
 of modern representative assemblies. At the same time, how- 
 ever, the spirit of nationalism was awakened among the various 
 peoples, and their conflicting claims (especially in Hungary 
 and in Bohemia) have seriously affected the working of the 
 parliamentary system, (b) The prohibitive system, which had 
 absolutely excluded the most important manufactures or had 
 
424 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 allowed them to be imported only as a special favor and by- 
 payment of high duties, was abandoned after 1848 for a more 
 moderate system of protection, and commercial treaties with 
 various states were made to facilitate the movement of wares. 
 (c) The freedom of internal trade was secured for the Austrian 
 half of the monarchy in 1826, and for the whole state (with 
 slight exceptions) in 1851. (d) The restrictions on industry 
 continued even after 1850. A man could not exercise any 
 trade requiring the use of a machine, or any but the simplest 
 household employments, without securing a public license; a 
 man might exercise only one trade, and a cabinet-maker, might 
 not upholster the furniture he made, nor might a baker make 
 confectionery. Most of these restrictions were abolished in 
 1860. 
 
 510. Growth of commerce since 1850. — Commerce and 
 industry, which had developed with exceeding slowness before 
 1850, were quick to respond to the change in conditions, aided 
 by the extension of the railroad system which marked this 
 period. In spite of heavy taxes and a depreciated paper 
 currency there was an extraordinary increase of energy and 
 growth of business. Foreign trade more than doubled in 
 twenty years, and each part of the monarchy developed along 
 the line of its strongest resources; the Austrian lands, especially 
 Bohemia, extended their mines and built up their backward 
 manufactures, while the Hungarian lands exported increasing 
 quantities of agricultural products (wheat, flour, stock, etc.). 
 A reaction toward protection, felt since the '70's, has not 
 checked the growth of commerce; a more serious danger is the 
 possibility that a tariff barrier will again be established between 
 the two parts of the monarchy as the result of the national 
 aspirations of the Hungarians. 
 
 511. Position of Austria-Hungary in present commerce. — 
 Austria-Hungary carries on by far the largest part of its com- 
 merce with its neighbor, Germany, and finds the greatest 
 hope of the future in building up the trade with the Balkan 
 states, and along the land route to Salonika and Constanti- 
 
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 42b 
 
 nople. Hampered by its position, it has not succeeded, in 
 spite of generous bounties, in developing its shipping trade to 
 important proportions. The first ships to pass through the 
 Suez canal in 1869 were three steamers of the Austrian Lloyd, 
 but in 1897 only one fortieth of the tonnage using the canal 
 was Austrian. The commerce of the Austrian port, Triest, 
 has not ceased to grow, and the Hungarian port, Fiume, has 
 developed even more rapidly, but neither has kept pace with 
 rivals like Venice, Genoa, Marseilles, and Hamburg. 
 
 512. The Scandinavian states; their position in present 
 commerce. — The Scandinavian states (Sweden, Norway, Den- 
 mark) hold a lower rank among commercial countries than 
 others which will be mentioned later, but in a geographical 
 grouping they may be properly considered here; and their 
 commerce is important, at least, in proportion to their rela- 
 tively small population. These states are characterized, in 
 general, by a lack of coal and by the slight development of 
 manufactures; and by a soil and climate which are disadvan- 
 tageous to the ordinary operations of agriculture. The diffi- 
 culties of life have forced many inhabitants to emigrate, and 
 force those who stay at home to make the most of their extrac- 
 tive industries (forestry, mining, dairying), the products of 
 which they exchange for the wares of more favored nations. 
 The time when the Baltic trade was one of the great branches 
 of world commerce is long past. The rest of Europe would 
 be but slightly affected if it were separated from the Scandi- 
 navian countries, while such a separation would entail ruin 
 on them. 
 
 613. Denmark. — The little state of Denmark, with a popu- 
 lation of but slightly over two million, has taken advantage 
 of modern commercial facilities to specialize in the dairy 
 industry, in which it has been a leader and teacher of Europe. 
 When we add to butter the pork products raised in connection 
 with the dairies, and the eggs from Danish poultry yards, we 
 have the articles which make up more than two thirds of the 
 total value of the country's exports. 
 
426 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 514. Norway; Norwegian shipping. — In Norway, also, a 
 country so barren that far less than 1 per cent of its area is 
 suited to cultivation by the plough, dairying is an important 
 industry; and the dairy and forest industries supply most of 
 the exports. The difficulties of life on land are so great that 
 the people have been forced to take to the sea; they gain one 
 tenth of the national income from the fisheries, and have, in 
 proportion to their numbers, more merchant shipping than 
 any other people. In 1900 Norway ranked third in tonnage 
 of sailing ships (after England and the United States), fourth 
 in total tonnage (after Germany), and fifth in tonnage of 
 steamers (after France). The position of Norwegian shipping 
 was even higher before the use of iron ships had become general, 
 and when Norway could utilize its forest products in ship- 
 building. Norway enjoyed the most brilliant period of its 
 shipping in the generation following 1850, when it took the 
 place of the United States as one of the great carrying nations 
 of the world. The last few years have been a period of struggle 
 and slower progress. 
 
 615.. Sweden. — Sweden is somewhat more fortunate than 
 the other Scandinavian countries in its agricultural resources, 
 and during part of the century has been able to export a surplus 
 of grain. It is now, like the others, reduced to importing the 
 cereals, and finds its chief strength in products of the forest, 
 the pasture, and the mine. From its rich iron deposits it 
 Contributes raw materials for maintaining the iron industry in 
 other countries, especially England. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS . 
 
 A profitable exercise on each of the minor countries treated in this 
 and in the following chapters is a study of the statistics of present-day- 
 commerce, and a reduction of these statistics to the form of a graphic 
 chart. [Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 1. Experience of the chief Dutch colony during the Napoleonic wars. 
 [Day, Dutch in Java, chap. 5.] 
 
 2. The culture system. [Same, chaps. 7, 8.] 
 
 3. Political and social conditions in the Netherlands. [Hough, 
 
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE 427 
 
 Dutch life, N. Y., 1901; Campen in Westminster Review, 1890, 134: 
 479-492; National Review, 1890, 15: 74&-763.] 
 
 4. Recent political history of Belgium. [Seignobos, chap. 8.] 
 
 5. Recent history of the Swiss. [Seignobos, chap. 9.] 
 
 6. Labor conditions in Switzerland. [Scaife in Forum, 1901, 31: 
 30-46.] 
 
 7. Conditions in Austria-Hungary in the period of the absolute 
 monarchy. [Seignobos, chap. 13.] 
 
 8. Political development of Austria-Hungary in the last half of the 
 century. [Same, chap. 17.] 
 
 9. Austria-Hungary's colonial experiment. (Bosnia-Herzegovina.) 
 [Monthly Review, 1902, 8: Sept., 72 ff.] 
 
 10. Recent commercial policy. [Philippovich in Economic Journal, 
 1902, 12: 177-181.] 
 
 1 1 . The conflict of nationalities. [Edinburgh Review, 1898, 188 : 1-36; 
 Quarterly Review, 1901, 194: 372-395, with map; Coubertin in Fortnightly 
 Review, 1901, 76: 605-614.] 
 
 12. Recent history of the Scandinavian states. [Seignobos, chap. 18.] 
 
 13. Danish agriculture and free trade. [Westenholz in Monthly 
 Review, 1904, 14: Feb., 69-77.] 
 
 14. Modem Iceland. [Quarterly Review, 1894, 179: 58-82; States- 
 man's Year Book.] 
 
 15. The Danish West Indies. [See Griffin's Bibliography and index 
 of periodical literature for references.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The narrative history of the minor states is well treated in Seignobos; 
 present conditions are described in volumes of the series Our European 
 Neighbors, N. Y., Putnam, $1.20. 
 
 A bibliography of the Netherlands has been published by the Uni- 
 versity of the State of N. Y., State Library Bulletin, Bibliography, no. 9. 
 For bibliography of the Dutch colonies and of the Congo, see Griffin. For 
 bibliography of the Scandinavian countries, see Providence, R. I., Public 
 Library Bulletin, Dec, 1897, reference list no. 52. 
 
 On Belgium, see Belgium, its institutions, industries, and commerce, 
 Brussels, 1904, a handbook published by the government for the Louisiana 
 Purchase Exposition. Similar handbooks have been published for the 
 Scandinavian peninsula; they include much historical material and are 
 valuable sources for our purposes. 
 
 See Norway, edited by Sten Konow and Karl Fischer, Kristiania, 1900; 
 Sweden, its people and its industry, edited by Gustav Sundbarg, Stock- 
 holm, 1904. (References to Sundbarg in the authorities at the end of 
 
428 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 this book are to the French edition, 1900). Kiaer has pubUshed a valuable 
 historical sketch of the development of Scandinavian shipping in Journal 
 of Polit. Econ., 1891-2, 1: 329-364. 
 
 On Switzerland see The Swiss Confederation, by Francis O. Adams 
 and C. D. Cunningham, London, 1889, and W. H. Dawson, Social Switzer- 
 land, London, 1897. On Austria-Hungary see S. Whitman, The realm 
 of the Habsburgs, N. Y., Lovell [1893], and the volume by F. H. E. Pahner 
 in the series of Our European Neighbors, N. Y., Putnam, $1.20. 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 STATES OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 
 
 516. Condition of Italy in the first half of the century. — 
 
 Of the countries of southern Europe none has gained so rapidly 
 as Italy in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The 
 explanation, however, must be sought largely in the fact that 
 none was sunk so low as Italy in the first part of the century. 
 Conditions of an earlier period, described in the previous 
 chapter on Italy, lasted far into recent times. Here is the 
 description given by an English author, writing in 1878: 
 "Before 1848, Italy, all except Piedmont, seemed hopelessly 
 crushed. Austria, the Pope, and the Bourbons held her in 
 their grasp. Even the comparatively native sovereigns of 
 Tuscany had turned oppressor, and all Italy groaned like a 
 man in the grasp of the torturer. Commerce languished, 
 divergent fiscal laws and arbitrary raids on private wealth 
 choked up the channels of intercourse between one part of the 
 kingdom and another; without shipping, without manufactures 
 or foreign trade of a solid kind, possessed of no political secu- 
 rity, Italy was, thirty years ago, more insignificant in the 
 eyes of neighboring nations than Greece or Spain is now.'' 
 In southern Italy. the government was incompetent to perform 
 the first of its publie duties, the protection of its citizens. It 
 could not withstand even the half-civilized corsairs of Tripoli, 
 who pillaged the Neapolitan ships, and finally, long after the 
 United States had shown the proper way to deal with such 
 pirates, bought from them a disgraceful peace. 
 
 517. Lack of political and commercial union. — The penin- 
 sula was divided among seven independent states, so stratified 
 as to cut the natural lines of trade, and to prevent effectually 
 
 429 
 
430 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the development of any national commercial life. Of these 
 states six had the protective tariffs characteristic of the pro- 
 hibitive period, and toll stations existed even inside the fron- 
 tiers. A Milan manufacturer, shipping silks to Florence (about 
 1840), had to pass eight customs stations in 150 miles; a mer- 
 chant on his way from Bologna to Lucca was stopped at seven 
 stations in the stretch of about 125 miles. Commerce would 
 have been in desperate straits except that all but two of the 
 states touched the sea, and hence could find some opening for 
 trade. It is noteworthy, however, that the leading commercial 
 city of Italy in this period was one which many people now 
 would be puzzled to place on the map, Leghorn. It owed its 
 commercial importance, not to the advantages of situation or 
 to the productive resources of surrounding territory; it stands 
 now sixth in the list of Italian ports, and has but a fraction of 
 the trade going to Naples or Genoa. It gained its prosperity 
 at this time simply by " the comparative security and freedom " 
 which foreigners found there, and which they were denied in 
 other parts of Italy. 
 
 518. Establishment of Italian unity. — The example of 
 Germany, in extricating herself from a somewhat similar situa- 
 tion by the formation of customs unions, made, naturally, an 
 impression in Italy, and led in 1847 to an attempt there to 
 form a similar union. The attempt was paralyzed by the 
 opposition of Austria, who saw in it a blow aimed at her political 
 influence in the peninsula. The Italian states, unlike the 
 German, could secure commercial union only as a result of 
 national unity, not as a means of preparation for it. National 
 unity was in preparation, nevertheless, in the brain of a great 
 statesman, Cavour, and was obtained through his far-sighted 
 plans and the cooperation of the king whom he served, Victor 
 Emanuel, ruler of Piedmont. In the few years following 1859 
 a real kingdom of Italy was established, and the country, 
 which for nearly fifteen hundred years had formed the prey 
 of rival powers, became at last a power herself, worthy to rank 
 with the other great states of Europe. The old barriers to 
 
STATES OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 431 
 
 internal trade disappeared, and the whole country accepted 
 the customs tariff of Piedmont, which was extremely liberal. 
 Rarely, if ever, in the history of commerce, have changes of 
 such sweeping importance taken place so quickly. The tariff 
 of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to choose an extreme 
 example, which levied a duty of over $2,500 on a centner of 
 silk goods, gave place to a tariff of United Italy, in which the 
 corresponding duty reached a minimum of $10. 
 
 519. Survey of Italian commerce since i860. — The effect 
 on commerce of this great political upheaval was instantaneous. 
 Contrasting the two years, 1859 and 1861, we find that in this 
 brief interval the value of imports into Italy more than doubled. 
 The foreign trade of the country, in 1863, exceeded 300 million 
 dollars in value, and increased by one half in the seventies. 
 After 1880, however, came a period of standstill and sometimes 
 of actual decline. If the reader will turn to the figures given 
 in section 319 he will observe that the value of Italian com- 
 merce had not doubled in the long interval separating 1863 
 and 1897. He will see that toward the close of the century 
 Italy had a commerce exceeding that of some of the other 
 European states in total amount, but he should note that this 
 commerce still is not commensurate with the country's large 
 population. The average share of each Italian in the annual 
 movement of commerce is much less than that falling to the 
 inhabitants of most of the other states of Europe. Among 
 the great states only Spain and Russia rank lower, in this 
 respect. 
 
 This survey suggests the topics which demand discussion 
 in the following sections. We must know the reasons for the 
 rapid development of Italian commerce till about 1880, and 
 for the check to progress after that date; we want an expla- 
 nation of the comparatively slight share which the average 
 Italian has now in the world's commerce. 
 
 620. Development of agriculture and commerce after i860. 
 — When Italy secured national unity, about 1860, the country 
 was almost purely agricultural. The ordinary trades, of course, 
 
432 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 were exercised to satisfy local needs, and the silk manufacture 
 had not altogether perished, but, to use the phrase of a modern 
 writer, though there were industries in Italj^ there was no 
 Italian industry. Restrictive taxes and tariffs had prevented 
 the development of any considerable manufacture. When, 
 therefore, comparative freedom of trade was introduced, the 
 people made full use of the opportunity to purchase the cheap 
 wares of the factory industry of other countries; they imported 
 manufactures in increasing amount, and paid for them by 
 exporting their surplus agricultural products. The railroad 
 system, which grew from 800 to 5,000 miles in the period 
 1860-1880, gave greatly improved facilities for the marketing 
 of wares, and affected distinctly the course of foreign trade; 
 the proportion of commerce carried on across the land frontier 
 rose in this period from a third to nearly a half of the total. 
 
 521. Increase of customs duties; protection; tariff war. — 
 The Italians realized at once the benefits of the movement 
 which led to national unity, but ever since they have been 
 carrying its burdens. The expense of the national movement 
 was enormous, especially in view of the poverty of the country; 
 it weighted the government with debt, and required a constant 
 increase in taxes. The treasury, reaching out in every direc- 
 tion for money, and forced to some fiscal devices which seem 
 now positively iniquitous, did not spare commerce. Duties 
 were raised from time to time, and a general revision of the 
 tariff in 1878, while it reformed some old abuses, tended still 
 to raise the general level of duties, and introduced a distinct 
 element of protection. The revised tariff, however, did not 
 go far enough to satisfy the demands either of the treasury or 
 of the protectionists, and was altered again in 1887. Com- 
 merce labored henceforth under high revenue duties, under 
 increased duties designed to protect Italian manufactures, and, 
 furthermore, under new or increased duties on agricultural 
 products. 
 
 One disastrous result of the new tariff appeared quickly in 
 the outbreak of a tariff war between Italy and France. France 
 
STATES OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 433 
 
 had been Italy's best customer, taking at one time nearly 
 half of her total exports and furnishing about a quarter of 
 her imports. Trouble between the two countries had, however, 
 been brewing for years; they were following different lines in 
 foreign politics, and the protectionists on both sides of the 
 frontier viewed with jealousy a commerce which stimulated 
 the development of international rather than national indus- 
 tries. The tariff of 1887 called forth a reply in kind from 
 France; this was met by a rejoinder from Italy; and so the 
 duties grew rapidly on either side, and had soon reduced the 
 commerce between the countries to a small part of its former 
 dimensions. The most important export industries of Italy 
 (wine, raw silk, fruits, live stock, eggs) suffered severely, and 
 many producers were absolutely ruined. 
 
 522. Italian agriculture ; poverty of the people. — The course 
 of tariff policy explains, in large part, the check which Italian 
 commerce has experienced in the last decades of the century. 
 Reasons why this commerce is so small in proportion to the 
 population will appear as we review now some features of the 
 Italian productive organization. 
 
 Few of the large states of Europe show so large a proportion 
 of the people engaged in agriculture, so small a proportion in 
 manufactures, as we find in modern Italy. Considerably more 
 than half the people live directly from the land. Not only does 
 Italy show backwardness in this respect; the character of 
 Italian agriculture is itself backward. The land is worked 
 largely " on shares," a system which does not encourage im- 
 provement or stimulate efficiency. A government commission 
 reported in 1881 that production depended almost entirely on 
 mere labor, and that capital and intelligence contributed only 
 a minimum. Antiquated implements and wasteful and careless 
 methods of treating the crop, go far to nullify the natural 
 advantages of soil and climate. When we consider that, of 
 the small surplus which the agriculturist obtains, the govern- 
 ment demands a good share for taxes, we can understand why 
 the mass of the people are wretchedly poor, and must content 
 28 
 
434 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 themselves with a bare living. It is worth noting that the 
 consumption of sugar in Italy is only about six pounds per 
 head, less, even, than in Turkey, while in most European 
 countries people consume from 20 to 50 pounds or even more. 
 Salt itself is a luxury, which is heavily taxed. The protective 
 tariff appears to extend favors to farmers as well as to manu- 
 facturers, but the people who gain by it are chiefly the great 
 landlords, while the mass of the people simply pay more for 
 bread because of it. 
 
 523. Manufactures, — As agriculture was and is the 
 strongest branch of production in Italy, it was bound to suffer 
 more than any other from the protective tariff. Italian agri- 
 culturists did not need protection for most of their products, 
 and they did need the chance to market their products in free 
 exchange for industrial wares imported from abroad. We have 
 now to see what success the Italian tariff has had in building 
 up the native industry on which the people are forced, in large 
 part, to rely. 
 
 Italian manufactures, in 1880, had scarcely advanced beyond 
 the meager beginnings which we found in 1860. Nearly all con- 
 ditions were adverse. Capital was scanty. Of important raw 
 materials the country lacked all but silk and hemp. Coal, 
 the mainstay of modern manufacturing, had to be imported 
 , at an expense which nearly doubled its price. Most serious, 
 perhaps, of all difficulties was the lack of a class of industrial 
 leaders, men of technical knowledge and business energy. We 
 may take as typical the case of a macaroni manufacturer in 
 Naples, who declined some important foreign orders, for no 
 other reason than that he had, as it was, enough business to 
 make both ends meet, and saw no reason for adding a new 
 worry to life. The single important advantage which Italian 
 manufacturers enjoyed was that of cheap labor. The govern- 
 ment was lax in its factory legislation, and allowed employers 
 to secure their labor supply from women and children, at an 
 extremely low rate. 
 
 The great development, therefore, which Italian manufac- 
 
STATES OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 435 
 
 turers have shown in the last decades of the century has been 
 due not to any natural fitness of the country, but solely to the 
 tariff, which has raised prices paid by consumers enough to 
 counterbalance natural disadvantages, and to attract men into 
 manufacturing industry. The artificial character of Italian 
 manufactures is shown strikingly by the fact that at the very 
 close of the century not one of the protected manufactures was 
 strong enough to contribute in any considerable degree to the 
 exports of the country. 
 
 624. Shipping ; colonies. — Some of the most unfortunate 
 features of Italian policy seem to be the result of national 
 vanity, of the desire on the part of Italians, now that they 
 have made for themselves a great state, to make their state 
 resemble the other great powers in all respects. This feeling 
 is certainly responsible in part for their determination to build 
 up a system of national manufactures, regardless of expense. 
 It has led them to profuse expenditures for the encouragement 
 of shipping, which have resulted, indeed, in a growth of the 
 merchant marine, but have created in it merely a costly luxury. 
 The Italian navigation companies charge high freight rates, 
 and include in their fleets many antiquated vessels. 
 
 The instinct of imitation, finally, led the Italians to follow 
 the lead of other powers in colonial expansion. They did not 
 escape the colonial fever prevalent in the eighties, and spent 
 money and lives lavishly, in the attempt to build up a dominion 
 on the African side of the Red Sea. Their attempt ended in 
 disastrous failure (Adowa, 1896), and popular opposition to 
 such enterprises grew so strong that the government did not 
 dare to carry out a later project for the establishment of an 
 Italian station on the coast of China (San Mun, 1899). 
 
 625. Recent progress of Italy. — The preceding sections 
 have been avowedly critical in tone, and are designed to make 
 clear the great gap which separates Italy from the leaders in 
 the world's industry and commerce. It is important, however, 
 that the reader should distinguish Italy, on the other side, from 
 such backward countries as Spain and Portugal. Though Italy 
 
436 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 is poor it is not so poor as they, and it offers vastly richer 
 promises for the future. In the closing years of the century 
 it has shown marked advances in many lines. Italian agri- 
 culturists have awakened to the possibilities of their profession; 
 they have shown an eagerness to improve their methods, and 
 by various forms of association and cooperation have scored 
 great advances. The exports of dairy and poultry products 
 doubled in about ten years, and have become more important 
 than the export of wine. Italian manufacturers secure now 
 from natives the technical assistance for which they formerly 
 depended entirely on foreigners. They have emancipated 
 themselves, in part, from coal, by their skilful management 
 of water power, and enjoy a high reputation for electrical 
 appliances for the transmission of power and other purposes. 
 The tariff has been made more liberal by treaties with other 
 states and by a reconciliation with France; and commerce in 
 the last few years of the century has grown to a gratifying 
 extent. In the years immediately following the introduction 
 of the high tariff of 1887 the annual commerce was less than 
 500 million dollars; 1897-1901 it was nearly 560 million, 
 excluding commerce in the precious metals. 
 
 626. Spain. — Spain, with an area much larger than that 
 of Italy, and with a population more than half as large, has a 
 commerce less than half that of the Italian. The fault lies not 
 with the country, which in mineral resources is perhaps the 
 richest in Europe, and which under the skilful agriculture of 
 the Moors was made to bloom like a garden, but with the 
 people who have neglected or misused their opportunities. 
 Spain furnishes a striking example of the evil that bad politics 
 can work in economic development. The personal absolutism 
 of the period before 1800 has been shaken off in the nineteenth 
 century, but experiments in constitutional government under 
 monarchs of various families and even under a republic, have 
 not succeeded in bettering conditions greatly. The mass of 
 the people are utterly ignorant, and niost of their leaders are 
 inefficient and corrupt. There can be no wholesome economic 
 
STATES OF SOUTflERN EUROPE 437 
 
 life under these conditions. Shrewd politicians use economic 
 enterprises merely as a means to draw money from the public 
 treasury or from the pockets of consumers, while the investor 
 or worker without political influence is deterred from enterprise 
 by the heavy taxes which are heaped upon him. 
 
 527. Spanish commerce in the first half of the century. — 
 A partial reform of the Spanish colonial system toward the 
 close of the eighteenth century led to a growth of trade with 
 the colonies, so that it formed, if the figures can be trusted, 
 a considerable part of the total Spanish commerce, which was 
 small at best. The promise of commercial development inside 
 the Spanish Empire was of short duration. While Spain was 
 still harassed by the Napoleonic wars, revolutions began among 
 the Spanish colonies on the American continent; and as soon 
 as they had achieved their independence they used it to trade 
 with states like England rather than with the country which 
 had asked so much of them and could offer them so little. 
 The commerce of Spain with other countries was hampered by 
 the Spanish commercial policy, which an Englishman of the 
 time called "one of the most pernicious and restrictive of all 
 the systems of trading exclusion." Duties were levied both 
 on imports and on exports, and included not only rates of 
 50 to 100 per cent but also many absolute prohibitions. 
 Spanish commerce would have been starved out of existence 
 if the government which set these rules had not, by its ineffi- 
 ciency and corruption, furnished the means of evading them. 
 A veritable army, including, it is said, 300,000 persons, of 
 whom one third were armed, found its chief occupation in 
 smuggling; Spanish manufacturers maintained factories only 
 to mask the sale of contraband goods, and even members of 
 the government engaged in the contraband trade. 
 
 528. Recent commerce of Spain. — The turning-point in 
 the recent history of Spanish commerce came about the middle 
 of the century, when the worst abuses of the old tariff were 
 shorn off. The reform was followed by a rapid increase in the 
 country's trade, which grew to more than fourfold in the forty 
 
438 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 years following. Especially noteworthy is the increase in this 
 period of the importation of the implements and raw materials 
 of industry, (coal, machinery, textile fibers, etc.), showing that 
 Spain was at last beginning to seek a place for herself among 
 modern commercial nations. Such indications of progress 
 must not, however, blind our eyes to the fact that it was 
 attained by a colonial and commercial policy which retained 
 many of the old restrictive features. The loss of the remaining 
 important colonies to the United States has been a severe 
 blow to Spanish industries, and they are supported now by a 
 protective tariff which bears heavily on many producers as 
 well as on all the consumers in Spain. The considerable 
 development in mining (iron, copper, quicksilver, etc.) has 
 been due to foreign energy and capital, and the native Span- 
 iards offer as exports to other countries little more than dessert 
 for their dinner tables: wine, fruit, nuts, and raisins. It is 
 noteworthy and significant that Spain has suffered seriously 
 from the competition of California in the sale of fruit in Europe; 
 this most perishable of wares, in which a nearby country 
 ought to control the market without effort, is packed and 
 transported in such a slovenly fashion by the Spaniards that 
 a people 6,000 miles distant can excel them in the quality they 
 offer to the consumer in Paris or London. 
 
 529. Portugal. — In all the respects which concern a stu- 
 dent of recent commerce Portugal is but a miniature of Spain, 
 with the faults of Spain exaggerated rather than lessened by 
 the weakness and smaller size of the country. ''It is scarcely 
 credible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that agriculture is nearly 
 in the same condition as it was some hundreds of years since"; 
 these words of an English author would apply now nearly as 
 well as when they were written in 1843. Few of the inhabi- 
 tants are engaged in occupations other than agriculture; rich 
 mines remain un worked, and manufacturing has remained 
 insignificant throughout the century. After 1850 it could still 
 be said of the Portuguese that ''their entire faith is reposed in 
 protectionism, monopolies, restrictions, and high duties." 
 
STATES OF SOUTHERN EUROPE 439 
 
 Portuguese trade, nearly ruined already, received a further 
 blow by the separation of Brazil about 1820; and though con- 
 siderable colonial possessions in Africa and the East are still 
 retained, the Portuguese have shown no capacity to base on 
 them commerce of any importance. By exports, of which 
 wine and cork are the most important, the Portuguese are 
 able to satisfy their most pressing necessities; but the back- 
 wardness of commerce can be seen when it is realized that the 
 trade of this country, approximately equal in population to 
 the Netherlands, is less than one twentieth of Dutch trade. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Social and economic conditions in Italy after 1800. [King, Hist., 
 vol. 1, chaps. 3-5.] 
 
 2. Formation, of United Italy. [Seignobos, chap. 11, middle part.] 
 
 3. Commerce of Italy about 1850. [Romans, Cyclopedia, p. 1114 fiF.] 
 
 4. Burden of debt and taxes. [King and Okey, p. 270 ff., chap. 15; 
 Villari, chap. 4; W. Calkins, Taxation and business in Italy, Forum, 1902, 
 33: 333-345.] 
 
 5. Italian agriculture. [King and Okey, chap. 8; Villari, chap. 11.] 
 
 6. Life of the agricultural classes. [Phillipps, Peasants of Romagna, 
 Fortnightly Review, 1897, 68: 407-417.] 
 
 7. Poverty of the people. [King and Okey, chap. 6; Villari, chap. 4; 
 Strutt, Monthly Review, 1901, 4: August, 62 ff.]. 
 
 8. Emigration. [King and Okey, chap. 17; Schuyler, Italian immi- 
 gration into the United States, Polit. Science Quarterly, 1889, 4: 480-495.] 
 
 9. Italian manufactures. [King and Okey, chap. 7; Villari, chap. 12.] 
 
 10. The Italian colonial venture. [Edwards in Westminster Review, 
 
 1897, 148: 477-489; KeUer in Yale Review, 1900, 9: 17S-190; cf. Griffin's 
 bibliography.] 
 
 11. Present commerce of Italy. [Statesman's Year-Book; treat 
 exports, imports, countries traded with, etc., as has been already suggested.] 
 
 12. Commerce of Italy with the United States. [Luzzatti, in North 
 Amer. Review, 1903, 177: 247-259.] 
 
 13. Recent development of agriculture. [King and Okey, chap. 9.] 
 
 14. Political conditions in Spain. [Dillon in Contemporary Review, 
 
 1898, 73: 876-907, 74: 305-334; Foreman in National Review, 1897, 29: 
 I 721-734, 30: 547-560.] 
 
 15. Commerce of Spain about 1850. [Homans, Cyclopedia, p. 
 1739 fif.] 
 
440 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 16. The present commerce of Spain. [Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 17. Resources and industries of Spain. [E. D. Jones in North Amer. 
 Review, 1898, 167: 39-47.] 
 
 18. Present commerce of Portugal. [Statesman's Year-Book; see 
 Homans, Cyclopedia, for conditions about 1850.] 
 
 19. The future of Portugal. [Crawfurd in Fortnightly Review, 
 1891, 56: 149-162.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 For the general history of Italy, see besides Seignobos, Bolton King, 
 History of Italian unity, N. Y., Scribner, 1899, 2 vols., with bibliography. 
 The book by the same author in collaboration with Thomas Okey, ** Italy 
 to-day, London (N. Y., Scribner, $3), 1901, is excellent for existing con- 
 ditions, and has a full classified bibliography. Villari, * Italian life, N. Y., 
 Putnam, 1902, $1.20, is more popular and depends in part on King and 
 Okey, but still is good. Orsi's book in Story of the Nations Series is 
 mainly political. 
 
 On Spain good reading in English is as scarce as on Italy it is plenti- 
 ful. Seignobos is dull, and Hume's histories are almost entirely political. 
 There is, however, a good book in the series of British Colonies and Foreign 
 Countries, W. Webster, * Spain, London, 1882; and Higgin, Spanish life, 
 N. Y., Putnam, 1902, $1.20, has some material of value. The U. S. 
 Monthly Summary, Commerce and Finance, published several reviews of 
 Spanish commerce at the time of the recent war (March, June, 1898, 
 April, 1899), and a considerable amount of material on various aspects of 
 Spain appeared about that time in the periodicals. 
 
 The close commercial relations between Portugal and England have 
 given rise to two excellent books on the condition of Portugal in the 
 nineteenth century, J. J. Forrester, * Portugal and its capabilities, third 
 ed., London, 1856; Oswald Crawfurd, * Portugal, old and new, London, 
 1880. 
 
CHAPTER XLIV 
 EASTERN EUROPE 
 
 530. Great size and small commerce of the Russian Empire. 
 
 — The attention and imagination of men have long been 
 impressed by the size of the Russian empire, which includes 
 an area greater than that presented by the moon at the full. 
 Combining the characteristics both of Europe and of Asia, 
 Russia is almost a world in herself, and, indeed, was called by 
 one of her rulers " a sixth part of the world," worthy to rank 
 as a continent. Yet this great state takes a place in modern 
 commerce below petty countries like the Netherlands and 
 Belgium. A country of such vast size might, of course, secure 
 by internal trade many of the advantages which smaller 
 countries must seek in international exchange. The United 
 States presents an example of a territory so large and so richly 
 endowed that it can afford, in considerable degree, to renounce 
 commerce with the rest of the world, and can still maintain 
 from its own resources a high industrial civilization. Russia 
 has not enjoyed a similar success. It has a comparatively 
 sluggish internal trade; and it lacks industrial civilization. 
 We must seek in the history of commerce an explanation of 
 these facts. 
 
 531. Historical reasons for backward development. — The 
 few paragraphs devoted to Russia in a previous chapter sug- 
 gested the main reason for the country's backwardness. During 
 many centuries, while the peoples of the West were advancing 
 in civilization, the people of Russia were facing away from 
 Europe, occupied in defending themselves against Asiatic 
 princes. Russia shared in none of the great movements of 
 early European history: feudalism, chivalry, crusades, rise 
 
 441 
 
442 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 of towns, Reformation, Renaissance. It was devoted entirely 
 to the struggle for self-preservation. When it became part of 
 the European world, therefore, about 1700, it brought with it 
 into modern times many characteristics of an unformed, half- 
 developed organization; and since that date it has been trying, 
 and it is now still trying, to catch up with the rest of Europe. 
 
 632. Russian commerce about i8oo. — The movement 
 toward progress, initiated by Peter the Great about 1700, 
 continued, with various fluctuations, during the century. In 
 so far as it found expression in commerce we can regard the 
 last fifty years before 1800 as a time of rapid advance; com- 
 merce grew to nine fold the volume which it showed in 1750. 
 So slight, however, had been the beginnings of Russian trade, 
 that it amounted in 1802 only to about fifty million dollars. 
 
 Russia was still practically in the position which it had 
 occupied in the time of the Hansa, dependent on the West 
 for all its finer manufactures, and supplying raw materials in 
 exchange. Hemp and flax, crops which rapidly exhaust the 
 soil, and for the cultivation of which the great tracts of fresh 
 land in Russia offered an advantage, were the chief exports. 
 Among others on the list were wood, grain, tallow, hides, furs, 
 feathers, etc. The Russian nobles exported a certain amount 
 of linen, which they forced their serfs to make for them that 
 they might have the means of purchasing foreign luxuries, and 
 manufactured also iron for sale abroad. The appearance 
 among the exports of this metal, which we are used to asso- 
 ciate with advanced industrial countries, is explained by the 
 fact that charcoal was still an important source of fuel for the 
 iron manufacture, and of this the boundless Russian forests 
 offered an abundant supply. 
 
 533. Means of transportation. — Almost nothing had been 
 done as yet to unite by means of transportation the vast 
 stretches of territory in Russia. Roads were practically non- 
 existent, and goods were transported by land only in winter, 
 when they could be sledged over the rough ground on the 
 snow. The water-ways, with which the country is so abundantly 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 443 
 
 provided, had been connected by a few important canals, and 
 were the chief means of transportation. Goods were brought 
 to them on sledges in winter, to await the high water of the 
 spring freshets. They were laden on flat-boats, holding some- 
 times several hundred tons, but built to draw only two or 
 three feet of water, and were floated down with the current 
 when the ice melted. The boats were rudely constructed, and 
 were broken up for timber or fire-wood at the end of the trip. 
 The inconvenience and uncertainty of such a system of trans- 
 portation are obvious, but it was, nevertheless, remarkbly 
 cheap; rates on some water routes were only one or two cents 
 per ton-mile. 
 
 534. Chief ports. — The conditions of transportation con- 
 fined almost all the foreign trade of Russia to the sea, and 
 the commerce across the western frontier was insignificant. 
 Archangel, situated on the river Dwina, a few miles from the 
 coast of the White Sea, and the leading port of Russia before 
 the time of Peter the Great, still retained a respectable share 
 of commerce, and was visited every year by ships from England 
 and the Netherlands. In relative importance, however, it had 
 declined greatly after the foundation of St. Petersburg, which 
 soon became the most important outlet for the country's 
 trade. A rival was at this time, however, growing up in the 
 South, where Russia had only recently secured the territory 
 on the shore of the Black Sea. Odessa, which was founded in 
 1793, rose rapidly in commercial importance, especially during 
 the Napoleonic wars, when the Baltic trade suffered a severe 
 check. 
 
 535. Development up to the Crimean War (1854-1856). — 
 During the first half of the nineteenth century Russian com- 
 merce grew steadily but slowly; the rate of increase was much 
 behind that of the preceding fifty years. A partial explanation 
 of this check to progress can be found in the adoption, in 1822, 
 of a prohibitive tariff; the importation of many foreign manu- 
 factures (clocks, textiles, porcelain, glassware, etc.), was abso- 
 lutely forbidden. Shortly after the middle of the century, 
 
444 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 however, came a turning-point. The Crimean War, in which 
 England and other states were engaged with Russia, is gen- 
 erally admitted to have yielded to neither of the chief com- 
 batants advantages proportional to the costs which it involved. 
 It was in one way, however, of immense benefit to Russia. 
 It awakened the country to a realization of its backward- 
 ness. It raised a demand for reform of antiquated condi- 
 tions in economic and political life, which the Czar himself 
 was the first to heed. 
 
 536. Reforms; growth of the railroad system. — The reform 
 movement bore fruit in many lines to which we can pay but 
 scant attention. It led to the emancipation of the serfs in 
 1861, by which a considerable part of the Russian people were 
 liberated from a condition resembling medieval bondage, and 
 became free land-holders. It secured at least a partial im- 
 provement in the system of government. It was, finally, to 
 name the result of the greatest influence on commerce, the 
 occasion for the introduction of the modern railroad system in 
 Russia. The government had found itself so hampered in 
 carrying on the war by the lack of transportation facilities, 
 that it now bent every energy to remedying the defects. The 
 railroads of Russia measured at the outbreak of the war only 
 about 600 miles. In the ten years following the railroad 
 system grew to over 2,000 miles, and in the next decade to 
 about 10,000. Though the first lines were built mainly to 
 serve military purposes, those constructed later were designed 
 to develop the economic resources of the country; and it is 
 hard to overestimate the importance of this development of 
 the means of modern transportation, to a country which stood 
 in such sore need of it as Russia. 
 
 537. Development of commerce. — The results of the re- 
 forms can be followed in the growth of Russian commerce 
 after the middle of the century. In the decade 1860-1870 the 
 foreign commerce of the country increased to more than double 
 what it had been, and was growing at this time faster than 
 the commerce of any other country in Europe, except that 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 445 
 
 of a neighboring state, Austria-Hungary. Some significant 
 changes, moreover, appeared in the direction and character 
 of Russian trade. The great gains of the period were made 
 by southern Russia, where the wheat fields of the rich ''black- 
 earth" district were brought within reach of a market. It 
 was about this time that wheat won the first place among the 
 exports away from flax and its products. Commerce by way 
 of the Black Sea increased very rapidly, while the Baltic did 
 not keep its proportional share in the commerce of the country, 
 and the proportion of trade finding its outlet by the Arctic 
 Ocean had sunk to insignificance. Commerce with the West 
 of Europe across the land frontier, which formerly had been 
 restricted by the difficulty of transportation, grew even faster 
 than the Black Sea commerce, and gave an entirely new 
 importance to trade relations with neighboring states. Eng- 
 land had enjoyed the largest share of Russia's commerce during 
 the first part of the century, but could not hold her own hence- 
 forth in competition with Germany. This last-named country, 
 then in course of rapid industrial development, was enabled 
 by the railroads to win her way rapidly in Russian commerce, 
 and soon was the largest sharer in it. 
 
 538. Character of industries and commerce. — Russia, like 
 many other of the European states, enjoyed the greatest 
 freedom of trade in the period following closely after the 
 middle of the century. The customs duties levied in Russia 
 at this time would have been considered high in western 
 Europe, but they were much lower than the rates ruling in 
 the first half of the century, and much lower than the rates 
 in force at the century's close. 
 
 Russia at this time was still almost exclusively agricultural. 
 The serfs had learned to supply their simple needs for clothing 
 and implements by domestic industries, but nothing like the 
 western factory organization, with its extensive use of power 
 machinery, had as yet appeared. Attempts to stimulate such 
 an organization, by privileges and protection, had resulted in 
 failure. The Russians are not a people with a gift for mech- 
 
446 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 anism. It has been said of them that their only invention is 
 the samovar, their apparatus for making tea. The world 
 exposition of 1867 displayed samples of Russian industry, but 
 most of these were the products of village craftsmen, and the 
 few samples of modern manufacture came from factories 
 owned for the most part by Germans. The exports of the 
 country were still almost entirely raw products, and the manu- 
 factured wares which the country contributed to the commerce 
 of the world were of the most simple description: yarn of 
 flax and hemp, cordage, string, and sacking. 
 
 639. Recent history of the tariff. — In spite of these con- 
 ditions the government has pursued since about 1870 a policy 
 of protection, which has grown constantly more strict with 
 the passage of time, and which furnishes at the end of the 
 century the most extreme example of protection to be found 
 among civilized states. Comparing the tariff of 1868, which 
 was comparatively liberal, with the tariff of 1891, we find that 
 duties on some important manufactures have risen in the 
 following measure: on cotton goods and glassware, to double; 
 on rails and locomotives to quadruple or more. Even more 
 striking and more serious is the increase on partly manufac- 
 tured wares. Duties have risen, on leather and yarns to two- 
 fold or more; on petroleum and wrought iron to threefold; 
 on sulphuric acid to four or seven fold; on cast iron to ten- 
 fold. Another tariff was in preparation at the beginning of 
 the twentieth century, and there were indications that it was 
 to be even more restrictive in character. 
 
 540. Development and cost of manufactures. — The pro- 
 tectionist policy in Russia has gained its object, an increase 
 in the manufacturing industry of the country. The product 
 of home manufactures has risen greatly in value, and the 
 importation of foreign manufactures has declined in proportion. 
 This object, however, has been attained at a great cost. Russia 
 is even less suited to the modern system of manufactures than 
 Italy or other states which we have considered. It lacks 
 capital, technical knowledge, leaders, laborers of steadiness and 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 447 
 
 intelligence — practically everything except raw materials, 
 which are present in abundance. Manufactures, therefore, are 
 conducted at an expense far above that common in other 
 countries, and can be maintained only by forcing the people 
 to pay far higher prices for their wares. A person cannot get 
 so much as a sewing needle without contributing an extra 
 sum to the support of the home manufactures. The policy is 
 the more questionable, as the profits of these manufactures go 
 in large part to foreign stock holders, who have utilized an 
 opportunity for which the native Russians were still unprepared. 
 Even from the political standpoint the policy of protection in 
 Russia seems to be attended with danger; recent events indicate 
 that the factory laborers will be the first to turn against the 
 autocracy which has brought them into being. 
 
 541. Effect of the tariff on agriculture. — The most serious 
 aspect, however, of the Russian tariff is its effect upon agri- 
 culture. The great plains of the country are peculiarly adapted 
 to the use of modern cultivating and harvesting machinery, 
 such as has contributed so much to the progress of agricul- 
 ture in America. The tariff has made such machinery so 
 costly, whether it be imported or manufactured in Russia, 
 that it has been introduced to only a slight extent. A Russian 
 has estimated that the farmers of the United States find it 
 profitable to spend nearly twenty times as much for agricultural 
 implements and machinery as the Russians. The peasants 
 cannot afford even plows, harrows, or scythes of a modern 
 type, and still use antiquated makeshifts. The mass of the 
 people, at best, are ignorant and bound by custom, showing 
 still the bad effects of the servile condition from which they 
 have so recently emerged; and need every encouragement to 
 be induced to advance to better methods of cultivation. Even 
 artificial fertilizers, however (superphosphates, etc.), have been 
 burdened with a duty, because there seemed a chance to 
 manufacture them in the country; the result, naturally, was 
 an increase in price, and a restriction in the use of this important 
 aid to production. 
 
448 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 542. Effect on railroads. — We must note further the effect 
 of the tariff on the railroad system. Russia has never gone 
 through the period of transportation by highroads. It passed 
 from conditions described above as existing during the first 
 part of the century, to the use of the railroad, without the 
 transition such as was marked by the use of turnpikes in 
 England. Even now the highroads of the country are of the 
 crudest character, and internal trade depends mainly upon 
 the waterways and railroads, contributing nearly the same 
 tonnage to each. The railroads, therefore, have peculiarly 
 important functions to perform in Russia. They serve agri- 
 culture, moreover, to an unusual degree; the cereals supplied 
 in 1897 more tonnage than any other ware carried on Russian 
 railroads. Yet if we measure the development of railroads by 
 comparing their length with the area or population of the coun- 
 try, we find that even at the close of the century the Russians 
 had made but a beginning, and took the lowest rank among 
 all important peoples. Taking merely Russia in Europe, and 
 contrasting it with the United States, a country which also 
 has a vast area and great vacant spaces, the Russian railway 
 system has not reached one tenth the development of the 
 American in comparison with population, not one fourth in 
 comparison with area. An important reason for this back- 
 wardness is the increased expense of the construction, equip- 
 ment, and operation of railroads due to the high tariff on 
 railroad supplies. Iron may be said, roughly, to cost double 
 or more of what it costs in other countries. The government 
 has not always been blind to these facts, and has made con- 
 cessions from time to time, but the general tendency of its 
 policy has been made only more glaring by these occasional 
 exceptions. 
 
 643. Commercial reasons for Russia's eastern movement. — 
 Preceding sections have sketched some of the historical in- 
 fluences which have prevented Russia from taking a part in 
 world-commerce commensurate with the space she covers on 
 the map. This great state, which in the sixties took only 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 
 
 449 
 
 29 
 
450 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 seventh place among countries in commerce, passed Belgium 
 and the Netherlands in the early part of the seventies and 
 secured fifth place, only to be passed again by those little 
 states and also by Austria-Hungary, and to sink to eighth 
 place at the close of the century. 
 
 This decline in commercial importance was due largely to 
 the conscious and voluntary action of the government, which 
 has restricted commerce between its people and the people of 
 the West. No government, however, regards all commerce as 
 injurious, and the Russian government has endeavored to 
 atone for losses in the West by expansion in the East. In 
 that direction Russia has met people who were her industrial 
 inferiors. By trade with them she has hoped to secure imports 
 which would not compete with her own products, and has 
 sought to win a market for her newly founded factories. The 
 manufactured products which were too high in price to compete 
 in European markets could be sold in the East so long as the 
 cheaper wares of western Europe did not reach the field. As 
 commerce extended, however, in the last decades of the cen- 
 tury, Russia saw that her eastern markets were threatened 
 unless she could apply to them the same policy of protection 
 which she had established in the West; and the government 
 was forced into the policy of military and political expansion, 
 designed to close the doors of eastern markets to other powers, 
 which received its first, and perhaps its final check, in the war 
 with Japan. 
 
 544. Course of the Asiatic trade. — In no period of the 
 nineteenth century has Russian commerce across her Asiatic 
 frontier formed any important fraction of her total foreign 
 trade. At the beginning and end of the century it was about 
 one tenth of the total; in the intervening time it was rather 
 less. The difficulty of transportation over the great stretches 
 of almost trackless territory confined the trade with the Far 
 East to objects comprising great value in small bulk (tea, 
 cloth, etc.), and directed Russian commerce rather to the 
 Asiatic countries on her southeastern frontier (Persia, etc.). 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 451 
 
 In the second half of the century, for reasons noted above, 
 the government showed an increased interest in this branch of 
 trade, and lent liberal aid in furthering Russian interests in 
 the East. Commercial returns were not immediate; the whole 
 movement was a speculation; and up to the present the specu- 
 lation has turned out badly. The great Siberian railroad, 
 constructed (1891) at enormous expense, was a military and 
 not a commercial undertaking; it has developed as yet no 
 important traffic, and gives no promise of paying its way for 
 years to come. So much of the Far East as is accessible by 
 sea seems to have been lost to Russian trade. Some border 
 countries, like Persia, hold out more promise; how much may 
 be realized only the future can show. 
 
 545. States of the Balkan Peninsula. — If the reader will 
 examine a map of Europe about 1800 he will find that at that 
 date the state of Turkey occupied the whole of the Balkan 
 Peninsula, and included considerable territories even to the 
 north of the Danube. The nineteenth century has witnessed 
 the liberation of most of this land from Turkish rule; and some 
 half dozen independent states have emerged and taken their 
 place in the European system. These states, however, have 
 neither in their political nor in their economic organization 
 reached maturity. Like the Russians, the peoples of south- 
 eastern Europe belonged for centuries to Asia rather than to 
 Europe, and the period of Turkish misrule, lasting down into 
 very recent times, has effectually checked their development. 
 Their states are still in the making, constantly disturbed by 
 racial, religious, and dynastic quarrels. Their economic organ- 
 ization is still, in large part, medieval. Roads are scarce, and 
 good roads are almost unknown. The implements and methods 
 of agriculture are of the most primitive description. Some 
 cultivators still use for a plow a crooked piece of wood with 
 a single handle, and thresh their grain on the open ground by 
 driving horses over it. Manufactures are still in the stage of 
 the handicafts, and are, in some cases, exercised by gilds like 
 those of the Middle Ages. 
 
452 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 646. Commerce of the Balkan States. — Conditions are 
 rapidly changing, now that railroads and steamers have reached 
 the peoples of the Balkans, and have brought them in touch 
 with the advanced civilization of the West. In the next few 
 generations there will, undoubtedly, be a very rapid develop- 
 ment of commerce in these regions; and some of the European 
 states, Austria-Hungary above all, feel a deep interest in their 
 future. The commerce of the Balkans, however, is as yet 
 important rather by its promise than by its performance. The 
 total commerce between the contiguous states Servia and 
 Bulgaria amounted in 1882 to less than a million dollars. 
 The foreign commerce of the little kingdom of Greece depends 
 almost entirely on one product, the so-called Zante currant, 
 a seedless raisin which got the name of currant from Corinth, 
 whence it was carried to the island of Zante. The pig takes 
 in Servia a position almost equal in importance to that of the 
 currant in Greece; great herds of swine are kept in the oak 
 forests, and contribute largely to the chief export, that of 
 animal products. On the plains of Roumania wheat is grown 
 for export by a wretched population of tenants and laborers, 
 who were still serfs forty years ago. The governments of some 
 of the states have endeavored by protective tariffs and various 
 privileges to stimulate the growth of a mining and manufac- 
 turing industry; but the countries of the Balkan Peninsula 
 will find in agriculture their chief resource for a long time to 
 come, and will develop their commerce most rapidly by ex- 
 changing their surplus of raw products for the manufactures 
 of central and western Europe. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Character of internal trade in Russia. [Wallace, chap. 12; Palmer- 
 chaps. 10-12; Schierbrand, chap. 9.] 
 
 2. The period of Mongol rule and its effects. [Wallace, chap. 14; 
 Rambaud, History of Russia, N. Y., Burt, $2, vol. 1, chap. 10; Thompson, 
 chap. 2; Noble, chap. 3.] 
 
 3. Condition of people and production in the time of serfdom. [Wal- 
 lace, chap. 28; Palmer, chap. 5.] 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 453 
 
 4. Traveling by roads and rivers in modem Russia. [Wallace, 
 chap. 1.] 
 
 5. The Crimean War. [Seignobos, chap. 27, first part.] 
 
 6. The period of reforms. [Wallace, chap. 27.] 
 
 7. Faults of the Russian administration. [Wallace, chap. 24; Schier- 
 brand, chap. 11; Thompson.] 
 
 8. Emancipation of the serfs. [Wallace, chap. 29; Thompson, chap. 
 4; Noble, chap. 7.] 
 
 9. What are now the chief exports and imports of Russia; with what 
 countries is the most important commerce of Russia conducted? [States- 
 man's Year-Book.] 
 
 10. Character and significance of the foreign trade of modem Russia. 
 [Hourwich in Journal of Polit. Econ., 1892-3, 2: 284-290.] 
 
 11. Domestic manufactuers. [Palmer, chap. 20.] 
 
 12. Recent fiscal policy and protection. [Wallace, chap. 36; Schier- 
 brand, chap. 3.] 
 
 13. Manufactures in modem Russia. [Palmer, chap. 19; Schier- 
 brand, chap. 4; Oserofif, The industrial development of Russia, Forum, 
 
 1899, 27: 129-144.] 
 
 14. Condition of the agricultural population after emancipation. 
 [Wallace, chap. 31; Palmer, chap. 8; Schierbrand, chaps. 5, 6; Thompson, 
 chap. 4; Noble, chap. 7.] 
 
 15. Political, social, and economic life of the mral population. [Palmer, 
 chap. 4; Wallace, chaps. 6-9.] 
 
 16. Famines in modem Russia. [Articles by various authors in 
 Fortnightly Review, 1891, 56: 636-652; Forum, 1892, 13: 575-582: Nine- 
 teenth Century, 1892, 31: 1-6; Century, 1893, 46: 560 ff., etc.] 
 
 17. Faults of the modem system of agriculture. [Hourwich in Yale 
 Review, 1892-3, 1: 411-433; in greater detail, in Columbia Studies, vol. 2, 
 N. Y., 1892.] 
 
 18. Russian trade in China. [Calderon in Contemporary Review, 
 
 1900, 78: 389-396.] 
 
 19. Russia's hold on Persia. [Fomm, 1900, 29: 147-153.] 
 
 20. Russian railway policy in Asia. [Long in Fortnightly Review, 
 1899, 72: 914-925, with map.] 
 
 21. Territorial expansion in the East. [Wallace, chap. 38; Noble, 
 chap. 10; Schierbrand, chap. 1.] 
 
 22. The Siberian railroad. [See A. L. A. Catalogue, or use one of the 
 following periodical articles: Norman in Scribner's, 1900, 28: 515-541; 
 Davidson in Century, 1904, 67: 940 ff.; Kinloch in Monthly Review, 1901, 
 2: 60-71, with map, and with special reference to trade possibilities; Mik- 
 hailofi^, in North Amer. Rev., 1900, 170: 593-608; Colquhoun in Monthly 
 Review, 1900, 1: Nov., 40-55, with two maps.] 
 
454 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 23. Choose one of the more important states (Turkey, Roumania, 
 Bulgaria, Servia, Greece) and 
 
 (a) Trace its poUtical history during the century. [Seignobos, chaps. 
 20, 21.] 
 
 (6) Study its present commerce. [Statesman's Year-Book.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Though no history of Russian commerce has appeared in EngHsh, 
 there are many good books on the history and conditions of the Russian 
 Empire; and a considerable number have been published within a few 
 years. For bibliography see the A. L. A. Catalogue and recent issues of 
 the American Historical Review; a more complete bibliography, with 
 chronological classification, will be found in Skrine, pp. 347-358. Com- 
 pare, also, A. L. Morse, Reading list on Russia, Univ. of State of N. Y., 
 State Library Bulletin, Jan., 1899, Bibliography, nos. 15-17. References 
 to articles on Russian commerce in the first half of the century, in Eng- 
 lish and American periodicals, will be found in Homans, Cyclopedia, p. 
 1659. 
 
 The history of Russia in the nineteenth century is treated by 
 Seignobos, adequately for most purposes; more fully by Skrine, Expan- 
 sion of Russia, London, 1900 (N. Y., Macmillan, $1.50), in the Cambridge 
 Historical Series. 
 
 The most useful books for our purposes are the descriptive works, 
 most of which contain considerable historical material. First of these 
 should be mentioned D. M. Wallace, ** Russia, N. Y., Holt, 1877, 1905, 
 $5.; references in the topics are to the revised edition, 1905. Anatole 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, ** The empire of the tsars, N. Y., Putnam, 1893, $3 per 
 volume, has the rank of a classic, but a large part of its three volumes 
 treat topics removed from our direct interest. Among the smaller books 
 the most useful are the following: Francis H. E. Palmer, * Russian life, 
 N. Y., Putnam, 1901, $1.20; W. von Schierbrand, * Russia, N. Y., Putnam, 
 1904, $1.60; Edmund Noble, Russia, Boston, Houghton, 1900, $1.50; 
 H. M. Thompson, Russian politics, N. Y., Holt, 1896. 
 
 A work deserving special mention is ** Industries of Russia, published 
 for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago, and edited in the Eng- 
 lish translation by John M. Crawford, St. Petersburg, 1893, 5 vols, with 
 maps and charts. Volumes 1 and 2, paged continuously, cover Manu- 
 factures (with historical surveys) and Trade (brief on foreign commerce); 
 volume 3 covers Agriculture and Forestry; 4, Mining; 5, Siberia and the 
 Trans-Siberian Railroad. See the authorities in this book for the later 
 official publication, edited by Kovalevsky and pubHshed in French. I 
 cannot cover here the mass of literature on Russia's eastern policy, and 
 
EASTERN EUROPE 455 
 
 refer for that to the bibliographical aids mentioned above. The U. S. 
 Monthly Summary, Commerce and Finance, April, 1899, contained a 
 compilation of various material on the Russian Empire and the Trans- 
 Siberian railroad, with a map; another monograph, on European Russia, 
 appeared in this series in 1904. 
 
 On Finland, a distinct part of Russia for the treatment of which the 
 text offers no space, see N. C. Frederiksen, ** Finland, London, 1902, 
 with bibliography; this is an excellent book, especially full on economic 
 matters. 
 
 The Balkan States have attracted more attention from writers than 
 accords with their present commercial importance; for a general survey 
 see Laveleye, * The Balkan Peninsula, N. Y., Putnam, 1887. 
 
 TOPICS FOR REVIEW 
 
 Among topics suitable for general review of the recent period, (1800- 
 1900), the following may be suggested: (a) shipping; (b) transportation 
 by canals; (c) transportation by railroads; (d) production and exchange 
 of raw textiles; (e) finished textiles; (/) coal; (g) iron and steel; (h) intro- 
 duction of steam and power machinery in manufactures; {i) commercial 
 policy. 
 
PART V.-THE UNITED STATES 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 
 
 547. Comparison of conditions in 1789 and in 1900. — The 
 
 United States is to-day recognized as one of the greatest 
 countries of the world in area, in population, in wealth, in 
 efficiency of the organization of production and business, and 
 in the volume of internal trade and foreign commerce. Little 
 more than a century ago, when it began its career as an indepen- 
 dent state, it was an aspirant struggling merely for a respectable 
 position among the minor powers. Its population, which in 
 1900 was over seventy-five million, was in 1790 less than four 
 million, placing it in this respect far below the great states of 
 Europe, and not far above such little states as the Netherlands, 
 Portugal, or Sweden. The whole settled area, comprising a 
 strip along the Atlantic coast, and the mere beginnings of 
 settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains,, was less than 
 the area of the present state of Texas. The people were 
 poor, and backward in industrial development. The amount 
 of internal trade was small, even in proportion to the scanty 
 population. The people were forced into foreign commerce 
 by the necessities of their condition. They were as yet unable 
 to supply the needs of civilization by wares of their own pro- 
 duction. They had as yet developed no resources which 
 assured their economic position in commerce with European 
 powers, and in their political and military position they were 
 so weak that they must beg as favors rather than demand as 
 rights the opening of markets which were essential to their 
 commercial growth. 
 
 The sharp contrast between then and now indicates clearly 
 the importance of the subject which will be treated in the 
 
 456 
 
^ORTH AMERICA- 
 in 1782 
 
 SCALE or MILES 
 
 . L. POATCS EN8R>e 
 
 120 Longitude West 100 
 
458 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 remaining chapters of the book, the history of the commerce of 
 the United States. The student is asked to give his attention 
 first to a detailed study of conditions existing about the year 
 1789. A survey of conditions at that date will furnish a 
 summary of the development of the colonial period, and a 
 basis for appreciating the national progress of more recent 
 times. 
 
 648. Chief exports in 1790. — Following the plan pursued 
 in earlier chapters we shall attend first to the exports of the 
 country, composed of those wares which could be produced 
 to such advantage that the people could sell a surplus of 
 them abroad, and so secure the imports of which they stood 
 in need. The following table gives the chief items for the 
 first year of our national existence: 
 
 Exports, 1790, in Millions of Dollars 
 
 Northern products. — Flour 4.5 
 
 Wheat 1.3 
 
 Lumber 1.2 
 
 Com 1.0 
 
 Fish 9 
 
 Potash 8 
 
 Southern products. — Tobacco 4.3 
 
 Rice 1.7 
 
 Indigo 5 
 
 Total (including decimals omitted) 16.6 
 
 Total exports, including items omitted 20 . 2 
 
 One characteristic of this table is noteworthy because it 
 has marked the exports of the country from this early time to 
 the present. The exports of the United States have always 
 consisted, not of a great many articles sold in small quantities, 
 but of a few great staples sold in large quantities. Nine items, 
 it will be observed, comprised over three fourths of the total 
 value, and the two items, breadstuff s and tobacco, made up 
 over half. 
 
 649. Predominance of agriculture; experiments with crops. 
 — The table shows clearly that the strength of the United 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 459 
 
 States at this time lay in what the economists call extractive 
 industries, devoted to the production of raw materials. Some 
 of the wares, it is true, had undergone the first stages of manu- 
 facture (flour, lumber, potash, indigo), but their chief value 
 consisted still in the original material. In contrast with present 
 conditions it was estimated at this time that nine tenths of 
 the people were engaged in agricultural pursuits, and that 
 even in New England, where industrial pursuits were most 
 diversified, only one eighth were employed in manufactures, 
 trade, or other occupations beside agriculture. Of twenty-one 
 presidents of the United States (to 1880) fifteen were farmers 
 or the sons of farmers. 
 
 The agricultural products of the table above represent 
 the results of nearly two centuries of experiment in the search 
 for profitable crops. It is not easy to determine what cultures 
 will pay under the conditions of a new country. Early settlers 
 had extravagant hopes of supplying the European market with 
 silk, wine, olive oil, drugs, dyes, etc., and learned only by 
 bitter experience that the conditions of nature and man des- 
 tined America to a commercial career different from that of 
 southern Europe or Asia. Most of the important crops and 
 grasses were introduced to this country from other continents, 
 Indian corn being, of course, the notable exception; and so 
 thoroughly had the process of experiment been carried out 
 that in the hundred years following the Revolution only one 
 species of cultivated plant (sorghum) was introduced, of suffi- 
 cient importance to be enumerated in the census. 
 
 550. Breadstuffs. — The crop of greatest importance to the 
 people of the American colonies was, without question, maize 
 or Indian corn. This crop, of native origin, flourished in all 
 parts of the colonies, and yielded, under the conditions of a 
 primitive agriculture, far richer returns than could be secured 
 from any of the European grains. To the domestic food supply 
 it was indispensable. For export purposes, however, it was 
 less desirable, and though moderate quantities were shipped 
 abroad every year, the demand of foreign markets, as appears 
 
460 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 in the table, was chiefly for wheat and wheat flour. Wheat 
 was at this time a costly luxury in New England, but it could 
 be grown to advantage in the middle colonies and in Virginia; 
 and in the particular period which we are studying it assumed 
 a leading position among the exports. European countries 
 had formerly been unwilling to receive a product which com- 
 peted with their own agriculture, but the failure of crops in 
 Europe, the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789), and 
 the long wars following, caused a great increase in the demand 
 for our food products, and gave rich returns to the wheat 
 farmers who had been suffering from the lack of a market. 
 
 551. Other products of northern agriculture. — Aside from 
 the cereals the agricultural exports of the middle and northern 
 colonies were unimportant. Many, attempts had been made 
 to grow flax and hemp, to sell in competition with the produce 
 of Russia and other Baltic countries. The seed of the flax 
 was exported, but the preparation of the fiber was too trouble- 
 some to pay the producer, and though coarse fabrics for home 
 wear were made of it and it was used for sewing shoes until 
 the invention of the wooden shoe peg, the export of flax and 
 hemp fiber remained insignificant. 
 
 The second place among exports of northern agriculture, 
 after breadstuffs, was taken by stock and meat products. 
 The abundance of pasture land encouraged farmers to raise a 
 surplus of live stock for sale, though as yet they paid but 
 little attention to breeding or to the proper care and fattening 
 of the animals. Horses were shipped to Canada and to the 
 West Indies, while salt beef and salt pork had a ready sale 
 for provisioning ships, and for export to the West Indies. 
 The export of live animals and provisions amounted, however, 
 to less than one million dollars. 
 
 552. Southern staples ; tobacco. — Many of the export 
 products above mentioned could be raised in the southern 
 colonies, and all of them were, in fact, produced there to some 
 extent. The people of the South, however, were fortunate in 
 finding conditions suited to the production of some special 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 461 
 
 crops, which, unlike those of the North, could not be produced 
 to advantage in Europe, and which therefore were more readily- 
 taken in trade. The Southerners followed their interests, 
 therefore, by raising of foodstuffs only what they absolutely 
 needed, and by applying themselves to their special staples. 
 Of these tobacco was by far the most important throughout 
 the colonial period. It was asserted at one time that a man 
 could provide grain for five men and clothes for two, by the 
 sale of the tobacco which he could grow unassisted. Until the 
 rise of the cotton culture tobacco was king among the southern 
 staples, and had no rival export at the North of equal impor- 
 tance; through the eighteenth century it formed about half 
 of the total exports of the colonies to England, and only just 
 before the close of the century did it yield the leading place 
 to wheat. Disadvantages of a one-crop system, entailing sharp 
 fluctuations in price and periods of dearth, the rapid exhaustion 
 of the soil under tobacco, and the encouragement of negro 
 slavery, — all these evils could not turn the planters of Maryland 
 and Virginia from a crop which, on the whole, yielded rich 
 returns. 
 
 553. Rice and indigo. — In Carolina rice took the position 
 held by tobacco in other southern colonies. Its cultivation 
 became of practical importance only toward 1700, starting, it 
 is said, from the gift of a small parcel of rough rice by the 
 captain of a ship bound from Madagascar to Liverpool, who 
 was forced to put into Charleston for repairs. The grain found 
 a ready market in southern Europe and in the West Indies, 
 and became soon an important article of export, though the 
 modern method of water culture was not introduced until 
 nearly 1800. 
 
 The only other item of southern produce deserving special 
 mention in this place is indigo. This plant, the reader will 
 remember, was the source of a blue dye which at the time 
 was highly prized and which, indeed, has only recently been 
 displaced by anilin colors. Attempts had been made in the 
 early colonial period to raise indigo, but no success attended 
 
462 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 them until about 1750. After that date the culture flourished 
 in South Carolina and Georgia; aided by a bounty from the 
 British government the planters exported large quantities and 
 secured handsome returns. The preparation of indigo was, 
 however, an unwholesome occupation, as the plant, after being 
 soaked in water, was left to rot, giving out an offensive odor 
 and drawing innumerable flies. It was an indication of prog- 
 ress, therefore, that indigo culture declined rapidly after 1790; 
 planters gladly took up the cotton culture, and the United 
 States soon secured by importation from abroad the ware of 
 which it had formerly produced a surplus. 
 
 554. Methods of agriculture. — Though agriculture as a 
 source of wealth overshadowed all other industries in the 
 colonies, it was conducted with methods which we should now 
 consider extremely inefficient and wasteful. Washington wrote 
 to an agricultural specialist in England: ''An English farmer 
 must have a very indifferent opinion of our American soil 
 when he hears that an acre of it produces no more than from 
 8 to 10 bushels of wheat; but he must not forget that in all 
 countries where land is cheap and labor is dear the people 
 prefer cultivating much to cultivating well." 
 
 The plow, the most important implement of agriculture, 
 was still at the time of the Revolution substantially unchanged 
 from the models of ancient times. The mould-board, of wood 
 as the name implies, was sometimes plated with sheet iron or 
 with strips made out of old horseshoes. President Jefferson 
 improved the shape of the mould-board, and about the end of 
 the century the cast-iron plow began to come into common 
 use. The sickle gave place to the scythe and cradle, but 
 threshing was still done with a flail or by driving horses over 
 the grain. There was a marked increase in the interest in 
 agricultural science and methods about the time when the 
 national government began, agricultural societies were founded 
 in many states, and progress thenceforth was more rapid. 
 
 555. Forest products ; potash. — If the reader, after this 
 review of the agricultural exports of the country at the begin- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 463 
 
 ning of its national existence, will refer again to the table 
 above, he will find that export products of considerable im- 
 portance were derived also from the fisheries and the forests. 
 
 The eastern slope of the country was so heavily wooded 
 that trees were regarded rather as a hindrance than a help by 
 the colonists. It was good philosophy, however, to make the 
 best of them; and the British government, during the colonial 
 period, encouraged the export of forest products, to avoid 
 depending on the Baltic countries for the supply of wood and 
 naval stores. The most spectacular export of this description 
 was that of the great masts and spars, which formerly had 
 been reserved for the government by the mark of the broad 
 arrow, and which were hauled out of the woods in winter by 
 fifty yoke or more of oxen. Most of the wood, however, left 
 the country in smaller form: staves and heading, which were 
 sent to the West Indies and there set up into casks and hogs- 
 heads for the carriage of sugar products; boards, shingles, etc. 
 
 When wood ashes are leached, and the water evaporated, 
 the product is potash; if this be refined by heating it is termed 
 pearlash. It is an impure carbonate of potassium, and at this 
 early stage of chemical industry it had an immense importance 
 in the arts, being used in bleaching, the manufacture of glass, 
 soap, etc. Besides enjoying a ready sale potash had another 
 peculiar advantage in this period; it was, beside the naval 
 stores (pitch, tar, turpentine, rosin), the only wood product 
 which could be readily transported on land. It was, therefore, 
 a great resource when land was cleared; and practically every 
 new settlement, in the northern colonies at least, had its potash 
 works, in which useless wood was converted into a valuable 
 export product. 
 
 556. Fisheries. — ''The fisheries first and mainly placed 
 New England on its legs." The people of the northern shore 
 were driven to the sea by the difficulties of life on land; and 
 used the proceeds of the fishing industry as the means of 
 purchasing their imports from abroad, and part even of their 
 food supply from other colonies. They had advantages over 
 
464 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 European competitors in their nearness to the great fishing 
 grounds and in their skill in building and navigating boats; 
 and though the proportion of the total population engaged in 
 fisheries was never large (about one thousandth at this titne), 
 the product was sufficiently important to take a respectable 
 rank among the exports of the country. Every year more than 
 five hundred boats left the towns of the Massachusetts coast, 
 especially Gloucester and Marblehead, for the banks of New- 
 foundland, while Nantucket and New Bedford became the 
 source of whaling voyages that reached from the Arctic to the 
 Antarctic oceans. 
 
 In comparison with the fisheries the fur trade had become 
 of little importance; the European demand for furs was met at 
 this time by territory lying to the north of the limits of the 
 United States. 
 
 557. Chief imports, 1791. — The method, or rather the lack 
 of method, followed by the government in keeping its commer- 
 cial statistics in early days, renders it impossible, unfortunately, 
 to present here a table of imports in 1790 comparable in accu- 
 racy and in detail to the table of exports given above. We 
 must content ourselves with the following estimates for the 
 year 1791. 
 
 Imports, 1791, in Millions of Dollars 
 
 Articles paying duties ad valorem 17.0 
 
 Wines, spirits, malt liquors 2.6 
 
 Colonial wares. — Sugar 1.6 
 
 Molasses 1.4 
 
 Coffee 5 
 
 Tea 3 
 
 Total, Colonial, including minor 4.0 
 
 Total, including minor items omitted 25 . 
 
 668. Classes of wares imported ; manufactures. — The table 
 shows, on its face, only one thing with clearness, that the 
 people used already a considerable part of their surplus to 
 purchase articles of food, of the nature rather of luxuries than 
 of necessaries, which could not be produced to advantage at 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 465 
 
 home. This feature has ever since characterized the import 
 trade of the country. In the present commerce of the United 
 States we find, beside the class of colonial products, two other 
 classes comprising the bulk of the remaining imports, manu- 
 factures, and material for manufacturing. Were articles of 
 these two classes masked behind that large item of the table 
 which classifies the imports only with reference to tariff sched- 
 ules? The answer can be given, without hesitation, in the 
 affirmative. Raw materials for manufacturing were still, how- 
 ever, comparatively unimportant; most of the imports to this 
 country, at the beginning of its national existence, were finished 
 manufactures. The statement made by a writer in 1818 held 
 true at this time: '' Our imports consist chiefly of articles which 
 habit and fashion have made necessary for our consumption: 
 but a very small proportion of them is subservient to our 
 arts and manufactures." 
 
 To describe the character of these imported manufactures 
 in detail would be an arduous task, for they included the 
 products of practically all the handicrafts and factories of 
 Europe. In contrast with the exports of the country, which 
 have been restricted always to a few great staples, the imports, 
 from earliest times to the present, have been extraordinarily 
 diversified. The imports included, besides the items sp>ecified 
 in the table above, a large part or the whole of the metals 
 used in the country (tin, copper, lead, pewter, brass, and 
 iron), and manufactures of metal. They comprised, further, 
 a great quantity of the various textiles, of woolen, cotton, 
 linen, and silk; and miscellaneous manufactures such as glass 
 and earthern ware, paper, leather wares, etc. 
 
 559. Significance of the import of manufactures. — Accept- 
 ing now as the most important characteristic of the imports 
 of this period the preponderance of manufactured articles, we 
 must seek to realize why this was so, and what it signified. 
 Anticipating the substance of following sections it may be said, 
 in summary, that the people of the United States supplied 
 their need for manufactured articles by their own handiwork, 
 30 
 
466 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 SO far as possible, but that they found it unprofitable to attempt 
 to make wares the manufacture of which required high tech- 
 nical skill, the use of machinery, and an advanced organization 
 of business. They depended on Europe, therefore, for all the 
 finer manufactures. The total amount of manufactures im- 
 ported annually was not large in proportion to the population, 
 being less than $5 per head; yet this amount comprised most 
 of the comforts and luxuries as well as many of the necessaries, 
 which the people enjoyed. Even at the end of the colonial 
 period the average American led a life of struggling and priva- 
 tion, and could think himself fortunate if he won by his toil 
 on land or at sea a surplus sufficient to provide him with a 
 few articles beyond the bounds of his absolute necessities. 
 
 560. Household self-sufl&ciency. — In contrast with the 
 modern scale of living the simplicity of the standard of life 
 at this period can scarcely be exaggerated. Most of the articles 
 consumed in a family were produced at home. The house 
 was begun with the help of neighbors, and was finished, perhaps 
 long afterwards, by the inmates themselves. Domestic uten- 
 sils, household furniture, and farm implements were still made, 
 to a large extent, on the farm where they were used. The 
 every-day clothing of the people, made from linen or wool or 
 from a combination of the two (''linsey-woolsey "), was spun 
 and woven, cut out and made into clothes, with comparatively 
 little professional help. Carpets were made from woolen yarn 
 spun in the family, sent away only to be dyed, and then woven 
 either at home or in the neighborhood. The self-sufficiency 
 of the family group was not so complete in 1800 as it had 
 been in 1700, but it continued still to be the dominant feature 
 in economic life, and in some districts lasted for decades to 
 come. 
 
 561. Town self-sufficiency. — Articles which were not made 
 in the household were, as a rule, made in the town, and did 
 not contribute to the volume of distant trade or of foreign 
 commerce. The important unit in the economic organization 
 of the United States at this period was the rural group of 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 467 
 
 perhaps a few hundred inhabitants. Most of the people were 
 farmers, as has been said above, and very few were entirely 
 independent of farming. Some, however, had the skill and 
 implements which enabled them to supply the needs which 
 could hardly be met by household production. Nearly every 
 village had a gristmill, and, if conditions favored, a sawmill. 
 The village blacksmith was to be found in almost every settle- 
 ment, and performed an astonishing variety of work for the 
 people. Toward 1800, moreover, a tannery had become a 
 common though not a universal feature of village life, and 
 most towns could now boast of a shoemaker. Some still 
 depended, however, on the itinerant cobbler, and few were 
 large enough at this time to furnish paying custom to special 
 artisans; and relied on traveling tinkers, glaziers, coopers, 
 curriers, etc., to perform the services proper to their trades. 
 
 562. Development of household manufactures. — Only in a 
 few lines of manufacture had the organization developed beyond 
 the simple lines sketched above. The making of cloth is an 
 operation requiring much time, considerable technical skill, 
 and, for some processes, machinery such as few households 
 would possess. By 1700 it had become customary to rely 
 upon professionals for fulling, the process which compacts the 
 fibers of the cloth, and fulling mills were widely distributed in 
 1800. Carding machines, for straightening the fibers of wool 
 before spinning, were to be found in many towns, and it was 
 more and more common, also, to have the weaving done out of 
 the house, though this process was ordinarily attended to in the 
 immediate neighborhood. With outside aid of this character 
 the people of some parts of the country were able to produce 
 cloth in excess of their needs, and could use the surplus in trade. 
 
 Nearly every town, moreover, in the northern and central 
 colonies, had some industry which utilized the spare time of 
 the inhabitants, and gave them the means of exchange with 
 people in the colonies or abroad. For a characteristic descrip- 
 tion take the following of Raynham, Mass., 1793, when the 
 town had a population of about 1,000: ''Besides the usual 
 
468 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 business of husbandry, numbers are here employed in the 
 manufactories of bar iron, hollow ware, nails, irons for vessels, 
 iron shovels, potash, shingles, &c." 
 
 563. Appreciation and criticism of American manufactures 
 at this time. — It would be tedious and unprofitable to study 
 in detail the petty manufactures which cropped up in the 
 various towns of this period. Let us accept as a summary 
 the following statement, applying to the decade ending in 
 1800: ''The domestic manufactures best established are those 
 of leather, iron, flax, potters' wares, including bricks, ardent 
 spirits, malt liquors, cider, paper of all kinds, hats, stuff and 
 silk shoes, refined sugars, spermaceti and tallow candles, copper, 
 brass and tin wares, carriages, cabinet wares, snuff, gun- 
 powder and salt.'' 
 
 In studying this description the reader should bear certain 
 facts in mind. First, the list, however long it seems, is far 
 from including all the wares required for the satisfaction of 
 ordinary wants. Second, though these manufactures are stated 
 to be the ones best established, there was, among them all, 
 only one sufficiently strong to produce a considerable surplus 
 for sale outside the country; this was the rum manufacture. 
 The people still relied largely on importations from foreign 
 countries for many of the wares enumerated. Third, many of 
 these manufactures (bricks, cider, snuff, and salt, for example; 
 flour and sawmill products might properly be included) were 
 of a very simple character, requiring no great technical skill 
 or elaborate machinery. Water power was used widely, but 
 steam power had not yet been applied, and improved machinery 
 had not yet been introduced from Europe. The factory system, 
 with its extensive use of machinery and its strict organization 
 of labor, was first permanently established in the United States 
 in 1790, at Pawtucket, R. I.; and the American factories did 
 not, for many years, reach the English standard of efficiency. 
 An English committee reported in 1791 that the American 
 cotton manufactures were of a coarse grade, of worse quality 
 and of higher price than those produced at Manchester. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 469 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. How do the population and settled area of the United States in 
 17^0 compare with those of the State in which you live now? 
 
 2. Has any country ever enjoyed such growth as that of the United 
 States in the nineteenth century? What country or countries come near 
 us in rapidity of progress? 
 
 3. Prepare a chart, in the way previously suggested, and preserve 
 it for comparison with the exports in later periods. 
 
 4. What is the proportion of persons now occupied in agriculture in 
 your State? in the State where the proportion is highest? [Abstract of 
 Twelfth Census, table 64.] 
 
 5. What are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of com 
 and wheat as commercial crops? Which crop occupies the greater acreage 
 in your vicinity, and why? 
 
 6. Write a report on one of the following crops, its preparation, uses, 
 and history in the United States: 
 
 (a) Flax. [Encyclopedias; E. A. Whitman, Flax culture, Boston, 
 1888.] 
 
 (6) Hemp. [Encyclopedias; C. R. Dodge, Report no. 8, U. S. office 
 of fiber investigations, price 10 cents.] 
 
 7. Profits and losses in the colonial tobacco culture. [Bruce.] 
 
 8. Do you know of any region which suffers from the evils of the 
 eingle-crop system now? 
 
 9. Advantages and disadvantages of rice as a crop; where is it chiefly 
 grown now? [Encyc; commercial geographies.] 
 
 10. Experience of a woman as an indigo planter. [Earle, Colonial 
 dames, Boston, Houghton, 1895, $1.50, pp. 76-83.] 
 
 11. What is the average crop of wheat per acre now, in the U. S., 
 and in your vicinity? [Census.] 
 
 12. Details of colonial agriculture. [Coman, 47-62.] 
 
 13. The lumber industry in New England. [Lord, Indust. exper., 
 part 3, chap. 1; Wright, 71-79.] 
 
 14. History of the American fisheries. [Coman, index.] 
 
 15. The whale fishery. [Weeden, chap. 11; McMaster, Hist., 1: 63, 
 with references.] 
 
 16. Manufactures imported by Virginia in the colonial period. [Bruce, 
 chaps. 15, 16.] 
 
 17. What parts of the United States are now in a position Hke that 
 of the colonies, devoting their labor to the production of raw materials 
 and importing manufactures from the regions of advanced industry? 
 What foreign countries are still in this position? 
 
470 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 18. Write a report on the household industries of the colonial period. 
 [Books by Alice M. Earle.] 
 
 19. What household industries are declining now? [The preserving 
 of fruit may suggest other examples.] 
 
 20. A typical New England town. [See the description of Braintree, 
 Mass., in C. F. Adams, Three episodes, Boston, 1892.] 
 
 21. The textile industry in the colonial period. [Wright, Ind. ev., 
 43-60.] 
 
 22. The rise of manufactures and the attitude of Great Britain. 
 [Lord, Indust. exper., part 3, chap. 2; Coman, 62-76.] 
 
 23. The iron industry. [Wright, Ind. ev., 80-103.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 General 
 
 Bibliography. — Channing and Hart, Guide, Boston, Ginn, 1897, 
 $2 (general); Bowker and lies, Emery in Cambridge Mod. Hist., 7: 825- 
 829, Bullock, Introd. to Economics, N. Y., Silver, 1900, $1.28 (classified); 
 Coman (alphabetical); E. R. Johnson (railways); Dewey, Financial his- 
 tory, N. Y., Longmans, 1903, $2 (chiefly fiscal); A. L. A. Catalogue (popular 
 books in print). 
 
 General. — No single book is devoted to the general history of the 
 foreign commerce of the United States. Foreign trade is treated in con- 
 nection with other topics in N. S. Shaler, ed., * The U. S., N. Y., Appleton, 
 1894, $10; C. M. Depew, ed., * Amer. commerce; T. D. Woolsey, ed.. 
 First century of the Republic, N. Y., Harper, 1876; McMaster, * Hist, 
 (general narrative); Wright, Ind. ev. (manual); Coman, * Ind. hist, 
 (manual). On special branches of foreign trade see S. J. Chapman, His- 
 tory of trade between United Kingdom and U. S., Lond. and N. Y., 1899; 
 F. R. Rutter, The South American trade of Baltimore, Baltimore, 1897; 
 J. M. Callahan, American relations in the Pacific, Baltimore, 1901. 
 
 Commercial Policy. — On tariff history ** Taussig is by far the 
 best guide; of the many other books on the subject (see bibliographies 
 above) most are too prejudiced to be put in the hands of immature stu- 
 dents. On the merchant marine and shipping policy see ** W. L. Marvin 
 and * W. J. Abbot. For defence of protection and subsidies, W. W. 
 Bates, American marine, Boston, 1893, American Navigation, Boston, 
 1902; for criticism, D. A. Wells, Our merchant marine, N. Y., 1890. 
 
 Special Topics. — Readers must look in the bibliographies and among 
 my authorities for references on special industries. The histories of 
 Ringwalt, Hammond, and Swank are likely to prove especially useful. 
 
 Sources. — The chief source is the annual report on commerce and 
 navigation, which is cited hereafter by abbreviation, Com. & Nav. Reports 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION, 1789 471 
 
 for the years from 1789 to 1823 are in the collected set of American State 
 Papers; later reports must be sought in the set of Congressional documents. 
 The Check-list of Public Documents, Washington, 2d. ed., 1895, is an in- 
 dispensable aid in using government publications; other aids are given in 
 Publications of Amer. Statist. Assoc, 1889, 1: 63 flf.; 1902, 7: 40 ff. 
 
 Early American Commerce 
 
 Colonial. — ** Weeden, ** Bruce, ** Beer. More general in charac- 
 ter are the various writings (see A. L. A. Catalogue) of * John Fiske, * Alice 
 Morse Earle, * Sydney G. Fisher. On commercial policy of the colonies 
 see (besides Beer, and Hill cited below) Willard C. Fisher in Papers of 
 Amer. Hist. Assoc, N. Y., 1889, 3: 467-493. 
 
 Early National Period. — Mahan, ** War of 1812, vol. 1; Fiske, 
 ** Critical period, Boston, Houghton, 1899, $2; McMaster, ** History, 
 and ** Chapter 9 of Cambridge Mod. Hist., vol. 7. On the development 
 of the" commercial organization, S. E. Baldwin, American business corpora- 
 tions before 1789, Amer. Hist. Review., April, 1903, 8: 449-465; G. S. 
 Callender, ** Early transportation and banking enterprises. Quarterly 
 Jour, of Econ., Boston, Nov., 1902, 17: 111-162. On commercial policy, 
 William Hill, ** First stages of tariff policy. Pub. Amer. Econ. Assoc, 
 1893, 8: 452-614; T. W. Page, ** Earlier commercial policy. Journal of 
 Pol. Econ., Chicago, 1901-2, 10: 161-192; Henry C. Adams, * Taxation 
 in U. S., Baltimore, 1884. 
 
CHAPTER XLVI 
 INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 
 
 564. Development of internal trade 1 789-1900. — It will be 
 impossible, in the later chapters of this book, to describe in 
 detail the development of the internal trade of the United 
 States. This trade has grown to such proportions that, at 
 the present day, it far outranks in volume and importance 
 the foreign commerce of the country. The reader may be 
 trusted to realize this fact, and to have some knowledge of 
 the character and organization of internal trade at the present 
 day. It is not probable, however, that he knows the humble 
 origins from which this trade has risen; and a description of 
 the conditions and character of internal trade about 1789 will 
 enable him to appreciate the progress of the past century, 
 even though the different steps in progress receive, but scant 
 mention in the narrative. 
 
 565. Condition of the roads ; effect on freight traffic. — The 
 roads, which furnished the only means of communication and 
 transportation by land, were still the earth roads of the colonial 
 period, thick with dust in summer, and absolute sloughs, with 
 mud a foot or more deep, during the thaws of winter and spring. 
 During the greater part of the colonial period wagons were a 
 rarity, because there was so little opportunity to use them. 
 Men used mere sledges on the farm, and traveled or carried 
 their produce from one farm to another on horseback. In the 
 northern States the facilities for land carriage were good in 
 only one season, winter, when the periods of sleighing enabled 
 the people to make the market trips and visits which were 
 impracticable at other times. Even near the large towns 
 laden carts had to be drawn by two to six oxen, when there 
 was no snow on the ground. 
 
 472 
 
INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 473 
 
 When there was no other means of transportation, as in 
 the case of the settlements west of the Alleghany Mountains, 
 wares were carried over the roads in wagons, sometimes for a 
 distance of hundreds of miles; but such instances of extensive 
 land transport were exceptional, and the freight charges were 
 so high that only articles of the first necessity, as salt and iron, 
 could pay for carriage. 
 
 $66. Sparsity of passenger traffic. — Some men lived and 
 died in the town where they were born, without visiting another 
 town a dozen miles distant. There was so little intercourse 
 between the adjoining towns of Easthampton and Southampton, 
 on Long Island, that each town preserved individual peculiari- 
 ties of pronunciation down even to 1800. Throughout the 
 colonial period, and even in the days of the early Federal 
 government, it was very difficult to collect delegates at a 
 political gathering; and it was not uncommon for men to make 
 their wills before starting to a State convention in Pennsyl- 
 vania. Travel by stage-coach did not become of importance 
 until well into the nineteenth century. In 1783 two stage- 
 coaches, consuming a week or ten days on the trip, sufficed for 
 the travel between Boston and New York; though a few years 
 later (1794) twenty stages were employed. Postage rates for 
 a single letter ranged from 8 to 25 cents, according to the 
 distance, and mails were infrequent. 
 
 567. Relatively great importance of waterways. — Like the 
 people of the Middle Ages, the inhabitants of the United 
 States at this period were driven to the use of water transport 
 by the difficulty of transportation on land. Rivers which are 
 used now only by canoes and pleasure boats were then impor- 
 tant means of communication and transportation. The Con- 
 necticut River has now a scant traffic as far as Hartford, 
 about forty miles from its mouth; in 1816 we read, ''The Con- 
 necticut River is navigable 200 miles above Hartford, for 
 Boats, of 15 tons, and 50 miles higher, for Floats and Pine 
 Timber"; large quantities of potash were carried down the 
 river even from the Canada line. The Hudson and other 
 
474 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 rivers were the channels through which export products were 
 collected and brought to the sea, and the farmers of central 
 and western New York sent their wares to market by rafts 
 and ''arks" on the Delaware and Susquehanna. Waterways 
 were of especial importance in the southern States, where the 
 means of land transportation were even less developed than 
 in the North; tobacco was brought to the wharves on inlets 
 and rivers by ''rolling-roads," rough tracks over which, the 
 hogsheads were rolled with the assistance of a horse. 
 
 568. Importance of the country store. — The great institu- 
 tion of trade at this period was the country store, which col- 
 lected the surplus products of the townspeople and gave them 
 in exchange the wares imported from abroad. Every town of 
 any size had one of these stores, and only the largest towns 
 had distinct shops for the sale of special articles. The stock 
 in trade of one of the typical country stores included all of the 
 articles which have been mentioned among the imports of 
 the country: sugar, molasses, tea, coffee, metals, and hardware, 
 cloth, thread, books, glass, earthernware, etc. The list on 
 the other side of the store-keeper's books would be as long, 
 for it included all the export products of the country, and 
 some wares which were sent to market in the large towns or 
 in other States. The merchant must always be prepared to 
 receive in pay for his goods "Grain of all kinds, beef, pork, 
 poultry, cheese, butter, eggs, nuts, berries, hides, tallow, 
 candles, lard, domestic flannels, feathers, quills, braided straw 
 hats, potatoes, apples and other fruits, both green and dried, 
 home-made brooms, flax and flax seed, cider and domestic 
 wines, etc." At the period which we are studying, well past 
 the close of the colonial period, barter was still the usual form 
 of exchange, and money rarely passed at the transactions in 
 the store or in the trade between the townspeople and the 
 village artisans. 
 
 569. Benefits and disadvantages of the country store. — 
 The country store was the focus of the village, not only in 
 economic but in political and social life as well. There was 
 
INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 475 
 
 no better training school in the world for the study of human 
 nature and the development of business sense. Practically all 
 of the business life of the times was concentrated in these 
 stores, and it is, therefore, not surprising, that few men rose 
 to eminence later in the mercantile world who had not passed 
 a period of apprenticeship in one of them. Charles Tiffany, 
 Levi P. Morton, E. D. Morgan, H. B. Claflin; of a later period 
 Marshall Field, Pullman, Pillsbury, Armour, J. D. Rockefeller, 
 J. J. Hill, and many others; all these rose from the position of 
 clerk in a general store to the place which they attained in later 
 life. 
 
 From the standpoint of the villagers, however, it was a 
 great disadvantage to have the market for their produce 
 restricted to the store in their immediate vicinity. The store- 
 keeper in the smaller towns had no competitors, and enjoyed 
 a practical monopoly of trade of which he took full advantage 
 in driving his bargains. In the northern colonies, where the 
 difficulties of transportation were leveled by the snows of 
 winter, the people could attain a certain measure of indepen- 
 dence of the country store by making market trips to one of 
 the larger towns. Neighbors would agree upon a date and 
 set off, sometimes in a troop of fifty or sixty. They loaded 
 their sleighs with a supply of food for the journey, and with 
 the produce of the farm and household, and sought out the 
 nearest large town, Portland, Newburyport, Boston, Provi- 
 dence, Springfield, Hartford, etc. In one of these market 
 centers they could make much better bargains than at home. 
 
 570. Relative smallness of interstate trade. — When the 
 products of the country had been collected at the large coast 
 towns by the farmers and store-keepers, they were, for the 
 most part, exported to foreign countries. Interstate commerce 
 was as yet comparatively small. There was, it is true, an active 
 coasting trade, but this was employed chiefly in the collection 
 and distribution of goods along short stretches of coast. Small 
 vessels plied frequently from the large ports like Boston, New 
 York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, to ,the country districts 
 
476 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 on either side, but rarely made extensive trips, as from Boston 
 to Charleston, for instance. 
 
 Commerce between States as distant even as Massachusetts 
 and South Carolina existed and was by no means insignificant 
 in absolute amount. The northern colonies sent a part of 
 their surplus of rum, live stock, dairy products, and home- 
 made cloth to the South, and brought back tobacco or bills 
 on England which they could cash. Still, comparing this 
 trade with other elements of internal trade, with the foreign 
 commerce of the time, or with interstate commerce of later 
 times, the striking thing about it is not that it was so large, 
 but that it was so small. 
 
 571. Share of different States in foreign commerce. — The 
 relative contributions of different parts of the country to its 
 foreign commerce can be shown by the following summary, 
 giving the exports by localities in the year 1791. The chief 
 States ranked as follows, giving values in millions of dollars 
 and indicating the leading ports in parenthesis: Pennsylvania, 
 3.4 (Philadelphia); Virginia, 3.1 (Bermuda Hundred, Norfolk); 
 South Carolina, 2.6 (Charleston); Massachusetts, 2.5 (Boston); 
 New York, 2.5 (New York); Maryland, 2.2 (Baltimore). No 
 other State or port exported as much as one million; and 
 exports from all the other States together amounted to little 
 over one tenth of the total of nineteen millions. 
 
 The striking feature of the table is the relative importance 
 of the southern States in foreign commerce, an importance 
 which they were destined to hold for a long time to come, as 
 the cotton industry was developed. It must be remembered, 
 however, that the figures refer only to the export trade, and 
 that there would be considerable changes in rank if we could 
 include the import trade. Taking as a rough means of meas- 
 uring imports the amount of duties collected, we find, for ex- 
 example, in the first year of the national government, that 
 though Pennsylvania again headed the list, the second and 
 third in rank were New York and Massachusetts respectively, 
 while the southern States ranked lower by very considerable 
 
INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 477 
 
 amounts. This period which we are studying was, moreover, 
 one of rapid change, marked especially by the development of 
 the central and northern colonies. Taking the year 1795, 
 when these colonies were profiting by a great increase in their 
 food exports, and when the cotton trade was still undeveloped, 
 New York had risen to the second place in exports and Massa- 
 chusetts to the third. 
 
 572. Development of the chief seaports into cities. — The 
 seaports named in the preceding section had gained from 
 trade an amount of wealth and population, which, however 
 small it may seem from the modern standpoint, put them in 
 a class above the ordinary towns, and made them the repre- 
 sentatives of a more advanced business organization. The 
 most populous of these places had in 1790 a population of only 
 about 30,000 (in thousands. New York 33, Philadelphia 28, 
 Boston 18, etc.); and the total number of people living in towns 
 of over 8,000 inhabitants was still only about 130,000. In 
 other words, only one person in thirty lived in a large town 
 or city. The budding cities retained many of the rural char- 
 acteristics of the towns from which they had grown. A mere 
 beginning had been made in paving the streets, and many 
 people still kept kitchen gardens. The price of provisions, 
 however, was rising rapidly, and the cities had become depen- 
 dent on trade with the country districts for most of their 
 supply. Cattle were fattened in the Connecticut valley for the 
 New York and Philadelphia markets, and wood for heating 
 and building was brought by coasting vessels from considerable 
 distances. 
 
 The large towns could boast of a diversified industrial 
 population, in which many special branches of manufacture 
 were represented, and of numerous shops; Boston was credited 
 with 366 stores in the enumeration of 1789. The first commer- 
 cial bank of discount and deposit in the United States began 
 operations in Philadelphia in 1782, and about 1800 there were 
 33 banks of this kind in the country. 
 
 573. Foreign countries of the greatest commercial impor- 
 
478 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 tance to the United States. — An indication of the direction 
 of commerce is furnished by the following table, showing the 
 chief countries to and from which the United States shipped 
 wares in 1790. Figures give the values in millions of dollars. 
 
 Exports Imports 
 
 Great Britain and her dominions 9.3 15.2 
 
 Including British West Indies 2.0 
 
 France and her dominions 4.6 2.0 
 
 Including French West Indies 3.2 
 
 Spain and her dominions 2.0 .3 
 
 Including Spanish West Indies 1 
 
 The Netherlands and her dominions 1.9 1.1 
 
 Including Dutch West Indies 6 
 
 Portugal and her dominions 1.2 .5 
 
 The figures of imports are based on estimates, and no sum 
 is given for the total amount of the year; the total exports 
 were but slightly above twenty million, and countries the names 
 of which do not appear received but insignificant amounts of 
 our goods. 
 
 574. Insignificance of direct trade with Asia and Africa. — 
 Some reasons for the direction of American commerce at this 
 period will appear in the next chapter, in which the commercial 
 policy of European countries will be discussed. I propose 
 here merely to point out some of the striking facts shown by 
 the table, and to indicate their connection with the develop- 
 ment of American commerce in the colonial period. 
 
 Attention may be drawn, first of all, to the significance of 
 omissions from the table. In the year in question the United 
 States sent to the two great continents of Africa and Asia 
 less than one third of a million dollars of exports. The im- 
 ports, especially from Asia, were probably somewhat larger, 
 for American vessels had begun to frequent the ports of East 
 India and China, and to bring direct from them the rich car- 
 goes which formerly had reached America through the hands 
 of English middlemen. Still, any reasonable estimate of the 
 trade with distant continents would leave it insignificant in 
 
INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 479 
 
 comparison with the European trade, which formed the main- 
 stay of American commerce. 
 
 575. Unique position of England in trade with the United 
 States. — Of the European countries there was one which 
 occupied a position of commanding prominence. Great Britain 
 received of our goods more than all the rest of Europe together, 
 and sent us of her own far more than all the other European 
 states could supply. It is noteworthy, and was so regarded 
 at the time, that this country, after a bitter struggle for political 
 and commercial independence, and after having broken the 
 bonds which were supposed to hold her in subjection to the 
 English market, should voluntarily resume the trade relations 
 which had formerly been considered so oppressive. The great 
 amount of our trade with England is the more remarkable, as 
 it covered a considerable amount of trade with other countries. 
 England felt as yet no great need for our export products, and 
 forwarded to other countries a considerable part of what she 
 received. Of the imports which we received from England, 
 on the other hand, while the greater part was doubtless the 
 product of English manufacturing industry, there were many 
 wares which came from other countries, but which we found 
 could be purchased more conveniently in England than at 
 the original place of production. 
 
 576. Commerce with the rest of Europe. — It was but 
 natural that the United States should have a commerce of 
 some importance with states like France and the Netherlands, 
 which were still among the leaders; and it can only be regarded 
 as surprising that this commerce was so small in comparison 
 with that with England. Our trade with eastern Europe was 
 carried on so largely through England that Germany and the 
 Baltic countries would make but an insignificant showing if 
 they were included in the table. Our trade with southern 
 Europe, however, was evidently governed by other conditions. 
 Portugal and Spain could furnish few desirable wares of their 
 own production, except wine; the table shows that the imports 
 from those countries were small. They offered, however, what 
 
480 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 we sought in vain in northern Europe, a ready market for 
 our fish, cereals, and other foodstuffs, and were hence of great 
 importance to our export trade. Commerce with the Medi- 
 terranean countries, which had been interrupted during the 
 Revolution, had not since then been developed to any con- 
 siderable proportions, because of the ravages of the Algerine 
 pirates. These countries had formerly taken a quarter of our 
 fish exports, and about one sixth of our wheat and flour ship- 
 ments; and trade with them revived later when our navy had 
 brought the pirates to terras. 
 
 577. Importance of the West Indies as an outlet for wares 
 excluded from Europe. — A place of very peculiar importance 
 in the commercial economy of the American people, in the 
 colonial period and well past the time which we are now 
 studying, was taken by the West Indian islands. Of the 
 chief products of the United States those coming from the 
 South, especially tobacco, were sure of a good market in 
 Europe, and were a ready means of purchasing the manufac- 
 tures which the people needed to import. The chief products 
 of the North, however, including breadstuffs, provisions, and 
 fish, enjoyed no such favorable reception. The statesmen of 
 England and other countries clung still to the plan of protecting 
 domestic agriculture by assuring it the home market, and 
 desired to encourage domestic fisheries as a means of supporting 
 the navy. In the colonial period, therefore, the staple products 
 of the central and northern colonies were kept out of England 
 and other states by heavy duties or by prohibitions. The 
 people of those colonies, therefore, were at a great disadvantage 
 in their trade with the mother country; they found it difficult 
 to secure the means of paying for the English manufactures 
 which they imported, and were forced to rely in some measure 
 on the crude products of their own domestic manufactures, 
 as described in a previous chapter. 
 
 578. Character of commerce with the West Indies; trian- 
 gular trade. — The very products, however, which were rejected 
 in Europe, were keenly desired in the West Indies. The 
 
INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 481 
 
 islands had become the great source of the world's sugar 
 supply, and the advantages of sugar production, under the 
 system of slave labor, were so great that planters neglected 
 all other crops and did not produce even a sufficient amount 
 of food for their laborers. They were eager to purchase food 
 either by the direct exchange of sugar and molasses, or, what 
 amounts to the same thing, by giving the seller bills on Europe 
 drawn against sugar products shipped thither. They offered 
 a ready market, therefore, for the wheat, flour, corn, meat, 
 and fish of the mainland, and purchased also large quantities 
 of lumber and shingles for building, staves for hogsheads, etc. 
 The colonies of the mainland took in pay considerable amounts 
 of sugar and molasses for their own use, and took molasses 
 also for th€ manufacture of rum, of which part was exported. 
 On the whole, however, the mainland exported to the islands 
 more than it received from them, and had thus a credit balance 
 with which it could liquidate its debts for European manufac- 
 tures. The conditions thus gave rise to a triangular trade: 
 the mainland shipped food and lumber to the West Indian 
 islands; the islands shipped sugar products to Europe; and 
 Europe shipped manufactures to the American mainland, thus 
 closing the transaction. So strong was the economic demand 
 for a trade of this description, that the attempts of European 
 governments to check it had proved entirely unsuccessful in 
 the colonial period; restrictions were evaded by smugglers or 
 were openly defied. The problems of policy relating to this 
 and other parts of the American trade after 1789 will be treated 
 in the next chapter. 
 
 579. Development of ship-building in the colonial period. — 
 A resource of the United States which deserves to be mentioned, 
 before we close this survey of the conditions of commerce 
 about 1789, was the building and sailing of ships. The colonies 
 were at first dependent on the mother country for the vessels 
 which they used. Most of the raw materials for ship-building 
 were, however, abundant in America; and the construction of 
 ships, unlike other manufacturing industries, was rather helped 
 31 
 
482 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 than hindered by British colonial policy, which put colonial 
 vessels on the same footing as those which were built at home, 
 and protected them from the competition of the ships of other 
 countries. An active ship-building industry grew up, there- 
 fore, especially in New England, where ship timber of the 
 finest quality was abundant, and where the difficulties of life 
 and the discouragement of staple exports forced the people to 
 make the most of every resource. A petition of Boston citizens 
 in 1746 calls ship-building "the ancient and almost the only 
 Manufacture the Town of Boston ever had." In the Massa- 
 chusetts towns a ship could be built of oak for $24 a ton, 
 while in England, France, or the Netherlands an oak vessel 
 cost $50 to $60 a ton, and even the fir vessels, built on the 
 Baltic, inferior in strength and durability, cost $35 a ton. 
 The colonies, therefore, could supply not only their own wants, 
 but also could sell ships abroad; before the Revolution more 
 than a third of British tonnage, it is said, was American built. 
 580. Extension of American shipping. The colonists were 
 as proficient in the sailing as in the building of ships, and 
 carried on a large part of the ocean traffic which served the 
 needs of American commerce. In the first year of the national 
 government considerably more than half of the tonnage enter- 
 ing the ports of the United States from foreign countries was 
 American, and English ships were the only serious competitors. 
 The bulk of American shipping was engaged in the West 
 India trade, but American ships carried also nearly half of the 
 commerce between the United States and Europe, in spite of 
 the adverse policy of European states, designed to exclude 
 American ships from commerce with them and with their 
 colonies. Driven further afield by this policy, American 
 skippers began to seek commercial connections with more 
 distant countries, from which wares had reached them hitherto 
 only through middlemen. An American ship sailed for the 
 first time to China in 1784; in 1788 two ships were advertised 
 as loading at Boston for the Isle of France (Mauritius) and 
 India, and "anybody wishing to adventure to that part of 
 
INTERNAL TRADE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, 1789 483 
 
 the world may have an opportunity of sending goods on 
 freight"; soon afterward a Philadelphia ship made the round 
 voyage to China in less than a year. A vivid impression of 
 the boldness and skill of American mariners of this period is 
 given by the voyage of the Experiment to China. This boat, 
 a sloop of eighty tons, no larger and no more seaworthy than 
 the sloops which now bring bricks down the Hudson River to 
 New York, carried her crew of fifteen men and boys safely to 
 Canton and back, despite the perils of the sea and of pirates. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Name another country in which transportation was easier in 
 winter than in summer, before the introduction of railroads. 
 
 2. History of the navigation of the Connecticut River. [W. D. Love, 
 Proc. Amer. Antiq. Society, April, 1903, reprinted Worcester, 1903.] 
 
 3. Write an essay on the economic, social, and political importance of 
 the country store, in the past and present. 
 
 4. Write a biographical sketch of one of the business men named in 
 section 569. [References in authorities; Poole's Index; current biographi- 
 cal dictionaries.] 
 
 5. What is now the interstate commerce of the State in which you 
 live? To what States does it export its products, what products of other 
 States does it import? How does its commerce with other States com- 
 pare with its foreign commerce in bulk and value? [Ask questions of 
 railroad and steamship men; visit freight yards.] 
 
 6. Comparing the figures of sect. 571 with the figures for total 
 exports, sect. 548, what do you guess formed the bulk of the exports from 
 each State or port? 
 
 7. Write a brief commercial history of one of the cities named. [Local 
 histories; Encyc; commercial cyclopedias.] 
 
 8. Episodes of Boston commerce. [M. A. D. Howe, Atlantic Monthly, 
 1903, 91: 175-184.] 
 
 9. Prepare and study a graphic chart, sect. 573, and preserve it for 
 comparison with later conditions. 
 
 10. The African slave trade. [Weeden, chap. 12; Abbot, chap. 3.] 
 
 11. What reasons occur to you why the Americans should have 
 traded with England so much more than with other states of Europe? 
 
 12. History of the commerce of the colonies with the West Indies. 
 [Weeden or Bruce, Index, West Indies.] 
 
 13. Character of production and commerce in the West Indies at 
 this time. [See references given under sect. 253.] 
 
484 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 14. History of ship-building in the colonies. [Weeden, 252-267, 
 573-581; Wright, 23-42; Marvin, chaps. 1, 2.] 
 
 15. Pirates and privateers of the colonial period. [Weeden, chap. 9, 
 559-565; Abbot, chap. 5.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See preceding chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XLVII 
 COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 
 
 581. Importance of commercial policy in this period. — The 
 
 two preceding chapters have described the conditions of com- 
 merce in the United States about 1789, with but an occasional 
 reference to the influence which governments exercised in 
 directing and restricting the movement of wares. In every 
 period governments interfere with the free exchange of com- 
 modities, that the interests of the people as a whole may not 
 suffer from the selfishness of individual merchants. In the 
 period under consideration, lasting through the second war 
 with England, the influence of governments on the fortunes 
 of our foreign trade was more pronounced than it has ever 
 been in later times; and the topic of commercial policy must 
 occupy the leading place in this present chapter. 
 
 582. Questions of policy. — The Revolution of 1776, by 
 which a group of English colonies was transformed into an 
 independent state, claiming to rank as England's equal, 
 shocked the ideas of European statesmen to an extent which 
 we can hardly conceive. There was no place in the political 
 system of the time for an independent American state. For 
 centuries the states of Europe had been the sole source of 
 active political and commercial power; in other continents were 
 to be found only semi-civilized states, subject to European 
 influence, and colonies, under the complete control of the 
 mother countries. Each European state had regulated as it 
 pleased the commercial relations of its colonies with the mother 
 country^ with other European countries, and with their colonies. 
 Now that the United States had won its political independence, 
 was it to be treated by England as though it was still an English 
 
 485 
 
486 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 colony, and given its former privileges though it was no longer 
 subject to the former restrictions? Were other European states 
 to welcome its commerce, now that England could no longer 
 prevent, or were they to treat it like a European state, and 
 restrict its trade with themselves and with their colonies? 
 Finally, what attitude was the United States itself to adopt, 
 now that it could frame its policy as it pleased? These were 
 among the serious problems that perplexed the statesmen of 
 the Old and New Worlds, as the success of the American 
 Revolution became assured. 
 
 583. Policy of England. — Reference has been made in a 
 previous paragraph to the striking fact that the colonists had 
 no sooner won the war of independence than they returned to 
 an active commerce with the country against which they had 
 been fighting. Comparing the six years preceding the Revo- 
 lution with the six years following the treaty of peace (1783), 
 we find that the volume of trade between the United States 
 and England was substantially the same. The American 
 people suffered during the war for lack of the manufactures 
 which they had been accustomed to purchase from England, 
 and which they found then could be purchased to such advan- 
 tage nowhere else; and as soon as peace permitted they began 
 eagerly to buy English products again. For a moment it 
 appeared that England was ready to welcome this trade; the 
 English statesman, Pitt, introduced a bill which aimed to 
 encourage the American trade not only with England but 
 also with her colonies. Such a policy implied too serious a 
 breach in the old system, and was not carried into effect. 
 The Americans were, indeed, permitted and encouraged to 
 trade still with England; that country could not afford to give 
 up the growing market for its manufactures which the United 
 States afforded. The ports of the West Indies, however, were 
 closed to American merchants; the Americans were to be 
 punished for their insubordination by exclusion from a branch 
 of commerce which was to them of the first importance. 
 
 684. Policy of France and other states. — The Americans 
 
COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 487 
 
 learned, not only from England but also from other European 
 powers, that an independent state must shift for itself and 
 could hope for no commercial favors. They might fairly 
 suppose that the countries which had joined in their war 
 against England (France, Spain, the Netherlands) would take 
 advantage of the successful issue of the conflict to seek to 
 secure the American trade which England had hitherto monop- 
 olized. They found, indeed, that these and other countries 
 were willing to sell their goods to the United States; but still 
 these countries were reluctant to take in exchange American 
 wares for which they felt no special need, and were most 
 reluctant to open the trade of their colonies to people of any 
 nationality but their own. John Adams might say of France 
 in 1780, "All the world will allow the flourishing state of her 
 marine and commerce, and the decisive influence of her councils 
 and negotiations, to be owing to her new connections with the 
 United States "; whatever truth there might be in the statement, 
 France certainly refused to express her gratitude by the grant 
 of commercial privileges. France found, actually, that after 
 the return of peace the Americans ceased to buy her manu- 
 factures, and flocked for trade to the English markets. French 
 merchants complained that none of them ever gained in com- 
 merce with the United States: when all the best part of the 
 American custom went to English merchants, why should 
 France or any other country on the Continent relax the re- 
 strictions which were designed to protect the home market 
 and the colonial market for the benefit of natives? 
 
 585. Conditions of American trade with Europe in 1789. — 
 In spite of the unfavorable attitude of the powers which con- 
 trolled the great markets of the world, the United States 
 maintained a considerable commerce, as was shown by the 
 descriptions of previous chapters. This commerce was, how- 
 ever, carried on under serious disadvantages. Reviewing the 
 staple exports of the country we find that breadstuffs were 
 generally subject to prohibitory duties in England, and that 
 fish and salt provisions were actually prohibited in England, 
 
488 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and were heavily dutied in France. The southern staples 
 fared little better, for they competed with the products of 
 European colonies even though they did not threaten European 
 industries. Tobacco and rice were subject either to actual 
 prohibitions or to heavy duties in most of the important 
 European markets. 
 
 586. Conditions of trade with the West Indies. — Conditions 
 of trade with the West Indies were even worse. Spain and 
 Portugal absolutely forbade all direct intercourse with their 
 colonial possessions; and wares destined for their colonies had 
 either to be carried by smugglers or else exported to Europe 
 and then re-exported in ships of the mother country. England 
 closed her possessions on the American mainland completely, 
 and while, as a temporary favor, she admitted some wares to 
 her West India colonies, by proclamations renewed from year 
 to year, she prohibited salt provisions and fish, and excluded 
 American ships from the trade. Her vessels alone could take 
 our produce and bring back the molasses, sugar, etc., which 
 formed the objects of the return trade. The French West 
 Indies, also, were open to us only as a temporary concession, 
 and in them and in the colonial possessions of other powers 
 the trade was burdened with duties. 
 
 687. Weakness of the United States at this time. — These 
 were by no means all the hardships under which American 
 commerce labored at this time. The government was too 
 young and weak to furnish adequate protection to ships flying 
 the American flag in foreign waters and on the high seas, and 
 it had as yet obtained no guarantee that American fishermen 
 would be allowed to pursue their calling as before the Revolu- 
 tion. Furthermore, the attention of American statesmen was 
 distracted by the need of getting the machinery of the new 
 government in running order, and by the serious fiscal difficul- 
 ties which pressed for settlement. These were the dark days 
 of American commerce. From the lofty position which the 
 United States has reached to-day, courted for its commerce 
 and its political influence by other great powers of the world, 
 
COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 
 
 489 
 
 it is hard to realize how humble was our national position in 
 1789, and how precarious seemed our commercial future. 
 
 588. Survey of American commerce, 1789-1815. — Starting 
 from these beginnings we have now to trace the course of our 
 commerce through the period. So sharp were the fluctuations 
 in this early stage that I give the annual statistics, and, for 
 reasons which will be apparent later, call particular attention 
 to the distinction between domestic exports, of articles pro- 
 duced in the United States, and foreign exports, of articles 
 brought from some other country and re-exported. No exact 
 figures for the imports of this period can be given, but it is 
 safe to say that the value of the imports did not diverge greatly 
 from the value of the exports. 
 
 Exports of the United States, in Millions of Dollars 
 {Fiscal years, ending Sept. 30 of the date given) 
 
 
 Domestic 
 
 Foreign 
 
 Total 
 
 
 Domestic 
 
 Foreign 
 
 Total 
 
 1790 
 
 
 
 20.4 
 
 1804 
 
 41.4 
 
 36.2 
 
 77.6 
 
 1791 
 
 
 
 19.0 
 
 1805 
 
 42.3 
 
 53.1 
 
 95.5 
 
 1792 
 
 
 
 20.7 
 
 1806 
 
 41.2 
 
 60.2 
 
 101.5 
 
 1793 
 
 
 
 26.1 
 
 1807 
 
 48.6 
 
 59.6 
 
 108.3 
 
 1794 
 
 
 
 33.0 
 
 1808 
 
 9.4 
 
 12.9 
 
 22.4 
 
 1795 
 
 
 
 47.9 
 
 1809 
 
 31.4 
 
 20.7 
 
 52.2 
 
 1796 
 
 40.7 
 
 26.3 
 
 67.0 
 
 1810 
 
 42.3 
 
 24.3 
 
 66.7 
 
 1797 
 
 29.8 
 
 27.0 
 
 56.8 
 
 1811 
 
 45.2 
 
 16.0 
 
 61.3 
 
 1798 
 
 28.5 
 
 33.0 
 
 61.5 
 
 1812 
 
 30.0 
 
 8.4 
 
 38.5 
 
 1799 
 
 33.1 
 
 45.5 
 
 78.6 
 
 1813 
 
 25.0 
 
 2.8 
 
 27.8 
 
 1800 
 
 31.8 
 
 39.1 
 
 70.9 
 
 1814 
 
 6.7 
 
 0.1 
 
 6.9 
 
 1801 
 
 47.4 
 
 46.6 
 
 94.1 
 
 1815 
 
 45.9 
 
 6.5 
 
 52.5 
 
 1802 
 
 36.7 
 
 35.7 
 
 72.4 
 
 1816 
 
 64.7 
 
 17.1 
 
 81.9 
 
 1803 
 
 42.2 
 
 13.5 
 
 55.8 
 
 1817 
 
 68.3 
 
 19.3 
 
 87.6 
 
 589. Fluctuations in the export trade; share of domestic 
 and of foreign exports. — If the reader will cast his eye down 
 the column of totals he will appreciate at once the unsteadiness 
 of our trade during the period under consideration. For a 
 few years the figure of exports was almost constant. Then, 
 
490 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 in 1793, began a rapid rise; the export trade doubled, tripled, 
 more than quadrupled. A check to this growth was apparent 
 in the few years after 1801, but it began again, and the figures 
 of exports reached their highest point in the years 1806 and 
 1807. They had grown more than fivefold in fifteen years. 
 The year 1808 showed a precipitous decline, and, after an 
 interval of partial recovery, the figures . reached their lowest 
 point in 1814. At the close of the period prospects seemed 
 brighter. 
 
 Returning to the table, to analyze the part borne in the 
 changes by domestic and by foreign exports respectively, we 
 find that the foreign exports were chiefly responsible for the 
 great fluctuations. No figures can be given for the earlier 
 years, but it can be stated with assurance that of the total 
 exports in 1790 only an insignificant fraction, probably much 
 less than one million, was composed of the products of other 
 countries. There had been a tremendous gain, therefore, in 
 this branch of our trade, before 1796, and it proved capable 
 of great expansion afterwards, while, on the other hand, it 
 declined in one year almost to nothing. Domestic exports, 
 also, showed a great increase in the early years of the table, 
 but they soon came near to the limit of their expansion, and 
 hovered generally about the figure of forty millions; the table 
 shows, moreover, that they resisted depressing influences better 
 than the foreign exports. 
 
 590. Varying fortunes of foreign trade not explained by 
 conditions at home. — The reasons for the growth of American 
 trade after 1790 are to be sought mainly in conditions abroad. 
 There was no development of resources at home sufficient to 
 account for the great expansion of trade. The United States, 
 it is true, gained a new export product in cotton, which was 
 shipped in rapidly increasing quantities after the invention of 
 the cotton-gin in 1793. Cotton took the first place among 
 southern exports after 1800, and the extension of the cotton 
 culture helps to explain the growth of domestic exports. Still, 
 cotton did not rise to the position of king among exports until 
 
COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 491 
 
 the following period, and the description of the rise of the 
 cotton trade will be deferred to a later chapter. 
 
 We cannot give American statesmen the credit for removing 
 the restrictions on our commerce, described above, and so 
 enabling it to expand uncramped. In spite of all their persist- 
 ence and ingenuity they secured only slight and partial con- 
 cessions. The treaty with England, negotiated by John Jay 
 in 1794, removed some of our grievances, but proposed to open 
 the West India trade on such humiliating conditions that the 
 offer was indignantly refused. A treaty with Spain gave us 
 merely the right to navigate the lower Mississippi River, 
 without other commercial privileges; and even the acquisition 
 of Louisiana, in 1803, had but an inconsiderable effect on our 
 commerce at the time. 
 
 591. Conditions abroad; effect of the European wars on 
 domestic exports. — We owed our rapid commercial growth 
 not to our own strength, and not to the favor of European 
 states; we owed it to the necessities of the position in which 
 the countries of Europe found themselves after the outbreak 
 of the wars following the French Revolution. These wars were 
 of decisive importance to our commerce in two ways. In the 
 first place they caused an immense increase in the demand for 
 our foodstuffs. When the states of Europe were fighting for 
 their very existence they could not afford to uphold the prin- 
 ciples of their former protective policy, and welcomed the means 
 of subsistence, from whatever source they might come. The 
 withdrawal of men from agriculture to serve in the armies 
 diminished the supply of food in Europe and called for large 
 exports from the United States, for which high prices were 
 paid. Taking for illustration the little country of Portugal, 
 we find that our exports to that country increased about ten- 
 fold in the course of the period, being especially large in the 
 years from 1810 to 1813. These years mark the time when 
 the Peninsular War was at its height, and when the large armies 
 quartered in the country demanded a supply of food which 
 could not possibly be met from native sources. 
 
 I 
 
492 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 592. Effect on foreign exports and the carrying trade. — 
 
 The European wars were not only responsible for a great gain 
 in our domestic exports; they were the sole cause of the tre- 
 mendous increase in the foreign exports, which figured so 
 largely in our commerce at this period. The wars involved 
 most of the important states of Europe. A ship flying the 
 flag of France or of any of her allies was constantly exposed to 
 capture by British cruisers; a ship flying the flag of Great 
 Britain or of one of her allies was a fair prize for the French 
 privateers which swarmed over the seas. In the great conflict 
 there was but one country, with an extensive merchant marine, 
 which managed to maintain neutrality, and this was the 
 United States. The carrying trade of the world fell into our 
 hands. The countries of Europe, forced by the exigencies of 
 war, gave up the cherished principles of their colonial policy, 
 and threw open the trade with their colonies and themselves. 
 The rights of neutral states in time of war were, it is true, 
 still unsettled. American ship captains and merchants were 
 subject to arbitrary and humiliating interference on the part 
 of the belligerents. In the early part of the war, however, 
 the results of this interference were of sentimental rather than 
 of practical importance, and means were found to evade the 
 restrictions which the belligerents imposed. When England 
 forbade all trade between her enemies (France, Spain, The 
 Netherlands) and their colonies, American skippers did not 
 sail direct from the West Indies to Europe, but touched at 
 some port of the United States, entered the cargo for import, 
 and sometimes actually landed it. It was not meant for 
 consumption in this country and was soon withdrawn and 
 exported to its destination in Europe, as though it were 
 composed of domestic products. 
 
 593. Prosperity of American commerce and shipping. — 
 The European wars, therefore, introduced American commerce 
 to a new era of prosperity. ''No one was limited to any one 
 branch of trade; the same individual was concerned in voyages 
 to Asia, South America, the West Indies, and Europe." Our 
 
COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 493 
 
 ships gathered the products of distant countries, coffee, sugar, 
 tea, pepper, etc., and purveyed them to the people of Europe. 
 In many years the value of foreign exports exceeded that of 
 domestic exports; in 1806 it was half as large again. The 
 reader will better appreciate the contrast with present condi- 
 tions when he learns that in 1902 the foreign exports of the 
 country amounted only to one fifty-second part of the domestic. 
 
 The merchant marine of the United States grew rapidly 
 under these favoring conditions, and in spite of complaints that 
 former conditions had been reversed, and that ships could be 
 built cheaper abroad than at home. The national tonnage 
 engaged in foreign trade, which in 1789 appeared to be not 
 much in excess of 100,000, exceeded 500,000 in 1795, and 
 900,000 in 1810. The proportion of American ships in the 
 total of those entering the ports of the United States grew 
 correspondingly; and the merchant tonnage of the United 
 States was second only to that of Great Britain and superior 
 to that of any other country in the world. 
 
 594. Checks to prosperity after i8oo. — The check on the 
 growth of our commerce apparent in the figures for the few 
 years after 1801 is explained by the conclusion of a peace 
 between the states of Europe, which lasted from 1801 to 1803. 
 Had the peace proved permanent there would have been, 
 without doubt, a further decline in American commerce, as 
 the European countries resumed their former commercial rela- 
 tions. With the reopening of war, however, the Americans 
 enjoyed the advantages of their previous position; the exports 
 of 1806 and 1807 exceeded a hundred millions in value, and 
 marked a height which exports did not again reach for nearly 
 twenty years. Our commercial prosperity at this time was 
 very precarious. It was the period in which Napoleon and 
 England were waging war over the Continental System, as 
 described in a previous chapter. Each belligerent looked on 
 the neutral carrier now not as a source of gain to itself so 
 much as a source of help to the enemy, and determined to 
 restrict neutral trade, even though it were necessary to destroy 
 
494 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 it. In the period between 1803 and 1812 some 1,500 American 
 ships were seized in Europe, and the greater part of them 
 condemned, for violating the restrictions then carried into 
 effect. The best sailors were impressed from American ships 
 to fight the battles of England. American shipping was 
 involved in an unequal struggle. 
 
 595. Decline of commerce ; embargo and war. — The United 
 States was not prepared to enforce by arms the rights which 
 it claimed for its merchants and sailors. The government 
 shrank from war, and adopted instead the policy of commercial 
 restriction, hoping to bring the European powers to terms by 
 refusing to trade with them until they reformed their conduct. 
 A short trial was made with an act forbidding the importation 
 of English manufactures, and in December, 1807, a general 
 embargo was laid on all vessels, forbidding them to leave port 
 for a foreign country. The embargo was evaded in various 
 ways, but its effect on our foreign commerce and export indus- 
 tries was disastrous, and forced the substitution of milder 
 measures in February, 1809. Our commerce, now suffering 
 both from the attacks of its enemies abroad and the restrictions 
 of its friends at home, could not recover the position which it 
 had reached before the embargo, and declined still further 
 after the declaration of war with England, to which we were 
 finally forced in June, 1812. 
 
 596. Effect of the decline of commerce on the development 
 of American manufactures. — While the people maintained an 
 active commerce with Europe they obtained most of their 
 manufactured wares from that source, as they had done in 
 colonial times. The interruptions of commerce due to acts 
 like the embargo and to the war with England cut them off 
 from this source of supply, and home manufactures grew up 
 as commerce declined. The letters of Jefferson, written at 
 this period, contain many references to the growth of manu- 
 factures in his State, Virginia, and in other parts of the country, 
 especially in New England, the development of a native manu- 
 facturing industry was even more marked. American manu- 
 
COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 495 
 
 factures began, in this period, to outgrow the simple forms 
 of domestic industry, and to attract the capital necessary for 
 the establishment of regular factories. Many companies were 
 incorporated to manufacture goods by means of power ma- 
 chinery, and industrial methods which had long been practised 
 in England were now first introduced in this country on an 
 extensive scale. The development of the textile industries 
 was especially rapid. It was estimated that in 1800 the cotton 
 factories of the country had consumed only 500 bales of raw 
 material, while in 1810 the number had risen to 10,000 and 
 in 1815 to 90,000. A cotton factory established by Francis 
 C. Lowell at Waltham, Mass., in 1814, is said to have been the 
 first in the world in which all the processes involved in the 
 manufacture of goods, from the raw material to the finished 
 product, were carried on in one establishment, under a carefully 
 studied system. 
 
 597. Considerations determining early tariff policy. — The 
 development of manufactures at this time gave rise, in the 
 following period, to a demand for protection which marks a 
 turning-point in the tariff history of the country. When the 
 first national tariff was adopted, at the founding of the Federal 
 government in 1789, the legislators had a difficult problem of 
 policy to solve. They found the commerce of the country 
 fenced in by foreign tariffs composed of high duties and of 
 some actual prohibitions. They desired the reduction of these 
 duties that American commerce might expand. Many of them 
 expressed their belief in a policy of retaliation, if no other 
 means availed to secure the reduction. At this time, however, 
 the commercial position of the country was not strong enough 
 to permit the tariff to be used as a weapon with which to 
 menace foreign states. Other countries showed but a languid 
 desire for the products which were then our staple exports, 
 and we had great need of the foreign wares composing our 
 imports. We could not afford even to discriminate against 
 the importation of manufactured goods, with an idea of pro- 
 tecting native manufactures; our manufactures were then so 
 
496 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 weak that a policy of high protection, to exclude foreign 
 wares, would have caused serious distress to the consumers 
 at home. 
 
 598. Survey of tariff policy. — Barrec^ by these considera- 
 tions from a tariff of high duties, the legislators framed the 
 first tariff mainly as a revenue measure. Comparatively few 
 articles were placed upon the free list, duties being levied on 
 articles like tea and coffee as well as on manufactured wares, 
 which might possibly be produced at home. The general scale 
 of duties was much lower than in foreign countries at the time, 
 or in the United States later; it was estimated that an assorted 
 cargo paid about 7^ per cent. Of the results of the first tariff 
 a recent investigator says: ''The most careful examination 
 fails to show that it affected the volume, variety, or direction 
 of our foreign trade in the slightest degree." In the course of 
 the period the tariff was frequently amended, and rates were 
 raised considerably; but the tariff continued to be used chiefly 
 as a source of revenue, and was not seriously affected by 
 protectionist ideas until after 1815. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Prepare yourself for studying the policy of this period by mentally 
 reviewing the present commercial policy. Does the government now 
 encourage or discourage exports or imports? Does it grant favors to one 
 foreign countrj'- over another? Do foreign countries prohibit or restrict 
 trade with their dependencies? What is the present poHcy of this and 
 other countries with respect to shipping? 
 
 2. When England excluded the United States from trade with the 
 West Indies, what classes would be hurt, what classes would be helped, in 
 England, in the West Indies, and in the United States? 
 
 3. Indicate on a rough sketch map the markets wholly or partially 
 closed to American commerce about 1789. 
 
 4. Financial, military, and naval weakness of the United States in 
 1789. [Manuals and standard works on U. S. History.] 
 
 5. Make a chart first of the figures of total exports in sect. 588; then 
 indicate the relative share of foreign and domestic exports. Leave room 
 at the top or bottom, where the dates are written, to write in the chief 
 historical events affecting the course of commerce in the period. 
 
COMMERCE AND POLICY, 1789-1815 497 
 
 6. It has been generally believed that the adoption of the Federal 
 Constitution led to a great growth in business and prosperity. Prof. G. S. 
 Callender has suggested that the growth of prosperity, due to influences 
 acting from outside America, caused, on the contrary, the Constitution to 
 be popular and successful. What facts support this latter view? 
 
 7. Prepare a list of the dates showing the beginning and spread of 
 the European wars, and insert on the chart as suggested above. 
 
 8. Study the relative importance of foreign exports to total exports 
 in the last half of the century, as a contrast to conditions about 1800. 
 [U. S. Statistical Abstract, Index, Exports, merchandise, total values.] 
 
 9. Expansion of the merchant marine, 1789-1800. [Marvin, chap. 4.] 
 
 10. Grievances of neutral carriers, leading to the second war with 
 England. [Marvin, chap. 7; Coman, 171-180; McMaster, Hist.] 
 
 11. The Embargo. [Manuals of U. S. history; references in Chan- 
 ning and Hart, sect. 171.] 
 
 12. Rise of manufacturing industry. [Coman, 180-193; Wright, 
 117-131.] 
 
 13. Considerations determining the earlier commercial policy. [Page; 
 see above, chap, xlv.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 See chapter xlv for general works; Henry Adams, * History, N. Y., 
 1889-91, covering the period 1800 -1817 in nine volumes, is the most com- 
 plete general narrative. Mahan, ** War of 1812, Boston, Little, 2 vols., 
 $7, is now by far the best special account. The commercial statistics of 
 the period may be found elaborated in Adam Seybert, * Statistical annals, 
 Phila., 1818, or in Timothy Pitkin, * Statistical view, New Haven, 1817, 2d 
 ed., 1835. 
 
 32 
 
CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 
 
 699. Survey of commerce, 1815-1860. — In contrast with 
 the period ending in 1815, the next period which we study, 
 extending from 1815 to 1860, was marked by the slowness and 
 the comparative steadiness in the growth of foreign commerce. 
 An indication of the course of trade in this period is given by 
 the following table, in which the figures represent millions of 
 dollars. 
 
 Imports Exports Total 
 
 1820 74 69 144 
 
 1830 62 71 134 
 
 1840 98 123 221 
 
 1850 173 144 317 
 
 1860 353 333 687 
 
 Though the statistics of selected years can give only a 
 rough picture of commercial development, the figures here 
 given suggest the striking features of our trade in this period 
 with sufficient accuracy. For about twenty years after 1815 
 the foreign commerce of the country was nearly stationary, 
 or actually declined. Not until 1835 did our exports reach 
 again the mark attained in the year 1807. Towards the end 
 of the period, however, they showed increasing strength; the 
 figures for 1860 show the upper limit which they attained, but 
 for some years previously they had been approaching the sum 
 of three hundred millions. 
 
 600. Reasons for slowness of growth. — The reasons for 
 these changes in our foreign trade must be sought both abroad 
 and at home. Our prosperity in the preceding period had 
 been due mainly to the European wars. With the return of 
 
 498 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 499 
 
 peace the states of Europe escaped from their commercial 
 dependence on the United States. Our domestic exports of 
 breadstuffs and provisions declined as Europe returned to the 
 policy of protecting the domestic food supply; and our foreign 
 exports declined even more rapidly when we lost our privileged 
 position of the great neutral carrier, and our merchants had 
 to face not only the active competition but also the adverse 
 legislation of other countries. Through most of the period 
 the annual foreign exports of the country were about twenty 
 million dollars in value. Not until near the end of the period 
 did conditions change to our advantage. The repeal of the 
 English Corn Laws in 1846, as was noted in a previous chapter, 
 marked a departure in commercial policy, which offered new 
 openings to American export industries. 
 
 601. Absorption of the national energy in territorial expan- 
 sion. — At home, moreover, the people of the United States 
 were occupied in this period with tasks which turned their 
 thoughts and interests to a large extent away from foreign 
 trade. It was a period of great territorial expansion. A 
 comparison of maps indicating the distribution of population 
 shows that extraordinary changes occurred in the interval 
 between 1810 and 1860. At the former date the people were 
 still gathered mainly along the Atlantic seaboard, face to face 
 with Europe; and most of the territory west of the Appalachian 
 mountains was still left to the Indians. The center of popula- 
 tion was not far from Washington, D. C. In 1860, on the 
 other hand, the center of population was near Chillicothe, Ohio. 
 This change indicates an enormous movement of population 
 westward. The country extending west to the Mississippi 
 river had, by 1860, been covered almost continuously with 
 settlements; many people had spread out on the great plains 
 facing the Rocky Mountains; and the population on the Pacific 
 Coast was sufficient to entitle that district to the two states 
 California and Oregon. 
 
 602. Relative decline in the importance of foreign trade. — 
 The expansion of population, necessary as it was to the develop- 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 501 
 
 ment of the country, proved in its early stages to contribute 
 comparatively little to the growth of foreign commerce. The 
 growth of our trade did not keep pace with the growth of 
 population. While the share of the average inhabitant in 
 foreign trade was over $30 in 1800, it was little over $20 in 
 1860, and ranged between $10 and $15 through much of the 
 intervening period. 
 
 It seems as if the people of the country, after the close of 
 the war of 1812, had turned their gaze away from Europe, 
 the continent which they had for centuries regarded as the 
 source of civilization, and had fixed their attention on their 
 own continent, with the determination to make its resources 
 satisfy their needs, so far as they were able. Many of the- 
 settlers in the western country led lives of extreme simplicity, 
 unable to find a market for the surplus which the fertile soil 
 returned to them, and consequently forced to restrict their 
 purchases of foreign goods to the bare minimum. 
 
 603. Importance of the problem of transportation in this 
 period. — As the American people expanded and occupied 
 territory far beyond the limits of their original settlements, 
 the question of transportation became one of increasing im- 
 portance. The early colonists had evaded rather than solved 
 the problem of transportation, by choosing for settlement 
 districts connected with the sea by short water routes, and 
 by renouncing, in large part, the attempt at intercommunica- 
 tion by land. The problem could no longer be set aside, as 
 the people spread out in the great interior valley. The resources 
 of the West could be of no advantage to the people of the 
 East, and could contribute nothing to the foreign commerce 
 of the country, uAless means were found to bring the wares 
 to market with a profit. 
 
 In the remaining sections of this chapter, therefore, we shall 
 study the development of the means of transportation in this 
 period, that we may be better able to appreciate the details 
 of the export and import trade, described in following chapters. 
 
 604.. The turnpike era. — Even in the earlier period, follow- 
 
502 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ing 1789, the condition of the common roads was felt to be 
 intolerable, and a movement for their reform set in. Stock 
 companies were chartered, to improve the more important 
 roads, and were allowed to secure a return on their investment 
 by charging toll on traffic — so much for a one-horse cart, so 
 much for a two-horse wagon, etc. Hundreds of turnpike 
 companies were chartered in the different States, and in Penn- 
 sylvania alone over 2,000 miles of improved roads had been 
 constructed by them at the close of the first quarter of the 
 century. 
 
 Until better means of transportation were provided the 
 turnpikes were important channels of trade. They united the 
 districts of the interior with the coast and with navigable 
 rivers, and made possible throughout the year a freight traffic 
 which formerly had been restricted to the sleighing season. A 
 great highway, like the Mohawk and Hudson turnpike, running 
 from Schenectady to Albany, was studded so thickly with 
 taverns that the traveler was never out of sight of the swinging 
 sign-boards. 
 
 605. Failure of the turnpikes to meet the country's demands. 
 — The success of the turnpikes stimulated the national gov- 
 ernment to construct a road from Cumberland, on the Potomac 
 River in the western part of Maryland, to Wheeling on the 
 Ohio River. This road was designed to furnish the connection^ 
 that was so keenly desired, between the districts lying on 
 either side of the mountains; and was for many years an 
 important route for passenger travel. The expense of wagon 
 transportation, however, prevented a great growth of freight 
 traffic on this or on other land routes of considerable length. 
 The cost of moving freight over the roads of this period has 
 been estimated roughly at ten cents per ton-mile, and this 
 cost prohibited the movement of ordinary freight to a great 
 distance. The turnpike, therefore, did not solve the problem 
 of transportation for the country, and turnpikes declined as 
 better means of transportation were brought into use. About 
 the middle of the century the idea of building roads of wood 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 503 
 
 took strong hold of the minds of men, and plank roads were 
 constructed with great vigor for a few years; but the idea 
 proved impracticable and led to no important results. 
 
 606. Importance of the western waterways. — Vastly more 
 important in its effects on the internal and foreign commerce 
 of the country was the development of the means of water 
 transportation. It has. been said of North America that no 
 other continent, with perhaps the exception of South America, 
 offers such excellent natural facilities for intercommunication 
 as is furnished by the system of rivers and lakes lying east of 
 the Rocky Mountains. Early in the history of our western 
 settlements traders used the rivers flowing into the Mississippi 
 to secure connection with the market at New Orleans, then 
 under Spanish rule; and the Louisiana purchase of 1803 gave 
 the United States control of the river route from source to 
 mouth. A line of packet boats plying between Pittsburg 
 and Cincinnati was started in 1794, and many flatboats were 
 employed to float cargoes down the Mississippi. The swift 
 current of that river, however, made ascending navigation 
 difficult. The crews of the flatboats had to return home by 
 land, going generally on foot through nearly a thousand miles 
 of wilderness, and using about six months on the round trip. 
 The stream could be ascended only in small boats propelled 
 by poles and sails. Though the freight rate down the river 
 was as low as one cent per ton-mile, the charge in the other 
 direction was about six times as much. The need of some 
 better means of propelling boats against the current was 
 strongly felt; and long before the steamboat had been made a 
 practical success the prediction was common that it would be 
 developed to serve the needs of commerce on our western rivers. 
 
 607. Invention and application of the steamboat. — The 
 steamboat, like many other instruments of technical progress, 
 was not the invention of a single man, but was developed by 
 contributions from several different sources. Before the adop- 
 tion of the federal constitution (1789) Fitch and Rumsey had 
 constructed steamboats which maintained a speed of four to 
 
504 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 
 101° 97° 
 
 93° 89° 86° 81° 77° 
 
 ^ 
 
 1 ~T 
 
 
 
 
 RIVER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 TRANSPORTATION 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 IS 1860 
 
 
 47° 
 43° 
 89 
 86° 
 
 31 
 
 V. 
 
 X yv' 
 
 
 *^» Navigable by Steamboat 
 "»- Navigable by Flatboat 
 Not navigable 
 
 47° 
 43° 
 39° 
 36° 
 
 c 
 
 St.Pau 
 
 
 1 s 1 
 
 
 CO / 
 
 1 3^" 
 
 T ff 
 
 ^1 Cincini 
 
 .,-^leveland 1 *'|*»' ] 
 .^ ^1j*pitts\)urg 
 
 Wsville F 
 
 ^ A^ 
 
 r 
 
 River 
 
 p5 
 
 ^*#ft.Loi^sl/^ 
 S Cairo| 
 
 iphHis ^ / 
 
 
 Little RocEl \J M 
 
 1 RivTr"*y 
 
 /vAT / 
 
 31° 
 
 
 W 
 
 n/?7y 
 
 lAgomery V <k, 
 
 31° 
 
 vj N^^jf* 
 
 / 
 
 Ijk |m 
 
 fetfc^ 
 
 'J/\ dl^ 
 
 
 ^x \ ^1, 
 
 L iv^:^ 
 
 
 t(w\ ^ - 
 
 
 
 iv 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^\;j^ 
 
 w Orleans 
 
 
 
 
 i " 
 
 U L 
 
 ^ F 
 
 J/ £ X 
 
 r c 1 \ -5 
 
 
 •2l 
 
 ~4~~l~- 
 
 
 
 
 v^ 
 
 27° 
 
 97° 
 
 93° Longitude West 89° from Greenwich 85° 81° 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BMHAY ENa.CO, 
 
 N.r. 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 505 
 
 seven miles an hour against the current of the Potomac and 
 Delaware rivers; and these successful experiments were followed 
 by many others in this country and in Europe. Robert Fulton, 
 therefore, scarcely deserves the credit commonly accorded him 
 for invention, but his service was not the less important. He 
 combined the ideas and inventions of others, and transferred 
 the steamboat from the sphere of technical experiment to that 
 of practical business operation. The Clermont, which started 
 from New York August 7, 1807, and arrived in Albany, 150 
 miles distant, in 32 hours, was the first steamboat in the 
 world which maintained a regular and continuous traffic in 
 the public service. 
 
 608. Development of river transportation. — Within a few 
 years of Fulton's success steamboats were introduced on the 
 western rivers, and after an interval of trial proved their 
 capacity for meeting the conditions. In ten years (1817) a 
 steamboat made the trip from New Orleans to Louisville in 
 25 days instead of the three months consumed by barges; 
 after another ten years (1827) a steamboat made the trip in 
 little over a week. The steamboats did more at first to reduce 
 the time of voyages than to reduce the rates of transportation, 
 but the cost of carriage declined gradually as the means of 
 transportation were improved. The following figures, giving 
 the number of steamboats employed on the rivers of the West, 
 show how rapidly steam navigation increased in importance: 
 1818, 20; 1829, 200; 1842, 450; 1848, 1,200. Size and carrying 
 capacity were growing also, and it is said that in 1847 the 
 steam tonnage of the Mississippi Valley exceeded that of the 
 whole British Empire. *' Pittsburg city, the Pennsylvania 
 great western emporium," as it was styled in a book published 
 in 1830, grew great by steamer traffic, and other cities, as 
 Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, flourished under the same 
 influence. The most obvious effect of the extension of steam 
 navigation was the growth of internal trade, especially that 
 between North and South. This trade, however, was indirectly 
 of great importance to our foreign commerce, for it enabled 
 
506 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the people of the South to apply themselves almost exclusively 
 to the growth of export products, like cotton, relying on other 
 parts of the country for food and manufactures. 
 
 609. Demand for canals in this period. — While the river 
 system offered great opportunities for developing the resources 
 of the West, it was necessarily incomplete in the connections 
 it afforded with other parts of the country. It left gaps, to 
 be filled by other means of transportation, between three 
 important sections of country, drained respectively by the 
 Mississippi and its tributaries, by the Great Lakes, and by the 
 rivers flowing into the Atlantic. The need of bridging these 
 gaps in the transportation system was felt acutely in the 
 second quarter of the century, as population spread in the 
 interior of the country, and was first met, with some degree 
 of adequacy, by the construction of canals. 
 
 There had been many projects for canals in the colonial 
 period, and some short stretches were constructed before 1800. 
 People contented themselves in general, however, with the 
 natural waterways, and sought merely to regulate their 
 channels and to regulate the flow of water by means of 
 dams. The era of activity in canal construction began after 
 the close of the second war with England, .in 1815. 
 
 610. The Erie Canal (1825), and others. — The easiest 
 route by which a canal might be carried through the Appa- 
 lachian mountain ridge lay in the State of New York, along 
 the valley of the Mohawk River. The advantages of this 
 route were recognized in the colonial period, and the advisa- 
 bility of utilizing them was felt especially during and after 
 the war of 1812, when the political danger of leaving the country 
 without means of intercommunication became apparent. The 
 construction of a canal along this route was begun in 1817, 
 and in 1825 the first boat passed from Lake Erie to the Hudson 
 River. Other canals were constructed to connect Lake Cham- 
 plain and Lake Ontario with the Erie Canal, and further 
 south, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania especially, the people 
 entered actively into the work of canal building. 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 
 
 507 
 
 Further west, canals were constructed to unite Lake Erie 
 with the Ohio River, and Lake Michigan with the Mississippi 
 River (1848), and just before the close of the period which we 
 are studying the St. Mary's Falls Canal (1855) opened the 
 passage from Lake Superior to the other lake's to boats with a 
 draft of twelve feet. 
 
 -^"^^^%^eat^ 
 
 The Erie Canal, 1825. 
 
 611. Commercial benefit of the canals. — The canals effected 
 a reduction in transportation charges which placed trade on an 
 entirely new footing along the lines that they covered. In 
 contrast with the cost of ten cents per ton-mile, on the turn- 
 pikes, we find a cost of movement of about one cent, and 
 tolls which brought the total charge to about three cents. 
 The tolls varied on different articles and were not the same 
 on different canals, but the total charges represented a great 
 saving in transportation even in the early days of the canals, 
 and tended to grow less with the passage of time. The crops 
 which grew in abundance on the fertile lands of western New 
 York had gone begging before the construction of the Erie 
 Canal, and the inhabitants had been able to purchase few 
 
508 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 509 
 
 manufactured or foreign articles. A letter from the Genesee 
 country (east of Buffalo), written in 1799, said that grain was 
 so low in price as to be scarcely worth the raising, while Euro- 
 pean goods were very dear; it took the produce of one acre to 
 buy a pair of breeches. Conditions had improved somewhat 
 before 1825, with the extension of turnpikes and with the 
 increase in the navigation of the Susquehanna River, but the 
 Erie Canal brought nevertheless a new era of prosperity to 
 this district, and first made its rich resources available for 
 consumption in the New York market and for extensive export. 
 
 612. Canals less important than rivers for distant shipments. 
 — Important as were the canals, their influence in this period 
 was local rather than national. Managers were slow to adopt 
 the practice of reducing rates on a long haul, to stimulate 
 distant traffic, and the canals served mainly local needs. We 
 read, it is true, of cotton being carried from Alabama to Phila- 
 delphia by canal, and of wheat reaching New York over the 
 Erie route from Ohio and Indiana. It is noteworthy, however, 
 that even in 1840 only one seventh of the freight carried on 
 New York canals came from outside the State. The river 
 system of the Mississippi proved still to be the most valuable 
 outlet for the products of the great interior valley, and about 
 1850 the value of the wares which it carried to the coast was 
 double that reaching the seaboard by the Hudson River and 
 its canals. A line drawn east and west through the center of 
 Ohio marked the commercial watershed between the competing 
 routes; north of that line practically all goods were shipped 
 by lake and canal, while south of it only articles like tobacco, 
 wool, and manufactured wares were sent by that route, and 
 most products were shipped by way of the Mississippi. In- 
 diana and Illinois showed a still more decided tendency to 
 the river route. In the reverse direction, however, the northern 
 route, by canal and lake, had the advantage, and the movement 
 to the interior by this route was double that ascending the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 613. Demand for further improvement met by railroads. — 
 
510 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Reviewing the substance of preceding sections, we find that of 
 the new means of transportation adopted to develop the 
 resources of the country and to make them available in internal 
 trade and foreign commerce, none had yet proved adequate to 
 meet the conditions. Transportation on the turnpikes was too 
 expensive to permit the carriage of bulky freight over great 
 distances. River navigation, valuable as it was in opening 
 the interior to commerce, still was tied fast to channels cut by 
 nature; the rivers Ynust at least be supplemented by feeders 
 and by connections across the country. Canals were of great 
 service as supplements to the rivers, but they too, v/ere re- 
 stricted in their course by the conditions set by nature, and, 
 like the rivers, could be used in northern districts during only 
 part of the year. What the country needed was a means of 
 transportation available throughout the year, free to follow 
 the paths toward which the interests of merchants most in- 
 clined, and cheap enough to encourage the exchange of common 
 articles between points widely separated. The need was met, 
 in the course of time, by the development of railroads. 
 
 614. Early American railroads little used for freight traffic. 
 — The operation of steam railroads began in this country and 
 in England at almost the same time; the Baltimore and Ohio 
 railroad was in course of construction in 1830, when the Liver- 
 pool and Manchester line was opened. In this early period, 
 however, the railroad was a much more valuable instrument 
 in the Old World than in the New. In England and other 
 European countries the railroad found great manufacturing 
 and shipping centers already established, with large volumes 
 of valuable freight to be carried short distances; the task before 
 it was comparatively easy. Conditions were somewhat similar 
 along our eastern seaboard, but in the United States in general 
 the railroad was wanted to develop agricultural districts with 
 a comparatively sparse population, separated from industrial 
 and shipping centers by hundreds of miles. The traffic offered 
 by these districts could not bear the high charges imposed by 
 railroads in their early period; these charges greatly exceeded 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 511 
 
 those paid for canal transportation and seem in some cases 
 to have equaled those paid for carriage on turnpikes. Aside 
 from coal and cotton the early American railroads carried 
 comparatively little freight; and they played but a slight part 
 in the development of commerce. 
 
 615. Extension of the railroad system in the West after 
 1850. — In 1850 there were still few railroads west of the 
 Alleghany Mountains. In contrast with nearly seven thousand 
 miles of line in the States along the eastern coast the States of 
 the upper Mississippi Valley could show little over one thou- 
 sand. Not a mile of railroad had been built in Iowa and 
 Minnesota, and there was no railroad connection with the East 
 in all the country west of the Mississippi and north of the 
 State of Missouri. 
 
 Conditions were ready at last for the extension of the 
 railroad system through the interior of the country, and the 
 West saw many thousand miles of line constructed in its 
 territory in the decade ending in 1860. The New York Central, 
 the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and other 
 lines united the roads of the interior with the East; many 
 roads were built from Lakes Erie and Michigan to the Ohio 
 and Mississippi rivers; while another set of roads extended 
 north from the Gulf of Mexico, aiming to attract the traffic 
 of the great valley southwards. 
 
 616. Effect of the improvements in transportation, espe- 
 cially marked in the following period. — The commerce of the 
 country got the full benefit of the railroad system only after 
 1860, when various improvements led to a great reduction in 
 freight rates, and stimulated an immense increase of traffic. 
 The period before the Civil War must be regarded as one of 
 preparation for the great commercial expansion in the period 
 following; the lines were laid, in large part, but men had not 
 learned to make the best use of them. Even before 1860, 
 however, the railroad had become an indispensable instrument 
 to the commerce of the country. While it did not displace 
 other means of transportation, it forced them to improvement, 
 
512 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1816-1860 
 
 513 
 
 33 
 
514 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and gave service in forms which they could not supply. There 
 will be little space in the two following chapters to refer to 
 the development of the means of transportation described here, 
 but the student must bear in mind this factor, as contributing 
 always and in very important measure to the growth of the 
 country's commerce. We may close this summary of the sub- 
 ject by giving an illustration of the effect of transportation on 
 the value of the resources of Ohio; the price of farm produce 
 in that State rose 50 per cent after the completion of the canals, 
 while the railroads appear to have doubled the price of flour, 
 trebled the price of pork, and quadrupled the price of corn. 
 
 617. Prosperity of the American merchant marine. — The 
 period from 1815 to 1860, in which the country first grappled 
 successfully with the problem of internal transportation, was 
 also the period in which the American merchant marine reached 
 the pitch of its prosperity. Even after the conclusion of peace 
 in Europe in 1815, which subjected our ships again to the 
 competition of foreign carriers and to the restrictions of other 
 countries, American ship-builders and sailors were able to hold 
 their own; and the period is marked by a great increase in our 
 merchant tonnage. Down to about 1850 the wooden sailing 
 ship was still supreme in its control of the ocean carrying trade. 
 American builders developed the ship to its highest type, the 
 clipper, and led the world in the art of naval construction. 
 Their skill, and the cheapness of good ship timber, more than 
 offset the higher prices which the tariff forced them to pay 
 for materials and equipment such as iron, copper, cordage, and 
 sail-cloth. The officers and crews of American vessels enjoyed 
 an international reputation for their efficiency. 
 
 618. Position and prospects of the merchant marine in i860. 
 — In 1855 the tonnage built in the United States was greater 
 than ever before or since; the California gold discoveries had 
 caused a great increase in the demand for transportation to 
 the Pacific Coast, from which the government excluded foreign 
 vessels, and the Crimean War forced European governments 
 to charter many American vessels for transport service. At 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 515 
 
 the close of the period (1861) the tonnage of the United States, 
 including that engaged in domestic trade, was not far from one 
 third of the total tonnage of the world; the British Empire 
 had slightly over one third; and the tonnage of all other coun- 
 tries grouped together was but little more than our own. Our 
 merchant fleet exceeded by half the amount necessary for the 
 carriage of all our exports and imports, and earned a large 
 revenue from the foreign countries which sought its services. 
 
 In one important point, however, the prospects of the 
 American merchant marine were not bright. We were not 
 keeping pace with the peoples of Europe in the construction 
 of steamers for ocean service, and of iron vessels in general. 
 American steamers were not able to win a place of any im- 
 portance in the foreign carrying trade; and before 1860 a slack- 
 ening of activity in the building of wooden sailing ships was 
 noticeable. 
 
 619. Navigation policy : reforms and restrictions. — The 
 period was marked by the removal of many of the restrictions 
 on foreign shipping which had been a regular feature of govern- 
 ment policy in previous centuries. Our ships were burdened 
 at first by heavy dues or by prohibitions in foreign ports, and 
 it was but natural that our government retaliated by taxing 
 foreign ships entering our ports. The disadvantages of this 
 system became apparent as commerce grew in the nineteenth 
 century, and a series of reciprocity treaties removed the former 
 discrimination, and put the ships of all nations on substan- 
 tially the same footing. The United States held fast, however, 
 to certain features of the old navigation policy. The coastwise 
 trade, which was interpreted to include the trade to the Pacific 
 coast by way of the Isthmus of Panama or around. Cape Horn^ 
 was reserved absolutely to American vessels; and no vessel 
 could secure American registry unless it had been built in this 
 country. Ships built abroad could not sail under the American 
 flag even though they had been purchased and were owned 
 by citizens of the United States. 
 
516 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Prepare a chart, sect. 599. [Figures of commerce for the inter- 
 vening years, showing fluctuations, will be found in the U. S. Statistical 
 Abstract.] 
 
 2. Review, in previous chapters, the accounts of the commercial 
 policy of European states during this period. 
 
 3. The westward movement of population. [Manuals of U. S. his- 
 tory; maps in Atlas of the Twelfth Census.] 
 
 4. The population of the country was as follows, in round millions 
 (counting half a million or over as one): 1790, 4: 1800, 5; 1810, 7; 1820, 10; 
 1830, 13; 1840, 17; 1850, 23; 1860, 31. Determine the average commerce 
 per capita, and indicate it on the chart. 
 
 5. The commercial history of a western town. [Select a town in one 
 of the States of the Mississippi Valley, admitted during this period, and 
 determine, from local histories and biographies, the extent of its trade 
 with other parts of the country and with foreigTi countries.] 
 
 6. What towns of the colonial period were situated at a distance 
 from the sea? What towns grew to considerable size in the interior of 
 the country in this period, and what were their means of land or water 
 transportation? [Consult historical maps, as those in Hart's Epochs of 
 American History.] 
 
 7. (a) Write a report on the history of turnpikes in the State in which 
 you live. [Consult State and local histories, making full use of table of 
 contents and index.] 
 
 (6) Development of roads in the U. S. [Hulbert, vol. 11, chap. 1.] 
 (c) The Pennsylvania State Road in 1796. [Hulbert, vol. 11, chap. 2.] 
 Id) The Catskill turnpike. [Hulbert, vol. 12, chap. 6.] 
 
 8. The Cumberland Road. [Hulbert, vol. 10; see especially chap. 4, 
 stages and freight traffic] 
 
 9. What are the chief river systems of the country; what gaps exist 
 between them? How do the facilities for river transportation in different 
 countries of Europe compare with those of the United States? 
 
 10. Development of the boats used for river traffic. [Hulbert, vol. 9, 
 diap. 4.] 
 
 11. Character and life of the western river men. [Same, chapk 5.] 
 
 12. The invention of the steamboat. [Encyclopedias; U. S. histories; 
 Thurston's Fulton, N. Y., 1891; S. Bullock in Conn. Magazine, 1905, 9: 
 440-455, an excellent article with illustrations.] 
 
 13. Write a report on the influence of the steamboat in building up 
 one of the cities named. [Local histories.] 
 
 14. Early canal projects. [Hulbert, vol. 13, chaps. 2, 3.] 
 
 15. The Mohawk River route. [Hulbert, vol. 14, chap. 1.] 
 
NATIONAL EXPANSION, 1815-1860 517 
 
 16. Early projects for a canal in the Mohawk Valley. [Same, chap. 2.] 
 
 17. The Erie Canal. [Same, chap. 4.] 
 
 18. Economic effects of the Erie Canal. [Hulbert, vol. 14, chap. 5.] 
 
 19. Origin of American railroads. [Johnson, chap. 2.] 
 
 20. Did any European country present conditions like those of the 
 U. S., in respect to railroad development? What has been the history of 
 railroads in Russia? [See chap. 44.] 
 
 21. Growth of the American railroad system. [Johnson, chap. 3; 
 Hadley, chap. 2; Coman, 234-242.] 
 
 22. Because Che Ohio farmer received more for his products, does it 
 follow that railroads have raised the price of articles and forced consumers 
 to pay more for them? 
 
 23. Development of the merchant marine, 1815-1860. [Marvin, 
 chaps. 9, 11, 12; Abbot, chaps. 1, 2.] 
 
 24. American whalers. [Marvin, chap. 8.] 
 
 25. Navigation laws of the U. S.: history and criticism. [Wells, 
 Merch. marine.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 See chapter xlv for general works. 
 
 Special Accounts. — Worthy P. Stems, ** Foreign trade of U. S. 
 from 1820 to 1840, Jour. Pol. Econ., Chicago, Dec, 1899, 8: 34-57, 452- 
 490; J. McGregor, * Commercial statistics; J. S. Homans, * Cyclopedia; 
 J. D. B. DeBow, * Industrial resources. 
 
 Special Topics. — Hulbert, Historic highways; E. R. Johnson, 
 Amer. railway, (with references); A. T. Hadley, Railroad trans.; C. F. 
 Adams, Jr., Railroads; S. D. Andrews, Report on colonial and lake trade, 
 1853 (document check-list no. 622); F. E. Haynes, Reciprocity treaty with 
 Canada, Pub. Amer. Ec. Assoc, 1892, 7: 417-486; Chalfant Robinson, 
 Two reciprocity treaties (Canada, 1854, Hawaii, 1876), New Haven, 
 1904. 
 
CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 EXPORTS, 1815-1860 
 
 620. Chief exports in i860. — The following table gives 
 the chief items among the exports of the country in 1860, and 
 corresponding items made up from the annual average of the 
 years 1802-1804, as a basis from which to appreciate the 
 changes. 
 
 Exports of U. S., Millions of Dollars 
 
 1802-4 
 
 I860 
 
 Vegetable foods 13 
 
 Cotton 6. 
 
 Tobacco 6 
 
 Animal products 3 
 
 Fish products 2 
 
 Forest products 4 
 
 Manufactures 2 
 
 Total of these items, omitting decimals 36 
 
 Total domestic exports including items omitted 39 
 
 Total foreign exports 28 
 
 Exports of precious metals 
 
 27 
 191. 
 15 
 20 
 4 
 13 
 37 
 307 
 316 
 26 
 . ... 56 
 
 621. Changes since 1800. — It will be noted, as said above, 
 that the foreign exports of the country did not increase during 
 the period, and were actually less in 1860 than they were about 
 1800. Comparing the figures for the total exports of domestic 
 merchandise we find that this, the most important branch of 
 our commerce, increased about eightfold in value between 
 the years chosen for comparison. All of the separate classes 
 of wares contributed to the growth of our export trade, but in 
 very different measure, as is apparent when the figures are 
 
 518 
 
EXPORTS, 1815-1860 519 
 
 compared. The export industries which were most prominent 
 in the colonial and early national periods had not kept their 
 place in the movement of progress, and their output for export 
 had merely doubled, roughly, in this period. There is apparent, 
 on the other hand, a great growth in the export of manufac- 
 tured wares; and the export of cotton, which in 1789 was 
 practically nothing, and about 1800 was less than seven million, 
 had risen to the enormous sum of one hundred and ninety 
 million, considerably more than half in value of the total 
 exports of the country. The history of commerce presents no 
 parallel to the rapid rise of cotton in the commerce of the 
 United States at this period, and the subject demands careful 
 consideration. 
 
 622. Cotton before iSoo. — The word cotton, now applied 
 exclusively to the fibers attached to the seed of a shrub of 
 the mallow family, was formerly a general term used for 
 vegetable fibers coming from several different sources. The 
 fibers acquired from the present cotton shrub, or from a vine 
 or tree, had been used for textile fabrics from ancient times. 
 The manufacture of cotton goods, however, was neglected in 
 Europe until the eighteenth century, and at the beginning of 
 our national existence much of the supply of raw cotton still 
 came from the ancient seat of the cotton industry in Asia. 
 From almost the beginning of the colonial period in American 
 history experiments had been made with cotton culture, but 
 the colonists found no incentive to devote themselves to cotton 
 cultivation on a large scale. The separation of the fiber from 
 the seeds was a tedious process, there was no market for raw 
 cotton in the colonies, and other crops were found to return 
 larger profits to the cultivator. Cotton was grown success- 
 fully on some of the islands of semi-tropical America, but the 
 territory now forming the United States counted for nothing 
 as a source of cotton when the national government was 
 established in 1789. So weak, in fact, was the cotton industry 
 at this time, that it was protected by a duty of three cents a 
 pound on imported cotton, included in the first national tariff. 
 
520 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 623. Growth in importance of cotton. — Various influences, 
 however, combined about 1789 to bring into prominence the 
 possibilities of cotton as a regular crop. The great improve- 
 ments in textile machinery caused at this time an increased 
 demand for the raw material. The other crops which were 
 then raised in the territory now occupied by cotton were not 
 flourishing. The indigo culture, for reasons which have been 
 noted above, was unpopular; rice culture had declined during 
 the Revolution, as the War had broken up the organization of 
 slave labor in the rice districts; tobacco was giving smaller 
 returns, as the land was exhausted by continuous cropping. 
 A new variety of cotton, moreover, had recently been introduced 
 from the Bahamas, known as sea-island or long-staple; the 
 fibers were long and silky, suited to the manufacture of fine 
 threads and fabrics, and they were more readily separated 
 from the seeds than were the fibers of the ordinary short-staple 
 or upland variety. The cultivation of this variety was an 
 assured success in the narrow strip along the coast where it 
 could be grown; and further inland, where sea-island cotton 
 could not be raised, people began to strive persistently to 
 overcome the difficulties of the cultivation of the upland 
 variety. 
 
 624. Demand for efficient means of cleaning cotton. — The 
 chief obstacle to the cultivation of upland cotton was now 
 the difficulty of separating the fibers from the seeds. To 
 perform the process by hand-picking was out of the question, 
 as a man in this way could clean only one pound of cotton in 
 a day. Various simple machines had been devised to effect 
 the separation of the seeds, and these were fairly successful 
 when applied to sea-island cotton, enabling a man to clean 
 fifty or sixty pounds. None of them, however, was a success 
 when applied to upland cotton, whose short fibers adhered 
 very tenaciously to the seeds. 
 
 The problem was solved by a native of New England, Eli 
 Whitney, who had gone south as a teacher, and who invented 
 the cotton gin (engine) which proved capable of cleaning 
 
EXPORTS, 1815-1860 521 
 
 upland cotton, and so made the cultivation of that crop a 
 commercial possibility. The conditions may be described in 
 Whitney's own words, used in a memorial to the government, 
 asking for an extension of his patent. He showed ''That, 
 being in the state of Georgia in the year 1793, he was informed 
 by the planters that the agriculture of that State was unpro- 
 ductive, especially in the interior, where it produced little or 
 nothing for exportation. That attempts had been made to 
 cultivate cotton, but that the prospect of success was not 
 flattering. That of the various kinds which had been tried in 
 the interior none of them were productive, except the green 
 seed cotton, which was so extremely difficult to clean as to 
 discourage all further attempts to raise it. That it was gener- 
 ally believed this species of cotton might be cultivated with 
 great advantage, if any cheap and expeditious method of 
 separating it from its seeds could be discovered, and that such 
 a discovery would be highly beneficial both to the public and 
 the inventor." 
 
 625. Invention of the saw gin by Whitney, 1793. — Encour- 
 aged by the terms of the national patent law, on which he 
 relied for a monopoly of his invention, Whitney set to work, 
 and in a short time had devised a form of cotton-gin which, 
 with minor alterations, has remained in use ever since. The 
 raw cotton was fed through a wire grating to a cylinder on 
 the surface of which were wires or saw teeth, that caught the 
 fibers and pulled them through, the seeds being retained by 
 the grating. The gin was a complete success, enabling a man 
 to clean several hundred pounds of cotton in a day. Whitney 
 himself reaped comparatively little benefit from his invention, 
 as he found it impossible to prevent infringements; he said in 
 1812, with slight exaggeration, that the total amount which 
 he had realized was less than the saving in cost effected in 
 one hour by his machines then in operation. The country, 
 hov/ever, was an immense gainer, for the last obstacle to the 
 successful cultivation of cotton was removed. 
 
 626. Extension of cotton cultivation, and increase of exports. 
 
522 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 — The exports of cotton, which in 1793, the year of Whitney's 
 invention, had been only two thousand bales, rose by leaps 
 and bounds. In 1802 they passed one hundred thousand 
 bales, in 1822 five hundred thousand, in 1834 one million, in 
 1843 two million, in 1858 three million. The States along 
 the Atlantic coast, in which cotton culture first sprang up, 
 continued for many years to be the main seat of the industry. 
 After the war of 1812, however, the cultivation of cotton 
 spread in the Southwest, where rich river bottoms and prairie 
 lands offered soil of exceptional fertility, and where the numer- 
 ous rivers facilitated transportation. The exports of cotton 
 from New Orleans increased tenfold in the years 1816 to 1830, 
 and at this later date the western States produced the larger 
 part of the cotton supply. At the close of the period which 
 we are studying (1860) over half of the total crop was raised 
 in the three States Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 
 
 627. King Cotton. — The success of the cotton culture in 
 this country was attended by far-reaching results in economic 
 and political history. We must restrict ourselves here to the 
 commercial aspects of the cotton industry, without discussing 
 such topics as its relations to slavery and its influence in 
 bringing on the Civil War. 
 
 Never in the world's history have producers enjoyed such 
 an exalted position in commerce as that which was held by 
 the planters of the cotton States. The larger part of the 
 world's supply of an article regarded as of the first necessity 
 came from a comparatively restricted area in the South. The 
 people of Europe and other continents had become used to 
 cotton textiles, great factories had grown up to manufacture 
 them, but it seemed as though people must go unclad and 
 factories must stop work, if the United States should refuse 
 to deliver raw cotton. For years before the Civil War fear 
 of a cotton famine had haunted the minds of European manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 Cotton took a position in national commerce equal in 
 importance to that which it occupied in international trade. 
 
EXPORTS, 1815-1860 523 
 
 Not only did it furnish directly more than half of the total 
 exports of the United States; it shared its prosperity with other 
 industries, and influenced the development of every part of 
 the country. Northern merchants made fortunes in handling 
 and transporting Southern cotton; the manufacturers of every 
 district found in the South a market where people had plenty 
 of money to buy goods which they were too busy to make; 
 the farmers of the Northwest supplied in considerable part the 
 needs of the South for food. The people of the South were 
 not blind to these facts, and tended, indeed, to exaggerate 
 their importance. As a sample of their attitude this extract 
 from a speech by Senator Hammond in 1858 may be taken: 
 ''Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they 
 make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet. 
 What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? 
 I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this 
 is certain, England would topple headlong, and carry the 
 whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war 
 on cotton. No Power on the earth dares to make war on it 
 — cotton is king." 
 
 628. Slight contributions of the South to exports, aside from 
 cotton. — In the period before the Civil War, when southern 
 plantations were worked by slaves, it was considered to be the 
 best policy to plant cotton continuously, without alternation 
 or diversification of crops, though this policy led necessarily 
 to exhaustion of the soil and required frequent removals to 
 fresh land. Cotton was, therefore, the single product which 
 the South contributed in great quantities to the internal and 
 foreign trade of the country. The rice culture was main- 
 tained on the eastern coast and was extended along the 
 Gulf, but there was little increase in the export of rice, as 
 the crop was consumed largely at home. Indigo disappeared 
 from the list of American products. Tobacco production 
 spread in the states of the Ohio valley, and the exports of 
 this ware rose after the middle of the century to double the 
 value which they had about 1800, but a comparison of the 
 
524 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 figures given at the opening of the chapter shows that ich 
 bacco declined still further from the position it had held in 
 colonial times. 
 
 629. Trade between the North, the South, and Europe. — 
 In 1860 only one third, approximately, of the total exports 
 of the country came from the North. Conditions in this period 
 resembled closely those of colonial times, with the substitution 
 of the southern States for the West Indies in the triangle of 
 trade. The North imported from Europe far more than it 
 could export in return; it shipped South, however, large quan- 
 tities of foodstuffs and manufactures; and the South gave in 
 exchange bills on Europe which were drawn against the great 
 quantities of cotton sent thither. Cotton from the South to 
 Europe, manufactures from Europe to the North, manufactures 
 and foodstuffs from the North to the South: such were the 
 three sides of the triangle. 
 
 630. Chief exports from the North. — The North could no 
 longer look to colonial industries, like fisheries and forestry, 
 to provide the means of purchasing the foreign wares which 
 it required. The exports from those industries had increased, 
 it is true, but were still so small that they had become items 
 of slight importance in the total. The exports of manufac- 
 tures, on the other hand, had grown very rapidly, and formed- 
 now a considerable item in our trade. The South contributed 
 to this class some wares (manufactured tobacco, turpentine, 
 cottonseed oil cake), but the products of developed manufac- 
 ture came almost entirely from the North; manufactures of 
 cotton and of iron were the leading items. The rise of these 
 manufactures will be treated in the next chapter. At the 
 North, however, as at the South, agricultural products held the 
 first place among the exports. Foodstuffs and animal products 
 were exported to the value of about fifty million dollars, and 
 these wares came chiefly from the North. The total is small in 
 comparison with that of the cotton export (one hundred and 
 ninety million), and gave little promise of the remarkable ex- 
 pansion which was to follow after the Civil War; still, foodstuffs 
 
EXPORTS, 1815-1860 525 
 
 and animal products were the mainstay of the Northern ex- 
 port trade. 
 
 631. Gradual increase in the exports of foodstuffs. — The 
 increase in the exports of northern agriculture was rather less 
 than would be expected from a people rapidly increasing in 
 numbers and provided with an abundance of fertile land. 
 For many years after the close of the war of 1812 commerce 
 in wheat and flour languished, and even toward 1840 the 
 export of those articles was less than it had been at the opening 
 of the century. There was talk, even, of imposing a duty on 
 wheat, to protect the farmers of the Atlantic seaboard from 
 imports. As late as 1835 Ohio was the only grain-exporting 
 territory of the West, and the first grain shipment on the 
 Great Lakes, of which there is record, was made about that 
 time. Chicago became of importance as a center of grain 
 shipments only about 1850. In the decade from 1850 to 1860, 
 however, the Chicago shipments increased (roughly) from two 
 to twenty million bushels, and the total exports rose rapidly; 
 canals and railways were at last bringing the cheap grain from 
 the West to the people of Europe, who at last were ready to 
 welcome it. The export of animal products was growing also. 
 Lard and pickled. pork were the chief items under this head, 
 for the lack of modern appliances prevented the export of 
 fresh meat; but the price of hogs at Cincinnati doubled in the 
 fifteen years preceding 1860, and western farmers were en- 
 couraged to give increased attention to the supply of animal 
 products. 
 
 632. Exports of precious metals; result of the California 
 gold discoveries. — The last item in the list of exports given 
 at the beginning of the chapter is that of precious metals, 
 which we shipped abroad to the value of more than fifty 
 million dollars. Ordinarily the exports and imports of pre- 
 cious metals are not included in the figures of a country's 
 trade. Coin and bullion are used to make up the balance of 
 accounts between different countries; they may leave a country 
 one year and may return to it the next year; and they repre- 
 
526 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 sent, therefore, no contribution to commerce like that of the 
 shipment of merchandise. An exception must be made, how- 
 ever, in the case of the few countries which produce such 
 quantities of gold and silver that they can regularly export a 
 surplus. The mines of precious metals are to these countries 
 as much a commercial resource as are the coal or iron mines 
 to countries like England and Germany, The United States 
 was not at first among these favored countries; it produced 
 little gold and less silver, and needed to import most of the 
 precious metals which it required for use as currency and in 
 the arts. These conditions were suddenly reversed by the 
 discovery of gold in California in 1848. The gold production 
 of the country, which had been formerly less than a million 
 dollars a year, had risen by 1850 to fifty million, and pro- 
 vided the country with a handsome surplus which it could 
 afford to exchange abroad for merchandise. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Prepare a graphic chart of the figures, sect. 620, for comparison 
 with earlier and later conditions. 
 
 2. Review the distinction between domestic and foreign exports. 
 The principal foreign wares exported from the U. S. in 1860 were as fol- 
 lows, in millions of dollars: coffee, 2.2, sugar 2.1, tea 1.9, hides 1.6, tobacco 
 0.7. From what countries do you think these wares came? 
 
 3. Write a report on one of the following topics: 
 (a) The cotton plant and cotton fiber. 
 
 (6) Different varieties of cotton. 
 
 (c) History of cotton, outside America, before 1800. 
 
 (d) History of cotton in America before 1800. 
 [Encyclopedias; commercial geographies; Hammond, pp. 3-33, 
 
 references in bibliography.] 
 
 4. Invention of the cotton gin by Whitney. [Hammond; Amer. 
 Hist. Review, Oct., 1897, 3: 90-127.] 
 
 5. What changes have been made in the cotton gin since its inven- 
 tion? [Encyclopedia.] 
 
 6. How long do you think the world would have had to wait for 
 an efficient gin if Whitney had not supplied the need? 
 
 7. Importance of cotton in southern agriculture before the Civil War. 
 [Hammond, 67-119.] 
 
EXPORTS, 1815-1860 527 
 
 8. What other wares have held the position of "king" in the com- 
 merce of countries? In what period and in what country were the follow- 
 ing wares especially important among the exports: tin, silk, wool, spices, 
 silver? 
 
 9. Connection of cotton and slavery. [Hammond, 34-66.] 
 
 10. The cotton trade, 1815-1860. [Hammond, 243-277.] 
 
 11. Rice culture before the Civil War. [Depew, chap. 38 by Tal- 
 mage; DeBow, vol. 2.] 
 
 12. Later history of American fisheries, and international questions 
 to which they have given rise. [Census; McMaster and Moore in Cam- 
 bridge Mod. hist., vol. 7, 363 ff., 657 ff .] 
 
 13. Trade in turpentine and rosin. [Census, 1900, 9: 1001-1012.] 
 
 14. The development of the American lumber industry. [Depew, 
 chap. 30, by Femow.] 
 
 15. Development of Cincinnati or Chicago as a market for meat and 
 breadstuffs. [Local histories.] 
 
 16. What countries were the chief sources of supply of gold and 
 silver before 1850? [Encyclopedias.] 
 
 17. The California gold discovery. [Narrative histories of U. S.] 
 
 18. Commerce of California before the discovery of gold, [Read the 
 interesting narrative of a sailor's life by R. H. Dana, Two years before the 
 mast, Boston, Houghton, $1.] 
 
 19. The overland route to California. [Henry Inman, The old Santa 
 F^ trail, N. Y., Macmillan, 1899, $3.50; Salt Lake trail, N. Y., 1898, $2.50.] 
 
 20. Development of gold and silver mining. [C. H. Shinn, Story of 
 the mine, N. Y., Appleton, 1896.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter xlviii. 
 
CHAPTER L 
 IMPORTS, POLICY, DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1816-1860 
 
 633. Chief imports in i860. — The imports of the United 
 States have been so varied in character that it is impossible to 
 classify them with any exactness. An attempt will be made 
 in this section, however, to indicate the leading items in our 
 imports in 1860, giving values in round millions of dollars. 
 Of the total of the year, 353, the largest share fell to manu- 
 factures. Under this head the chief place was taken by the 
 textiles (wool 38, silk 33, cotton 32, linen 10); nearly one 
 third of the total imports of the country was derived from 
 these four leading branches of the textile manufacture. Most 
 of the other manufactures imported fell below the mark of 
 5 millions; a noteworthy exception is the item of iron and 
 steel in various forms, amounting to 21 millions. In com- 
 parison with the amount of manufactures imported, the class 
 of raw materials, to be used for manufacture in this country^ 
 was still small; we purchased abroad considerable amounts of 
 hides and skins, wool, etc., but in general we either manu- 
 factured our wares out of materials procured at home or sent 
 abroad for the finished product. The colonial wares had 
 gained both in value and in the proportion which they formed 
 of the total imports; the chief items in this class were sugar 
 31, coffee 21, tea 8, cigars and tobacco 6, molasses 5, alto- 
 gether amounting to about one fifth of the imports of the 
 year. 
 
 634. Significance of the import trade at this time. — The 
 general character of our import trade, evidently, had not 
 changed greatly in the seventy years since the establishment 
 of the national government. The attractions of farming were 
 
 528 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1815-1860 529 
 
 SO great, when fertile land was to be had in abundance and 
 when there was an eager demand for such products as cotton 
 and foodstuffs, that the American people still gave most of its 
 energy to raising raw materials; and found it profitable still to 
 look to other countries for much of its supply of manufactured 
 wares. The policy of protection, which was established in 
 the period under consideration, had not as yet succeeded in 
 building up manufactures capable of supplying the wants of 
 the home market. The comparatively small amount of ma- 
 terials imported for our factories showed that our manufactures 
 were still local in character, without the strength, or else 
 denied the opportunity, to reach out and draw from distant 
 sources the raw materials which they could work up and return 
 to the currents of the world's trade. 
 
 The growth in the imports of colonial products represented 
 the increase of general prosperity, enabling the people to con- 
 sume luxuries in greater quantity. Dividing the amount of 
 these wares imported by the population of the country, and 
 so securing a rough idea of the share falling to each individual, 
 we find that the per capita consumption rose as follows from 
 1790 to 1860: coffee from about 1 pound in 1790 to over 5 
 pounds in 1860, sugar from less than 5 pounds to over 30. 
 
 635. Growth of domestic manufactures. — Though the im- 
 ports of manufactured wares increased greatly in the course 
 of this period, it must not be assumed that the United States 
 was as wholly dependent on foreign manufactures in 1860 as 
 it had been in 1790. A population growing rapidly both in 
 numbers and in welfare caused a demand for manufactures 
 which stimulated some producers to choose manufacturing 
 instead of farming for their livelihood, and the government 
 aided these individuals by taxing imported wares, and so 
 giving the domestic producer an advantage in the home market. 
 In the following sections we shall survey the chief branches 
 of manufacture which grew up in the United States at this 
 time, and consider the bearing of the protective tariff on their 
 development. 
 34 
 
530 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 636. Increase in the use of coal. — Some idea of the develop- 
 ment of modern forms of manufacture in the United States 
 can be gained by tracing the history of coal, the great source 
 of power for the developed system of factory industry. The 
 demand for coal was still very small in the first quarter of 
 the century; in 1830 the total production was less than half- 
 a million tons, and the United States was surpassed in coal 
 output by four of the states of Europe. The second quarter 
 of the century was marked by a great extension in the use 
 of steam power, and the successful application of coal to 
 iron making; by 1850 the United States had reached the 
 second place among the countries of the world in coal produc- 
 tion, with an output of over seven million tons. Small as this 
 seems in comparison with the output of Great Britain at that 
 time (54 million), or the output of the United States in 1900 
 (240 million) , it marked a tremendous advance over conditions 
 as they were about 1800, and showed that at least the 
 country had passed through the preparatory stage of indus- 
 trial development. 
 
 637. Sluggish development of the iron industry. — While the 
 use of coal is perhaps the best index of a country's develop- 
 ment in the modern forms of manufacturing and transporta- 
 tion, the use of iron is also certainly of great significance; 
 iron is the fulcrum through which the power of steam is applied, 
 to repeat Jevons' figure of speech. Great importance attached, 
 therefore, as has been noted in previous chapters, to the im- 
 provements introduced in the English iron manufacture towards 
 1800, by which it was freed from dependence on charcoal, and 
 was enabled to turn out increased quantities of pig and bar 
 iron at reasonable prices. American iron makers showed a 
 slackness which we find it hard now to forgive in adopting 
 the improved processes. Coal and coke were not used in the 
 American iron manufacture until about 1840, and the new 
 methods of puddling and rolling, which had transformed the 
 English iron industry, were applied in this country only shortly 
 before that date, about half a century after their introduction 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1815-1860 531 
 
 in England. Some excuse can be found for our delay in the 
 lack of transportation facilities for bringing the iron ore and 
 coke together. The result, at any rate, was unfortunate. A 
 heavy duty was laid on imported iron, to protect the home 
 producer, but did not make up for his inefficiency. It was 
 necessary, therefore, throughout the period, to import a con- 
 siderable part of the necessary pig and bar iron and steel, 
 paying the higher prices caused by the tariff; and the machine 
 industries could not but suffer from the added expense. Down 
 to 1860 our iron industry was not strong enough to export 
 crude iron in any quantity, though American ingenuity suc- 
 ceeded in finding a market for considerable quantities of iron 
 manufactures. 
 
 638. Success of the cotton manufacture. — With one of the 
 branches of textile manufacture, that of cotton, the Americans 
 had more success. Thanks to the alertness of the cotton 
 manufacturers in introducing improved machinery, and to the 
 advantages they enjoyed in their supply of raw material, they 
 had soon outgrown the need of protection. The higher wages 
 which they paid to American laborers were more than offset 
 by the quantity of work turned out, and in the manufacture 
 of the common sorts of piece goods they did not fear the com- 
 petition of any other country. Large manufacturing towns 
 grew up in New England to meet the demand for cloth which 
 formerly had been made in the household of the consumer, 
 and by 1850 there were as many cotton spindles at work in 
 New England as there were inhabitants. American cottons 
 were sold so readily in South America and other foreign markets 
 that English manufacturers condescended to imitate them, and 
 our exports of cotton manufactures in 1860 amounted to over 
 ten million dollars, more than double the export of fish products, 
 and not far below the export of forest products. The strength 
 of the American cotton manufacture lay in the production of 
 plain cloth; the bulk of the imports consisted of finer and 
 fancy products. 
 
 639. Failure to establish a strong woolen manufacture. — 
 
532 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 The United States was, of course, peculiarly fortunate in its 
 supply of raw material for the cotton manufacture. It en- 
 joyed no such advantage with respect to wool. The wool 
 fibers from American sheep were comparatively short, and 
 unsuited to the manufacture of the finer woolens and worsteds. 
 Manufacturers were hampered in their use of other wools by 
 a tariff designed to protect the sheep growers, and paid for 
 other raw materials higher prices than their competitors in 
 England, while they could not, as in the cotton industry, 
 make up for the higher wages in this country by the skilful 
 application of machinery. Under these conditions the duties 
 designed to check the importation of woolen manufactures 
 from abroad were only a partial protection to the American 
 producer; and the woolen manufacture did not flourish in this 
 country. We could in large part supply the demand of the 
 home market for coarser fabrics (flannels, blankets, etc.), but 
 we manufactured no wool for export, and we continued to 
 import the finer fabrics. 
 
 640. Other manufactures. — In the manufacture of other 
 textile products which were imported in considerable amounts, 
 silk and linen, the United States made no important progress 
 during this period. Sewing silk and silk trimmings were made 
 in the country, but the great bulk of silk manufactures were 
 bought in France and England, while there were only the 
 beginnings of a linen manufacture in this country before the 
 Civil War. 
 
 Other manufactures existed besides those named, but the 
 most important of them were devoted chiefly to the first 
 processes in working up raw materials, and scarcely correspond 
 to our ideas of manufacturing at the present time. This 
 point is illustrated by the list of domestic manufactures ex- 
 ported from the country in 1860, as given by the government. 
 Of the total of 37 millions, the items cotton 10.9 and iron 
 5.7 were the product of developed manufacture, and the same 
 may be said, perhaps, of the item copper and brass and their 
 manufactures, 1.6. Among the other items, however, the 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1815-1860 533 
 
 leading products were of a different character, and showed 
 strength in raw materials rather than in manufacture (manu- 
 factured tobacco 3.3, spirits of turpentine 1.9, oil cake 1.6, 
 household furniture 1.0). 
 
 641. Dependence of the South on the North for manufac- 
 tured wares. — It is noteworthy that most of the manufactures 
 which grew up in the United States in this period were estab- 
 lished in the North. The prevalence of slavery in the South 
 and the attractions of agriculture in that section prevented the 
 rise of any considerable manufacturing industry; and the 
 South manufactured even of its staple product, cotton, less 
 than one fifth as much as the mills of the North. Conditions 
 were thus adapted to the triangular trade, as it has been 
 termed above, by which surplus shipments from the North 
 to the South balanced surplus shipments from the South to 
 Europe The results were set forth in the ' following extract 
 from a book published by a Southerner in 1857: 
 
 ''In one way or another we are more or less subservient to 
 the North every day of our lives. In infancy we are swaddled 
 in Northern muslin; in childhood we are humored with Northern 
 gewgaws; in youth we are instructed out of Northern books; 
 at the age of maturity we sow our 'wild oats' on Northern 
 soil; ... in the decline of life we remedy our eyesight with 
 Northern spectacles; in old age we are drugged with Northern 
 physic; and, finally, when we die, our inanimate bodies, shrouded 
 in Northern cambric, are stretched upon the bier, borne to the 
 grave in a Northern carriage, entombed with a Northern 
 spade, and memorized with a Northern slab!'' 
 
 We shall see in the following sections, reviewing the course 
 of tariff policy, that the North and the South took opposite 
 sides with respect to the protective tariff. The South, which 
 had practically no manufactures, desired free trade, that it 
 might make its purchases in the cheapest market, while the 
 North desired protection for its growing manufactures. 
 
 642. Beginning of the system of protective tariffs, i8i6. — 
 In previous sections (596-598) attention was directed to the 
 
534 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fact that the earliest tariffs were but slightly protective. The 
 establishment of manufactures was stimulated much more by 
 the interruption of commerce at the time of the embargo and 
 of the war with England than by any deliberate policy of 
 protection. At the close of the war of 1812, however, the time 
 seemed to have come for the legislators to intervene in favor 
 of American manufacturing industries. The privations of the 
 war period awakened people to the dependence of the United 
 States on Europe, which seemed unworthy of a free state and 
 which seemed unsafe from the military standpoint. The manu- 
 factures which had grown up during the war were exposed, at 
 the return of peace, to a flood of imports which threatened 
 to reconquer the American market for the foreign manufacturer. 
 The tariff of 1816, therefore, included a number of duties 
 designed to restrict imports for the benefit of the American 
 producer; the scale of duties was moderate, the highest per- 
 manent duty being 20 per cent. 
 
 643. Course of tariff policy, 1816-1860. — The conflict of 
 interests between different sections of the country led to 
 many changes in the tariff schedules, and occasioned some 
 bitter political contests. Without attempting to recount the 
 details, it may be said in summary that the course of the ten- 
 dency was toward higher duties till about 1830, when some 
 of the duties amounted to 40 per cent and 50 per cent or 
 more. 
 
 The high duties were particularly obnoxious to Southerners, 
 who considered them a tax taken from their pockets for the 
 benefit of the North, and who fought persistently for a reduc- 
 tion. They finally secured a hearing; and duties were steadily 
 reduced in the period from 1833 to 1842 until they stood, at 
 the later date, at a general level of 20 per cent. The tariff 
 remained at this low level only two months, when it gave 
 place to another tariff with higher duties; the average of the 
 duties levied ad valorem was 33 per cent, while some duties 
 rose far above this rate. Finally, from 1846 until the Civil 
 War, the country was under a low tariff; duties were reduced 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1815-1860 535 
 
 until the maximum protective duty was 24 per cent, while 
 the general level was about 20 per cent. 
 
 644. Effect of the tariff on industrial development. — What 
 effect did the tariff policy have upon the industries and the 
 commerce of the country? To this question the only safe 
 answer is that the effect of the tariff was much less, for good 
 or for bad, than has commonly been stated by writers on 
 either side of the controversy between protection and free 
 trade. The country has grown rich from the wealth of its 
 natural resources and the character of its people. The tariff 
 diverted into manufacturing more people than would otherwise 
 have chosen that branch of production, but it did not succeed 
 in making them all prosperous. Manufactures which were 
 suited to the conditions of the time, as the cotton manufac- 
 ture, grew strong under the tariff, and would have grown strong 
 without it; other manufactures, such as those of iron and 
 wool, were still feeble after years of protection. Commerce 
 must have felt the effect of the tariff, for protection could be 
 effective only as it restricted the exchange of wares with 
 foreign countries. We are tempted to ascribe the rapid 
 increase in imports and exports after 1846 to the reduction 
 in duties. Yet, even here, many other influences favored the 
 growth of our foreign trade, and it is impossible to determine 
 which of them all was most effective. 
 
 645. Changes in the relative importance of shipping ports; 
 southern ports and the export trade. — In the course of this 
 period the development of new land in the West and South- 
 west, and the rise in importance of the cotton crop, effected 
 some notable changes in the relative rank of the ports of the 
 country. Measuring importance by the value of the domestic 
 exports, we find that New York now held the first place; this 
 port was in 1860 the shipping point for nearly one third of 
 the total export values of the country. A considerable part 
 of the value of exports from New York, however, was formed 
 of precious metals, attracted there by the banks and the 
 facilities for rapid voyages on passenger vessels. If we con- 
 
536 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fine ourselves to the shipment of ordinary merchandise, we find 
 that New York, in spite of the western connections afforded 
 by the railroads and the Erie Canal, took second place, showing 
 but two thirds of the export values leaving the country by 
 'way of New Orleans. This port was the natural outlet for 
 the cotton-growing country of the lower Mississippi valley, and 
 its export of the one ware, cotton, exceeded in value all the 
 merchandise shipped from New York. It was cotton, again, 
 that gave standing to the ports next in rank, Mobile, Charleston, 
 and Savannah; the exports from those cities, aside from that 
 single staple, were insignificant. Old ports like Boston and 
 Baltimore had sunk to the sixth and seventh place, while 
 Philadelphia, once the leader, was still lower on the list, and 
 was outranked by San Francisco if the gold shipments from 
 that port be counted. 
 
 646. Northern ports and the import trade. — The reader who 
 remembers what has been said above about the triangular 
 course of trade in this period will not be surprised to learn 
 that the figures of imports tell a very different story. New 
 York enjoyed an import trade nearly double that of all the 
 other ports of the country together; it was the great distributing 
 point for European manufactures, from which the various 
 ports of the country secured most of their supply. Second in 
 rank, but separated by an immense interval, was another 
 northern port, Boston; while New Orleans was but a poor 
 third, and Philadelphia and Baltimore followed in the order 
 named. Other southern ports, ranking high in the value of 
 their exports, had only an inconsiderable import trade. 
 
 647. Changes in the direction of trade. New character of 
 the trade with England. — There had been changes also in the 
 direction of our trade abroad. The following brief table gives 
 figures in round millions, for 1860, which may be compared 
 with the figures for 1790 given in section 573. 
 
 It will be noted that our trade with English-speaking people 
 formed still the most important part of our total commerce. A 
 noteworthy change had taken place, however, in our trade with 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1815-1860 537 
 
 Great Britain and her dominions 
 
 Including Canada 
 
 British West Indies . 
 
 France and her dominions 
 
 Spain and her dominions 
 
 Inckiding Cuba 
 
 the British possessions. At any earlier period we imported 
 from them far more than we could sell to them in return; the 
 balance of trade was against us, as men said. This condition 
 had been reversed by the rise of the cotton trade, and was to 
 be still further affected by our export of foodstuffs. Great 
 Britain was now dependent on us for the raw material of her 
 most important manufacture, and was seeking from us also 
 increasing supplies of food for her factory population. 
 
 648. Trade with Canada and the West Indies. — Our trade 
 with Canada was of comparatively recent growth. Restrictive 
 duties had formerly checked exchange with our northern 
 neighbor, but as population and industries developed on either 
 side of the frontier a demand for greater freedom of exchange 
 made itself felt; duties were reduced, a reciprocity treaty was 
 negotiated (1854), and under it many articles were exchanged 
 free of all duties. 
 
 It will be noted that trade with the British West Indies 
 had not developed to a similar degree; and it would be ap- 
 parent, if other figures were included in the table, that our 
 West India trade in general was far less important than it 
 had been in the earlier period of our history. Trade with the 
 French and the Dutch West Indies was, in fact, less in 1860 
 than in 1790. Among all the West India islands Cuba alone 
 was a prominent exception to this tendency to decline. 
 Slavery was still maintained in that island; and the sugar 
 industry, which had felt severely in other islands the abolition 
 of slavery, continued to flourish there. 
 
 649. Expansion of American commerce in Europe, South 
 
538 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 America, and the far East. — It may be said, in general, that 
 our commerce had broken through the rather narrow bounds 
 which had formerly directed so much of it to England and to 
 the West Indies. We were building up our trade with the 
 continent of Europe. Our trade with France had increased 
 greatly under the liberal commercial policy of Napoleon III, 
 and we were establishing profitable connections with other 
 European states, as is shown by the following figures for our 
 total trade with them in 1860 (millions of dollars): German 
 states 33, the Netherlands 10, Italian states 9. 
 
 Still more noteworthy is the extension of our commerce 
 to the South and to the far East. During the period under 
 review the states of Central and South America had won their 
 independence from Europe, and were now free to establish 
 such trade relations as they chose. With Mexico and various 
 states of South America (especially Brazil and the Argentine 
 Republic) we had in 1860 a commerce amounting to about 
 sixty million dollars. Our trade with China amounted to 
 about twenty million; and while our trade with Japan (about 
 $150,000) gave no immediate reward for the American enter- 
 prise which had opened the ports of that country, it was at 
 least a promise for the future. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. See sect. 681 for figures of imports which may be charted for 
 comparison with later development. 
 
 2. How did the import trade of the U. S. compare with that of Eng- 
 land at about this time? 
 
 3. Why was it cheaper for the Americans to buy manufactures 
 abroad than to make them at home? 
 
 4. What is the effect of a protective tariff, (a) on commerce, (6) on 
 production, (c) on the price of the product? 
 
 5. Industrial development, 1790-1860. [Wright, 132-142.] 
 
 6. American coal fields. [Nicolls, part 1; commercial geographies.] 
 
 7. Early transportations of coal by rivers and canals. [Nicolls, chaps. 
 17,18.] 
 
 8. Assuming that the protective duty on iron raised its price to pur- 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1816-1860 539 
 
 chasers, what must have been the effect on manufactures and transporta- 
 tion? [Compare the sections on Russia, above.] 
 
 9. Development of the American iron industry before 1860. [Taussig; 
 Depew, chap. 46 by Huston; Swank.] 
 
 10. Difficulties of the woolen manufacturer. [Taussig; North in 
 Depew, p. 482.] 
 
 11. Contributions of the U. S. to improvements in machine tools. 
 [Depew, chap. 49 by Sellers.] 
 
 12. Cotton manufactures in the South before the war. [DeBow, 1: 
 233,2: 101 ff., 3:24ff.]. 
 
 13. Industrial conditions at the close of the War of 1812. [Histories 
 of U. S. by McMaster and Henry Adams.] 
 
 14. Tariff of 1816. [Taussig.] 
 
 15. Why was the South opposed to protection in this period? [Re- 
 view the description of the industries and commerce of North and South, 
 and try to see what effect a protective duty on manufactured wares would 
 have on Southerners.] 
 
 16. Study in detail the influences, economic and political, deter- 
 mining the character of one of the following tariff acts: 1824, 1828, 1832, 
 1833, 1842, 1846, 1857. [Tariff histories by Taussig and others; narrative 
 histories of the U. S.]. 
 
 17. Study the commercial history of one of the ports named, sects. 
 645-6. [Local histories; Encyclopedias.] 
 
 18. Commerce of the South before the War. [Maury in DeBow, 
 vol. 3, 1 ff.]. 
 
 19. Reviewing the list of ports, which of the following factors seems 
 to have been most important in determining their relative rank in the 
 import trade: nearness to Europe, excellence of harbor, facilities for dis- 
 tributing goods by waterways, railroad facilities? Can you add other 
 factors of importance to the list? 
 
 20. Make a chart of the figures, sect. 647, and compare it with the 
 chart for the earlier period. 
 
 21. Effect on commerce with Canada of the reciprocity treaty of 
 1854. [Haynes, Robinson.] 
 
 22. History of the commerce between the United States and South 
 America. [Rutter; Curtis in Senate Exec, doc, first session, 51st Cong., 
 vol. 8; check-list 2685.] 
 
 23. Development of American conmierce in the Pacific. [Callahan.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter xlviii. 
 
CHAPTER LI 
 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 
 
 650. Survey of commercial development, 1 860-1 900. — In 
 
 the chapters introductory to the history of commerce in the 
 nineteenth century, attention was directed to the increasing 
 rapidity of movement, which makes the second half of the 
 century a period by itself, distinguished above all others by 
 its wonderful commercial development. That the United 
 States enjoyed a full measure of the world's progress in com- 
 merce is shown by the following table, which gives the figures 
 of imports and exports in millions of dollars. 
 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 Total 
 
 1860 
 
 353 
 
 333 
 
 687 
 
 1870 
 
 435 
 
 392 
 
 828 
 
 1880 
 
 667 
 
 835 
 
 1,503 
 
 1890 
 
 789 
 
 857 
 
 1,647 
 
 1900 
 
 849 
 
 1,394 
 
 2,244 
 
 The year 1900 was notable in several respects. The total 
 foreign commerce of the country exceeded two thousand million 
 dollars for the first time. No previous year, moreover, showed 
 such large figures for the total exports, for the exports of 
 manufactured wares, and for the imports of materials used 
 in manufactures. The few succeeding years seem to show 
 that this increase in commerce was not a temporary fluctuation, 
 but marks a new level from which the commerce of the country 
 will continue to rise during the present century. 
 
 651. Internal development of the country. — During this 
 
 540 
 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 541 
 
 period the natural growth of population was augmented by a 
 steady stream of immigration, which has increased with time 
 and has made to appear small in comparison all previous 
 movements of people to the country. In spite, however, of 
 this growth, the increase in the value of foreign trade has 
 been even more rapid, and the share contributed by the average 
 person to the commerce of the country was greater at the 
 close of the century than at any previous period except the 
 peculiar period of the Napoleonic wars. The average inhabi- 
 tant had in 1900 a share of about $11 in the imports, and of 
 about S18 in the exports. 
 
 While the preceding period was called the period of national 
 expansion, the period lasting from the Civil War to the close 
 of the century may fitly be termed that of national develop- 
 ment. The population continued, it is true, to spread out 
 within the national frontiers. It occupied the great plains 
 leading up to the Rocky Mountains region, and the strip of 
 fertile land along the Pacific Coast, and penetrated the moun- 
 tains and semi-arid region in all parts where mineral wealth 
 and agricultural possibilities promised returns to the laborer. 
 The most striking feature, however, in the progress of the last 
 forty years has been not so much the breaking-in of new 
 territory as the improved means adopted for making the most 
 of all resources, in old and new territory alike. Improvements 
 of a technical character have transformed the methods of 
 transportation and manufacture, and new methods of cooper- 
 ation have changed the aspects of business life completely. 
 
 The first subject requiring attention is the development of 
 the transportation system. 
 
 652. Extension of railroads. — In the recent history of the 
 transportation system of the United States the most noteworthy 
 feature has been, of course, the development of railroads. The 
 railroad mileage of the country in 18.60 was divided almost 
 equally between the North, the South, and the West, each 
 section having roughly 10,000 miles. The section which felt 
 most keenly the need of increased railroad facilities was the 
 
542 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 agricultural West, where the products of rich farm lands were 
 wasted and where corn was not infrequently used for fuel, for 
 lack of means to reach a market. After 1860 the railroads 
 were rapidly extended through the upper Mississippi Valley, 
 and in 1869 the first transcontinental route was completed 
 (Union and Central Pacific). Railroads reaching out like 
 feelers into new regions attracted population and stimulated 
 traffic not only in the new country but also in the older settled 
 districts, where the opportunities for profitable business were 
 multiplied by the increased supply of raw materials and by 
 the widened market for finished products. Old lines were 
 extended and new lines were built until, in 1900, the mileage 
 of the country had risen from about 30,000, as it was in 
 1860, to nearly 200,000, showing an average gain of about 
 40,000 miles in a decade, a greater amount than the total of 
 1860. 
 
 663. Improvements in the operation of railroads. — Equal 
 in practical importance to the extension of the railroad system 
 were the improvements effected during the period in the con- 
 struction and operation of the lines. This was the time in 
 which steel rails and bridges were introduced, which permitted 
 the use of more efficient locomotives, drawing heavier trains, 
 and so reducing the expense of carriage. Lines which had 
 been constructed in short sections under the control of different 
 companies were now merged in great corporations, operating 
 thousands of miles of track. The railroads had previously 
 been so independent of each other that there was not even a 
 standard gage for the track; some lines set the rails 6 or even 
 7 feet apart, a California law fixed the gage in that State at 
 5 feet, while the Missouri Pacific had a gage of 5 feet 6 inches. 
 A difference in gage necessitated, of course, the unloading and 
 reloading of wares in passage from one line to another, and pro- 
 hibited distant freight movements. Soon after 1860 a move- 
 ment toward the present standard, 4 feet Sh inches, brought 
 a uniform gage into use, and when the consolidation of rail- 
 roads was under way there was no longer a thought of varying 
 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 543 
 
 from this standard. The first consolidation of a through line 
 from Chicago to the sea was effected in 1869 under the man- 
 agement of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Lake Shore and Michigan 
 Southern and New York Central and Hudson River); and the 
 movement soon spread to other lines (Pennsylvania, etc.). 
 The benefits were greater than the reader may be inclined to 
 suppose. The management of railroads was made at the same 
 time more efficient and less expensive; uniformity of policy 
 was established in such matters as the track gage; and, most 
 important, a new policy of freight rates, designed to stimulate 
 distant shipments, became practicable. 
 
 654. Reduction of railroad rates. — The charges for freight 
 movements before 1860 rarely fell below 2 cents per ton-mile. 
 Railroad managers believed that the lowest rates which they 
 could profitably make were, roughly, 2 cents for heavy agricul- 
 tural produce, 3 for groceries, 4 for dry goods. The improve- 
 ments effected in road-bed and rolling stock after 1860 suggested 
 the possibility of reducing rates, and the reorganization of small 
 railroads in large systems made it possible to institute reduc- 
 tions to stimulate distant freight movements. The results 
 exceeded all expectations. The railroads found that a reduc- 
 tion brought such an increase of traffic that the lower rates 
 were not only an advantage to the shippers, but also a benefit 
 to themselves; and rates have fallen almost constantly in the 
 course of the period. In 1900 the average freight rate was only 
 three quarters of a cent per ton-mile, and some of the lines 
 between Chicago and the Atlantic coast had reduced their 
 charges very close to half a cent. 
 
 655. Contribution of the railroads to recent national devel- 
 opment. — The importance of this change in a country of great 
 distances can scarcely be exaggerated. It has transformed the 
 railroad from a luxury for the use of passengers and high-class 
 freight to a necessity for the producers and consumers of the 
 commonest articles. In 1860 even a ware like wheat could 
 not pay the expense of transportation over a distance exceeding 
 many hundred miles, and distant freight traffic was restricted 
 
544 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 to manufactures and the most valuable of farm products, such 
 as live stock. The reduction in charges has opened a profitable 
 market for the commonest agricultural products of distant 
 western States, and has made accessible the natural resources 
 of all kinds, which otherwise would count for nothing among 
 the economic assets of the country. In 1900 more than half 
 of the tonnage carried on the railways of the United States 
 consisted of ores, coal, and other products of mines, which 
 could scarcely have been carried at all in 1860. The railroads 
 now carry a tonnage far exceeding that transported through 
 other channels (rivers, lakes, canals, and coasting trade); and 
 it may be said in sober earnest that a considerable proportion 
 of the people in the country would starve, without the means 
 of earning a livelihood, if the railroad im'J)rovements that have 
 come since 1860 were suddenly swept away. 
 
 656. Relative decline in transportation by canals and rivers. 
 — The development of the railroad system has not entirely 
 done away with the previous systems of internal transportation, 
 but it has reduced them to subordinate importance. The 
 decline is especially noticeable in the case of canals. Even in 
 1880 nearly half of the total canal mileage had been abandoned 
 and a large number of the canals remaining in operation were 
 not paying expenses. The cost of transportation on the canals 
 has been reduced by deepening them to take in larger boats; 
 tolls have been entirely abolished, as in the case of the Erie 
 Canal; and still the superior speed and certainty of transporta- 
 tion by rail has robbed the canals of the bulk of the traffic. 
 Some of the river routes have fared better. The Mississippi 
 River system, notably, is still an important channel of trade, 
 but even in the territory it serves the railroads far outrank 
 it in importance, and most of the inland waterways have lost 
 their previous significance. 
 
 657. Importance of the Great Lakes; St. Mary's Canal. — 
 While the country could now renounce, without very serious 
 loss, the rivers and canals which \tere formerly so important 
 as means of transpoitation, it could ill afford to dispense with 
 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 545 
 
 the Great Lakes along its northern boundary. In the first 
 half of the century Lake Erie was a useful means of commu- 
 nication with the growing States of the West, and gained 
 greatly in importance with the construction of canals after 
 1825. It was not until the second half of the century, how- 
 ever, that the three western lakes showed their possibilities as 
 channels through which the national resources might be con- 
 ducted to districts where they could be best utilized. Between 
 1860 and 1900 the tonnage on the Great Lakes tripled, roughly, 
 and increased even more in carrying capacity as wooden sailing 
 vessels gave place to large steel steamers. Freight rates have 
 fallen as low as one tenth of a cent per ton-mile, and immense 
 amounts of ore, coal, grain, and lumber have thus found a 
 cheap means of access to market. 
 
 In 1855 a canal was completed to avoid the rapids in 
 St. Mary's River at the outlet of Lake Superior, and this canal, 
 since deepened and improved, has become one of the great 
 commercial channels of the world. The Lake Superior region 
 has proved to be wonderfully rich in iron, copper, timber, and 
 other products essential to modern industry. At the close of 
 the century the tonnage of vessels passing through the St. 
 Mary's Canal was as great as the tonnage entering the seaports 
 of the United States from all foreign countries, and far exceeded 
 the tonnage passing through the Suez Canal. 
 
 658. Decline of American shipping. — In contrast with the 
 great development of the means of internal transportation we 
 have to note, in this period, a decided decline in the American 
 shipping engaged in foreign trade. The total tonnage of the 
 country was about the same in 1900 that it had been in 1860, 
 and entitles the United States to a position high up among 
 trading countries. About one third of this total, however, 
 was employed on the Great Lakes, and most of the remainder 
 was engaged in the coasting trade. Both of these branches of 
 navigation can be, and are, protected by law against the 
 competition of foreign ship-owners. The trade of this country 
 with other countries, however, cannot be restricted to American 
 35 
 
546 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 vessels without danger of retaliation; and the attempts of the 
 United States to favor its own vessels in foreign trade, by- 
 taxing foreign vessels at the port of entry, had been given up 
 before 1860. Now in this branch of shipping, in which the 
 vessels of all countries of the world compete on equal terms, 
 the tonnage of the United States declined from 2.3 million in 
 1860 to 0.8 in 1900. 
 
 659. Effect of the Civil War on the merchant marine. — 
 Of this great loss in tonnage the larger part fell in the years 
 immediately following 1860, the period of the Civil War. The 
 southern States, unable to break the blockade which closed 
 their ports and prevented the sale of their cotton, sought to 
 retaliate by loosing swift cruisers to prey on the ships which 
 sailed under the United States flag. The most celebrated of 
 these cruisers, the Alabama, was fitted out in England, and 
 for two years, until its destruction by the Kearsarge in 1864, 
 haunted the chief routes of trade, and captured no less than 
 69 vessels. Other cruisers were less successful, but altogether 
 261 Northern vessels were taken. The fear of capture caused 
 a decline in tonnage far greater than the actual losses at sea; 
 American ship-owners found their profits eaten up by heavy 
 insurance charges, and sold their vessels to foreigners, who 
 could navigate them in safety under a neutral flag. Altogether 
 the country came out of the war with about a million tons of 
 shipping less than it had owned at the beginning. 
 
 660. Other causes of decline. — The American merchant 
 marine would have recovered from the losses of the war but 
 for other difficulties which it faced. This was the period in 
 which steamers began to gain rapidly on sailing ships, and 
 in which iron began to be extensively used in ship-building. 
 The Americans had at this time neither the resources nor the 
 experience to compete with the English in the new forms of 
 naval construction, and even before the war it was apparent 
 that the English were drawing ahead. Moreover, the war had, 
 indirectly, a great influence on the fortunes of American ship- 
 ping, for it led to a great increase in the tariff and to heavy 
 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 547 
 
 taxes of all kinds. It cost more both to build and to navigate 
 an American ship than it had cost before the war or than it 
 cost an English owner. Add to these influences the fact that 
 the country was just entering the period of great railroad 
 extension, and that the West now offered wonderful opportu- 
 nities for the investment both of labor and capital; and it is 
 not surprising that the American people turned from the sea 
 to the land, and resigned the high position which they had 
 formerly held in foreign carrying-trade. 
 
 661. Present position of the merchant marine. =^ Since 
 1860, therefore, the United States has relied mainly upon 
 foreigners to carry its freight across the seas. Of the tonnage 
 which cleared for foreign countries from the seaports of the 
 United States in 1900 less than one fifth was American, Various 
 attempts have been made to stimulate the construction and 
 navigation of American ships by the grant of subsidies from 
 the national government, but the success has been very mod- 
 erate, and the people have been in general unwilling to levy 
 taxes for the support of this particular industry. 
 
 The rapid advances which the country has made in recent 
 years in the production of iron and steel and in the construction 
 of machinery give ground for the hope that Americans will 
 begin again soon to compete for their share in ocean shipping. 
 
 662. Development of national manufactures. — Part of the 
 energy diverted from the sea found a fruitful field of labor in 
 the developing manufactures of the country. The period from 
 1860 to 1900 marked the advance beyond the age of trial and 
 experiment in the history of American manufactures; at the 
 close of this period the United States was the greatest manu- 
 facturing country of the world, supplying most of its own 
 requirements for manufactured wares, and producing a large 
 surplus for export to other countries. The development of 
 the transportation system was the indispensable condition of 
 this progress. The railroads have brought all parts of our 
 great national domain so closely together, in a commercial 
 sense, that the choicest natural resources of the continent have 
 
548 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 been made available at the centers of production. Abundant 
 labor has been supplied both by the growth of the native 
 population and by the increasing flow of immigrants. Leaders 
 have arisen from the people, stimulated to energy by the 
 rapid promotion which has been granted on proof of signal 
 ability; and the necessary capital has been contributed by 
 investors in all parts of the world, who have sought eagerly 
 the opportunity to share in our industrial gains. Finally, our 
 factories have enjoyed an advantage beyond those of any 
 country, in the great market which has stood waiting to receive 
 their products. Within boundaries, each of which measures 
 thousands of miles, lies an area absolutely free to trade, pro- 
 vided with the most efficient instruments of transportation 
 and communication, and settled by a people numbering nearly 
 a hundred million, of prosperous producers and educated 
 consumers. 
 
 663. Coal production and the use of steam power. — Not 
 until this period did the country realize the full value of its 
 hidden mineral wealth. The coal deposits of the United States 
 are thought to be richer than those of any other whole conti- 
 nent, and the Ohio Valley has coal mines together with iron 
 deposits and rich agricultural resources in a combination which 
 is unmatched. The coal production of 1860 (14 million tons) 
 was considerably larger than in previous decades, but it seems 
 insignificant in comparison with the 240 million of 1900, or 
 the 301 million of 1902. Bituminous coal, the kind chiefly 
 used in manufactures, formed only one third of the total output 
 in 1850 and only one half even in 1870, while in 1900 it com- 
 prised four fifths of the whole. In coal production the United 
 States now leads the world. 
 
 The vast increase in the coal product is used in innumerable 
 ways, but it finds its chief employment in furnishing motive 
 power to the transportation system, and to the factories of 
 the country. In studying the history of coal production one 
 is inclined to say that the country did not really enter the age 
 of steam until after the Civil War. Even in 1870 the motive 
 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 549 
 
 power in our manufactures was only 2.3 million horse-power, 
 while in 1900 it was five fold that (11.3 million), and steam 
 furnished over three quarters of the whole. 
 
 664. Machinery. — That the Civil War really marks a 
 dividing line in our industrial progress is shown by the history 
 of the Patent Office; within a few years after the close of the 
 war the number of patents granted increased greatly, and the 
 new level thus established was steadily maintained. American 
 machine manufacturers made in this period their great con- 
 tributions to mechanical progress : the system of interchangeable 
 parts, automatic and specialized machines, the utilization of 
 by-products, etc. Brass screws at one time could be pro- 
 duced only at great expense; it is characteristic that some 
 manufacturers will now make them absolutely free of charge, 
 if the customer will furnish the brass rod and will allow them 
 to keep the chips of brass which are cut off in the process. 
 
 It is impossible here to trace the history of manufactures 
 in detail, but a single manufacture, that of carpets, may be 
 taken for illustration. In the carpet industry about 1835 
 modern factory methods were unknown; weavers worked at 
 home with old-fashioned hand looms, producing 7 or 8 yards 
 of inferior carpet per day. Power looms were invented, and 
 were introduced little by little, but even after the Civil War 
 nearly half the carpets were still woven on hand looms. Since 
 that time has come the great advance in the industry, by the 
 introduction of improved power machinery, which has reduced 
 the price of fine tapestries and Brussels to that formerly paid 
 for the rudest ingrain, and which has stimulated an immense 
 increase in consumption. 
 
 The rapid development of the national manufactures in 
 this period may be shown by brief statistics, in thousand 
 millions of dollars; the capital invested grew from 1.0 to 9.8 
 while the value of the product grew from 1.8 to 13.0. 
 
 665. Extension of manufactures in the West and South. — 
 There has been, moreover, a noteworthy change in the dis- 
 tribution of manufactures throughout the country. The north- 
 
550 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 eastern States have greatly extended their manufacturing 
 plants, and relatively to population no European state rivals 
 New England in output; but American manufactures have 
 extended also into the West and the South. The southern 
 States, instead of sending their raw cotton to the North or to 
 Europe, have begun to manufacture it in increasing quantities, 
 and now compete with northern mills for the markets of the 
 Mississippi Valley. The development of iron production in 
 the South has been phenomenally rapid. The rich coal and 
 iron fields of the Southern Appalachian range have been 
 opened, and contribute now an important share of the total 
 output; while large industrial centers are growing up in Chat- 
 tanooga, Birmingham, and other Southern cities. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Chart the figures as before; if the same scale is used the chart may 
 be pasted to that previously made. 
 
 2. Industrial aspects of the Civil War. [Wright, 143-158.] 
 
 3. The population of the country was as follows, in round millions: 
 1860, 31; 1870, 39; 1880, 50; 1890, 63; 1900, 76. Calculate the commerce 
 per capita, and insert the line on the chart. 
 
 4. What has been the gain in population of your own State in this 
 period, compared with earlier periods? [Table 35, Abstract of Twelfth 
 Census.] 
 
 5. Write a report on the history of one of the western railroads. [Cy. 
 Warman, Story of the railroad, N. Y., Appleton, 1898, $1.50.] 
 
 6. Technical improvements in railroads. [See references in chap. 
 XXX, and Johnson, chap. 4.] 
 
 7. Development of railroad organization. [Hadley, chap. 5.] 
 
 8. Contributions of railroads to industrial development. [Hatfield, 
 Lectures, 81 ff.]. 
 
 9. Freight service of the modem American railroad. [Johnson, 
 chap. 9.] 
 
 10. Present and future of the Erie Canal. [Poole's Index.] 
 
 11. Possible future of ship canals in the United States. [Report of 
 the Deep Waterways Commission, House Doc. 192, 54th Cong., 2d. sess.] 
 
 12. River transportation in the Mississippi Valley. [Abbot, chap. 8; 
 Census, 1890, Transportation by water, pp. 393-465; Report of Indust. 
 Comm., 1900, 9: clxxxiv-clxxxviii.] 
 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1860-1900 551 
 
 13. Place of the Great Lakes in our modem transportation system. 
 [Tunnell; Marvin, chap. 17; Abbot, chap. 7; Census, 1890, Transp. by water, 
 243-373; Rep. Ind. Comm., 1900, 4: 160-167; Statistics in U. S. Monthly 
 Summary.] 
 
 The St. Mary Canal. [Tunnell; Fairlie, Ship canals, p. 67 ff.]. 
 
 14. What would be the effect on lake traffic of commercial union with 
 Canada? 
 
 15. The coasting trade of the United States. [Marvin, chap. 15; U. S. 
 Census, 1890, Transportation by water, pp. 1-143, Atlantic and Gulf 
 Coasts; pp. 145-252, Pacific Coast.] 
 
 16. Effect of the Civil War on shipping. [Marvin, chap. 14; Cam- 
 bridge Mod. Hist., vol. 7, chap. 17, by Wilson; Rhodes, Hist.] 
 
 17. Decline of American shipping since the War. [Marvin, chaps. 16, 
 18; Wells.] 
 
 18. The question of subsidies. [Ringwalt, Briefs.] 
 
 19. Ship-building in the United States. [Depew, chap. 18 by Cramp; 
 B. Taylor in Fortnightly Rev., 1899, 71: 284-299; U. S. Census.] 
 
 20. Taking the heads suggested (natural resources, labor, capital, 
 means of transportation, market), how would the following countries, 
 in your opinion, compare with the United States as a field for the develop- 
 ment of manufactures: Belgium, China, Germany, Russia, France? 
 
 21. Industrial development, 1860-1890. [Wright, 159-188.] 
 
 22. Transportation of coal by railroads. [Nicolls, chaps. 19, 20, 21.] 
 Geography and organization of the coasting trade in coal. [Nicolls 
 
 chap. 22.] 
 
 23. Methods employed in American coal mines. [NicoUs, part 2.] 
 
 24. Recent history of American coal mining. [U. S. Census, Mines, 
 1902, pp. 663-717; U. S. Monthly Summary, AprU, 1900; Sept., 1902.] 
 
 25. Power employed in manufactures. [Census, 1900, vol. 7, chap. 4.] 
 
 26. Utilization of waste and by-products in modem American fac- 
 tories. [Census, 1900, 10: 72^-748.] 
 
 27. The New South. [Coman, 292-298.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Bibliography. — See chap, xlv and add: Poole's Index; R. C. Ring- 
 wait, Briefs on Public Questions, N. Y., Longmans, 1905, $1.20 (protec- 
 tion, commercial reciprocity with Canada, shipping subsidies). 
 
 General. — Wells, ** Rec. econ. changes; Edward Atkinson, * In- 
 dustrial progress, N. Y., 1890, * Distribution of products, N. Y., 1892; 
 H. R. Hatfield, ed., * Lectures on commerce, Chicago, 1904; J. F. Rhodes, 
 * History of U. S., N. Y., 1893 ff. 
 
 Special. — A. J. Wilson, * Resources, 1: 140-211; R. Giffen, Essays, 
 
552 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 2d series, 3d ed., London, 1890, 116-131; W. G. L. Taylor, * Relative 
 importance of our foreign trade, Jour, Pol. Econ., Chicago, Dec, 1903, 
 12: 21-33; R. Mayo-Smith and E. R. A. Seligman, ** Commercial policy, 
 1860-90, Leipzig, 1892; C. F. Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams, Chapters of 
 Erie, Boston, 1871; J. P. Davis, The Union Pacific Railway, Chicago, 1894; 
 G. Tunnell, * Transportation on the Great Lakes, Jour, of Pol. Econ., 
 Chicago, June, 1896, 4: 332-351. 
 
 Sources. — Material in government documents becomes in this 
 period much richer and more varied. Beside the reports on Commerce 
 and Navigation (including many special reports on Internal Commerce) 
 and Commercial Relations, see the Statistical Abstract, Monthly Summary 
 of Commerce and Finance (including current statistics and useful mono- 
 graphs), the Census, Reports and Statistics of the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, and Report of the Industrial Commission, 1900-02. Address 
 inquiries concerning government publications to Superintendent of Public 
 Documents, Washington, D. C. School libraries should be provided at 
 least with copies of the Census and Report of the Industrial Commission; 
 these may probably be secured gratis by applying to the local Representa- 
 tive in Congress. 
 
CHAPTER LII 
 EXPORTS, 1860-1900 
 
 666. Chief exports in 1900. — The principal items of the 
 export trade of the United States in 1900 are given in the 
 following table, with which should be compared the table in 
 section 620,. 
 
 Exports op U. S., 1900, Millions of Dollars 
 
 Breadstuffs 262 
 
 Cotton 241 
 
 Provisions (including dairy) 184 
 
 Iron and steel, and manufactures 121 
 
 Mineral oils 75 
 
 Copper and manufactures 57 
 
 Total of these items, omitting decimals 940 
 
 Total exports of domestic merchandise, including items 
 
 omitted 1,394 
 
 Total foreign exports 23 
 
 Exports of precious metals 104 
 
 667. Noteworthy changes since 1860. — The table shows 
 that in one respect the export trade of the country remained 
 unchanged; six items made up nearly two thirds of the immense 
 total of the exports. While the country continues to rely 
 upon a few great staples for the means of purchasing foreign 
 wares, there have been since 1860 some noteworthy changes in 
 the relative rank of the chief items. Cotton is still important, 
 but has had to yield first place to the breadstuffs, while another 
 item associated with the agriculture of the northern and 
 western states, that of provisions, has risen to great prominence. 
 This item includes dairy products as well as various kinds of 
 meat, but does not include live animals. The last three of the 
 
 553 
 
EXPORTS, 1860-1900 ■ 555 
 
 half dozen items which exceeded fifty million dollars in value 
 are of especial interest, since they represent products of mineral 
 and manufacturing industry. The United States still depends 
 mainly upon the raw products of its natural resources, for the 
 means of exchange in its foreign trade, but it has broadened 
 the field of its activities to include the mineral as well as the 
 agricultural wealth of the country. The rise in importance of 
 metals and oil has forced into a subordinate position such 
 items as tobacco, and the products of forestry and the fisheries. 
 
 668. Reasons for the increase of agricultural exports. — 
 The great growth in the exports of northern agricultural 
 products was due to the improvements in transportation, 
 which opened the markets of the Old World to the food sup- 
 plies produced so abundantly in the New. There is general 
 agreement that no other part of the earth's surface presents 
 an area that can compare in quantity and quality of agricul- 
 tural land with the Mississippi Valley. The larger part of 
 this area still awaited cultivation at the close of the Civil War, 
 and has been brought under the plow in the past two decades. 
 Good land could be had free of charge by settlement under the 
 homestead laws, or could be bought for prices little above what 
 European farmers had to pay as rent or interest. 
 
 669. Improvement of agricultural implements. — The pro- 
 ductiveness of American agriculture was furthered in this 
 period by still another factor, the improvement of farm im- 
 plements and machinery. American ingenuity, always pro- 
 verbial, applied itself to the problem of getting the largest 
 crops with the least labor, and devised means which were 
 peculiarly suited to the conditions of the country and the 
 times. The automatic reaper, on which inventors had long 
 been working, had become a practical success by the middle 
 of the century, and spread rapidly after its merits had been 
 advertised at the Crystal Palace in 1851. An agricultural 
 writer expressed himself as follows in 1866: ''The reaper and 
 mower have become ' institutions ' — a necessity, and no farmer 
 of any standing ignores their use. The machinery for raking 
 
556 . A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 and loading hay in the field, and the unloading in the barn 
 and on the stack, the potato digger, the corn cutter, the bean 
 puller, the cultivator, the corn and bean planter and seed 
 sower, threshing machines, corn shellers, fanning mills, straw 
 and root cutters, hay rakes, tile ditchers, &c., &c., though not 
 all of recent introduction, have all been greatly simplified and 
 improved; in short every implement of farm husbandry, from 
 the hoe to the reaper, has undergone various transformations 
 for the better since the late change of the times. ..." 
 
 Every step in advance led to another. The reaper was 
 displaced by the harvester, which accomplished the same 
 results with less labor; and this in turn gave place to the 
 twine binder, which showed still greater efficiency. 
 
 670. Wheat and flour. — The leading place among the 
 breadstuffs exported falls to wheat. A large part of the 
 American wheat crop had found its market in the southern 
 States, before the Civil War. The closing of this market by 
 war threw the whole surplus on Europe, and the wheat exports 
 increased actually ninefold from 1860 to 1863. They declined 
 for a time, when the South was opened to trade, but rose 
 again as the soldiers from the disbanded armies and other 
 colonists settled on the western prairies; and have shown, in 
 spite of considerable fluctuations, a constant tendency to in- 
 crease. The method of transportation has been improved by 
 building great elevators and introducing machinery to handle 
 the grain at all points of transshipment; a system of grading 
 and classification enables the wheat to be carried in bulk, 
 without regard to small specific lots; and the charges for 
 storage and movement have fallen greatly. The instruments 
 of modern transportation carry a ton of wheat now from 
 Minneapolis to Liverpool for less than it cost a farmer, thirty 
 years ago, to haul it by wagon a hundred miles. 
 
 For many years after 1860 most of the wheat was exported 
 as grain, and was milled abroad. The introduction of European 
 improvements, producing flour not by the old millstones but 
 by gradual reduction between rollers, has established again 
 
EXPORTS, 1860-1900 557 
 
 the reputation of American flour; and nearly half in value of our 
 wheat export leaves the country now in the manufactured form. 
 
 671. Indian com. — No other cereal compares in value 
 with wheat among the exports of the United States. In his 
 "Indian corn speech/' delivered in 1877, Tilden predicted a 
 great increase in the export of corn, which yields a much larger 
 supply of food from a given area, and hence can be sold more 
 cheaply. The corn crop is one of the most valuable assets of the 
 country; it serves not alone for food, but supplies also raw 
 materials for the manufacture of starch, alcohol, glucose, etc. 
 Its most important use, however, is for feeding and fattening 
 stock, and its contribution to the exports of the country is 
 mainly indirect, in the form of animals and animal products. 
 
 672. Stock, meat, and dairy products. — Live stock, chiefly 
 beef cattle, are exported to the value of nearly forty million 
 dollars; the railroads offer every facility for bringing them to 
 the seaboard, and special steamers transport them across the 
 Atlantic in about ten days. Still more important, however, 
 is the export of animal products. The refrigerator car, patented 
 in 1868, has enabled the meat of animals slaughtered in the 
 West to be carried to market in all parts of the country, and 
 has stimulated the development of an immense packing industry 
 in the regions where stock are raised and fattened. The export 
 of fresh meat, which began about 1875, has increased constantly 
 in the last quarter of the century, and forms a considerable 
 item. Of even greater value is the export of bacon and hams, 
 while lard, tallow, pickled and canned meats contribute in 
 varying proportions to the total of animal products exported. 
 The dairy products occupy a less important place in foreign 
 than in internal trade; the total exports of cheese and butter 
 were valued in 1900 at about eight million dollars. 
 
 673. Relative decline in importance of exports from the 
 South. — The exports which have been considered hitherto 
 come mainly, though by no means exclusively, from the 
 northern and western States. The South contributes still one 
 great item, cotton, but has lost the commanding position in 
 
558 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 the export trade which it held before the Civil War. It would 
 be a mistake, however, to suppose that the war was the cause 
 of this change. It did, for a time, nearly annihilate the com- 
 merce of the South, and it absorbed so much of the capital as 
 to cripple productive power for a considerable period. It 
 swept away the system of slavery, and forced the people to 
 adjust themselves to this most serious of changes. It left 
 untouched, however, the natural resources of the country, 
 and the New South, which has arisen since 1880, has devoted 
 itself to the task of developing these resources with energy 
 and success. Meanwhile, however, parts of the country which 
 hardly counted in foreign trade before 1860, have been brought 
 within reach of the seaboard, and have been settled by millions 
 of active producers. The balance of commercial power has 
 thus been changed, not by the decline of the South but by the 
 rise of other parts of the country. 
 
 674. Cotton. — English manufacturers, who had been in 
 great straits for cotton during the Civil War, and had in vain 
 endeavored to find the raw material in sufficient quantity and 
 of satisfactory quality in other parts of the world, returned 
 gladly to their former source of supply, the southern States. 
 The cotton crop brought high prices, the records of cotton 
 production and export in the years before the war were soon 
 reached and surpassed, and the cotton culture has continued 
 to grow down to the end of the century. There have been 
 years since 1890 when the price has fallen so low as to leave 
 little profit for the producers; and it has often been suggested 
 that the South is suffering from an over-production of its 
 staple crop, and would fare better if it grew less cotton and 
 more of other crops. Southern farmers are constantly advised 
 to diversify their products. They seem to have followed this 
 advice to a certain extent, and now furnish the northern 
 States with a considerable supply of food products, especially 
 fruit and vegetables, in direct contrast with the course of 
 trade before the Civil War when most of the food shipments 
 were in the other direction. They seem, however, to have 
 
EXPORTS, 1860-1900 
 
 559 
 
 found no substitute for cotton as an export product, and 
 make that still their single great staple in foreign trade. 
 
 675. Export of mineral products : iron. — It has been as- 
 serted by an eminent geologist that North America is richer 
 than any other continent in the mineral substances which 
 have most contributed to the development of man. Every 
 metal except tin has been found in quantities of economic 
 importance. We must concern ourselves here chiefly with the 
 one metal, iron, that which has held the chief place in economic 
 progress in recent times, and in the production of which the 
 United States has made surprising advance. Before 1860, as 
 noted above, the United States had merely followed England 
 at a respectful distance, in the methods of iron making. Since 
 1860 the iron makers of America have outstripped all com- 
 petitors, in the efficiency of their methods and in the quantity 
 of their output, and have made the United States the leading 
 country of the world in iron production. The American iron 
 industry has shown itself competent not only to meet the 
 immense demands of the home market, but also to produce 
 for export in competition with other countries the large amounts 
 shown by the figures at the opening of this chapter. 
 
 676. Recent development of the American iron industry. — 
 The following table shows that the advance of the iron industry 
 was slow for a long time, and that its present power is of very 
 recent growth. 
 
 
 Production in Mil- 
 lions OF Tons 
 
 Commerce in Millions 
 OF Dollars, Iron, 
 Steel, and Manufac- 
 tures 
 
 
 Pig Iron 
 
 Steel 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 I860 
 
 1870 
 
 1880 
 
 1890 
 
 0.8 
 1.6 
 3.8 
 9.2 
 13.7 
 
 
 21 
 32 
 53 
 41 
 20 
 
 5 
 11 
 12 
 25 
 
 0.06 
 1.2 
 4.2 
 10.1 
 
 1900 
 
 121 
 
560 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Among the causes contributing to this result one of the 
 most important has been the development of the rich ore 
 deposits of the Lake Superior region and Alabama. Economies 
 in handling the ore, by means of steam shovels and carriers, 
 and in transporting it by water and railroad, have enabled it 
 to be brought to the heart of the coal and coke regions at 
 comparatively slight expense. In the reduction of the ore and 
 in the various processes of manufacture the American iron 
 makers in recent times have been quick to introduce improve- 
 ments discovered in other countries; and have themselves 
 contributed important devices by which the efficiency of the 
 labor employed in iron manufacture has been greatly in- 
 creased. 
 
 677. Machinery. — The least valuable part of the iron 
 export is that which leaves the country in the raw or partly 
 manufactured state. The single item of machinery (electrical, 
 sev/ing machines, locomotives, typewriters, etc.), makes up 
 nearly half the value of the iron and steel exports; while other 
 items (agricultural implements, cars, bicycles, etc.), made up 
 largely of iron and steel, would swell the importance of the 
 exports of iron manufactures still further, if they were included 
 in the list. 
 
 The Americans have recently taken the place of leaders 
 among the machine builders of the world, and no country, 
 however high it may have ranked in the past, can afford now 
 to neglect the contributions offered by American machinists. 
 The cheapness of raw materials, iron and steel, has aided the 
 recent development of the American machine industry, but 
 has not caused it. We must look further, to the ingenuity of 
 inventors encouraged by a liberal patent system, and still 
 more to the genius of men like Westinghouse and Edison, who 
 unite technical knowledge with great business ability. Men 
 of this last class are all too rare, but are more common in the 
 United States than in any other country. They take up and 
 develop inventions which otherwise would fall dead; and by 
 their practical sagacity in manufacturing and marketing their 
 
EXPORTS, 1860-1900 561 
 
 devices they alone transform interesting ideas into important 
 realities. 
 
 678. Copper. — Copper is a metal which has long been 
 prized as one of the components of brass, and which has been 
 still more highly valued since the development of electrical 
 industry has increased the field of its use. Until after the 
 middle of the century, however, the United States had to rely 
 upon foreign countries, chiefly Chile, for most of its supply, 
 and the importance of copper as an article of export dates 
 from recent times. The opening of the mines of the Lake 
 Superior region, the richest copper mines of the world, enabled 
 the country by 1860 to supply the demand for this metal from 
 native sources, and the later development, including ne-vv 
 sources of supply in Arizona and Montana, has furnished since 
 1880 a large surplus for sale abroad. The copper mines of 
 Michigan, which reach a depth of nearly a mile, are said to be 
 the best examples in the world of skilful and economical 
 mining, and improved processes of reduction have made avail- 
 able copper ores which formerly would not pay the working. 
 
 679. Petroleiim. — Even in colonial times the presence of 
 mineral oil in the country was known by the film which collected 
 on the surface of certain springs, and which took fire when a 
 light was applied to it. A well of oil which spouted fifty feet 
 was discovered on the bank of the Cumberland River in 1830, 
 but, as stated in a book published in 1853, ''it was found to 
 be useful only medicinally, and is bottled and exported for 
 that purpose." The interest in this new product, which 
 seemed to offer possibilities beyond its use as a proprietary 
 medicine, led to the organization in 1854 of a ''Rock Oil Com- 
 pany"; and the first oil well was driven near Titus ville. Pa., 
 four years later. Soon after 1860 the export of oil to foreign 
 countries began, with little idea that the trade thus started 
 was to become one of the great features of American foreign 
 commerce. Mineral oil is now one of the leading exports of 
 the country, and would take a still larger place in the exports 
 as given at the beginning of this chapter if various by-products, 
 
 36 
 
562 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 such as paraffin, were included in the figures. The average 
 exports per week in 1894 were considerably greater than the 
 exports for the whole year 1864. 
 
 680. Development of the oil industry. — The chief obstacle 
 to the development of the oil trade in its early years was the 
 difficulty of transportation. The extension of the railroad 
 system after 1860 furnished the means of bringing the oil to 
 market with profit, and in recent times the transportation 
 and manufacture of oil products have been developed to 
 wonderfully high efficiency. Tank cars have given place to 
 pipe lines; refineries have been extended and perfected, that 
 the reduction of the crude oil might be carried on with the 
 greatest economy and with full utilization of all by-products; 
 and the market for oil products at home and abroad has been 
 enlarged by a steady reduction of prices. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Chart the figures, as previously suggested, for comparison with 
 earlier conditions. 
 
 2. What other parts of the world come nearest to the Mississippi 
 Valley in quality and quantity of agricultural land? How do they com- 
 pare in the character of the people, and the facilities for transportation? 
 
 3. History of farm machinery. [Quaintance in Pub. Amer. Econ. 
 Assoc, 1904, vol. 5, pp. 799-809; Census, 1900, 10: 341-377; Depew, chap. 
 50 by Fowler.] 
 
 4. Effect of improved farm machinery on production. [Quaintance, 
 pp. 810-826.] 
 
 5. Agricultural progress of the past fifty years. [U. S. Census, 1900, 
 5: xvi-xxxv.] 
 
 6. Cultivation of wheat in the U. S. [Edgar, Story, chaps. 7, 8.] 
 
 7. The grain trade of the U. S. [Monthly Summary, Jan., 1900.] 
 
 8. Grain elevators and warehouses. [Rep. Ind. Comm., 1900, 10: 
 cccxvii-cccxxxix; Monthly Summary, Oct.; 1903.] 
 
 9. The flour-milling industry. [Edgar, Story, chaps. 10, 11; Depew, 
 chap. 39 by Pillsbury; U. S. Census, 1880, 3: 555-582, 1900, 9: 353-383.] 
 
 10. What are the various products obtained from maize? [Encyc; 
 commercial geographies.] 
 
 11. The packing industry. [Depew, chap. 55 by Armour; Census, 
 1900,9:385-429.] 
 
EXPORTS, 1860-1900 563 
 
 12. The dairy industry. [Census, 1900, 5: clxv-clxxxvi; Rep. Ind. 
 Comm., 1900, 6: 268-296.] 
 
 13. Economic effect of the Civil War on the South. [Cambridge 
 Mod. hist., vol. 7, chap. 19 by Schwab; Rhodes, Hist. U. S.] 
 
 14. The cultivation of cotton since 1860. [Hammond, pp. 120-228.] 
 
 15. Recent development of the cotton trade. [Hammond, pp. 324- 
 350; U. S. Mo. Summary, March, 1900; Depew, chap. 34 by Edmonds.] 
 
 16. By-products of the cotton industry. [Depew, chap. 67 by 
 Chaney; Census, 1900, 9: 585-594.] 
 
 17. Recent history of the Virginia tobacco industry. [B. W. Arnold, 
 History, Baltimore, 1897, $.50.] 
 
 18. Recent development of the American iron industry. [Depew, 
 chap. 46 by Huston; Crowell in International Monthly, 1901, 4: 211-250; 
 Census, 1900, 7: cxlix, 10: 1-77; Monthly Summary, Aug., 1900.] 
 
 19. The steel industry. [Hatfield, Lectures, 131 fT.; Thurston in 
 Century Magazine, 1900-1901, 61: 562-568.] 
 
 20. The mining of iron ore. [Fawcett in Century Magazine, 1900- 
 1901, 61: 712-725; Census, Mines, 1902, pp. 393-431.] 
 
 21. The transportation of iron. [Fawcett in Century Magazine, 
 1900-1901,61:851-863.] 
 
 22. Write a report on one of the following topics, using vol. 10 of the 
 Census of 1900: 
 
 (o) Manufacture of machine tools, pp. 381-388. 
 (6) Sewing machines, pp. 401-420. 
 (c) Typewriters, pp. 435-444. 
 {d) Watches, pp. 483-498. 
 
 23. Development of the American copper industry. [Depew, chap. 
 47 by Cowles; chap. 27, p. 182, by Rothwell; Census, Mines, 1902, 467-506.] 
 
 24. The uses and production of petroleum. [Census, 1880, vol. 10, 
 first monograph; Mines, 1902, pp. 719-764; Encyc] 
 
 25. Development of the American oil industry. [Depew, chap. 31 
 by Folger; G. H. Montague, The Standard Oil Company, N. Y., Harper, 
 1903, $1.] 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter li. 
 
CHAPTER LIII 
 
 IMPORTS, POLICY, DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 
 
 681. Survey of the import trade, 1 860-1 900. — The develop- 
 ment of the import trade of the United States since 1860 is 
 shown in the following table, which gives the values in millions 
 of dollars of the merchandise imported for consumption: 
 
 
 I860 
 
 1900 
 
 
 Value 
 
 Per cent 
 of total 
 
 Value 
 
 Per cent 
 of total 
 
 Food and live animals 
 
 78 
 61 
 
 31 
 
 123 
 
 58 
 
 353 
 
 22 
 
 17 
 
 9 
 
 35 
 
 16 
 
 100 
 
 216 
 299 
 
 80 
 
 130 
 103 
 830 
 
 26 
 
 Crude articles for domestic industries. 
 
 Articles wholly or partially manufac- 
 tured for use as materials in the arts. 
 
 Articles manufactured ready for con- 
 sumption . 
 
 36 
 
 9 
 
 15 
 
 Articles of voluntary use, luxuries, etc. 
 Total (including decimals) 
 
 12 
 100 
 
 682. Changes in the character of imports. — The percentages 
 of the table furnish a ready means of comparing the relative 
 importance of different classes of imports at the beginning and 
 end of the period. The most striking change is the decline in 
 importance of the class of manufactured articles ready for 
 consumption, which amounted to nearly one third of the total 
 value of imports in 1860, and sank to less than one sixth by 
 the close of the century. The indication here given that the 
 country was learning to supply its need for manufactured 
 wares, without depending so much as previously on foreign 
 
 564 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 565 
 
 producers, is confirmed by another item in the table, giving 
 the imports of raw materials for domestic industries. This 
 item doubled in importance in the course of the period, and 
 takes now the place which was formerly held by the item of 
 finished manufactures. We now import raw materials and 
 make the goods at home, instead of sending abroad for the 
 finished product. 
 
 683. Character of foods imported. — The large item of food 
 supplies imported would seem to show that the United States 
 resembles the countries of western Europe in being unable to 
 nourish its population from its own resources. Such an idea 
 would be wide of the facts. The figures of the previous chapter 
 have shown that the country can spare for export immense 
 quantities of the staple foods, such as wheat and meat, and 
 the item of food imports covers mainly luxuries, which the 
 country can afford to buy abroad in increasing quantities as it 
 gains in spending power. We may take as characteristic the 
 case of the so-called Zante currants, seedless raisins which are 
 used in cakes, puddings, etc., and which are so clearly a super- 
 fluous luxury that in England they are made the object of a 
 revenue tax. The imports of Zante currants into the United 
 States were small and scattering before the Civil War, rarely 
 exceeding a thousand tons in a year. The imports rose rapidly 
 to five thousand tons after the war, and in recent years have 
 been ten or fifteen thousand, in spite of the fact that part of 
 the supply is now raised in the country, and imports are re- 
 stricted by protective duties. Other similar cases might be 
 mentioned to show the peculiar character of our food imports. 
 
 684. Question of producing these foods in the United States. 
 Sugar. — The chief items among the imported foods are the 
 products of tropical or semi-tropical agriculture, their values 
 in millions of dollars being as follows in 1900: sugar 100, 
 coffee 52, fruits and nuts 19, tea 10. Some of these articles 
 could be produced in the country, and would undoubtedly be 
 grown at home if they could not be procured so cheaply abroad. 
 In general it has paid the American farmer better to cultivate 
 
566 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 crops like cotton and wheat, which are pecuUarly adapted to 
 the conditions of soil, climate, and labor in the United States, 
 rather than those crops which can be grown as well or better 
 abroad. 
 
 There has been a determined effort, lasting for more than 
 a century, to raise the necessary supplies of sugar at home. 
 The growing of sugar cane was an established industry in 
 Louisiana by 1800, and has been continued ever since in that 
 State. During most of the time the industry has received the 
 help of protective duties or of bounties, but it suffers in this 
 country from the danger of early frosts, and it has never 
 grown strong enough to relieve the United States from depen- 
 dence on foreign sources of supply. 
 
 Better prospects seem to favor the beet-sugar industry. 
 Sugar-beets were first grown successfully on a commercial 
 scale in California about 1890. Since that time the culture 
 of sugar-beets has spread to the prairie and mountain States, 
 and by 1900 beets furnished nearly half as much sugar as 
 American cane. Including all sources of supply, however, the 
 American sugar product is still less than one fifth of the amount 
 required by the people. 
 
 685. Increase in raw materials imported. — Turning now 
 to other classes of imports we are faced by the great increase 
 in articles, both crude and manufactured, used to supply the 
 needs not of consumers but of producers. Articles of this 
 character had always formed a part of our imports, but the 
 growing use of them in this period is clear testimony to the 
 internal development of the country. American industries, 
 which previously had attained strength only when they were 
 supported by a generous supply of raw materials close at hand, 
 are prepared now to reach out to all parts of the world for the 
 supplies which they require. 
 
 It is significant, also, that the great increase in these sup- 
 plies has taken the form of raw materials. Articles wholly or 
 partially manufactured are imported still for use in American 
 industries. These articles are of many different kinds; to 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 567 
 
 name one very important class, that of chemicals and dyes, 
 will suggest their general character. The proportion which 
 these articles form of our total import trade, however, has 
 not increased since 1860. 
 
 686. The chief raw materials among imports. — Of the raw 
 materials imported for domestic industries in 1900 two thirds 
 in value were comprised in the wares enumerated in this section. 
 Values are stated in round millions of dollars. 
 
 The revolution in the metal trade of the country since 1860 
 IS shown by the fact that tin is the only metal which was 
 imported in the crude state in considerable quantities (19 
 millions) ; the country can now supply itself with most of the 
 necessary mineral substances. Of the products of the animal 
 and vegetable kingdoms the raw materials for the textile 
 industry are most prominent. The first place is taken by 
 raw silk, 45; then follow the vegetable fibers, 26 (sisal grass, 
 Manila hemp, jute, flax); wool, 20. The single item of greatest 
 value in the whole list is that of hides, 57; while India rubber, 
 31, represents the importance of an industry that is still com- 
 paratively new, but that is rapidly growing. 
 
 687. Decline in importance of finished manufactures im- 
 ported. — While the imports of raw materials have increased 
 greatly in value, the imports of finished manufactures, ready 
 for the consumer, have shown a relative decline. Taking first 
 the textiles, the most important group among the finished 
 manufactures imported, we find that the total value in 1900 
 was but slightly greater than the total of 1860. In round 
 millions the value of the manufactures imported was as follows 
 in 1900: cotton 41, vegetable fibers and grasses 31, silk 30, 
 wool 16. Between the two dates there had been a great 
 growth of population and of wealth in the country, but the 
 increase in consumption was met mainly by the development 
 of home manufactures. The list of textile raw materials im- 
 ported for manufacture in America, given in the preceding 
 section, shows a great gain in every staple except one, cotton, 
 and the supply of that was of course furnished by the south- 
 
568 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ern States. The growth of domestic manufactures had caused 
 in the case of two important textiles, wool and silk, a con- 
 siderable decline in the value of the manufactured imports; 
 while the only case of a great increase is to be noted in the 
 manufactures of the vegetable fibers, jute, etc., which had not 
 come into extensive use until after the middle of the century. 
 
 688. Variety of imported manufactures. — If we seek to 
 explore the imports of manufactures, outside the single group 
 of the textiles, we are confronted by the same bewildering 
 variety of articles as in previous periods. We find earthen- 
 ware, china, and glass; jewelry, clocks, works of art, and books; 
 paper and leather wares; matting, manufactured furs, and 
 various manufactures of metal. Roughly, a round dozen of 
 articles like those named above can be found, of which each 
 shows imports ranging in value from two or three to ten or 
 more millions of dollars. 
 
 It is probable that the United States will always continue 
 to import manufactured wares like those named above, in 
 great variety and amounting in the total to considerable value. 
 We cannot afford to refuse the contributions of peoples who 
 have specialized in various lines, and by reason of inherited 
 taste and skill, or with the aid of exceptional natural resources, 
 can offer us what we cannot readily produce ourselves. Since 
 1860, however, we have come to depend less and less on our 
 foreign trade for the manufactures which serve the simpler 
 household needs, and the home product of many of the wares 
 named greatly exceeds the amount imported from abroad. 
 
 689. Change in tariff policy since the Civil War. — The 
 growth of American manufactures, to which I have alluded 
 frequently in preceding sections, has often been explained by 
 the change in tariff policy which came at the time of the Civil 
 War. The reader must look in other books for a discussion 
 of that question, on which opinions differ so widely. I shall 
 attempt here merely a brief summary of our recent tariff 
 history. 
 
 At the outbreak of the war a tariff with moderate protective 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 569 
 
 duties was in force. The strain of the conflict forced the 
 government at Washington to adopt every available means of 
 raising revenue. Heavy taxes were laid on manufacturers 
 and other producers in the country, and the tariff was raised, 
 to secure increased revenue from the importers and consumers 
 of foreign wares. Such an increase was necessary, not only to 
 raise revenue but also to enable the American manufacturers 
 to hold their own in the home market, in spite of the taxes 
 which they paid. Actually, however, the increase was greater 
 than was necessary for these purposes, and by the act of 1864 
 the average rate on dutiable commodities had risen to nearly 
 50 per cent. 
 
 690. Increase in protective duties. — The high duties of 
 the war period were imposed with the idea that they should 
 be repealed when the war was over and the country had re- 
 turned to normal business conditions. At the return of peace, 
 however, when the internal taxes on manufactures were repealed, 
 and the peculiar conditions which had formed the occasion for 
 the high tariff no longer existed, the protective duties were 
 kept unchanged or were actually raised. The people in general 
 did not pay so much attention to the tariff as to other ques- 
 tions of politics, and did not realize that it was a tax on them 
 as consumers; while the manufacturers vigorously opposed 
 any reduction. Duties which had been raised by 10 per cent to 
 30 per cent during the war were kept at the higher level which 
 they had reached, and duties on some special articles were 
 arranged so that they furnished the unprecedented protection 
 of 100 per cent or even 150 per cent. The duty on steel rails, 
 for example, amounted to more than the cost of the product 
 which England was ready to sell us, and Americans who built 
 railroads about 1880 had to pay $61 to $67 per ton for rails 
 which could have been purchased in England for $31 to $36. 
 
 691. The tariff at the close of the century. — Since 1880 a 
 reduction of the tariff has been seriously urged by various 
 individuals and parties in the country. The tariff has been 
 changed in details, but the general tendency has been rather 
 
570 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 toward increase than reduction of the protective duties. At 
 the close of the century the average duty was not far from 
 50 per cent of the value of the goods. The British Board of 
 Trade estimated that the important wares imported into this 
 country from England paid about 70 per cent. Such a high 
 tariff was unheard of in earlier times, in the United States or 
 in Europe; and was exceeded in 1900 only by the tariff of 
 Russia. 
 
 To a country small in area and poor in resources a tariff of 
 this character, restricting intercourse with other countries, 
 would be a crushing burden. So great is the extent of the 
 United States, however, and so rich and varied are the resources 
 within its borders, that it can endure seclusion better than 
 any other country in the world. The home market is almost 
 a world in itself. The country unquestionably renounces a 
 large amount of profitable commerce by its tariff restrictions, 
 but remains so rich that the loss is allowed to pass unheeded. 
 
 692. Leading ports, 1860-1900. — The continued impor- 
 tance of the eastern seaboard, in the foreign trade of the 
 country, is shown by the fact that in 1900 nearly three quarters 
 (73 per cent) of the total commerce in merchandise passed 
 through the Atlantic ports. The ports of the Gulf of Mexico 
 are next in importance, while, under the present arrangement 
 of customs districts, the exports and imports by the northern 
 frontier and the Great Lakes exceed those of the whole Pacific 
 coast. 
 
 The port of New York still stands without a rival in impor- 
 tance. Nearly two thirds of the total imports are received 
 through its harbor, and though its share of exports is smaller, 
 it conducts nearly half (47 per cent), of the total trade of the 
 country. No other port has as much as 10 per cent. New 
 York stood even higher, however, in the middle of the period 
 (56 per cent in 1882), and the tendency of recent years has 
 been to distribute among other ports an increasing share of 
 our great foreign trade. The second port, Boston, has built 
 up a large export trade in live cattle and receives a great volume 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 
 
 571 
 
 of miscellaneous imports; while the third, Baltimore, relies 
 mainly upon its exports for its importance, and has proved a 
 serious competitor to New York in the grain trade. New 
 Orleans has also enjoyed a great growth in exports, not only 
 of cotton but also of northern products shipped down the 
 Mississippi Valley, but its imports are comparatively small, 
 and in 1900 it ranked slightly below Baltimore. The order of 
 importance of other ports in 1900 was as follows: Philadelphia, 
 San Francisco, Galveston, Savannah, Newport News, and, in 
 the tenth place, the ports of Puget Sound. 
 
 693. Direction of commerce abroad. — The changes in the 
 distribution of our foreign trade during the last forty years of 
 the century are apparent in the following table, which gives the 
 percentage, in round numbers, of the total exports and imports 
 of the United States in its commerce with the great divisions 
 of the world. For convenience of comparison the figures for 
 1800 are included: 
 
 
 Imports 
 
 Exports 
 
 
 1800 
 
 I860 
 
 1900 
 
 1800 
 
 I860 
 
 1900 
 
 Europe 
 
 North America 
 
 Asia 
 
 South America 
 
 Oceania 
 
 Africa 
 
 51 
 
 35 
 12 
 
 0.1 
 0.6 
 
 59 
 
 20 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 1 
 
 0.9 
 
 51 
 15 
 16 
 11 
 4 
 1 
 
 58 
 
 38 
 
 1 
 
 0.0 
 
 1 
 
 77 
 
 13 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 0.8 
 
 74 
 13 
 4 
 2 
 3 
 1 
 
 694. Relative commercial importance of different parts of 
 the world. — The figures bring out in a striking manner the 
 close connection of commerce and civilization. The continent 
 of Europe, in spite of its small area and in spite of its inferiority 
 to Asia in population, has contributed far more than half of 
 our commerce throughout the century. Our trade with Europe 
 had not quite the same importance in 1900 that it had in 
 1860, but still exceeds that with all other parts of the world 
 together. 
 
572 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 The commerce with our immediate neighbors in North 
 America, on the contrary, has shrunk greatly in importance in 
 the course of the century. The development of the modern 
 transportation system has enabled the merchant in large part 
 to disregard distances, and to look afar for more favorable 
 markets. Commerce with Asia has grown, though it forms 
 still but a small part of our foreign trade, while the South 
 American trade has not fulfilled the hopes of those who have 
 predicted a great future for the United States in its dealings 
 with Latin America. Measured by absolute values, both our 
 exports and imports have increased in trade with South 
 America, but the increase has not kept pace with the progress 
 of our export trade in other parts of the world; hence the 
 percentage has fallen. Trade with Oceania and Africa has 
 grown, with the growth of a civilized population in those parts, 
 but our trade both with Oceania and with Africa is still almost 
 insignificant. 
 
 695. Importance of the English trade. — England still heads 
 the list of the countries with which we trade. Our imports 
 from the United Kingdom in 1900 formed 18 per cent of our 
 total import trade, exceeding, therefore, our imports from 
 South America, Oceania, and Africa together; while our exports 
 to the United Kingdom formed 38 per cent of the total exports, 
 making more than half of our exports to Europe, and far 
 exceeding the total value of our exports to all other divisions 
 of the world. The immense importance of the trade with 
 England is apparent, when comparisons of this kind are made; 
 but it is too often lost from view in current discussions which 
 seek to divert the attention of the public to undeveloped parts 
 of the world. 
 
 696. Trade with other countries : Europe. — The relative 
 importance of other countries in their commercial relations 
 with the United States can be seen in the following list, which 
 gives the share each took in our total commerce in merchandise 
 in 1900: United Kingdom 30 per cent, Germany 12 per cent, 
 France 6 per cent, British North America 6 per cent, the 
 
574 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Netherlands 4 per cent, the West Indies 4 per cent, Brazil 3 
 per cent, Mexico 2 per cent, Japan 2 per cent, Belgium 2 per 
 cent. An extension of this list would confuse rather than aid 
 the student; the ten countries named contributed between 
 two thirds and three quarters of the total commerce of the 
 country. 
 
 Among the European states we note that France occupies 
 now the third place; commerce with that country has grown 
 but slowly, and Germany has won the second place among 
 our European customers by her high industrial development 
 and her growing demand for our raw materials. It is note- 
 worthy that the only other states of Europe which take a 
 high place* on the list are the Low Countries, the Netherlands, 
 and Belgium; the small extent of these countries is actually 
 the reason why their commerce is so large, for they cannot 
 maintain their population except by granting the economic 
 privileges attending comparative freedom of trade. 
 
 697. The Americas and Asia. — The great importance of 
 our commerce with Europe rests largely on our trade with the 
 three states of England, Germany, and France, which, between 
 them, share nearly a half of our total foreign commerce. When 
 we have passed these countries, in scanning the list of our 
 customers, we find countries in other parts of the world de- 
 serving consideration. Our British neighbors on the mainland 
 still carry on an active trade across the border, though no 
 encouragement is given by treaties of reciprocity such as that 
 which was in force before the Civil War. The West Indies still 
 supply us with sugar and tobacco, and Brazil furnishes a large 
 part of the coffee consumed in the United States; these coun- 
 tries make most of their purchases in Europe, however, and 
 take a much lower rank in the list of the customers to whom 
 we export our products. 
 
 At the end of the century but one Asiatic state, Japan, 
 took a place high up among the countries with which the 
 United States traded. So rapid has been the development of 
 commerce with this country, however, and so promising are 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 575 
 
 the prospects in other parts of Asia, especially in China, that 
 a few years may see Asia ranking next to Europe when meas- 
 ured by the standard of our commercial interests. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 
 
 1. Chart the figures, sect. 681, and note the changes in the relative 
 as well as the absolute importance of different classes of imports. 
 
 2. Contrast the import trade of the United States in 1900 with that 
 of England or of Germany. Study the indications of trade between the 
 U. S. and other countries given by these comparisons. 
 
 3. The decline in import of manufactured wares implies either that 
 the country is growing poorer, and so is unable to buy finished products 
 abroad, or else is growing more competent to supply its own needs. Which 
 is the correct view? 
 
 4. What food supplies, used in the household in which you live, come 
 from foreign countries? 
 
 5. Has there been any change in the relative amount of foreign food 
 products consumed in your household in the past generation? 
 
 6. If an American farmer can get more sugar by raising cotton or 
 wheat and exchanging his surplus, is there any reason why he should 
 raise sugar? 
 
 7. The American cane sugar industry. [Depew, chap. 37 by Searles; 
 Pub. Amer. Econ. Assoc, 1904, 5: 79-98; Census, 1900, 6: 443-494.] 
 
 8. The beet sugar industry. [Census, 1900, 9: 543-555; Rep. Ind. 
 Comm., 1900, 10: ccli-cclxxiv; House Doc. 396, 55th Cong., 2d Session; 
 Poole's Index.] 
 
 9. The chemical industry of the U. S. [Depew, chap. 63 by Bowers; 
 Census, 1880, 2: 985-1028; 1900, 7: clii, 10: 52^-569.] 
 
 10. Write a report on the history, sources of supply, commerce and 
 uses, of one of the raw materials mentioned in sect. 686. [Encyc, 
 commercial geographies, U. S. Census.] 
 
 11. Write a report on one of the following industries, with respect to 
 production at home and importation from abroad: 
 
 (a) Glass. [Depew, chap. 40 by Gillinder; Census, 1880, 2: 1029- 
 1152; 1900, 9:947 ff.] 
 
 (6) Earthenware and potteries. [Depew, chap. 41 by Moses; Census, 
 1900, 9:899 ff.] 
 
 (c) Hides and manufactures of leather. [Depew, chap. 75 by Foerderer; 
 Census, 1900, 9: 699-738.] 
 
 {d) Boots and shoes. [Depew, chap. 87 by Rice; Census, 1900, 9*. 
 739-767.] 
 
 [See Depew and Census for many other industries.] 
 
576 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 12. Study in detail one of the following chapters in recent tariff policy: 
 (a) The war tariff. 
 
 (6) The failure to reduce the tariff after the war. 
 
 (c) Increase of duties above war rates. 
 
 (d) The Act of 1883. 
 
 (e) The Act of 1890 (McKinley Tariff). 
 (/) The Act of 1894 (Wilson Tariff). 
 
 (g) The Act of 1897 (Dingley Tariff). 
 
 [Taussig or Mayo-Smith and Seligman; for the Act of 1897 see Taussig 
 in Quarterly Jour, of Econ., Boston, Oct., 1897, 12: 42-69. The student 
 may also consult tariff histories by Stanwood, Rabbeno, etc., narrative 
 histories and contemporary periodical articles.] 
 
 13. The following figures give, in millions of dollars, the commerce 
 in merchandise passing through the ten principal customs districts in 
 1900. On a sketch map of the country draw lines from the different ports 
 proportional to the figures and extending out to sea; thus giving graphic 
 representation of relative importance of the ports. The first figure is 
 that of imports, the second that of exports. New York, 537, 518; Boston, 
 72, 112; Baltimore, 19, 115; New Orleans, 17, 115; Philadelphia, 51, 78; 
 San Francisco, 47, 40; Galveston, 1, 85; Savannah, 0.4, 38; Newport News, 
 2, 34; Puget Sound, 7, 17. 
 
 14. The figures, sect. 693 may best be charted by the use of colored 
 crayons, giving each grand division its own color. Draw a line composed of 
 100 equal units, by the use of dividers or a scale; a foot rule, divided into 
 sixteenths of an inch, may be employed, making the line 6^ inches long 
 (16 X 6i = 100). Chart imports and exports separately, and study the 
 charts as representing the relative importance of our trade with the dif- 
 ferent continents at different periods. 
 
 Commerce by Continents, units of Ten Million Dollars 
 
 (See next page) 
 
 1800 
 
 Imports 
 
 Europe 
 
 North America 
 
 Asia 
 
 South America 
 
 Oceania 
 
 Africa 
 
 Exports 
 
 4 
 2 
 0.1 
 
 0.1 
 
 1860 
 
 Imports 
 
 21 
 7 
 2 
 3 
 
 0.3 
 0.3 
 
 Exports 
 
 31 
 5 
 1 
 1 
 
 0.5 
 0.3 
 
 1900 
 
 Imports 
 
 44 
 
 13 
 
 13 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 Exports 
 
 104 
 
 18 
 
 6 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
DIRECTION OF COMMERCE, 1860-1900 577 
 
 15. Note carefully that the figures of the text are percentages, not 
 total values. The total values are given on preceding page, with a 
 slight difference of arrangement; each unit of the figures represents ten 
 million dollars, and dashes are inserted when the values do not come 
 within one decimal place of a unit. 
 
 To illustrate the use of the figures: the imports from Oceania in 1860 
 were roughly three million dollars in value, in 1900 thirty millions (the 
 precise figure was $34,611,108). 
 
 The figures may be used in studying our commercial relations in the 
 following ways: 
 
 (a) To show the development of our commerce with different con- 
 tinents take three large sheets of paper, for the three different dates. 
 Lay off the largest figures (Europe, 1900, 44 imports plus 104 exports) 
 to a convenient scale at the top of one sheet, and below it draw other lines 
 showing the total commerce with each of the other grand divisions at 
 that date. Distinguish either imports or exports by the use of wavy or 
 dotted lines. Prepare the other charts, using the same scale. These 
 charts will show the growth of American commerce, while the charts based 
 on figures in the text show only changes in proportion. 
 
 (6) To show the relative commercial importance of the continents 
 (excluding Oceania) at a certain time, as in 1900, the following method 
 may be adopted. Rule a sheet of paper in equal squares, or procure a 
 sheet of plotting paper already ruled. Draw on the paper a map of 
 Europe to such a scale that the land area will include as nearly as possible 
 148 squares (44 imports plus 104 exports). Exactness is impracticable, 
 but a few experiments should make the result sufficiently accurate; an 
 error of 10 or 20 squares is of little importance. Draw then the maps of 
 the other continents so that each one contains the number of squares 
 corresponding to its share in our trade (North America, exclusive, of U. S., 
 31; Asia, 19; South America, 12, etc.). The contrast between the con- 
 tinents will be sufficiently striking even if other maps, showing the con- 
 tinents in their true proportions, are not made for comparison. 
 
 16. Methods similar to those already employed may be used in study- 
 ing the commerce of the U. S. with separate countries. Full statistical 
 information is comprised in the Reports on Commerce and Navigation. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 See chapter li. 
 
 TOPICS FOR REVIEW 
 
 The following topics are suggested for use in a general review of 
 American commerce: (a) history of American shipping; (b) transportation 
 37 
 
578 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 by road, river, canal and lake; (c) transportation by railroad; (d) produc- 
 tion and exchange of wheat and flour; (e) cotton; (/) animal products; 
 (g) textiles, (cotton, wool, silk); (/i) iron and steel; (i) other mineral 
 products; (j) commerce with European countries; (k) commerce with 
 Asia; (Z) commerce with the West Indies and South America; (m) history 
 of American seaports; (n) tariff history. 
 
CHAPTER LIV 
 RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 698. Rise in the price level since 1896. It is not easy for 
 those who live in the midst of currents of change to estimate 
 accurately the force and direction of the currents, and to deter- 
 mine which ones among them will prove in time to have the 
 most lasting influence. Yet it seems safe to hazard the asser- 
 tion that among the changes marking the passing of the nine- 
 teenth century the future historian of commerce will distinguish 
 one of fundamental importance, namely, the change in the 
 general level of prices. 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 the 
 topic first deserving 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, com- 
 paring 1910- with 1896, when prices were lowest, by 66.3 %, 
 almost two-thirds. The change has been less marked in manu- 
 factured wares, for it has been offset to a certain extent by im- 
 provements in methods of production, but still it is very great: 
 nearly 30 % compared with the decade before 1900, and over 
 40 % compared with 1896. 
 
 699. 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 
 
 579 
 
580 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 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 Australian gold dis- 
 coveries, for almost half a century, the world's annual gold out- 
 put 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 in 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 in- 
 come 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 busi- 
 ness rapidly expands. The following pages will describe a 
 noteworthy development of industry and trade; 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. 
 The short period under review is actually one of extraordinary 
 expansion even in the quantity of business transacted, but 
 figures expressed in money values give an exaggerated idea of 
 the development. 
 
 700. Railroads and shipping of the world. Of the two great 
 instruments by which the trade of the world is carried on, the 
 railroad and the ship, the former, involving enormous capital 
 
RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 581 
 
 expenditure and growing now but slowly, is distributed as shown 
 in the accompanying table, which gives a fair idea of the com- 
 mercial development of the different continents. 
 
 Railroad Mileage at the End of 1908 
 
 Europe 202,109 
 
 Asia 58,813 
 
 Africa 19,211 
 
 Old World 280,133 
 
 North America 274,372 
 
 South America 39,013 
 
 Australasia 17,960 
 
 New Worid 331,345 
 
 Between continents most of the trade is conducted on the 
 sea, and the rapid expansion of the world's shipping in recent 
 years shows clearly the extent to which commerce has broken 
 through local and national bounds, and has united different 
 countries in one great economic organization. 
 
 Shipping in Millions of Registered Tons 
 (Ships of 100 tons or less are omitted) 
 
 1913 
 
 United Kingdom 
 
 British Colonies . . . . 
 
 Germany 
 
 U.S. (ocean) 
 
 U.S. (lake and coast) 
 
 Norway 
 
 Other countries 
 
 World 
 
 1900 
 
 1905 
 
 1910 
 
 13.2 
 
 15.8 
 
 17.5 
 
 1.0 
 
 1.2 
 
 1.4 
 
 2.6 
 
 3.5 
 
 4.3 
 
 2.0 
 
 2.6 
 
 2.7 
 
 0.7 
 
 1.3 
 
 2.2 
 
 1.6 
 
 1.7 
 
 2.0 
 
 7.9 
 
 9.9 
 
 11.8 
 
 29.0 
 
 36.0 
 
 41.9 
 
 18.6 
 1.7 
 5.0 
 2.9 
 2.3 
 2.4 
 
 14.0 
 
 46.9 
 
 701. Increased efficiency of the carrying trade. Of the total 
 
 shipping the steam vessels are gaining constantly a larger share. 
 In 1913 they far exceeded the sailing ships even in number 
 (23,897 as against 6,694, omitting all of 100 tons or below), 
 while their larger size made their gross tonnage more than ten- 
 
582 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fold that of the saihng ships; and their effective power was 
 proportionately, of course, even greater The British Empire 
 not only keeps its dominant place in the shipping business, but 
 also in ship-building has since 1900 contributed more than 
 half of the tonnage added to the world's fleet. 
 
 Recent years have marked a development in the use of oil 
 for fuel on steamships, and the beginning of the use of explo- 
 sion motors of the Diesel type, which may have far-reaching 
 effects. The perfection of wireless telegraphy has already 
 made this means of communication indispensable on passenger 
 vessels, and will make it without doubt equally necessary for 
 the safe and economical conduct of commercial shipping. If 
 we add to these technical factors the changes resulting from the 
 opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 we may fairly say that 
 the ocean carrying trade of the world has in these last few years 
 passed through a revolution. 
 
 702. Share of leading countries in the world*s commerce. 
 The share in the world's commerce taken by the leading countries 
 is shown in the table on the opposite page, which is based on the 
 figures of " special " trade (including therefore only those ex- 
 ports produced in the country, and those imports retained for 
 home consumption), and which states the annual average value 
 of trade in each of the past three decades. By following the fig- 
 ures vertically one may compare the relative standing of the 
 various countries in their import and export trade; while the 
 figures on the same horizontal line show the development of any 
 particular country in the period covered. 
 
 703. Commerce of the United Kingdom. Inspection of the 
 table shows that the United Kingdom still retains its position 
 of leadership among the commercial countries of the world. 
 The slackening of development, which caused concern in Eng- 
 land at the close of the nineteenth century, has been followed 
 by a period of recovery, and a steady rise in the value not only 
 of the import but also of the export trade. It is the great vol- 
 ume of imports, however, which maintains the primacy of the 
 United Kingdom in the foreign commerce of the world. The 
 
RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 583 
 
 Recent Trade of Leading Commercial Countries 
 (Approximate annual averages in millions oj dollars) 
 
 United Kingdom 
 
 Germany 
 
 United States . . . 
 
 France 
 
 HoUand * 
 
 Belgium * 
 
 Austria-Hungary 
 
 Russia * 
 
 Italy 
 
 Spain * 
 
 1881-1890 
 
 Imports 
 
 1650 
 825 
 705 
 880 
 465 
 302 
 247 
 234 
 269 
 162 
 
 Exports 
 
 1170 
 780 
 780 
 680 
 375 
 261 
 302 
 311 
 206 
 150 
 
 1891-1900 
 
 Imports 
 
 1725 
 1140 
 780 
 835 
 660 
 362 
 302 
 276 
 255 
 177 
 
 Exports 
 
 1190 
 880 
 
 1050 
 710 
 550 
 309 
 337 
 339 
 219 
 172 
 
 1901-1910 
 
 Imports 
 
 2525 
 
 1800 
 
 1185 
 
 1065 
 
 1020 
 
 578 
 
 464 
 
 386 
 
 480 
 
 201 
 
 Exports 
 
 1700 
 1470 
 1655 
 995 
 835 
 453 
 459 
 503 
 343 
 185 
 
 * Figures in the last column are averages for the decade 1900-1909. 
 
 United States has already passed the United Kingdom as an 
 exporting or selling country, and Germany has been advancing 
 so rapidly that she bids fair to win the second place in the 
 world's export trade. 
 
 There is still no evidence of any general decline in the pro- 
 ductive power of the United Kingdom. On the other hand, as 
 indicated above (page 381), the people who live within the re- 
 stricted area of Great Britain and Ireland have not been able to 
 match the progress of their competitors. Studying the course 
 of trade during the generation comprised between the dates 
 1880-1909, the United Kingdom has maintained or increased 
 the value of its sales in all but two of the more important 
 markets of the world; and the two countries to which British 
 exports have declined, Russia and Roumania, would not by them- 
 selves form very serious exceptions. If, however, we select for 
 study not the bare figures of export values, but the figures show- 
 
584 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ing the percentage which British sales to any country form of 
 that country's total imports, the result is very different; for we 
 are then measuring British progress not by the home standard 
 but by the standard set by commercial competitors. 
 
 704. Illustration by the recent commerce of Japan. The 
 distinction is so important that it deserves illustration by a par- 
 ticular example, and we may choose for the purpose a country 
 which during the recent period has furnished a rapidly growing 
 market to the merchants of the world, namely, Japan. 
 
 Annual Average Imports of Japan in Recent Decades 
 {Values in millions of yen) 
 
 
 From 
 
 United 
 
 Kingdom 
 
 From 
 Germany 
 
 From 
 U.S. 
 
 From 
 
 other 
 
 countries 
 
 From all 
 countries 
 
 1881-1890 
 1891-1900 
 1900-1909 
 
 19.6 
 46.6 
 84.3 
 
 3.4 
 14.8 
 36.1 
 
 4.2 
 22.8 
 65.8 
 
 19.3 
 
 87.0 
 199.8 
 
 46.5 
 171.2 
 386.0 
 
 The Japanese monetary unit, the yen, has declined consider- 
 ably in value in the course of the period, and therefore no 
 exact equivalent for it can be given; but even allowing for this 
 
 Percentage of Japan's Imports from Each Country 
 
 
 From 
 
 United 
 
 Kingdom 
 
 From 
 Germany 
 
 From 
 
 U.S. 
 
 From 
 
 other 
 
 countries 
 
 From all 
 countries 
 
 1881-1890 
 1891-1900 
 1900-1909 
 
 42.2 
 27.3 
 21.8 
 
 7.2 
 8.6 
 9.3 
 
 8.9 
 13.3 
 17.0 
 
 41.7 
 50.8 
 51.9 
 
 100 
 100 
 100 
 
RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 585 
 
 decline the growth of British export trade to Japan appears 
 satisfactory if the student regards merely the figures in the 
 first column. If we apply, however, the comparative standard, 
 and measure the British exports to Japan alongside those from 
 other countries, the result is not the same. 
 
 705. Relative decline of the United Kingdom in the world's 
 markets. Pursuing the comparative method, illustrated by 
 the last preceding table, we find that the United Kingdom 
 during the generation 1880-1909 shows an increased share of 
 sales in only three of the minor markets of the world: Spain, 
 Argentine Republic, Sweden. It has almost held its own in 
 France, Switzerland and Norway; but in most of the impor- 
 tant markets of the world it has lost ground seriously. 
 
 Even in its trade with the British dependencies the United 
 Kingdom has not held its own. Comparing the percentage of 
 British exports to a dependency with its total imports, we find 
 that the United Kingdom kept its place in only one of its colonial 
 markets, Mauritius, a purchaser of relative insignificance, while 
 foreign countries gained ground from it in British India, Aus- 
 tralia, Canada and all the other important colonial markets. 
 
 Under these circumstances, naturally, thoughtful observers 
 in the United Kingdom have kept alive the question of how their 
 country may best contrive to secure its commercial position. 
 The agitation for a change from the traditional policy of free 
 trade has continued, but it has been so far without result; and 
 though some of the colonies have accorded a slight degree of 
 preference to British goods in framing their tariffs the move- 
 ment toward an Imperial Customs Union has made but a bare 
 beginning, and the practical results have been too slight to 
 deserve detailed consideration. 
 
 706. Development of German commerce. In sharp contrast 
 to the commercial record of the United Kingdom in recent 
 decades stands that of the other aspirants for commercial 
 leadership. The United States shows an increased share of sales 
 in fourteen out of sixteen foreign markets, including all but one 
 (Belgium), of the ten great purchasing countries; Germany 
 
586 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 shows an increased share of sales in thirteen foreign markets, 
 including all but one (Holland), of the ten great purchasing 
 countries. 
 
 Steadily and methodically the Germans have continued to 
 perfect their industrial processes, and to push their wares in 
 foreign markets. They have tended more and more to restrict 
 their imports to foodstuffs and raw materials, and to sell 
 finished manufactures to the other countries of the world. 
 They retain an undisputed supremacy in the chemical industry, 
 and are keen competitors in other industries, such as steel and 
 textiles, which are characteristic of an advanced industrial 
 people. They have maintained their economic progress in 
 spite of a military burden which has grown much more heavy 
 since 1900, as they have elaborated their great army, and have 
 added a modern navy which is thought by some to menace the 
 position of the United Kingdom as a sea-power. 
 
 707. Relative importance of the internal and the foreign 
 trade of the United States. In taking up for consideration the 
 recent developments in the commerce of the United States it 
 is proper to emphasize again the fact that the internal trade of 
 this country, with its great population, its rich resources and 
 its efficient organization of business, far exceeds in value its 
 foreign commerce. The relative proportion of the two branches 
 of trade has been the subject of estimates in the past, but for 
 recent years can be stated with some approach to statistical 
 accuracy. The total value of the merchandise of the United 
 States exported and imported in 1912 was $3,857,587,343 — 
 3.8 billions, in short. The total value of the internal trade of 
 the country in that same year is calculated to have been 474 
 billions! No one, of course, believes that these figures are abso- 
 lutely accurate, yet on the other hand they are certainly not 
 far from the truth ; and it is perfectly safe to assert that in the 
 year in question the value of the country's foreign commerce 
 was not one per cent of the value of its internal trade. 
 
 708. Growth of transportation facilities in the U.S. Some 
 idea of the growth of business in the United States in recent 
 
RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 587 
 
 years can be gained from the accompanying brief table, which 
 pictures the contribution of the railroads in their two impor- 
 tant activities, the carriage of freight and the carriage of 
 passengers. 
 
 Railroad Service in the U.S., 1890-1910 
 {Figures in billions: 000,000,000 omitted) 
 
 
 1890 
 
 1895 
 
 1900 
 
 1905 
 
 1910 
 
 Tons carried one mile 
 
 Passengers carried one mile 
 
 77 
 11 
 
 85 
 12 
 
 141 
 16 
 
 186 
 23 
 
 255 
 32 
 
 While the mileage of railroad track in the country increased 
 from 1900 to 1910 by a little over one-third, the effective capacity 
 of the railroads grew much more rapidly, as is evidenced by the 
 figures of service above, and also by the additions to locomotives 
 and rolling stock, which show an increase of about two-thirds 
 in the period; and the traffic through the Great Lakes, by way 
 of the St. Mary canals, grew even more rapidly than the rail- 
 road tonnage. The Parcels Post Act of 1912 gave the public 
 facilities for the distribution of small packages which the 
 people of European countries had long enjoyed; and the Panama 
 Canal Act of the same year made it at last possible, under some- 
 what severe restrictions, to register under the American flag 
 foreign built vessels engaged in foreign trade. 
 
 709. Change in character of the export trade. Evidence of 
 a momentous change in the foreign trade and in the internal 
 development of the United States in the past generation is 
 furnished by the accompanying table. The student who traces 
 the changes in the percentages which foodstuffs and manufac- 
 tures respectively form of the total exports will see that these 
 two most important items have practically changed places. 
 The value of the agricultural output has not ceased to grow, 
 and has indeed risen rapidly. The home market, however, 
 
588 
 
 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 has grown so fast that the surplus available for export has 
 remained nearly stationary, and forms a constantly smaller 
 part of the expanding total. The country has come to rely upon 
 its industrial rather than its agricultural resources to buy what 
 it needs from foreign lands. 
 
 Exports of U.S. 
 
 Foodstuffs 
 
 Manufactures 
 
 
 Value 
 
 Per cent 
 
 Value 
 
 Per cent 
 
 Fiscal year 
 
 millions of 
 
 of 
 
 millions of 
 
 of 
 
 
 dollars 
 
 total 
 
 dollars 
 
 total 
 
 1880 
 
 459 
 
 55 
 
 121 
 
 14 
 
 1885 
 
 325 
 
 44 
 
 150 
 
 20 
 
 1890 
 
 356 
 
 42 
 
 178 
 
 21 
 
 1895 
 
 318 
 
 40 
 
 205 
 
 25 
 
 1900 
 
 545 
 
 39 
 
 484 
 
 35 
 
 1905 
 
 401 
 
 26 
 
 611 
 
 40 
 
 1910 
 
 369 
 
 21 
 
 766 
 
 44 
 
 1912 
 
 418 
 
 19 
 
 1,020 
 
 47 
 
 710. Development of American manufactures. This change 
 in the national economy is reflected in the statistics of imports, 
 
 
 Average num- 
 
 Values in billions of dollars 
 
 
 ber of wage- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 earners 
 
 Capital 
 
 Wages 
 
 Materials 
 
 Products 
 
 1899 
 
 4,712,763 
 
 8.9 
 
 2.0 
 
 6.5 
 
 11.4 
 
 1904 
 
 5,468,383 
 
 12.6 
 
 2.6 
 
 8.5 
 
 14.7 
 
 1909 
 
 6,615,046 
 
 18.4 • 
 
 3.4 
 
 12.1 
 
 20.6 
 
 1913 
 
 7,532,376 
 
 23.0 
 
 4.0 
 
 15.0 
 
 25.3 
 
 (estimated) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 589 
 
 which show a decline in the relative importance of the finished 
 manufactures imported, and a notable growth in the import of 
 the raw materials of manufacture. 
 
 The statistics of manufactures in the country show also how 
 great has been the industrial development within a compara- 
 tively brief period. 
 
 711. Direction of commerce. Corresponding to this change 
 in the quality of American commerce we find a change in the 
 strength of the trade currents in various directions. 
 
 Percentage of Merchandise Imported into and Exported 
 
 FROM the U.S., BY DIVISIONS OF THE WORLD 
 
 1912 
 
 Europe, imports 
 
 " exports 
 
 North America, imports 
 
 " " exports 
 
 South America, imports 
 
 " " exports. 
 Asia, imports 
 
 " exports 
 
 All other, imports 
 
 " " exports 
 
 1895 
 
 1900 
 
 1905 
 
 1910 
 
 52 
 
 51 
 
 48 
 
 51 
 
 77 
 
 74 
 
 67 
 
 65 
 
 18 
 
 15 
 
 20 
 
 19 
 
 13 
 
 13 
 
 17 
 
 22 
 
 15 
 
 11 
 
 13 
 
 12 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 16 
 
 14 
 
 12 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 49 
 
 60 
 
 20 
 
 23 
 
 13 
 
 6 
 
 13 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 The most notable change in the figures of the table, the 
 decline in exports to Europe, is clearly due to the fact that 
 manufactured articles have taken from foodstuffs the leading 
 place among the exports. Of the manufactures of the United 
 States Europe still takes more than does any other continent, 
 but the increase in the export of manufactures was, comparing 
 1900 and 1912, to Europe only 59 %, while to North America 
 it was 225 % and to South America 310 %. North and South 
 America together took of the manufactures of the United 
 States in 1900 about half as much as Europe bought, while in 
 1912 they took more than Europe. 
 
590 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 712. Recent tariff and currency legislation. Following in- 
 sistent demands for a revision of the customs tariff, the Payne- 
 Aldrich act of 1909 placed hides on the free Hst, and reduced 
 a number of duties. Some duties were raised, and some high 
 duties, particularly those bearing on textile products, were 
 retained. Dissatisfaction with the results led to the passing of 
 the Underwood act of 1913, which made considerable reductions' 
 on the textiles (except silk), iron and steel, sugar and agricul- 
 tural products. Several schedules continued practically un- 
 changed, and on about half of the chief dutiable commodities 
 imported the rates remained as high as before. 
 
 Neither of these tariff acts has shown great influence on the 
 commerce of the country. American commerce appears now, 
 as in the past, to change in response to the internal develop- 
 ment of a nation which has shaped itself with relatively little 
 guidance from its government. Some competent observers 
 believe that the revision of the banking system, enacted in 
 1913, will have more effect than any tariff act both on national 
 development and on domestic and foreign trade. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Of books published since 1907, which will be serviceable to the student 
 or teacher of the history of commerce, the following may be mentioned. 
 
 Bibliography. Hubert Hall, editor, A select bibliography of Eng- 
 hsh mediaeval economic history, London, 1914, 5 sh.; What to read on 
 social and economic subjects, Fabian Society, London, 5th ed., 1910. 
 The American Economic Review, of which the first number appeared 
 March, 1911, Usts all new books and periodical articles, with a brief ap- 
 preciation of the more important, and reference should be made to that for 
 many books and articles which cannot be listed here. 
 
 Manuals. Hugh O. Meredith, Outlines of the economic history of 
 England, London, 1909; Arthur D. Innes, England's industrial develop- 
 ment, N.Y., 1912. 
 
 A book covering a great stretch of time, and embracing valuable 
 material for the student of the history of commerce is Edwin A. Pratt, 
 A history of inland transport and communication in England, London, 
 1912. More important to scholars but less useful to most teachers 
 are George Unwin, Industrial organization in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, Oxford, 1904, and WiUiam R. Scott, The constitution 
 
RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 591 
 
 and finance of joint-stock companies to 1720, 3 vols., Cambridge, 1910 fif. 
 On English colonial policy see George L. Beer, The origins of the British 
 colonial system, 1578-1660, N.Y., 1908, and The old colonial system, 
 1660-1754, 2 vols., N.Y., 1912; on French policy, Stewart L. Mims, Col- 
 bert's West India policy. New Haven, 1912. Abbott P. Usher, The history of 
 the grain trade in France, 1400-1710, Cambridge, Mass., 1913, is a scholarly 
 • contribution on an important but difficult topic; J. C. Hemmeon, The 
 history of the British post office, Cambridge, Mass., 1912, covers chiefly 
 the nineteenth century. Frederick P. Robinson, The trade of the East 
 India Company from 1709 to 1813, Cambridge, 1912, I have not had an 
 opportunity to examine. 
 
 For the more recent period of commercial development the teacher 
 will find the new edition of George R. Porter (cf. p. 364 of this book), The 
 progress of the nation, revised and brought up to date by F. W. Hirst, 
 London, 1912, of great value. Gilbert Slater, The making of modern 
 England, London, 1913, has many chapters of economic importance. On 
 the commercial poUcy of the period of the corn laws see Bernard Holland, 
 The fall of protection, 1840-1850, London, 1913, and G. M. Trevelyan, 
 The life of John Bright, London, 1913; of contributions to the recent con- 
 troversy over commercial policy may be mentioned J. M. Robertson, 
 Trade and tariffs, London, 1908 (for free trade), and WiUiam Cunningham, 
 The case against free trade, London, 1911 (protectionist). David Hannay, 
 The sea trader, London, 1912, covering the modern and recent periods, is 
 popular and interesting. Lectures on British commerce, with preface 
 by W. P. Reeves, London, 1912, is mainly a description of the present 
 organization. John Holt Schooling, The British trade book, fourth issue, 
 London, 1911, is an indispensable compendium of recent commercial 
 statistics. 
 
 For recent additions to the literature of the economic history of the 
 United States see the bibliographies in the revised editions of K. C. Coman, 
 Industrial history of the U.S., N.Y., 1910, and E. L. Bogart, Economic 
 history of the U.S., N.Y., 1913; arid compare the article by G. S. Cal- 
 lender. The position of American economic history, American Historical 
 Review, Oct., 1913, 19:80-97. 
 
AUTHORITIES 
 
 [Numbered references are to sections of the text.] 
 
 As the following notes are, by necessity, restricted to as small a 
 compass as possible, and give in most cases merely the authority for a 
 statement in the text, the student-investigator may be grateful for an 
 introductory note on the bibliography of the subject. 
 
 A search of Newman's Index (N. Y. State Library Bulletin, Albany, 
 1898), and of the Bulletin of Bibliography (Boston, to July, 1905), failed 
 to reveal any bibliography on commerce or its history. R, van der Borght, 
 Handel und Handelspolitik, Leipzig, 1900, has a bibliography by Lippert, 
 of which about nine pages are devoted to the history of commerce. Titles 
 are arranged under 13 heads, but no appreciation is given, and references 
 to important periodical articles are lacking; traces of slipshod work, 
 moreover, are apparent. Otto Miihlbrecht, Wegweiser durch die neuere 
 Litteratur der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften, vol. 1, 2 ed., Berlin, 
 1893, vol. 2, 1901, and continued in periodical form, is a convenient index 
 of books in trade, including German books with a few in other languages; 
 titles are classified by subjects, and an index of authors is provided. 
 Good bibliographies on some important topics will be found in the Hand- 
 worterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2 ed., Jena, 1898, and in Worter- 
 buch der Volkswirtschaft, Jena, 1898, now appearing in a second edition. 
 The third volume of Roscher, System, 6 ed., Stuttgart, 1892, gives also a 
 wealth of references. The best bibliographical aid, however, for the 
 period extending from ancient times through the Middle Ages, is L. Gold- 
 schmidt, Universalgeschichte des Handelsrechts, 3 ed., Stuttgart, 1891; 
 the pages are largely filled with scholarly notes. 
 
 Of the older manuals the writer has examined the following: Lafaurie, 
 Gesch. des Handels, Stuttgart, 1848; Scherer, Gesch. des Welthandels, 
 Leipzig, 1852; Alberda, Schets der Handelsgeschiedenis, Amsterdam, 
 1862 (one of the sources from which Yeats drew); and Biichele, Gesch. 
 des Welthandels, Stuttgart [1867-8]. These books are old-fashioned 
 in method and authorities, and are now antiquated. Adolf Beer, Gesch. 
 des Welthandels, Wien, 1860 ff., shows a marked advance; Beer used 
 good secondary authorities, was himself a historian of distinction, and 
 produced a book of lasting value. A book by Octave Noel, professor at 
 the school of advanced commercial studies at Paris, Histoire du com- 
 
 592 
 
AUTHORITIES 593 
 
 merce du monde, Paris, 1891-4, 2 vol., quarto, lacks the apparatus of 
 scholarship, but has a text based on good authorities, is handsomely 
 equipped with maps and cuts, and is a very convenient addition to a work- 
 ing library. Wilhelm Gotz, Die Verkehrswege im Dienst des Welthandels, 
 Stuttgart, 1888, is useful for a study of trade routes and centers. 
 
 Of modern manuals the best, so far as the writer's knowledge extends, 
 is by a successor of Beer at the Vienna Commercial College, Richard Mayr, 
 Lehrbuch der Handelsgeschichte, Wien, 1894. This contains a useful 
 bibliography, pp. 345-351. Boccardo, Manuale di storia del commercio, 
 3 ed., Torino, 1886, and Cons, Precis d'histoire du commerce, 2 vol., 
 Paris, 1896, are less noteworthy. Still, any one of these seems better 
 than the current English manuals, which bear all the earmarks of cram- 
 books. 
 
 ANCIENT COMMERCE 
 
 2. For discussions of the character of early trade see A. Sartorius 
 von Waltershausen, Die Entstehung des Tauschhandels in Polynesien, 
 Zeitschrift f. Soc. und Wirtschaftsgesch., 1896, 4: 1-66; Carl Koehne, 
 Markt-, Kaufmann- und Handelsrecht in primitiven Culturverhaltnissen, 
 Zeitschrift f. vergl. Rechtswissenschaft, 1895, 11: 196 ff.; Biicher, Ind. 
 Ev., chaps. 1 and 2. I have treated some aspects of the question in The 
 Dutch in Java, 345 ff. 3. Estimates from Ringwalt, 19, 27. 6. Ed. 
 Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, Stuttgart, 1884, 1: 51; Erman. Anc. Egypt, 
 15; W. M. F. Petrie', Ten years' digging, London, 1892, 151; Ethel J. 
 Simcox, Primitive civihzations, London, 1894, 1: 67, 94 IT. 7. A. H. 
 Sayce, Ancient empires, N. Y., 1885, 85; Erman., 496; Genesis, xxxvii. 
 25; E. Speck, Handelsgeschichte des Altertums, Leipzig, 1900, 1: 384, 
 392 ff., 407. Speck's book, of which the first volume is devoted to ancient 
 Oriental and the second to Greek commerce, is the best available single 
 book on the commerce of the period, and will answer most needs of the 
 general student. It was compiled with care from excellent secondary 
 authorities. 8. Sayce, 53; Grote, Hist, of Greece, N. Y., Harper, 12 vol. 
 ed., 1: 365, 3: 336; Curtius, Griech. Gesch., 6 ed., Berlin, 1887, 1: 414; 
 Speck, 1 : 408 ff . On the canal cf. Erman, 27; Duncker, Hist, of antiquity, 
 London, 1877 ff., 6: 357. 9. Speck, 1: 235, 255; Meyer, Gesch. des. Alt., 
 1: 222, 225; George Rawlinson, Seven great monarchies, N. Y., 1884, 1: 18. 
 10. Speck, 1: 264 ff., 287 ff.; Sayce, 123 ff.; Meyer, Gesch., 1: 487; Raw- 
 linson, 1: 320, 2: 266, 286, 473. 11. On the Jews cf. Speck, 1: 581 ff. 
 Hunter, Hist, of Brit. India, 1: 21 ff., puts in an interesting light the policy 
 of David and Solomon in securing control of the Syrian trade route; 
 but their success can be regarded only as an incident in commercial his- 
 tory. On the Phoenicians see Speck, 1: 417 ff.; G. Maspero, Hist, ancienne 
 des peuples de I'Orient, 5 ed., Paris, 1893, 176; Grote, 3: 266. 12. W. 
 
594 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Richter, Handel . . . im Altertum, Leipzig, 1886, 6; Meyer, Gesch., 
 1: 229 ff.; Georg Busolt, Griech. Gesch., 2 ed., Gotha, 1893 fP., 1: 264; 
 Speck, 1: 465; Duncker, 2: 292. 13. Richter, 9, 12, 14, 16; Speck, 1: 508; 
 Albert G. Keller, Homeric society, N. Y., 1902, 89 ff. 14. Speck, 1: 
 466 ff.; Meyer, 1: 339; Grote, 3: 271 ff.; Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, N. Y., 
 1895, 2: 136 ff. 15. Carl Neumann and J. Partsch, Physikalische Geog. 
 von Griechenland, Breslau, 1885, 127, 146 ff.; V. Duruy, Hist, of Greece, 
 Boston, 1892, 1: 122, 142; E. Abbot, Hist, of Greece, London, 1888, 1: 2; 
 Curtius, 1: 12 ff.; Keller, Homeric Soc, 85 ff. 16. On the self-sufficiency 
 of early Greece cf. Paul Guiraud, La Propriete fonciere en Gr^ce, Paris, 
 1893, 70; R. Pohlmann, Aus dem hellenischen Mittelalter, Hist. Zeitschrift, 
 1895, 75: 233. On early Phoenician trade: Keller, 88 ff., Richter, 7; J. P. 
 Mahaffy, Problems, London, 1892, 36. A discussion of Mycenean culture 
 seems unnecessary. On the industrial revolution of the period of the 
 colonies cf. Guiraud, 86 ff.; Busolt, Gesch., 1: 198, 442, 503, and Alter- 
 tumer, 2 ed., Miinchen, 1892, 134; Beloch, Griech., Gesch., Strassburg, 
 1893 ff., 1: 203. Guiraud 's book is substantially an economic history 
 of Greece, and is an admirable piece of work. Busolt is most reliable, 
 Beloch most interesting and suggestive, of modem historians of Greece. 
 17. Beloch, 1: 394 ff.; Ed. Meyer, Die wirtschaftliche Entwickelung des 
 Altertums, Jena, 1895, 26. This important essay may be found also in 
 Jahrbucher f. Nationalokonomie, Jena, 1895, 65 : 696 ff. 18. Beloch, 
 1: 397; Meyer, Entwick., 39; Gustav Gilbert, Staatsaltertiimer, 2 ed., 
 Leipzig, 1893, 1: 372, 392 (available also in translation, London, 1895); 
 Aug. Boeckh, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 3 ed., Berlin, 1886, 
 59, 62 (the English translation is from an earlier and less desirable edition); 
 Guiraud, 559 ff. 19. Imports: Guiraud, 616; Gilbert, Staatsalt., 1: 371; 
 Meyer, Wirt. Entwick., 39; Holm, Griech. Gesch., Berlin, 1886 ff., 2: 283 
 ff.; G. Perrot, Le Commerce des cer^ales en Attique, Revue Historique, 
 1877, 4: 22. Pohcy: Boeckh, 68; Guiraud, 558, 564. On commercial 
 organization, a topic which must be omitted here for lack of space, see 
 Boeckh, Guiraud, and esp. W. Drumann, Die Arbeiter und Communisten, 
 Konigsberg, 1860. 21. Beloch, 3, 1: 279, 286 ff.; Meyer, Entwick., 43. 
 
 22. Estimates from Beloch, 3, 1 : 306. There is, of course, great diversity 
 of opinion on this question of the population of ancient cities, but for 
 present purposes the comparative rather than the absolute size of the 
 cities is the main point. For a discussion with bibliography see Ed. 
 Meyer, Die Bevolkerung des Altertums, Handworterbuch, 2 : 674 ff . 
 
 23. Beloch, 3, 1: 293 ff.; Holm, Gr. Gesch., 4: 142 ff., 564 ff. 24. 
 Beloch, 3, 1: 299; Holm, 4: 616 ff.; Richter, Handel, 4; Mommsen, Hist., 
 N. Y., 1895, 2: 407. 25. For Roman commerce in the republican period 
 see Mommsen, Hist., 1: 257, 2: 78, etc.; and esp. Moritz Voigt, Privat- 
 altertumer und Kulturgeschichte, Munchen, 1893, 289 ff., 372 ff. It 
 
AUTHORITIES 595 
 
 seems unnecessary to attempt here a detailed discussion of the vexed 
 question of "Oikenwirtschaft," self-sufficiency, in antiquity; see the con- 
 flicting views in Carl Bucher, Ind. Ev., 96 ff., and Meyer, Wirt. Entwick., 
 passim. 26. Voigt, 427 ff.; Meyer, Entwick., 48. For the later history 
 of commerce in the East see Heyd, Levantehandel; Hertzberg, Gesch. 
 der Byzantiner, Berlin, 1883; and Hopf, Gesch. Griechenlands, in Ersch 
 und Gruber, Encyc, Leipzig, parts 85-6. 27-29. It is impossible to cite 
 here authorities for this sketch, which represents conclusions to which I 
 have been led by somewhat extended reading. The student may be re- 
 ferred to Paul Vinogradoff, Growth of the manor, London, 1905, where he 
 will find noticed most of the books covering the period. 
 
 MEDIEVAL COMMERCE 
 
 30. In modem practice, of course, there would be no unnecessary 
 circulation of wares or money between the capital and a province; a sur- 
 plus would move in one direction or the other, but most of the taxes of 
 the province would be short-circuited, if the expression may be allowed, 
 to defray local expenses. It seemed to me that the picture would be sim- 
 pler and more striking if I drew it as in the text, and the difference is not 
 of vital importance. 32. The estimate of the number of feudal states is 
 by Seignobos, in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire gen^rale, Paris, 1894 ff., 
 2: 62; in the twelfth century the number had diminished to about 40. 
 More than a thousand abbeys and individuals had the right to coin money 
 under the Merovingians; 24 had this right in the thirteenth century. 
 D'Avenel, Histoire 4conomique, Paris, 1898, 1 : 30. For present purpose 
 it is unnecessary to enter into the niceties of the feudal system, or even 
 to discuss such characteristic points as its hierarchical gradation. 33-34. 
 Pigeonneau, Hist, du commerce de la France, 1: 187; William Denton, 
 England in the fifteenth century, London, 1888, 173. A vivid idea of the 
 difficulties of communication in England about 700 is given by Beda's 
 writings. For Anglo-Saxon laws referred to see Benjamin Thorpe's 
 Ancient laws, folio ed., in the Rolls Series, London, 1840: Wihtraed, sect. 
 28, p. 19; Alfred, sect. 34, p. 37; Hlothare and Eadric, 15, p. 14; Cnut, 21, 
 p. 166. For an example of cattle laws, Edgar, Supp. 7, p. 116; second- 
 hand clothes were included with live animals (for obvious reasons) by 
 Edw. Conf., 38, p. 199; Aethelstan, 12, p. 88, forbade buying over 20d. 
 "out of port"; Cnut, 24, p. 167, required four witnesses to every bargain 
 over 4d. 35. The word manor is used in this book for the village of the 
 time, without regard to its technical significance. 37. The few details 
 illustrating manorial economy have been taken from the great mass of 
 literature available on medieval agrarian history. The estimate of wheat 
 yield is that of F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and beyond, Cambridge, 
 
596 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 1897, 438; it applies to England about the eleventh century. For the 
 frequency and character of famines see esp. Fritz Curschmann, Hungers- 
 note im Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1900. My characterization of the people is 
 based on Aug. Jessopp, Coming of the friars, London., 1889, and on study 
 of the original court rolls; these date from a later period but conditions 
 must have been still worse in the eleventh century. The roseate pictures 
 of J. E. Thorold Rogers are wholly untrustworthy. 38. Von Maurer, 
 Gesch. . . . der Hofverfassung, Erlangen, 1862, 1: 202, 242, 253. The 
 factories were given up in the twelfth century: K. T. von Inama-Sternegg, 
 Deutsche Wirthschaftsgeschichte, Leipzig, 1879 ff., 2: 255. 39-40. On 
 the wares of early medieval commerce see Johannes Falke, Geschichte des 
 deutschen Handels, Leipzig, 1859-60, 1: 51 ff., 66; Pigeonneau, Hist, du 
 commerce de la France, 1: 60; Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, 2. Aufl., 
 Berlin, 1894 ff., 3: 20. Slave-trade: Falke, 1: 60; Fustel de Coulanges, 
 L'Alleu, Paris, 1889, 279; Thorpe, Ancient laws, folio ed., 19, 21, 48, 129, 
 163, etc The description of the Bristol slave trade, by a biographer of 
 Wulstan, is given in H. D. Traill, Social England, 1: 204. 41. For the 
 early trade of Germany see Lamprecht, in Historische Zeitschrift, 1891, 
 67: 387 ff.; idem, Deutsche Gesch., 3: 21; Falke, 1: 69. France: Pigeon- 
 neau, 1: 102. Law of ranks in Thorpe, 81; later laws, ib., 89, 121, 122. 
 Early trade between Asia and Europe, Wilhelm Heyd, Geschichte des 
 Levantehandels, 1 : 67, 99, 103. Inst, of London, Thorpe, 127. 42. On 
 the character of the early merchant see Gustav Schmoller, in his Jahr- 
 buch f. Gesetzgebung, etc., 1889, 13: 1055; Karl Biicher, Die Entstehung 
 der Volkswirtschaft, 2. ed., Tubingen, 1893, 47; on the religious 
 mixture see Pigeonneau, 1; 62, 124; Falke, 1: 45; Roscher, System 
 der Volkswirthschaft, Bd 3, Handel etc., 6. ed., Stuttgart, 1892, 136. 
 43 ff. G. Schmoller, Strasburgs Blute, Strasburg, 1875, 16; the author 
 says that he is tempted to characterize the industrial revolution of the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries as greater than any which the German 
 people has since experienced, and gives interesting details of the rapid 
 development of Strasburg at this time. Most of the facts on Roman 
 towns are taken from the excellent chapter by Giry and R^ville, in Lavisse 
 et Rambaud, Hist. G^n., 2: 411 ff. There is an immense foreign literature 
 on town history, and it seems to me unnecessary to give detailed refer- 
 ences for these general sections. Cf. the bibliography in the article Biir- 
 ger, by Georg von Below, Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2. 
 ed., Jena, 1898 ff., vol. 2. 48. Charles Gross, Gild merchant, Oxford, 
 1890, 1 : 73, note; Law in Economic Review, July, 1897, 7: 294. The figures 
 of Seebohm, The Black Death and its place in English history. Fortnightly 
 Review, 1865, 2: 155, are certainly too high. For the continent see 
 Biicher, Entstehung, 215, and Bevolkerung v. Frankfurt, Tiibingen, 
 1886; Schmoller, Strasburgs Bliite, 5; Inama-Stemegg, Wirthschafts- 
 
AUTHORITIES 597 
 
 gesch., 3: I: 21 ff. The question of the size and character of the popula- 
 tion of medieval towns is still the subject of discussion; I endeavor to 
 represent the conservative views. 49. Lamprecht, Deutsche Gesch., 
 4: 213; Schmoller, in his Jahrbuch, 1889, 13: 1037; H. T. Riley, Munimenta 
 Gildhallae Londoniensis, London., 1859 ff., 1: xlvi. 50. This picture of 
 the medieval town is based on material from Riley (including the Liber 
 Albus), Denton, Mrs. Green, etc.; Lamprecht; Johannes Scherr, Gesch, 
 der deutschen Frauenwelt, 4th ed., Leipzig, 1879, 1: 241. 51. See for 
 Colchester, Stephen Dowell, Hist, of taxation, London., 1884, 1: 253; Mrs. 
 J. R. Green, Town Life, 1 : 13. For the growth of prosperity in continental 
 towns see Lamprecht, Deutsche Gesch., vol. 4, and Schonberg, Finanzver- 
 haltnisse der Stadt Basel, Tubingen, 1879. 52-53. Gross, Gild merchant, 
 1: 60 and passim; Alfred Doren, Untersuchungen zur Gesch. der Kauf- 
 mannsgilden des Mittelalters (Schmoller, Forschungen, vol. 12), Leipzig, 
 1893, 161 ff.; Lamprecht, Deutsche Gesch., 3: 27; for the "caravan" 
 organization in England cf. Law, Towns and roads (see below), 298. 
 54. For the list of crafts see Schmoller, in his Jahrbuch, 1889, 13: 1044; 
 Inama-Sternegg, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgesch., 2: 316; Lavisse et Ram- 
 baud, Hist, gen., 2: 512. The origin of the town artisans is a mooted 
 point which need not be discussed here; cf. the authors above, Below and 
 Doren. 55. The quotation is from Ashley, Ec. hist., 1: 90; for other 
 references see Gross; Stieda, article Zunftwesen in Handworterbuch der 
 Staatswissenschaften; and notes below. 56. (1) Riley, Mun. Gild., 
 Liber Albus, p. 231; cf. pp. 223-4, scavage time of Edward I. (2) ib. 279, 
 461. (3) Riley, Mun. Gild., 1: Ixvi; discriminations against foreign mer- 
 chants are to be found everywhere, and have lasted even into modem 
 town and village politics in the U. S. 57. Liber Albus is rich in market 
 regulations. I mean to suggest only the main points, without entering 
 on such niceties as forbarring, etc. 58. The Liber Albus, again, furnishes 
 many examples. On the assize of bread cf. Ashley, 1 : 188 ff., Rohrscheidt, 
 Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2d. ed., 5: 260 ff., with refer- 
 ences. The assize of bread was enforced in the American colonies (in 
 Boston, e.g.) and has been retained into recent times in some parts of 
 Europe; cf. D'Avenel, Hist. Econ., 3: 225; Cohn in Zeitschrift d. ges. 
 Staatswissenschaft, Tubingen, 1883, 39: 609 ff. 59. Felix Lucas, Etude 
 sur les voies de communication, Paris, 1873, 8; Schaffle, Bau und Leben 
 des socialen Korpers, 2d. ed., Tubingen, 1896, 2: 152; William Denton, 
 England in the fifteenth century, London, 1888, 173 (time of Richard II); 
 Rogers, Econ. interpretation of hist , N. Y., 1889, 62; Jusserand, English 
 wayfaring life, 2d. ed., N. Y., 1890, 37, 44; Pigeonneau, 1: 189. 60. 
 Pigeonneau, 1: 186; Lavisse et Rambaud, 2: 486; Alice Law, English towns 
 and roads in the thirteenth century, Econ. Review, July, 1897, 7: 302, 
 320, etc.; Denton, 181, 187; Jusserand, 95, 104; Mrs. Green, Town life, 
 
598 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 1: 31; Borel, Foires de Geneve, Geneva, 1892, 202. 6i. Pigeonneau, 
 1: 188 ff.; Jusserand, 48, 57 ff.; Law, 297; Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, N. S., 
 1: 366-7. 62. The estimate is by Pigeonneau, 1: 116; the example is 
 from Naude, Deutsche stadtische Getreidehandelspolitik, Leipzig, 1889, 
 (Schmoller, Forschungen Bd. 8), 13. 63-64. Jusserand is full of material 
 on this topic; the quotation from the Rolls of Parliament, 1348, is from 
 him. The Hampshire story, told by Matthew Paris, is given in Rogers, 
 Six centuries of work and wages, N. Y. [1884], 99. Rogers attempts in 
 some places e.g., Econ. inter., 25, 170; Six cent., 51, 125) to make Eng- 
 land appear a land of general peace, but furnishes sufficient facts to refute 
 himself. For conditions on the Continent cf. Johannes Falke, Gesch. 
 des deutschen Handels, Leipzig 1859, 1: 134, 198; Frantz Quetsch, Gesch. 
 des Verkehrswesens am Mittelrhein, Freiburg i. B., 1891, 403 ff.; Pigeon- 
 neau, 1 : 100, etc. Borel tells in detail, from the criminal archives of Geneva, 
 1437, the story of a saffron merchant robbed near Cologne, on his way 
 from Catalonia to Malines. 66. For classification see Rathgen, Entstehung 
 der Markte in Deutschland, Strasburg, 1881, 5; Schmoller, Umrisse und 
 Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1898, 62, 63. The list of 17 classes is in Guilmoto, 
 Etude sur droits de navigation, Paris, 1889, 9; and a briefer classification 
 will be found in Jules Finot, Etude hist, sur les relations commerciales 
 entre la France et la Flandre, Paris, 1894, 35. Inama-Stemegg, 2: 490 ff., 
 gives tariffs of the twelfth century in tabular form. Many facts in the 
 following pages for which no reference is given are taken from a* rare 
 and valuable book by Matthieu de Vauzelles, Traicte des peages, Lyons, 
 1550, quarto. The student who desires to follow the subject will find 
 ample material in Philippe Mantellier, Hist, de la communeaute des 
 marchands frequentant la riviere de Loire, Orleans, 1867-69, volumes 
 1 and 3. Toll statistics are from Pigeonneau, 1: 183; Falke, 1: 142, 237. 
 67. On Grundruhr und Strandrecht cf. Falke, 1: 242. 68. On the 
 group organization of toll-stations see Pigeonneau, 1: 195. The "pools" 
 were the fifth abuse in the enumeration of Vauzelles, Traicte, 57: "Le 
 cinquieme & evident abus, que les Publicains font entre eux, est, quilz 
 font monopole ensemble de tenir quatre, cinq, ou six peages. Et pour ce 
 faire se associent vingtcinq ou trente, & conviennent intre eux secrette- 
 ment, que lun ne mettra point sur lautre: et que tous les gaings & proufits 
 seront communs: & quilz se rendront bon contre lun a lautre." On the 
 Strassenzwang see Falke 1: 240 ff. 69. See for exemptions Vauzelles, 
 49, 77 ff., 155, 171; Finot, France et Flandre, 55; Pigeonneau, 1: 108; 
 Falke, 1: 141. 70. Estimates from Lamprecht, 4: 57; Pigeonneau, 1: 
 384; Lavisse et Rambaud, 1: 384 (Giry et Reville, cf. Pigeonneau, 1: 183 
 note). 71-73. The facts in the text are taken mainly from Walford, 
 Fairs, London, 1883; Bourquelot (title below); Borel, Foires de Geneve, 
 Geneva, 1892. See K. Rathgen, Markte und Messen, Handworterbuch, 
 
AUTHORITIES 599 
 
 5: 691 ff., bibliography 702-3. The incident of the one-eyed man is from 
 F. W. Maitland, Court Rolls, Selden Soc, 2: 139. 75. On the Cham- 
 pagne fairs see Pigeonneau, 1: 211 ff.; and especially Felix Bourquelot, 
 Etudes sur les foires de Champagne, Mem. Acad. Inscr., Paris, 1865, 2d. 
 ser., vol. 5, 1 : 77 ff., 175 ff. Trade at the fairs, ibid., 1 : 75, 83, 164 ff., 208; 
 decline, ibid., 2; 302 ff., Pigeonneau, 1: 225, 2: 11, Lavisse et Rambaud, 
 3: 292. 76. On Sturbridge fair see Walford, 54 ff., 94; Rogers, Six cent., 
 149; Traill, Soc. Eng., 3: 142. The passage quoted is from Ashley, Ec. 
 hist., 1: 100. 77. Oppenheim, in F. P. Barnard, Companion to English 
 hist. (Middle Ages), Oxford, 1902, 159; Come wall- Jones, 4; Alice Law, 
 Notes on English medieval shipping, Econ. Rev., 1898, 8: 350. 78. 
 Clowes, in Traill, Soc. Eng., 1 and 2; Pigeonneau, 1: 145. 79. Brown, 
 Venice, 139; A. Jal, Archeologie navale, Paris, 1840, vol. 1, memoire 4. 
 80-81. For the art of navigation I have drawn on Das Seebuch, ed. 
 Karl Koppmann, with introduction by A. Breusing, Bremen, 1876 (Nie- 
 derdeutsche Denkmaler); Oscar Peschel, Gesch. des Zeitalters der Ent- 
 deckungen, Stuttgart, 1858, 29; Fiske, Discovery of Amer., 1: 314 ff.; 
 N. Y. Nation, Jan. 2, 1896, p. 17. 82. Zimmem, Hansa towns, 18; 
 Pigeonneau, 1: 102, 241; Rogers, Six cent., 153. 83-84. Denton, Eng,. 
 183; Pigeonneau, 2: 112, 123. 85. Traill, Soc. Eng., 2: 336. Statements 
 regarding costs of transportation are from H. Sieveking, Aus venetian- 
 ischen Handlungsbiichem, Schmollers Jahrb., 1902, 26: 193. The In- 
 quisition of Queenborow, in Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. T. Twiss, 
 London, 1871, 1: 133-147, gives a vivid description of English commerce 
 about 1375. 86-87. Falke, 1: 198; Denton, 85 ff.; Zimmem, 126 ff.; 
 Green, Town Life, 1: 91 ff.; Rawdon Brown, Cal. of Venetian State Papers, 
 London, 1864, 1: Ixviii, with statement regarding Columbus. 88-94. 
 Heyd, Gesch. des Levantehandels, Stuttgart, 1879 (French edition, ed. 
 Raynaud, Leipzig, 1886, is preferable but was not available), 2: 543 ff.; 
 Stieda, Hansisch-Ven. Handelsbeziehungen, Rostock, 1894, 95 ff.; Sieve- 
 king, 211 ff.; Paul Masson, Hist, du commerce Fran^ais dans le Levant, 
 Paris, 1896, App., xxvi ff. 95- Heyd, 1: 104-138; Falke, 1: 28, 34; 
 Pigeonneau, 1: 66. 96. Heyd, 1: 31 ff., 2: 68 ff.; Hunter, Hist. Brit. 
 India, 1: 17 ff.; O. Peschel, Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 
 Stuttgart, 1858, 4. 97. On the numbers in the first crusade cf. Kugler, 
 Gesch. der Kreuzztige, Berlin, 2 ed., 1880, 30. I have had occasion to go 
 over a considerable part of this ground in detail, but see no reason for 
 multiplying references. 98. Michaud, Hist., N. Y., 1881, 1: 140, 2: 
 48; Heyd, 1: 133, 136; H. F. Brown, Venice, 86; Tafel and Thomas, Ur- 
 kunden . . . Venedig, Pontes Rerum Austric, 1: 79, 90. 99. Hans 
 Prutz, Kulturgesch. der Kreuzziige, Berlin, 1883, 396 ff., 406 ff.; this is 
 an excellent book. 100. Tafel and Thomas, Urkunden, 1: 36, 43. lOi. 
 Heyd, 1: 270, 275, 287; G. M. Thomas, Die altesten Verordnungen der 
 
600 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Venezianer, Bayer. Akad. Abhand., 1875, I. CI., Bd. 13, Abth. 1: 108, 
 115 ff., 123. 102. Heyd, 1: 297, 300; Thomas, 131; P. G. Molmenti, 
 Storia di Venezia, 2 ed., Torino, 1880, 88; Martino da Canale cited by 
 Simonsfeld, Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig, Stuttgart, 1887, 2: 8. 
 103. Shipping regulations, Molmenti, Doc. E, 515; Brown, Venice, 139; 
 Jal. Influence on book-keeping, Sieveking, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 1901, 
 25: 1511; Simonsfeld, 2: 39; Thomas, 125. List of words from Cohn, 
 System, Stuttgart, 1898, 3: 38. 105-107. Simonsfeld, Fondaco, 1: &- 
 106; Sieveking, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 1902, 26: 211 ff.; Stieda, 62 ff., 
 89-113. 108-9. Rawdon Brown, Venetian State Papers, Rolls Series, 
 London, 1864, 1 : Ixi ff ., cxxxv; cf . Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, 
 1: 111, 117. no. Cf. for Florentine poUcy, Pohlmann (title below), 
 137. III. I regret that there is no space to describe some of the in- 
 teresting features in the development of the trade of Genoa; cf. the article 
 Giustiniani by Hopf, Ersch und Gruber, Encyc, Theil 68. 112. Alfred 
 Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirtschaftsgesch., Stuttgart, 1901, 
 1: esp. 5, 102 ff., 114; Pohlmann, Wirthschaftspolitik der Florentiner 
 Renaissance, Leipzig, 1878. 113. Pigeonneau, 1: 138 ff.; Desdevises du 
 D^zert in Hist. Gen. of Lavisse et Rambaud, 3:500. 114-117. Falke, 
 1: 157; Emile Worms, Hist, de la I;igue Hans^atique, Paris, 1864, 84, 124, 
 179, 197; Schafer, article Hanse, in Handworterbuch der Staatswissen- 
 schaften, 2 ed., 4: 1117; Zimmern, Hansa towns, 26, 96. For a description 
 of the western trade to Bourgneuf see A. Agats, Der hansische Baien- 
 handel, Heidelberg, 1904. 119. For different uses of the word see Gross, 
 Gild merchant, 1: 194 ff.; for the origin of the League see D. Schafer, Die 
 Hansestadte und Konig Waldemar, Jena, 1879. Most of the material 
 in my sketch is from Falke, 1: 145-192, 200-230, 2: 75-129. 120. Green, 
 Town Life, 1: 82. 122. On the factory organization see Falke, 1: 212 ff., 
 215 ff.; for the English factory R. PauH, Pictures of Old England, London, 
 1861, 184 ff. Venetian factories are fully described by Heyd. 123-4. 
 H. Pirenne, Hist, de Belgique, Bruxelles, 1902, 1: 169, 247 ff.; 2: 179 ff., 
 393 ff.; P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, Groningen, 
 1892 ff., 2: 483 ff. 125. On the reasons for England's superiority in wool 
 production cf. Rogers, Econ. interpretation, 9. The best description of 
 the trade with France is by F. Michel, Hist, du Commerce a Bordeaux, 
 Bordeaux, 1867, 2 vols. 126. Practically all the writers on English 
 economic history of the period discuss the staple. Georg Schanz, Eng- 
 lische Handelspohtik gegen Ende des Mittelalters, Leipzig, 1881, 2 vols., 
 gives material for an extended description of commerce and policy in the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but English commerce was not yet of 
 sufficient importance to justify the apportionment of more space in this 
 book. 127. Georg Steinhausen, Der Kaufmann in der deutschen Ver- 
 gangenheit, Leipzig, 1899, 29; Jusserand, 232 ff. M'Culloch, Diet. (1847), 
 
AUTHORITIES 601 
 
 1: 325, said that cats were still decoyed and killed for their skins. 128. 
 Steinhausen, 29 ff., 39, 43; G. von Below, Grosshandler und Kleinhandler 
 im deutschen Mittelalter, Jahrbucher f. Nat., 1900, 75: 30 ff., 51. Sieve- 
 king' shows that specialization had gone further in Venice, but the union 
 of various kinds of business was characteristic even there. 129. Below, 
 Grosshandler, 40. 130-2. Cohn, System, 3: 110; Schmoller in his Jahr- 
 buch, 1893, 17: 381; Ashley, Ec. hist., 2: 412 ff.; Goldschmidt, Univer- 
 salgesch. des Handelsrechts, Stuttgart, 1891, 1: 254 ff., with references. 
 133. Cf. Ashley, vol. 1, chap. 3, with references; Pigeonneau, 1: 67 ff., 
 242 ff. 135-6. The sketch of the development of bills of exchange omits 
 the details; cf. Goldschmidt, 408 ff.; Karl Adler, in Handworterbuch, 
 2 ed., 7: 684 ff., bibliography 697; examples of early bills and promissory 
 forms in Gustave Fagniez, Documents relatifs a I'histoire de I'industrie 
 et du commerce en France, Paris, 1898, 1: no. 135, no. 167 ff. The ex- 
 ample of Behaim is from Falke, 2: 378. 137. Cf. Cohn, System, 3: 555 
 ff.; R. Ehrenberg, article Banken in Handworterbuch, 2: 167 ff., with 
 bibliography; Goldschmidt, 1: 318 ff. 138-140. Cf., in general, Kurt 
 Breysig, Kulturgesch. der Neuzeit, vol. 2, part 2, Berlin, 1901. 141-3. 
 The rise of a national economy may be studied in Cunningham, Growth, 
 1: 261 ff.; Ashley, Ec. hist., 1: 102 ff., 204 ff., 2: 42 ff.; Hall, Customs 
 revenue, 28. For France see Pigeonneau, 1: 281 ff., 347, etc.; Rudolph 
 Eberstadt, Das franzosische Gewerberecht, in Schmollers Forschungen, 
 Bd. 17, Heft 2, Leipzig, 1899. On the general topic cf. Von Below, Der 
 Untergang der mittelalterlichen Stadtwirtschaft, Jahrbucher f. Nat., 1901, 
 76: 449 ff., 593 ff. 
 
 MODERN COMMERCE 
 
 145. S. Ruge, Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, Berlin, 1881, 
 35, 40, 69, 76; Pigeonneau, 1: 134. 146. Hunter, Brit. India, 1: 71, 
 87 ff.; Ruge, 98, 106, 241; Noel, Hist, du commerce du monde, Paris, 
 1891-4, 2: 17. 147. Hunter, 1: 57 ff.; E. G. Bourne, Prince Henry, in 
 Yale Review, Aug., 1884, 3: 187-202. 148-9. Noel, 2: 13; Heyd, 2: 505; 
 Ruge, 87, 89; Hunter, 1: 64 ff.; Oscar Peschel, Gesch. des Zeitalters der 
 Entdeckungen, Stuttgart, 1858, 68. 150. Ruge, 129, 221 ff. 151. On 
 America cf. Fiske, Discovery, Boston, 1892, 1: 279; 2: 210; Ruge, 129, 
 221 ff., 459, 499 ff.; Hunter, 1: 76; Peschel, 668. For details about the 
 demarcation line see E. G. Bourne in Rep. Amer. Hist. Assoc, 1891, 
 103 ff.; on its general significance, Hunter, 1: 82 ff. 152. Cunningham 
 in Camb. Mod. hist., 1: 494. For the development from secret commerce 
 to open commerce based on exclusion by the right of prior discovery. 
 Hunter, 1- 218 ff. 153. Cf. the figures of imports for the three years 
 ending 1799, Macpherson, Annals of commerce, London, 1805, 4: 504, 
 and the figures showing the growth in the consumption of sugar. Beer, 
 
602 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Col. pol., 64. 154. Georg Wiebe, Gesch. der Preisrevolution, Leipzig, 
 1895, 148, 270 ff.; this book can be recommended as a sober and careful 
 study of a most difficult subject. 155. Shipping: Noel, 2: 8ff.; Pauli, 
 Pictures, 188; Roscher, System, 3: 78; the statement of Mrs. Green, Town 
 life, 1 : 84, that the ordinary size of French ships in the fifteenth century 
 was 1,000 tons and over, is an exaggeration. Ustariz, writing in the eigh- 
 teenth century, said that the carrying capacity of ships in merchant 
 fleets trading to America was ordinarily from 200 to 400 tons; a few ships 
 reached 500. Piracy: Pigeonneau, 1: 441, 2: 110; E. Ducer^, Hist, mari- 
 time de Bayonne, Bayonne, 1895, 27, 86 ff . ; Pringsheim, Entwickelungsgesch. 
 der Niederlande, Leipzig, 1890, 17; Cunningham, Growth, 2: 271 ff.; refer- 
 ences to the Barbary pirates will be given later. See the excellent article 
 on Navigation in the Encyc. Brit., 9 ed., by Capt. Moriarty. 158. This 
 survey of the evils of the gild system in its later period is drawn from a 
 great amount of scattered material, and does not pretend to be a descrip- 
 tion of actual conditions in any one place at any one time. For a com- 
 pact discussion, with abundance of illustrations and references, see Roscher, 
 System, 3: sect. 134; cf. also Hatschek, Das Manufakturhaus auf dem 
 Tabor, Leipzig, 1886, 10 ff., and references given later under specific 
 countries. 159. On wholesale trade, G. von Below in Jahrbiicher f. 
 Nat., 1900, 75: 41; on Bodeck's business, Richard Ehrenberg, Das Zeit- 
 alter der Fugger, Jena, 1896, 2: 250. 160. Definition and classification 
 from Jacques Savary, Le parfait negociant, 2 ed., Paris, 1679, 2: 250 ff.; 
 other details from Rolt, Dictionary of trade, London, 1756, sub voc. 
 Factor, Factorage; cf. Ehrenberg, Zeitalter der Fugger, 2: 6. 161. Emil 
 Sax, Verkehrsmittel, Wien, 1878, 1: 321 ff., 331, 353; Quetsch, Gesch. 
 des Verkehrswesens am Mittelrhein, Freiburg, 1891, 118 ff. The state- 
 ment regarding communication between Strassburg and Basel is from 
 Loper, Gesch. des Verkehrs in Elsass-Lothringen, Strassburg, 1874, 1; 
 it appeared on a placard in the banquet room when the opening of the 
 railroad was celebrated at Miilhausen in 1841, and doubtless allowance 
 should be made for the occasion. On the newspaper see Ehrenberg, 2: 
 122; Biicher, Ind. ev., chap. 6. 162. For this and the following para- 
 graphs see Roscher and Jannasch, Kolonien, Leipzig, 1885, 255 ff.; Paul 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, Colonisation, Paris, 3 ed., 66; Cunningham, Growth, 2: 
 219 ff.; Hunter, 1: 254. For contemporary criticism of the companies see 
 Bonnassieux, Les grandes compagnies, Paris, 1892, 477 fT.; Schmoller, 
 in his Jahrbuch, 1893, 17: 1007-1013. For criticism by a modern writer 
 see W. A. S. Hewins, English trade, xiv, 72, etc. I have made a study, 
 in The Dutch in Java, of the political characteristics of commerce at the 
 time, and refer to that for a more extended discussion. 164. On the 
 regulated company cf. Roscher and Jannasch, 283; Hewins, 29; Schmoller, 
 as above, 967. 166. On the rise of the joint stock company see esp. 
 
AUTHORITIES 603 
 
 Schmoller, in his Jahrbuch, 1893, 17: 359 ff., 959 ff., and the references 
 there cited; cf. Cohn, System, 3: 111 ff. 167. On the London Company, 
 Hunter, passim; Cunningham, Growth, 2: 255 ff.; James Mill, etc. For 
 the number of stock companies see Schmoller, as above, 17: 980 ff. 169. 
 The quotation is taken from the part reprinted in Cunningham, Growth, 
 2: 143; the tract has also been reprinted in Quart. Jour, of Econ., 1887-8, 
 2: 251-262. For other interesting material on banking see Cunningham, 
 2: 149, 442. 171. Richard Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, 1: 122 
 ff., 386 ff. The material of the following sections, to sect. 177, except as 
 noted, is from this book, and page references will not be given. 172. 
 Falke, 2: 330. 173. Hunter, 1: 223, quoting Wheeler. For the restric- 
 tions in Bruges and the vain efforts to maintain the trade of that place 
 see Schanz. 174. Ehrenberg, also in Handworterbuch, article Borsen- 
 wesen, with references; Cohn, System, 3: 88. 175. Ehrenberg, also in 
 Handworterbuch, 2: 1028; Hunter, 1: 292. Claudio Jannet, Le monde 
 de la finance au XVII. siecle, Journal des Econ., 1892, 10: 71, 73; Cun- 
 ningham, Growth, 2: 324; John Francis, Chronicles and characters of the 
 stock exchange, London, 1855, 46. 177. Jannet, as above, 10: 72; 
 Macaulay, Hist, of England, N. Y., 1897, 4: 323; Francis, 25, 30, 49. 
 179. For the period of stock jobbing before the foundation of the Bank 
 see Macaulay, 3: 614. On the crisis of 1720 cf. Lecky, History of Eng- 
 land, Cabinet ed., N. Y., 1892, 1: 371 ff., 2: 155; Cunningham, Growth, 
 2: 449, 491. See Wirth, Gesch. der Handelskrisen, 4 ed., Frankfort, 
 
 1890, for comparative material. 180. J. S. Nicholson, Money and mone- 
 tary problems, London, 1895, 165, 207; A. M. Davis in Quart. Jour. 
 Econ., 1886-7, 1: 289 ff., 420 ff.; Levasseur, 2: 443 ff.; Martin, in Lavisse 
 et Rambaud, Hist. Gen., 7: 7 ff . 183. Growth of taxes, Schmoller, 
 Umrisse und Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1898, 154. See, in general, the 
 works of Schmoller, Breysig, Ehrenberg, for the discussion of these 
 topics, connected only indirectly with the history of commerce. 185. 
 Sax, Verkehrsmittel, 1: 321ff., 331, 353; Tocqueville, Old regime, 
 N. Y., 1856, 197. See for a striking example of the "police-state" 
 the Canton Zurich, described by Gustav Cohn in Zeitschrift f. d. ges. 
 Staatswissenschaft, Tubingen, 1883, 39: 604 ff. Of the large litera- 
 ture on the grain trade see esp. Schmoller, in his Jahrbuch, 1896, 20: 
 695 ff., or in his Umrisse, and Naude's volume in Acta Borussica. 186. 
 Schmoller, Merc. System, passim; Hintze, Schmoller's Jahrbuch f. Gesetz- 
 gebung, 1897, 21: 800. In the sixteenth century there were only 25 
 years without war on a large scale, in the seventeenth only 21; cf. Ehren- 
 berg, 1: 13. 188. Hunter, 1: 8; Seeley, Expansion of England, London, 
 
 1891, 112. 189. Seeley, 20, 51, 92 ff. 192. Geronymo de Ustariz, 
 Theorie et pratique du commerce, Paris, 1753, *44, *53; Cunningham, 
 2: 310. 195. The effect of the balance of trade on foreign policy can be 
 
604 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 studied to advantage in English treaties of the eighteenth century, 1703, 
 1713, 1786, etc.; cf. Cunningham, Hewins, Ashley's Surveys. On the 
 Methuen treaty a valuable article has recently been published by Hans 
 Schorer, in Zeitschr. f. d. ges. Staatswissenschaft, Tubingen, 1903, 59: 
 434-475, 597-651. 198. For the facts of Spanish development see esp. 
 Konrad Habler, Die wirtschaftliche Blute Spaniens im 16. Jahrhundert, 
 und ihr Verfall, Berlin, 1888 (Jastrow, Hist. Untersuch., Heft 9), 8, 45, 
 56 ff., 66 ff. The authorities quoted on p. 56 show that the estimates of 
 commerce in the sixteenth century vary greatly; some would make the 
 American fleet less than 20 a year. The statement, p. 85, that over 500 
 ships' cargoes were imported annually for export to the colonies, is an 
 evident exaggeration. All the fleets enumerated by Antunez y Acevedo 
 would not have sufficed to carry such an amount of wares. 199. Habler, 
 145 ff.; Moritz Bonn, Spaniens Niedergang wahrend der Preisrevolution 
 des 16. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1896 (Miinchener volksw. Stud., 12), 
 124. 200. On the expulsions cf. Habler, 51, 70, 83; Fiske, Discovery of 
 Amer., 2: 562; books by H. C. Lea. Faults of the political organization 
 in Habler, Bonn, etc., passim. 201. Habler, 71 ff.; Bonn, 76, 156, 160 
 ff.; Bernardo de Ulloa, Retablissement des manufactures et du commerce 
 d'Espagne, Amsterdam, 1753, 29 ff., 50; Ustariz, Du commerce, *5. 
 The last two writers contain a great fund of material. 202. Habler, 79, 
 81, 90; Ustariz, 58, *13ff.; internal duties, Bonn, 75; Habler, 54, 78; 
 Ulloa, 1: 57 ff., 74. The reader will find an abstract of the writings of 
 Ustariz and Ulloa, with some information from other sources, in Alex- 
 ander Wirminghaus, Zwei spanische Merkantilisten, Jena, 1886 (vol. 4, 
 part 2 of Conrad, Sammlung). 203. Habler, 22 ff.; W. Webster, Spain, 
 London, 1882, 47; Bonn, 69 ff., 115. 205. On the palmeo see Colmeiro, 
 Hist, de la economia politica en Espana, Madrid, 1875, 2: 416. 206. 
 Unless other authorities are cited the facts of the following sections, on 
 the colonial system, can be found in Bourne, Roscher, or Moses. Statis- 
 tics concerning fleets and ships are to be foun4 in Rafael Antunez y Ace- 
 vedo, Memorias historicas, Madrid, 1797, Appendix, xxi-xxxiii; sailings 
 became very irregular in the eighteenth century. Rolt, Diet., 1756, sub 
 voc. Fleet, described the Vera Cruz fleet as consisting of about 16 cargo 
 ships. 209. Bourne, 287; Postlethwayt, Diet., sub voc. America, de- 
 scribing cargoes of 1723. 210. For character of Spanish commerce in 
 the eighteenth century cf. Rolt, Diet., sub voc. Spain. 211. Heyd, 2: 
 519, 525; Hunter, 1: 104. 213. Hunter, 1: 89, 172, 304 ff. 214. Post- 
 lethwayt, Diet., sub voc. Brazil. Keller, Yale Review, Feb., 1906, 14: 
 382, quotes authorities to show that about 45 ships came to Brazil every 
 year about 1600, for sugar and brazil wood. 215. Wilhelm Oncken, Das 
 Zeitalter Friedrichs des Grossen, Berlin, 1882, 2: 342, 344, 352; John 
 Smith, Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal, London, 1843, 1: 114, 117. 
 
AUTHORITIES 605 
 
 217. When no other authorities are cited in this chapter I refer to 
 my book on The poHcy and administration of the Dutch in Java, N. Y., 
 1904. For explorations of the sixteenth century see Motley, Hist, of 
 United Neth., vol. 3, chap. 36; Hunter, 1: 217. 219. N. Y. Colonial 
 Documents, Albany, 1853, 1: 66 (by misprint 96); various other docu- 
 ments in this collection confirm this attitude. On the decline of the 
 Company cf. Elias Luzac, Hollands rijkdom, uit het Fransch vertaald, 
 Leyden, 1780 ff., 2: 129 ff. 220. Details of cargo of 1677 from Dagh 
 Register gehouden int Casteel Batavia, Anno 1677, Batavia, 1904, p. 
 400 ff. 221. Otto Pringsheim, Beitrage zur wirthschaftlichen Ent- 
 wickelungsgeschichte der vereinigten Niederlande im 17. und 18. Jahr- 
 hundert, Leipzig, 1890 (Schmoller, Forschungen, Heft 44), p. 15, prints 
 an interesting table from a MS. of 1805, giving the value of different 
 branches of Dutch commerce about that time, but this of course cannot be 
 taken for evidence of conditions earlier. Luzac confirms the impression 
 which I got from studying the history of the E. I. Co., that their European 
 commerce was the mainstay of the Dutch. See esp. 2: 281 ff.; 4:166 ff. 
 Cf. also P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het nederlandsche volk, Groningen, 
 1892 ff., 5: 146, 441; 6: 109. While the E. I. Co. entered only a score 
 or so of ships a year, the vessels engaged in trade with European countries 
 counted by hundreds; and no difference in value of cargoes would offset 
 this disparity. Statements in the text are based on Pringsheim (who 
 has examined earlier authorities critically, and who is the safest guide), 
 Falke, 2: 192 ff., and Schmoller, Studien, in his Jahrbuch, 1884, 8: 384. 
 222. The text must be restricted to a mere survey. See further details 
 on manufactures in Pringsheim and Blok; business development in Ehren- 
 berg, Fugger, 2: 279 ff., also in Jahrbucher f. Nat., 1892, 58: 809-826; and 
 the following articles by Andre Sayous: Revue de Paris, 1900, 3: 772-784, 
 (exchange); Journal des Econ., 1901, 46: 393-401, 47: 428-434 (specula- 
 tion); Poht. Sci. Quarterly, 1902, 17: 369-380 (trusts). 224. The text 
 follows Pringsheim, in the main. Luzac gives the greater part of his 
 fourth volume, in which he describes the causes of decline, to political 
 evils and weaknesses. Blok, Gesch., 5: 145, cites "the judgment of the 
 most competent authors" for the opinion that Dutch trade reached its 
 climax about 1660, but cites Pringsheim without seeking to contest his 
 view. 228. Cf. esp. R, Ehrenberg, Hamburg und England, Jena, 1896, 
 11-33; on the advantages of England's position and political constitution 
 cf. Hintze, in Schmoller's Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, 1897, 21: 783, 804. 
 230. Seeley, Expansion of England, 80; Green, Town life, 1: 94. For 
 English policy at this period see esp. Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, 
 Leipzig, 1881, first part. For the Merchant Adventurers see the valuable 
 work of Lingelbach (Univ. of Pa. Pub., N. Y., 1902), Schanz, Gross, Hall, 
 etc. 231. Green, Town fife, 1: 73, 89, 107, 114; H. R. Fox Bourne, Eng. 
 
606 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 merchants, 66 ff.; Hubert Hall, Customs revenue, London, 1885, 51. 
 Facts characterizing the distant voyages are from Schanz, 1: 254; Traill, 
 Soc. Eng., 3: 541. The most vivid picture of English trade at this time 
 is the Libell of Englishe Policye, in Wright's Polit. Songs, London, 1861, 
 2: 157 ff. 232. With the classification in the text, based on a table in 
 Schanz, 2: 39, may be compared a list of 1451, describing the apportion- 
 ment of a tax among the ports; see H. R. F. Bourne,- Eng. merchants, 67. 
 233. Hewins, English trade, 25; Cunningham, Growth, 2: 243; Bonnas- 
 sieux, Les grandes compagnies, 79 ff. 234. References to literature on 
 the companies, which has grown to considerable size in recent years, will 
 be found in Cunningham, Growth; Gross, Gild Merchant, 1 : 156; Edinburgh 
 Review, 1900, 192: 161 ff.; Amer. Hist. Rev., Jan., 1903, 8: 241 ff. 236-7. 
 The figures are taken from M'CuUoch, Diet., Philadelphia, 1847, 2: 21. 
 They are based on official values set in 1698, so that they are far from 
 exact accuracy, but they suffice for the purpose in hand. Students de- 
 siring further information on the basis of these statistics are referred to 
 the critical studies on the trade statistics of England and France by Loh- 
 mann, inspired by SchmoUer, and published in the proceedings of the 
 Royal Academy of Prussia, session of 22 Dec, 1898. The figures have 
 been frequently reprinted, by Macgregor, Vogel, Stephen Bourne, etc. I 
 have corrected an error in M'Culloch's table, copied also in the German 
 translation, by which the exports to Africa in 1802 appear as 6 million. 
 239. From the statistics in Macpherson, Annals, 4 : 504, giving the annual 
 value "estimated at the prices current" of exports for the three years 
 ending 1799. The war of course affected the trade of this period with 
 France and the Netherlands, but had not stopped the growth of English 
 commerce. The development in the export of manufactures can be traced 
 in the general descriptions of English commerce; cf. L. Roberts, Merchant's 
 map, London, 1677, 308; Rolt, Diet., 1756, s. v. Britain; Postlethwayt, 
 Diet., 4 ed., 1774, s. v. Britain. 240. On the advances in agriculture see 
 esp. Cunningham; the statement as to increase in weight of stock is in his 
 Growth, 2: 706. Cf. also Prothero, Gamier, Thorold Rogers, etc. 241. 
 Homer, PubHck Roads (1767), quoted by Cunningham, 2: 539. Add to 
 authorities on agriculture, named above, Nicholls, Hist, of the English 
 poor law, London, 1854, and later, Levi, Hist. British commerce, 16 ff. 
 242-3. On the influence of aliens, Cunningham, Growth, 2: 83, 329, 515, 
 etc., and Alien immigrants, London, 1897. On the domestic system in 
 general see Bucher, Ind. ev., 172 and passim; Schonberg, Handbuch der 
 Polit. Oekon., 4 ed., Tubingen, 1896, 2, I, 490, 493; Hobson, Mod. cap.; 
 Cunningham, Growth, 2 : 494 ff . The quotation from Smith will be found 
 in Wealth of nations, Bk. 1, chap. 8. 244. On the early history of in- 
 ventions cf. Cunningham, 2: 76, note 4; Hewins, Eng. trade, 107; Prings- 
 heim, Niederlande, 30 and note. The topic is worth a more careful study 
 38 
 
AUTHORITIES 607 
 
 than it has yet received Much appropriate material can be found in the 
 Cal. of Dom. State Papers, and the example is taken from that source, 
 volume for 1547-1580, p. 696, no. 45. 246. Cunningham, 2: 620 ff.; 
 Ellison, Cotton trade, London, 1886, statistics, 29. 248. Readable 
 articles on the early coal trade will be found in the Contemporary Rev., 
 1892, 62: 569 ff.; Nineteenth Cent., 1900, 47; 664 ff. For descriptions of 
 the iron manufacture see Hewins, English trade, 12; Bishop, Amer. manu- 
 factures, 1: 480; Beer, Col. pol., 83, 85. The estimates of the use of wood 
 are from Traill, Soc. Eng., 4 : 445. For later development see Cunningham, 
 2: 522 ff.; Levi, Brit, com., 10. 249. Postlethwayt, Diet. s. v. Britain, 
 spelling and punctuation modernized; Savary, Diet., 1679, 2: 140; Rolt, 
 Diet., s. V. Britain. For the exports to Africa see Sir Charles Whitworth, 
 Trade of Great Britain, London, 1776, xviii. 250. The figures, as before, 
 cover the three years ending 1799, and are taken from Macpherson, Annals, 
 4: 503. 251. The reader must refer to Cunningham, Hunter, Mill, etc., for 
 details in the history of the Company; its fortunes were so interwoven 
 with British and Oriental politics that further consideration of it here 
 would probably distract the beginner's attention from the great forces 
 that were building up English commerce. 253. Postlethwayt, Diet., 
 1774, s. V. Britain. 255. Postlethwayt, s. v. Africa. The figures given 
 by Whitworth, 2: 1, show a very gradual growth of the African trade 
 1697-1760, when it quadrupled in little more than a decade. On the 
 slave trade see Cunningham, 2: 477, and Gomer Williams, Hist, of Liver- 
 pool privateers, London, 1897. 256. See the figures in Macpherson, 
 4: 505. They tally with the general statement in Roberts, Merchant's 
 map, chap. 273, and in Rolt, Diet. 257. For English policy of the 
 sixteenth century see Cunningham, 2: 63 ff.. Beer, Col. pol., 10 ff. The 
 comparisons are taken from Lavisse and Rambaud, Hist. Gen., 6: 104 
 (by Vast); Beer, 28-29. 258. Seeley, Growth of British policy, Cam- 
 bridge, 1895, 2: 26; Cunningham, Growth, 2: 209, 359, 479 etc.; Beer, 32; 
 Ashley, Surveys, 311 ff.; C. F. Bastable, Theory of internat. trade, Dublin, 
 1887, 142. On the English ports, Rolt, Diet., s. v. Britain. 259. For a 
 discussion in detail of English policy the reader must refer to Cunningham, 
 Ashley's Surveys, Seeley, SchmoUer in his Jahrbuch, 1899, 23: 1211- 
 1241, etc. 260-1. On sumptuary legislation, Cunningham, 2: 393 note, 
 515. On the inconsistencies of the tariff, ib., 2: 414, edition of 1892; the 
 quotation in the text is from this edition, p. 548. See further on the 
 tariff system Hewins, xviii; Lohmann in Trans. Prussian Acad., 22 Dec, 
 1898; biographies of Walpole and Pitt, the Book of Rates, etc. On smug- 
 gling cf. references above, Beer, 131 ff., and especially the sources in Cal. 
 Treas. Papers, Reports from Committees of the House, reprinted 1803, 
 and reports of the Hist. MS. Comm. The subject is well worth a mono- 
 graph. 262. Seeley, Expansion, 8; Cunningham, 2: 342, 471. 263. See 
 
608 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 esp. Ashley, Surveys, 309 ff.; cf. Beer, Col. pol. This sketch of English 
 colonial policy has been confined to the continental American colonies, as 
 being those of the greatest interest and importance; the West Indian 
 colonies suffered more. For a history of the policy pursued toward Ireland, 
 which was really colonial in character, see Cunningham, and A. E. Murray, 
 History of the commercial relations, London, 1903. 264. For evidence 
 that the French, as individuals, showed more disposition to progress in 
 manufactures than the English cf. Jevons, Coal question, London, 1866, 
 86. See also, below, the sections on the gilds. 265-6. Pigeonneau, 1: 
 354 ff., 2: 58, 172 ff.; D'Avenel, Hist. Economique, Paris, 1898, 1: 325, 
 341; Lavisse et Rambaud, Hist. Gen., 3: chaps. 2 and 3, p. 307; 5: 302 ff., 
 6: 301 ff., 746; Levasseur, Hist, des classes ouvrieres avant 1789, 2 ed., 
 Paris, 1900-01, 2: 52 ff., 144 ff., 344 ff. 267. On the fiscal effects of the 
 wars of Louis XIV, esp. their effect on manufactures, see Levasseur, 2: 
 348 ff.; cf. Hist. Gen. 6: 218, 246. On French favorites and policy in the 
 eighteenth century. Hist. G^n., 7: 329, 605, 630, etc.; J. B. Perkins, France 
 under Louis XV, Boston, 1897, 1: 19, 462. 268. For class divisions see 
 esp. Taine, Anc. regime, N. Y., 1876. On the system and methods of 
 taxation references abound; cf. Levasseur, Stourm, Gomel, Perkins, 
 Lowell, Taine, Tocqueville, etc. 269. Hist. Gen., 3: 307; Pigeonneau, 
 1: 374. For Coeur's downfall see Rev. Quest. Historiques, 1890, 47: 
 433 ff. Deschamps, Hist, de la question coloniale, Paris, 1891, 4, 15, 73, 
 101, etc., gives an interesting picture of the curiosity and interest in 
 foreign countries shown by the French of the period. 270. On the direc- 
 tion and character of French trade in the sixteenth century see Levasseur, 
 2: 50 ff., with full detail; Pigeonneau, 2: 24 ff., 40, 52, 105. On the 
 French in the Levant, Masson, Hist., xiff.; Pigeonneau, 2: 126 ff., 191; 
 Bent, Early Voyages (Hakluyt Society), iv. 271. Pigeonneau, 2: 250; 
 Masson, book 1. 272. Pigeonneau, 2: 292, 390 ff., 403; Levasseur, 2: 
 193, 375; Hist. G6n., 5: 322, 367. 273. Pigeonneau, 2: 422; Levasseur, 
 passim (list of companies, 2: 197); Bonnassieux, 165 ff.; Leroy-Beaulieu; 
 L. Pauliat, La politique coloniale sous I'ancien regime, Paris, 1887 (in- 
 cluding valuable documents); Deschamps, Quest, col. (valuable esp. for 
 analysis of contemporary opinion), 274. Cf. Beer, Col. pol., 115. 275. 
 A. T. Mahan, Influence of sea power upon history, 3 ed., Boston, 1893, 
 141; Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV, London, 1752, 1: 101, 2: 73; Vauban, 
 preface to La Dime Royale. 276. Mahan, Sea power, 226. The last 
 sentence I quote from Forbonnais, Princ. Econ. Franc, 200, note. 277. 
 The table is a combination of the exports and imports in Arnould's table, 
 Levasseur, 2: 554. On the sources of the figures cf. Lohmann, Prussian 
 Acad., 22 Dec, 1898, 54: 872 ff. The sum of the columns is not correct, 
 but I have no means of revising the figures; the errors in addition appear 
 in the table in Levasseur. The difference between this table and Loh- 
 
AUTHORITIES 609 
 
 mann's is accounted for by the exclusion of the colonies in Lohmann. 
 In transforming into American currency I have followed, roughly, Noback, 
 Munzbuch, Leipzig, 1879, 683. 278-9. Details are given in Amould's 
 table. On the American trade cf. Levasseur, 2: 565; on the colonial 
 sugar trade ib. 2: 548; Beer, Col. poL, 62 ff. 280. Details in Levasseur 
 and Pigeonneau; on smuggling see Lohmann, 885. 281. Levasseur, 2: 
 288. Henry IV attempted in vain to wipe out the provincial customs 
 frontiers; cf. Pigeonneau, 2: 305, 372. 282. Pigeonneau, 2: 72; Levasseur, 
 2: 82, 373. See esp. the interesting work of Guilmoto, Etudes sur les 
 droits de navigation de la Seine, Paris, 1889, 6, 15, etc. Difficulties of 
 internal trade would be still more apparent if it were possible to enter 
 here on restrictions on certain articles, especially grain. 283. References 
 to and including sect. 287 are to Levasseur, vol. 2, except as noted; his 
 revised edition includes most valuable material from local archives. The 
 book has full contents and index, and page references seem unnecessary. 
 288. Besides Levasseur full descriptions are given by the following: 
 L. Mosnier, Origines de la grande Industrie, Paris, 1898; A. des Cilleuls, 
 Hist, de la grande ind., Paris, 1898; G. Martin, La grande ind., Paris, 
 1900. 292. On the causes and incidents of the decline of the Hansa of. 
 references already given: Schafer in Handworterbuch, 4: 1118 ff.; Falke, 
 1: 176 ff.; Lamprecht, Deutsche Gesch., 2 ed., 4: 469 ff., 5: 487; Zimmem, 
 255. The decline of the German towns in conflict with England is de- 
 scribed in full detail by R. Ehrenberg, Hamburg und England, Jena, 
 1896. 293. Falke, 2: 15 ff., 150; Lamprecht, 5: 52, 478 ff. On the 
 Venezuela enterprise cf. also Ehrenberg, Fugger, 1: 200; Konrad Welser, 
 Die iiberseeischen Unternehmungen der Welser, Leipzig, 1903. I have 
 not had an opportunity to use this last named book, or the latest and best 
 description of the trade of southern Germany, by Aloys Schulte, Leipzig, 
 1900, 2 vol. 294. The "glaciation" theory is developed by Lamprecht, 
 5: 478; he believes also that the political disintegration of Germany pre- 
 vented the concentration of capital necessary to carry on oceanic com- 
 merce. Neither of these views seems tenable. I follow in the text Falke, 
 2: 72 ff., 137 ff.; Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, 1884, 8: 41 ff. 295. SchmoUer, 
 as above, 57; Falke, 2: 14, 43, 65, 132; Lamprecht, 5; 483. 296. Beer, 
 Gesch. des Welthandels, Wien, 1860 ff., 2: 424; Schmoller in his Jahr- 
 buch, 1884, 8: 363, 407, 1054 ff. 297. W. von Schroder, 1685, cited by 
 Hatschek, Manufakturhaus, 7, referred to "die vermaledeyten und als 
 argste Pesth von gantz Deutschland verfiuchten Ziinnfft." The facts 
 are cited from Roscher, System, 3: 602, 618, 630; Schmoller, Umrisse und 
 Untersuchungen, 353, 364, 370, 390, 446. 298. Falke, 2: 279 ff., 318, 
 323, 345; Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, 1884, 8: 1058, 1072 ff., 1886, 10: 
 708; Ehrenberg, Fugger, 2: 312 ff. 299. On the possibility of a marine 
 pohcy cf. Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, 1884, 8: 419 ff., 999; Falke, 2: 265 
 
610 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ff.; details in Viktor Ring, Asiatische Handlungscompagnien, Berlin, 
 1890. 300. As the topics alluded to here have attracted the attention 
 of some of the greatest economic historians for many years the list of 
 possible references is long. I refer in general to the works of Schmoller 
 in his Jahrbuch, in the Acta Borussica, and in his Umrisse. On thQ 
 protective measures of Fred. II cf. the polemics in Zeitschrift f. Social- 
 und Wirtschaftsgesch., vols. 1-3; and for recent conditions Das Webere- 
 lend in Schlesien, Preuss. Jahrbucher, 1891, 67: 173 ff. 301. Useful 
 surveys of conditions in the Habsburg lands will be found in Ad. Beer 
 and Falke; and the student will find also of assistance the new constitu- 
 tional histories of Huber and Luschin von Ebengreuth, which touch on 
 economic organization and policy. 302. Beer, 2: 448. 303. Hatschek, 
 Das Manufakturhaus auf dem Tabor, Leipzig, 1886 (Schmoller, Forschun- 
 gen, Bd. 6, Heft. 1); cf. Adam Wolf, Osterreich unter Maria Theresia, 
 Berlin, 1884 (Oncken's series), 193-4. 304-5. On the protective policy 
 and its results cf. Foumier, Handel und Verkehr, in Archiv. f. ost. Gesch., 
 1887, 69: 342 ff.; Hatschek, 14 ff.; Ad. Beer, 2: 443 ff.; Wolf, 195; Falke, 
 2: 222 ff. 306. For conditions at the opening of the period see Hist. 
 G6n., 3: 542; G. Voigt, Wiederbelebung d. class. Alterthums, 3 ed., Berlin, 
 1893, 1: 158. 307. Heyd, 2: 518; Hunter, 149; Seeley, Expansion, 89; 
 Pigeonneau, 2: 186; Masson, 24 ff. 308. Peschel, Entdeckungen, 670; 
 Falke, 2: 130; Heyd, 2: 539 ff. 309. Hunter, 1: 51; Hans von Zwieden- 
 eck-Siidenhorst, Venedig, Leipzig, 1899, 150, 182 ff.; Sam. Romanin, 
 Lezioni de storia Veneta, Firenze, 1875, 2: 175 ff. 310. Reumont, Gesch. 
 Toscana's, Gotha, 1876, 1: 355, 370, 510, 2: 43, 146. 311. On southern 
 Italy cf. G. Orloff, Memoires sur le royaume de Naples, Paris, 1821, 3: 
 117 ff. The interesting report of the Austrian agent is printed by A. 
 Foumier, Eine amtliche Handlungsreise nach Italien im Jahre 1754, in 
 Archiv. f. ost. Gesch., 1888, 73: 223-274. 312. See the economic sec- 
 tions in the histories by Schafer, Geijer and Carlson (Perthes, Gotha, 
 Gesch. d. eur. Staaten), and in Lavisse et Rambaud, Hist. Gen. Bonnas- 
 sieux, 436 ff ., 471 ff ., gives a summ*ary of the attempts at extended com- 
 merce. On attempts to monopolize the Baltic trade cf. Schmoller, in 
 his Jahrbuch, 1884, 8: 385 ff.; Pringsheim, Niederlande, 19 ff. 313. A 
 remarkably large amount of material on the Russian commerce of this 
 period is available. The facts in the text are taken from Jean-Benoit 
 Scherer, Histoire raisonnee du commerce de la Russie, Paris, 1788, 1: 1 ff.; 
 Heinrich Storch, Historisch-statistisches Gemalde des russischen Reichs, 
 Riga, 1797-1803, 4: 417, 5: 112 ff., 6: 220; G. von Schulze-Gavernitz, 
 Volkswirtschaftliche Studien aus Russland, Leipzig, 1899, 10 ff. 314. 
 Scherer, 1: 97 ff., 2: 10; Storch, 4: 403 ff., 8: 134 ff., 229 ff. 
 
AUTHORITIES 611 
 
 RECENT COMMERCE 
 
 315. The table is from O. P. Austin, in No. Amer. Review, 1900, 
 171: 674. The table on commerce bears marks, unfortunately, of having 
 been taken from Mulhall, Diet, of Statistics, 1892, 128; no source is cited 
 for it. The figures for the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 
 must be pure guesswork. I insert the table because I sympathize with 
 the demands of elementary teachers for the means of giving some 
 impression, even though an inaccurate one; and I know of no better esti- 
 mates. The figures since 1860 correspond fairly well with those of Neu- 
 mann-Spallart, 736, which range slightly higher. The estimate in the 
 text is by SchmoUer, Grundriss der allg. Volkwirtschaftslehre, Leipzig, 
 1901-04, 471 (I cite by the continuous paging of the two parts). 319. 
 Table from U. S. Consular Reports, Aug. 18, 1902 (Monthly ed., no. 254, 
 Oct., 1902, 70: 254); it was furnished by Consul Winter of Annaberg, 
 giving figures for 1901, "according to German returns." I have not 
 found, in German statistical literature, the source from which it was taken. 
 Cf., for recent figures, Neumann-Spallart, 751; Handworterbuch, 4: 1066. 
 For commercial standing about the middle of the century see L. Levi in 
 Jour. Royal Stat. Soc, June, 1852, 15: 111; Vogel, 1: 433 (figures about 
 1860). 318. Quotations from article Commerce in Palgrave, Diet., 
 1894, 1: 338; C. F. Adams, Jr., in Chapters of Erie, Boston, 1871, 338; 
 D. A. Wells, Ec. changes, 27, published originally Aug., 1887, Pop. Sci. 
 Mo., 31: 433. On the influence of the material inventions as affecting 
 esp. the second half of the century cf. C. M. Andrews, Modern Europe, 
 N. Y., 1899, 2: 2 ff. 322. Illustrations from Jevons, Coal, 111, 163 fif.; 
 of course they now need revision, but for the purposes of this manual 
 scientific accuracy in such matters seems unnecessary. This must be 
 my excuse for the other source in this section, E. Boutmy, Eng. constitu- 
 tion, London, 1891, 184, and for later illustrations. 323. Jevons, 119; 
 Taylor in Nineteenth Century, 1900, 48: 489. 324. Handbuch der Wirt- 
 schaftskunde Deutschlands, Leipzig, 1901, 1: 312; Huber, Deutschland 
 als Industriestaat, Stuttgart, 1901, 25, 29; Schmoller, Grundriss, 677; 
 Marshall, Princ. of Econ., London, 1895, 1: 345. 325. Encyc. Brit., 
 9 ed., articles Engine and Steam-engine; Roscher, System, 3: 576; Crab- 
 tree, Modern mechanism, Springfield, 1901, 51. 326. Cf. Schmoller, 
 Grundriss, 670; Huber, 284. 327-8. For a brief summary, Schmoller, 
 676; for full treatment the German manuals by Buchenbfjger, Von der 
 Goltz in Schonberg's Handbuch, Handworterbuch, etc. 330. Cf. Roscher, 
 System, 3: sects. 119-120, p. 572 ff.; Hobson, chap. 3; Lexis, article 
 Maschinenwesen, Handworterbuch, 5: 710 ff., bibliography 717. 331. Ex- 
 amples from Ed. Atkinson, Cotton manufacture, in Tenth Census of U. S., 
 vol. 2; Molinari, L'Evolution economique, Paris, 1880, 5. Cf. Schmoller, 
 
612 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 679; Huber, 40; and Thirteenth Report of the U. S. Commissioner of 
 Labor, Washington, 1899, a vast mine of information. 332. Wells, Ec. 
 changes, 336; O. Petrenz, Arbeitsteilung im Leipziger Gewerbe, Leipzig, 
 1901 (Schmoller, Forschungen, Heft 83), 89, with further details; Mar- 
 shall, Princ, 1: 358; Hobson, chap. 8, sect. 3. 335. Report of 31. 
 (Manchester) meeting of the Brit. Assoc, Ixiv (I owe the reference to 
 Jevons, 115); Nasmyth, Autobiography, ed. Smiles, London, 1883, 179, 
 237 ff. 336-8. Wright, article Iron, Enc. Brit., 9 ed.; Swank, 95, 400 
 ff., 418; Thurston in Century, Feb., 1901, 61: 567; Amer. Railway, 29. 
 339. Banet-Rivet, L'Evolution de I'industrie chimique. Rev. deux 
 Mondes, 15 April, 1903, 2: 842-866. 340. The interesting topic of the 
 distribution and localization of manufactures is treated with some fulness 
 by Cunningham in Econ. Jour., 1902, 12: 501-6; E. A. Ross, in Quart. 
 Jour, of Econ., 1896, 10: 247-268; Twelfth U. S. Census, 1900, 7: Ivi fT., 
 ccx ff . In none of these discussions do I find adequate importance attrib- 
 uted to the human element, espec. as represented in the directing class. 
 Cf. chapters below, and a chapter contributed by me to a new edition of 
 Johnston's Conn, in the Commonwealth Series. Rough estimates of the 
 share of different states in modern manufacturing will be found in Huber, 
 91, 204. 341. Macaulay, Hist., chap. 3. 342, O. P. Austin in No. Amer. 
 Rev., Nov., 1900, 171: 674. 343- Edinb. Rev., 1864, 119: 340 ff.; Cohn, 
 System, 3: 735 ff.; Seibt (see below), 932; Porter, Progress, 2: 17; Lucas, 
 Voies, 21; Schmoller, Grundriss, 467 ff. 344. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Etat 
 moderne, 2 ed., Paris, 1891, 134; U. S. Dep. of Agric, Office of Road 
 Inquiry, circulars 23, 27, 37; lecture by F. V. Greene at Union College, 
 reported in N. Y. Sun, Mar. 24, 1895; Rep. U. S. Industrial Comm., 1901, 
 6: 446. 345. Arago's estimate quoted by Roscher, System, 1: 164. 346. 
 Palgrave, Diet., and M'Culloch, Diet., s. v. Canal; Porter, 2: Iff.; James, 
 282 ff. For discussion and recent statistics, with bibliographies, see 
 articles by Victor Kurs in Handworterbuch. 347. For a discussion of 
 the merits of canals now see esp. German iarticles: G. Seibt, in SchmoUer's 
 Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, 1902, 26: 929-1014; Sympher, in Volkswirt. 
 Zeitfragen, no. 169, Berlin, 1900; Handworterbuch; etc. 348. Evans, 
 quoted in McMaster, Hist., 3: 495. I cannot follow Adams, Railroads, 3, 
 who says that the railroad and the locomotive "burst rather than stole 
 or crept upon the world." See Enc. Brit., article Railway, for condition 
 of the Liverpool and Manchester canals. 349. Hadley, chap. 1; Amer. 
 Railway, 346>rGeorge Armroyd], Internal navigation of the U. S., Phila., 
 1830, 570, quoting Crozet; Ringwalt, 12, 110. 350. Amer. Railway, 2, 
 109. 351. Amer. Railway, 47, 122, 358; Swank, 401. 352-3. Hadley in 
 Amer. Railway, 344; cf. Atkinson, Distribution of products, N. Y., 1892, 
 256; Wells, Ec. changes, 41. Figures from Poor's Manual. 354. Foville, 
 La France Econ., Paris, 1887, 332, quotes the following estimates of the 
 
AUTHORITIES 613 
 
 superiority of steamers: Kiaer, 3; Giffen, 3.5; other, 4 to 5. Cf. Lexis, 
 article Schiffahrt, Statistik, Handworterbuch, 6: 568. 355-6. Levi, Hist., 
 18; Quarterly Rev., 1900, 191: 78 ff.; Lindsay, 2: 492, 4: 83 ff., 270; 
 Cornewall-Jones, 115, 126, 227; Wells, Merch. marine, 50; Gould in Scrib- 
 ner's Mag., Nov., 1891, 10: 598, 606; U. S. Cons. Rep., Dec. 24, 1903. 
 357. Seibt, 933; Lindsay, 4: 82; (British Parliamentary) Accounts and 
 Papers, 1851, vol. 8, Revenue etc., 60. 358. On the early Atlantic trips 
 cf. Fry (most trustworthy), Maginnis, Lindsay, Hist., 4: 168 ff. The 
 Cunard incident is to be found in the article by Ginsburg and Duffield, in 
 Enc. Brit., 32: 839, and in Ocean Liners, Quarterly Rev., 191: 80. I am 
 ignorant of the source or truth of the story. 359. Lack of space forbids 
 discussion in detail of inventions like that of the screw propeller; dates 
 can be used to indicate only one event of a series. Facts are from Fry, 
 Maginnis, Chadwick, and Seaton in Ocean Steamships. 360. Economy 
 of large steamers, Marshall, Princ, 1: 369; Wells, Ec. changes, 38; growth 
 in size, Mulhall in Contemp. Rev., 1894, 66: 814; figures for 1841, Porter, 
 Progress, 3: 164. 361. J. D. J. Kelley, Question of ships, N. Y., 1884, 29; 
 Helm, in Ashley, Brit, ind., 74; U. S. Cons. Rep., Feb. 20, 1901. A valu- 
 able but somewhat technical summary of progress in steamship construc- 
 tion and operation will be found in the Report of the 69. (Dover) 
 Meeting of Brit. Assoc, London, 1900, 837-853. 362. Handworterbuch, 
 5:5; Enc. Brit., 4: 791, with maps. The student will find useful material 
 in articles by Roux, in Rev. de Paris, 1899, vols. 5 and 6; by Fleury, in 
 Rev. deux Mondes, 1893, 6: 308-348. 363. J. A. Fairlie, Econ. effects of 
 ship canals. Annals of Amer. Acad., 1898, 11: 59 ff.; Cohn, System, 3: 
 740; U. S. Cons. Rep., Feb. 28, 1902. 364-5. Porter, Progress, 3: 295, 
 304; Farrer, State in relation to trade, London, 1883, 100; Fischer, article 
 Post in Handworterbuch, 6: 118 ff., bibliography 171. 366. Focillon, 
 Les grandes inventions, 2 ed.. Tours, 1887, 176 ff.; Cohn, System, 3: 754; 
 see [Armroyd], Internal navigation, 400, for U. S. 367-8. Cohn, System, 
 3: 755 ff.; Fischer, article Telegraphie, Handworterbuch, 7: 61 ff., 371 ff. 
 I have endeavored to avoid a statistical treatment of the subject of these 
 paragraphs, and present generally facts of common knowledge. For 
 statistics see Neumann-Spallart; Karl von Scherzer, Das wirths. Leben 
 der Volker, Leipzig, 1885; and appropriate articles in the Handworter- 
 buch (Eisen, Steinkohlen, Baumwollindustrie, Wolle, Seide, etc.). On 
 the slave trade cf. Enc. Brit., 22: 138 ff.; Wilson, Resources, 2: 75. 372. 
 Statistics from Interstate Commerce Comm., 13. Report, Statistics, 1900; 
 for changes since 1880 cf. Atkinson, Distribution, 237. The table in Mul- 
 hall, Diet., 1892, 130, would be most useful if it could be regarded as 
 accurate. 374. Rudolf Schneider, Der Petroleumhandel, Tubingen, 
 1892 (Zeitschr. ges. Staatswissenschaft, Erganzungsheft 3), 11 ff. 375. 
 Ringwalt, 129; Devers, Pol. commerciale de la France, Leipzig, 1892, 131; 
 
614 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Lipsky in Kovalevsky, La Russie, Paris, 1900. Cf. also A. de Foville, 
 La Transformation des moyens de transport, Paris, 1880, chap. 13; Neu- 
 mann-Spallart, 8: Atkinson, Distribution, 236. English grain supply: 
 G. Hamilton, in Jour. Royal Stat. Soc, 1894, 57: 114; Quarterly Review, 
 1894, 178: 290; Crowell in Annals of Amer. Acad., 1899, 14: 210; cf. also 
 the many articles by R. B. Marston and others on the question of corn 
 stores for war time. 377. Levi, Hist., 306. References to the older 
 methods of marketing meat are frequent in the literature of U. S. economic 
 history about 1800; for modern methods see U. S. Census, and Report of 
 the Industrial Comm. On the modern trade in dairy products cf. A. D. 
 van Assendelft de Coningh, De wereldhandel in boter en kaas en de 
 margarine, De Economist, 1896, 45: 643 ff., 758 ff. 378. Thomas Ellison, 
 Cotton trade of Great Britain, London, 1886, 120; Wilhelm Schultze, Die 
 Produktions- und Preisentwickelung der Rohprodukte der Textilindustrie 
 seit 1850, Jena, 1896 (Elster, Studien, Bd., 5, Heft 6), 23 ff., 60, 93. 
 379. Schultze, 42, 49; Willy Senkel, Wollproduktion und Wollhandel im 
 XIX Jahrhundert, Tubingen, 1901 (Zeitschr. ges. St., Erganzungsheft 2), 
 31. 380. M'Culloch, Diet., s. v. Caoutchouc; U. S. Cons. Rep., May 16, 
 1901. I give figures and dates for consumption in round numbers from 
 Schonberg, Handbuch d. Pol. Oekon., 1: 177; Karl Schonfeld, Der Kaflfee- 
 Engroshandel Hamburgs, Heidelberg, 1903, 2; and article Zuckerindus^ 
 trie, Handworterbuch, vol. 7. 381-2. Cohn, System, 3: 250; Paasche, 
 article Zuckerindustrie in Handworterbuch, 7: 995 ff. The student can 
 get a good idea of the complexity of the question of sugar duties by read- 
 ing Levi, 524 ff. The statistical aspect of the sugar question is treated 
 by G. Martineau, Jour. Royal Stat. Soc, 1899, 62: 296 ff. 383. Cf. 
 Schmoller, Grundriss, 472. 384. Porter, Progress, 2: 82. 385. Esti- 
 mates of Peez, from Schmoller, Grundriss, 466; Fairlie, Ec. effects, 61. 
 386. Atkinson, Industrial progress, N. Y., 1890, 130; Schierbrand, 
 America, Asia, and the Pacific, N. Y., 1904, 302; Annual Register, 1886, 
 479; 1888, 408; Bowley, Foreign trade, 14. 387. C. Jannet, Le capital, la 
 speculation et la finance au XIX siecle, Paris, 1892, 107, quoting Beau- 
 voir, 1872. 388. Schonfeld, 62; Senkel, 36; Ellison, 279 ff. 389. Quota- 
 tion from the chapter by Jeans, Sec. of the British Iron Trade Assoc, in 
 Ashley, Brit, ind., 21. Cf. other chapters of this useful book for descrip- 
 tion of the merchants in the cotton and woolen trade. 390. Schmoller, 
 Grundriss, 493; Mataja, article Handel in Handworterbuch, 4: 975. 391. 
 On the services of the modern speculator see esp. the study by H. C. 
 Emery. For a good description of the Liverpool futures market in cotton, 
 and the process of hedging, see Helm in Ashley, Brit. Ind., 76 ff.; cf. 
 Ellison, 279 ff., and Hammond. 393. Schmoller, Grundriss, 483 ff.; 
 Huber, article Ausstellungen, Handworterbuch, 2: 51 ff.; R. Ehrenberg, 
 article Borserwesen, ib. esp. 1047. Experience of Hamburg in Schon- 
 
AUTHORITIES 615 
 
 feld, 8 ff . 395. Fairlie, Ship canals, 62. 398-9. In this brief summary I 
 follow mainly H. Herkner, article Krisen, Handworterbuch, 5: 427 ff. 
 On the gold discoveries cf. Walker, Internat. bimetallism, N. Y., 1896, 
 122 ff., Nasse, in Handbuch, 1: 358; Cairnes, etc. 401. Mahan, Influence 
 of sea power on the French Rev., Boston, 5 ed., 1894, 2: 203 ff. 402. 
 J. H. Rose in Kirkpatrick, Lectures on the history of the nineteenth 
 century Cambridge, 1902, 66, 69; Mahan, French Rev., 2: 202, 265 ff., 
 327. 403. Mahan, 2: 275, 286 ff., 354. 404. Mahan, 2: 322 ff.; Rose in 
 Kirkpatrick, 74, in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1893, 8: 722; Albin Konig, Die sach- 
 sische Baumwollindustrie, Leipzig, 1899 (Leipziger Stud. Gesch., Bd. 5, 
 Heft 3), 246, 353, etc. 405. Mahan, 2: 227, 304 ff., 318, 344, 379; Porter, 
 Progress, 2: 149. 406. Ellison, Cotton trade, 93 ff., 129; Rhodes, Hist, 
 of U. S., 3: 503, with references. 407. Lexis, in Schonberg, Handbuch 
 der Pol. Oekon., 2, II, 299; articles by Jellinek in Handworterbuch (see 
 author index); Levi, Hist., 424 ff. On the removal of obstructions to 
 internal trade cf. Schmoller, Umrisse, 675, Grundriss, 1079. 408. Cf. 
 Schmoller, Grundriss, 1068, or in his Jahrbuch, 1900, 24: 373 ff. Mees 
 prints an early protest against the system, Een adres van Rotterdamsche 
 kooplieden van het jaar 1802 tegen de bescherming, De Economist, 
 1891, 493-499. Books by Tollenare (Paris, 1820), Marliani (Madrid, 
 1840), describe the conditions of the period. 409-10. Schmoller, Grund- 
 riss, 1072 ff.; Fuchs, Handelspohtik, 31; Wells, Ec. changes, 262; George 
 Baden-Powell, State aid and state interference, London, 1882, 216. 411. 
 Schmoller, Grundriss, 1082; Dietzel in Quart. Jour. Econ., 1902-3, 17: 
 366; Molinari in Jour, des Econ., 1892, V., 11: 321 ff.; Fuchs, 59; Balfour, 
 Economic notes, N. Y., 1903, 20, note, giving estimates by the Board 
 of Trade of the ad valorem equivalent of the duties levied on the chief 
 British exports. 413. Bowley, For. trade, 5. 414. The table is from 
 figures in Stephen Bourne, Trade, population and food, London, 1880, 
 170, 174, which are to be taken as mere approximations to the true de- 
 velopment; see Bourne's text for a discussion. Some discrepancies in the 
 figures for the total trade are due to the fact that I included the first 
 decimal figure in the additions. The figures based on official values are 
 from Jour. Royal Stat. Soc, 1852, 15: 257. 415. From figures giving 
 the "declared real values" for 1850, in Statistical Abstract, U. Kingdom, 
 1865, Sessional Papers, vol. 55. Figures giving the "declared values" 
 for 1850, published in Accounts and Papers, 1851, vol. 9 (9), p. 7, show 
 divergences due either to changes in official estimates, to changes in the 
 method of reckoning the year, or to differences in completeness of 
 the returns. Both tables exclude foreign and colonial produce. On the 
 woolen exports cf. Porter, 1: 192. 416. Estimates of production from 
 Jour. Royal Stat. Soc, 1852, 15: 257. Ellison, 118, gives estimates of 
 the production of the three leading textiles in 1783 which afford a strik- 
 
616 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 ing proof of the changes of the period. 4i7- Porter, 1 : 274, 312, 2: 62 ff ., 
 3: 163. 418. EUison, 30 ff., 56 ff.; Porter, 1: 241; M'Culloch, Diet., 1: 
 525. 419. I use the figures for the "computed real value" of the im- 
 ports of 1854, given in the Statistical Abstract, 1865, 24. For the increase 
 in the consumption of coffee see M'Culloch, Diet., 2: 376; Porter, 2: 118. 
 The consumption of sugar remained pretty steady at 15-18 pounds per 
 capita until 1840, and then began to increase rapidly, reaching 25 pounds 
 in 1850. Cf. Paul Busching, Die Entwickelung der handelspolitischen 
 Beziehungen zwischen England und seinen Kolonien, Stuttgart, 1902 
 (Munchener Volksw. Stud., 48), 192. 420. Material for first part of period 
 from statistics in Porter, 2: 102, 180; M'Culloch, Diet., 2: 29 ff ; latter 
 part from figures in Accounts and Papers, 1851, vol. 8 (Revenue, Pop., 
 etc.), 122-3. 421-3. Statistics in previous section; Porter, 2: 101, 145; 
 Ellison, 86. See Cunningham for a brief narrative of relations with China. 
 424. Figures of exports, 1850, from Stat. Abstract, 1865, 48. Indian 
 trade: M'Culloch, 1: 623 ff.; Porter, 3: 342 ff.; Levi, 235; Seeley, Expan- 
 sion, 258. Trade in cottons; Cunningham, 2: 624; Ellison, 62; Accounts 
 and Papers, 1851, vol. 8, table 91, p. 125. 425. M'Culloch, 1: 414 ff.; 
 Porter, 3: 364 ff.; Cunningham, vol. 2. 426. Badham, Life of Hume, 
 London, 1859, 22; Aug. Mongredien, Free trade movement, London 
 [1881], 4; Levi, 169; M'Culloch, 1: 198; Helm in Ashley, Brit. Ind., 70 ff. 
 An idea of the complexity of the tariff may be gained from an inspection 
 of one of the Books of Rates, published in the eighteenth century, (e.g., 
 1726, 1770), as -a guide for merchants. 427. M'Culloch, 2: 516. Mon- 
 gredien, 10. 428. Levi, 153. The petition of 1820 is printed in Hansard, 
 N. S., 1: 179, and in Porter, 2: 152. 429. Fuchs, Handelspolitik, 10; 
 Cunningham, 2: 835; John Morley, Life of Cobden, London, 1881, 1: 163; 
 Porter, 1 : 316 ff . The last restraint on exports was abolished when a 
 committee reported in favor of complete freedom in exporting machinery: 
 Levi, 271. 430. Porter, 1: 190, 235 ff.; M'Culloch, 2: 490, s. v. Silk. 
 On reforms after 1840 cf. Cunningham, 2: 836; Mongredien, 33, 118; 
 Morley, Cobden, 1: 234 ff.; Morley, Life of Gladstone, N. Y., 1903, 2: 25; 
 Fuchs, 11. 431. Cunningham, 2: 541, 723; Mongredien, 5ff.; Levi, 21, 
 211 ff.; George C. Brodrick, English land, London, 1881, 81. 432. 
 Morley, Cobden, 1: 141, 148, 290, 321, 406. Herbert Spencer, Auto- 
 biography, N. Y., 1904, 1: 33, notes that only two clergymen out of a 
 total of 15,000 in the Church of England avowed their opposition to the 
 corn laws. 433. Mongredien, 53, citing Dunckley; Jevons, Coal, 173, 
 212. On the price of wheat in the period following cf. Giffen, Essays in 
 fin., 3 ed., London, 1890, 2: 377. 434. Levi, 159 ff., with full references 
 to statutes; Porter, 2: 158 ff.; M'Culloch, Diet., 2: 209, s. v. Nav. Laws; 
 Mahan, French Rev., 2: 228; Lexis, article Schiffahrt, Politik, Handworter- 
 buch, 6: 544, with bibliography. 435. Levi, 299; figures from Cunning- 
 
AUTHORITIES 617 
 
 ham, 2: 668, note. For further statistics cf, M'Culloch, s. v. Ships, and 
 Porter, 2: 171 ff., 3: 163. 436. Figures are from Accounts and Papers, 
 1903, Cd. 1761, vol. 67, 403-4, except the sum of domestic exports and 
 imports, which is made simply by adding the figures in the text. On the 
 technical questions involved in the history of English trade statistics cf. 
 S. Bourne, chap. 1, p. 32; Fuchs, 88 ff., 93; Palgrave, Diet., 1: 339, 2: 33; 
 Macgregor, Commercial statistics, 5: 128 ff. The estimate of the propor- 
 tion of English and world trade is from Neumann-Spallart, 751, and is as 
 reliable as such an estimate can be; the proportion of imperial trade is 
 estimated by Giffen, Econ. inquiries, London, 1904, 2: 179. 437. Shel- 
 burne's statement of 1783, quoted by Hill, First stages of tariff pol. of 
 U. S., Pub. Amer. Ec. Assoc, 1893, 8: 542. Cf. Morley, Cobden, 2: 129, 
 on the effect of the repeal of the corn laws; he admits that the gold dis- 
 coveries played a part in the expansion of trade. For a criticism of the 
 tendency to exaggerate the influence of free trade on English develop- 
 ment cf. Taussig, in Quart. Jour. Econ., 7: 169. 438. Figures of exports 
 from Fuchs, 109. On coal cf. Bowley, 106; Thomas in Jour. Royal Stat. 
 Soc, 1903, 66: 439 ff. 439. Details from Fuchs, 110 ff.; Mulhall in Con- 
 temp. Rev., 1900, 77: 40; S. Bourne, Trade, 40 ff.; Bowley, 107 ff.; States- 
 man's Year-Book. 440-1. On imports cf. Bowley, 131 ff.; Fuchs, 101 
 ff.; S. Bourne, Trade, 76 ff. 442. Giffen, The excess of imports. Jour. 
 Royal Stat. Soc, 1899, 62: 35. Giffen apportions the total as follows, in 
 millions sterling: freight, 70, commission 18, interest and profits 90. 
 443. Kurt Wahl, in Schmoller's Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, 1900, 24: 
 969; Ginsburg in Ashley, Brit, ind., 173 ff.; Fuchs, 98 ff.; Glover in Jour. 
 Royal Stat. Soc, 1902, 65: 1 ff. 444. Statesman's Year-Book, 1901, 82; 
 U. S. Cons. Rep., Nov. 25, 1904, Apr. 12, 1905. The relative rank of 
 ports varies greatly according to the standard of measurement; I have 
 adopted the figures compiled by the U. S. Dep. of Commerce from official 
 sources, giving the value of exports and imports by land as well as by sea. 
 If the tonnage entering and clearing were taken as standard the result 
 would be very different; see the list on this basis in Statesman's Year- 
 Book, which would make Cardiff the second, sometimes even the first, 
 port in the U. Kingdom. For the relative standing of English ports 
 about 1860 see Vogel, 1: 474 ff. 445- Mulhall, Contemp. Rev., 1900, 
 77: 383 ff.; the tables cover the period 1859-1898 by decennial aggregates. 
 See also U. S. Cons. Rep., Dec 19, 1902; Farrer in Contemp. Rev., 1898, 
 74: 817; Fuchs, 116 ff. 446. Ashley, Tariff problem, London, 1903, 
 53 ff., 100 ff.; Schooling in Monthly Rev., Jan., 1902, 6: 40 ff.; Ellinger in 
 Econ. Rev., 1902, 12: 21 ff. 448. On Asiatic competition cf. Ashley, 
 Tariff. 72, 76; Kershaw in Fortnightly Rev., 1897, 68: 738 ff.; Hobson in 
 National Rev., 1891, 17: 2, 7; Gundry, in Fortn. Rev., 1895, 64: 613, 616. 
 449. The text gives a mere summary, and the literature is so voluminous 
 
618 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 as to defy compression. See U. S. Consular Reports, periodical articles, 
 report of the first Moseley Commission (extracts published in U. S. Cons. 
 Rep., Oct. 8, 1903); Pratt, Trade unionism, London, 1904; T. M. Young, 
 The Amer. cotton industry, N. Y., 1903; Giffen, in Ward, Reign of Queen 
 Victoria, 2: 39; etc. 450. Gastrell and Williams, passim. 451. The 
 concluding summary of the Blue Book on Foreign trade competition is 
 quoted verbally by B. Taylor, in Fortn. Rev., 1900, 74: 647; Taylor calls 
 it an "extensive libel," but the weight of evidence is against him. Cf. 
 Lambert, in Nineteenth Cent., 1898, 44: 940 fT.; Birchenough, ib., 1900, 
 48: 1065: Fraser in Contemp. Rev., 1897, 72: 86 fT.; Tripp, in Nineteenth, 
 Cent., 1898, 43: 193; U. S. Cons. Reports; etc. 452. Gastrell, 81 ff.; 
 U. S. Con6. Rep., April 25, 1902; Flux in Econ. Jour., 1897, 7: 45; N. M. 
 Harris, Joseph Chamberlain, N. Y. [1900], 39. 454. Table of duties, as 
 estimated by the Board of Trade, reprinted in Balfour, Econ., notes, 20, 
 note. 455. W. J. Ashley, Tariff problem, London, 1903; A. J. Balfour, 
 Economic notes on insular free trade, N. Y. and London, 1903. 456. 
 Chamberlain's views are expressed chiefly in public speeches to be found 
 reported in the newspapers; see the reference under Questions and Topics. 
 457. Fuchs, 177 ff.; Levi, 244 ff. See U. S. Cons. Rep. for recent prefer- 
 ential tariffs in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. 460. W. 
 Weber, Der deutsche Zollverein, 2 ed., Leipzig, 1871, 2; Henri Richelot, 
 L'Association douaniere allemande, 2 ed., Paris, 1859, 10, 31; Sax, Ver- 
 kehrsmittel, Wien, 1878-9, 1: 337; Roscher, System, 3: 279; Werner 
 Sombart, Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im 19. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1903, 
 7. 461-2. Sombart, 31 ff., 67; Albin Konig, Die sachsische Baumwoll- 
 industrie, Leipzig, 1899 (Leipziger, Stud. Gesch., Bd. 5, Heft 3), 81, 332; 
 Biicher, Ind. ev., 186, 190. On the development and regulation of the 
 industrial organization cf. Schonberg in his Handbuch d. Pol. Oekon., 
 Tubingen, 1896, 2, I, 567 ff., with references; articles Gewerbe and Ge- 
 werbegesetzgebung in Handworterbuch. 463. Mulhall's statistics are 
 quoted by Huber, Deutschland als Industriestaat, Stuttgart, 1901, 86, 
 but the estimate in the text, by Rau, quoted by Sombart, 43, seems pref- 
 erable. Konig, Sachs. Baumwollind., 1-67, gives a good account of the 
 English trade in cotton textiles. 464. Weber and Richelot, passim; 
 Sommerlad, article Zollverein in Handworterbuch. 465. Weber, 180 ff., 
 215, Richelot, 115, 120 ff., 431. Statistics of consumption by Neumann 
 in Schonberg, Handbuch, 1: 177; Huber, 56, 59. 466-7. Weber, second 
 period, passim; Richelot, 99, 292, 306; Walther Lotz, Die Ideen des deut- 
 schen Handelspolitik von 1860 bis 1890, Leipzig, 1892 (Schr. Ver. f. Soc), 
 6, 11 ff. 468-9. Lotz, 102, 109, 118 ff., etc. 47i- Figures from U. S. 
 Mo. Summary, Feb., 1903, 2285; total is made by adding figures in the 
 text, disregarding decimals. For quinquennial averages, in pounds 
 sterling, see Report of 1903, British and Foreign Trade, Cd. 1761, 476. 
 
AUTHORITIES 619 
 
 On the changes in the German commercial statistics, making it impossible 
 to institute direct comparisons between figures before and after 1900, see 
 Accounts and Papers, 1896, Cd. 8211, 70. Other facts in the text from 
 Ad. Braun, in Yaie Review, May, 1902, 11: 10 ff.; Handbuch der Wirt- 
 schaftskunde Deutschlands, Leipzig, 1901 ff., 1: 243, 4: 39 ff.; Ballod in 
 Schmoller's Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, 1900, 24: 493 ff.; Baker, Seen in 
 Germany, N. Y., 1901, 313; U. S. Cons. Rep. 473. Lotz, 126 note. For 
 the modern domestic industry cf . Handbuch d. Wirtschaftskunde, 1 : 310 
 ff.; Deutschland als Agrar- und Industriestaat, Preuss. Jahrb., 1899, 97: 
 500, 507; Biicher, Ind. ev., chap. 5. On the growth of factories see Handb. 
 d. W., 1: 298; the report of Reuleaux is cited by Blondel, L'essor indus- 
 triel du peuple allemande, Paris, 1898, 151, and by Schoenhof in Forum, 
 1901, 31: 90. The chapter on Germany in Wilson, Resources of mod. 
 count., London, 1878, shows how little Germany was feared by the Eng- 
 lish then; cf. 1: 336, 345 ff. 474. On coal supply. Marcel Dubois, Geog. 
 ^con. de I'Europe, Paris, n. d., 262; U. S. Cons. Rep., Nov. 5, 1902. On 
 iron and steel, Huber, 298, Williams, chap. 2; U. S. Cons. Rep., May 23, 
 1903, Aug. 11, 1903. 475. For discussion of the character of the people 
 see Blondel, Essor, 110 ff.; Levy in Rev. deux Mondes, 1898, 1: 809; 
 Findlay in Fortn. Rev., 1899, 72: 534. 476. The literature is extensive. 
 For facts and opinions cited in the text see Magnus in National Rev., 
 1897, 29: 169 ff. (Magnus was a member of the Royal Commission sent 
 to study conditions); Rawson in Contemp. Rev., 1901, 80: 586 ff.; Thwaites 
 in Ninteeenth Cent., 1896, 40: 926 ff.; Levy as above, 812 ff.; Schwob, Le 
 danger allemand, 2 ed., Paris, 1897, 191; U. S. Cons. Rep., etc. 477. 
 Report of Consul Greene, Antofagasta, March 9, 1902, U. S. Cons. Rep., 
 May 3, 1902. 478. F. Bianconi, La Russie, Paris, 1893, 6; Colquhoun in 
 Monthly Rev., Nov., 1900, 1: 50; Gastrell, 42; Blondel, Essor, 122; Levy, 
 Rev. deux Mondes, 1898, 2: 869. 479. Gastrell, 45; articles Ausfuhr- 
 musterlager, Handelskammern, etc., in Handworterbuch, with references. 
 On colonies see U. S. Cons. Rep., passim; on rivers and canals, Dubois, 
 287 ff.; Blondel, 50; Kurs in Jahrbucher f. Nat., 1895, 65: 641-675; Sym- 
 pher, Berlin, 1900. On railroad tariffs cf. Bunzel in Zeitschr. f. Volksw., 
 Wien, 1900, 9: 191. Space is lacking for adequate treatment of the 
 development of shipping. See Die Seeinteressen des deutschen Reichs, 
 Berlin, 1898; Poisson in Annales de I'Ecole Libre des Sci. Pol., Paris, 
 1901, 16: 691-707; Feig in SchmoUers Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, 1902, 
 26: 1691-1700; U. S. Cons. Rep.; etc. 480. Examples from S. Whitman, 
 Imperial Germany, 251 ff.; Schwob, 21; Blondel, 43; cf. Williams, Gas- 
 trell, etc. 481. German periodical literature is, of course, full of articles 
 on recent commercial policy. Rates of the tariff of 1902 are given in 
 U. S. Cons. Rep., Jan. 30, 1903, and later changes and their effects are 
 reported there. 482. An interesting, if not convincing, defence of agra- 
 
620 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 rian protection may be found in Ad. Wagner, Agrar- und Industriestaat, 
 Jena, 1901. 483-4. Giffen, Econ. inquiries, 2: 235; Vogel, 1; 483; Noel, 
 Hist, du commerce ext^rieure de la France, Paris, 1879, 32 ff. 485. 
 Neymarck, in Jour. Royal Stat. Soc, June, 1889, 52: 322; Vogel, 1: 162; 
 M. Am6, Etude sur les tarifs de douanes, Paris, 1876, 1: 73. 486. Ame, 
 1: 149, 2: 164 ff.; Aug. Devers, La politique commerciale de la France, 
 Leipzig, 1892 (Schr. Ver. f. Soc), 130; Pierre Clement, Hist, du systeme 
 protecteur, Paris, 1854, 236. For lists of prohibitions, covering 12 to 
 15 lines, see Ame 2: 286 and Mahaim (full title below) 211. 487. M. 
 Pigeonneau, L'Industrie textile en France, Paris, 1891, 15; Ch. Dupin, 
 Forces productives, Paris, 1827, 1: 29; Am6, Douanes, 1: 170 ff., 214 ff., 
 312. 488. The declared value of British produce exported to France, 
 1829, was 491,388, out of a total export of 35 million; cf. Accounts and 
 Papers, 1851, vol. 8, table 89, p. 122. On smuggling see Am^, 1: 99; 
 M'CuUoch, Diet., 2: 516, sub voc. The generalized statement I take 
 from Levasseur, 2: 566. I must say, however, that I think more weight 
 should be attached to changes in the method of measuring commerce 
 than he allows to appear in his text. Cf. his note, and his section on 
 re-exports. 489. Ame, 1: 189; Devers, 129 ff.; Noel, 64 ff.; Clement 
 151 ff. 490. Noel, 109, 136 ff.; Vogel, 1: 190, 431, 473, 506 ff. 491. 
 See all the writers cited on the history of recent French commerce, and, 
 on the other side, Levi, Fuchs, Morley, etc. Text of the treaty in Noel, 
 350 ff. Napoleon's letter of Jan. 5, 1860, giving his program of reform, 
 will be found in 36. Cong., 1. Sess., House Exec. Doc, vol. 6, doc. 30. 
 492. Noel, 227-240. 493-4. Devers, 162 ff., 170, 184, 206; Fisher in 
 Econ. Journal, 6: 341, 349. 495-6. Devers, 208. On effects of recent 
 tariff, Alex, von Brandt, Gesch. d. franz. Handelspolitik, Leipzig, 1896, 
 206 ff.; Zablet in Rev. d'Ec. Pol., 1898 12: 917, in Jour, des Econ., Aug., 
 1903, 55: 235; Guyot in Jour, des Econ., 1897, 32: 5. On character of 
 manufactures: Vogel, 1: 169, 184; Guyot in Nineteenth Cent., 1893, 34: 
 873; Berge in Rev. deux Mondes, 1890, 5: 191. In 1901 France consumed 
 little over 1 ton of coal per capita (U. S. Cons. Rep., Nov. 5, 1902); of 
 which it imported over one quarter (ib., Apr. 21, 1902); industries employ 
 only about 2,500,000 horse-power (ib., Jan. 20, 1903). 497. Statistics of 
 colonial commerce in U. S. Cons. Rep. Shipping and navigation laws, 
 (see Ame for early): Devers, 175; A. de Foville, La France iCcon., Paris, 
 1887, 330 ff.; Moireau in Rev. deux Mondes, 1897, 2: 893 ff.; McVey in 
 Yale Rev., 11: 52; periodical articles by Bellet and Zablet. 499. Kurt 
 Wahl, Die Entwickelung der hollandischen Handelsschiffahrt, in Schmollers 
 Jahrbuch f. Gesetzgebung, 1900, 24: 960, 962; H. de Reus, Handelspolitik 
 der Niederlande, Leipzig, 1892 (Schr. Ver. f. Soc), 241 ff.; Ad. Beer, 
 Gesch., 4: 294 ff. 500. On the tariff see Reus, 242 ff.; on the colonial 
 policy my Dutch in Java. Statistics from Jaarcijfers voor het Koninkrijk 
 
AUTHORITIES 621 
 
 der Nederlanden, Europa, 1898, 's Gravenhage, 1899, 135-6. I turn 
 gulden into round figures of dollars at $.40. 501. Hiilsmann, Handel 
 en nijverheid, in P. H. Ritter, Eene halve eeuw, Amsterdam, 1898, 1: 
 281 ff.; Jaarcijfers, 137 ff. 502. Coal statistics in U. S. Cons. Rep., Feb. 
 6, 1904; cf. Encyc. Brit., 3: 524. In consumption of coal per capita Bel- 
 gium is the second state of Europe; cf. U. S. Cons. Rep., Nov. 5, 1902. 
 Narrative from Ad. Beer, Gesch., 4: 319 ff.; Ernest Mahaim, La politique 
 commerciale de la Belgique, Leipzig, 1892 (Schr. Ver. f. Soc), 197 ff., 
 216. 503-4. Mahaim, passim; statistics, ib., 223, 236, and Statesman's 
 Year-Book. There has been a slight return to protection, but the tariff 
 as estimated by the Board of Trade with respect to English exports is 
 still very low. 505-6. Beer, Gesch., 4: 343, 348 ff.; W. H. Dawson, 
 Social Switzerland, Lond., 1897, 40, 45, 51 ff.; Francis O. Adams and 
 Cunningham, Swiss Confederation, London, 1889, 210 ff.; Scaife in Forum, 
 1901, 31: 31, 41. 507. Jos. Oberhauser, Ost. Zollverfassung, Wien, 1826, 
 94 ff. 509. (6) Beer, Gesch., 4: 199 ff., 209, 217 ff.; Richelot, 306; A. 
 Peez, Die ost. Handelspolitik, Leipzig, 1892 (Schr. Ver. f. Soc), 173; (c) 
 Beer, 4: 204, 208; Richelot, 305; (d) Beer, 4: 213; Handworterbuch, 4: 
 440 ff. 510-11. Beer, Gesch., 4: 236, 243 ff., 274; Peez, 174 ff.; Neumann- 
 Spallart, 53 ff., 69; Jekelfalussy, Der tausendjahrige ungarische Staat, 
 Budapest, 1896, 494, 607; Matlekovits in Zeitschr. f. Volksw., Wien, 1898, 
 7: 537, 543, etc. On shipping see Beer, 4: 289 ff.; Verdin in Zeitschr. f. 
 Volksw., Wien, 1896, 5: 632 ff.; Bunzel, ib., 1900, 9: 142, 144; Matlekovits, 
 548. 512. Figures of commerce per capita, Konow, 404; Frederiksen, 
 Finland, London, 1902, 154. 513. Tweedie in Fortn. Rev., 1895, 63: 
 819 ff. 514. Konow, 307, 325, 351, 380; Wallace in Econ. Rev., 1897, 
 7: 149 ff.; Peschel-Kriimmel, Eur. Staatenkunde, Leipzig, 1880, 1: 224 ff. 
 Shipping: U. S. Cons. Rep., Feb. 20, 1901; Kiaer in Jour. Pol. Econ. 
 515- Sundbarg, La Suede, Stockholm, 1900, 2: 18, 191; Peschel-Kriimmel, 
 212 ff. 516. Wilson, Resources, 2: 4; J. W. Probyn, Italy, London, 1884, 
 41. 517. Werner Sombart, Handelspolitik Italiens, Leipzig, 1892 
 (Schr. Ver. f. Soc), 78 ff.; Richelot, 298; M'Culloch, Diet., s. v. Leghorn. 
 518. Richelot, 301; Sachs, LTtalie, ses finances, etc., Paris, 1885, 748 ff.; 
 Sombart, 82 ff. 519. Statistics from Sombart, 88, 166; Bolton King and 
 Okey, Italy to-day, London, 1901, 143; N. Colajanni, Le nostre esporta- 
 zioni, in Nuova Antologia, 1900, 170: 656 ff. 520. Sombart, 125, 131; 
 Probyn, 360; Sachs, 793. 521. Sombart, 91 ff., 109 ff.; on the tariff war 
 cf. 122, 157 ff. 522. Figures of occupations in Handworterbuch, 2: 627. 
 On the agricultural organization see King and Okey or Villari; on its in- 
 efliciency cf. Morgan in Nat. Rev., 1891, 17: 517; Lord in Nineteenth 
 Cent., 1892, 31: 366 ff; Nitti in Econ. Rev., 1893, 3: 364-391. Estimates 
 of sugar consumption quoted in Nuova Antol., 1900, 172: 61; on agrarian 
 duties see Giretti, Contro il dazio, Giom. d. Econ., 1900, II, 21: 405; and 
 
622 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 many similar articles. 523. Sombart, 143 ff.; King and Okey, 146; 
 Morgan in Nat. Rev., 17: 516. Trade statistics, as given in the States- 
 man's Year-Book, do not bear out the favorable account of manufactures 
 by King and Okey; see the list of exports. 524. Early shipping: Sachs, 
 812; Wilson, 2: 35; Wells, Merch. marine, 194. Recent policy, E. Giretti, 
 I premii, Giom. d. Econ., 1900, II, 20: esp. 263-4. Other writers seem 
 to take state aid for granted; cf. Bettolo in Nuova Antol., 1903, 188: 
 545 ff.; Piaggio, ib., 1904, 196: 288 ff. On colonial projects see Keller in 
 Yale Review, Aug., 1900, 9: 175 ff.; and many articles in the Italian re- 
 views. 525. King and Okey, 148 ff., 163 ff., chap. 9; U. S. Cons. Rep. 
 Mar. 1, 1903; Giretti, La nouva politica commerciale, in Giorn. d. Econ., 
 1902, 25: 434 ff. 527. Statistics of Spanish trade, colonial and other, 
 1790 and 1795, in Macgregor, Com. stat., 2: 1027, 1028. Figures of Span- 
 ish trade, even in the nineteenth century, are not reliable. Macgregor 
 gives, 995 ff., ample details to confirm his characterization of Spanish 
 policy, which I quote. On smuggling see Macgregor, 2: 988 ff., 1027; 
 Andree, Geog. des Welthandels, Stuttgart, 1867 ff., 3, II, 355; Porter, 
 Progress, 2: 111; Wilson, Resources, 2: 59. 528. Tariff reform of 1849: 
 Andree, Geog., 3, II, 357; Rodriguez in Joum. des Econ., May, 1891, V. 
 6: 176 ff. On recent protectionist tendencies and their results see Rodri- 
 guez, 183-4; Zablet, in Journal des Econ., 1895, V. 24: 217, 219. Exports 
 from Stateman's Year-Book; Higgin, Span. Life, N. Y., 1902, 178; Webster, 
 43; U. S. Cons. Rep., May 22, 1901. 529. Quotation from John Smith, 
 Mem. of Pombal, London, 1843, 2: 33; cf. Higgin, Span, life, 301. Manu- 
 factures: Macgregor, 2: 1123; Forrester, Portugal, 3 ed., London, 1856, 17. 
 Policy: Forrester, 14, 26, 113 ff.; Crawfurd, Portugal, London, 1880, 111; 
 Macgregor, 2: 1182; Wilson, Resources, 2: 69. Commerce: Macgregor, 2: 
 1121, 1154; Andree, 3, II, 404; Statesmans's Year-Book. The most 
 important export industry, that of wine, is now passing through a crisis; 
 cf. U. S. Cons. Rep., Sept. 4, 1901. 530. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire 
 of tsars, N. Y., 1893, 1: 4, 10. 531. Leroy-Beaulieu, 1: 249, 276 ff.; A. 
 Rambaud, Hist, of Russia, London, 1879, 1: 176 ff. 532. J. J. Oddy, 
 European commerce, Philadelphia, 1807, 1: 72 ff., 203, with statistics; 
 G. von Schulze-Gavernitz, Volkswirtschaftliche Studien aus Russland, 
 Leipzig, 1899, 20 ff. 533- Oddy, 1: 70. 534. Oddy, 1: 71, 91, etc.; 
 F. Matthai, Der auswartige Handel Russlands, St. Petersburg, 1874, 11, 
 17; M'Culloch, Diet., s. v. Odessa. 535. Matthai, 12, 14 ff.; V. Wittschew- 
 sky. Die russische Zoll- und Handelspolitik, Leipzig, 1902 (Schr. Ver. f. 
 Soc), 364; Chapochnikoff in W. Kovalevsky, La Russie, Paris, 1900, 547. 
 536. Oncken, Zeitalter Kais. Wilhelm, Berlin, 1892, 2: 769 ff.; Matthai, 
 46 ff.; Libsky in Kovalevsky, 845. 537. Matthai, 4, 23, 48, 194 ff., 218; 
 Pokrovsky in Kovalevsky, 689, 694. 538. Schulze-Gavernitz, 38 ff.; 
 I. Golowin, Russland unter Alexander II, Leipzig, n. d., 143 ff.; Matthai, 
 
 39 
 
AUTHORITIES 623 
 
 107; P. Schwanenbach, Statistische Skizze d. russ. Reiches, St. Peters- 
 burg, 1876, 30. 539. Wittschewsky, passim; ChapochnikofT in Kovalev- 
 sky, 547 ff., Schulze-Gavernitz, 244 ff. 540. Wittschewsky, 410, 425; 
 Kovalevsky, 291, 550. On the conditions of manufacturing see esp. 
 Schulze-Gavernitz, 107 ff.; Schoenhof in Forum, 1901, 31:96. Foreign 
 capital: Schulze-Gavernitz, 273 ff.; Lanin (pseud.), in Fortn. Rev., 1891, 
 55: 181; U. S. Cons. Rep., Oct. 3, 1900, Dec. 22, 1900. 54i- Schulze- 
 Gavernitz, 351 ff.; Lanin, 182. 542. Fr. Hoch, Zufuhrwege in Russland, 
 Berlin, 1896, 37, 41; Lipsky in Kovalevsky, 857, 861; Wittschewsky. 
 381 ff., 416. 543. References abound: I select Calderon in Contemp. 
 Rev., 1900, 78: 389-396; Beale in Forum, 29: 147-153. On Siberia and 
 the railroad see esp. C. Ballod in Jahrbucher f. Nat. 1896, 67-321: 367, 
 and U. S. Cons. Reports. 544. Cf. statistics in Matthai, 1, 25, 119, 247 
 ff.; Kovalevsky, 689; Schwanenbach, 29 ff.; Wittschewsky, 438. 545-6. 
 For the facts used as illustrations see Laveleye, Balkan Pen., N. Y., 1887, 
 passim; G. Benger, Rumanien, Stuttgart, 1896, 70; R. Millet, La Serbie, 
 Paris, 1889, 25, 55; James Baker, Turkey, N. Y., 1877, 405 ff.; and various 
 U. S. Cons. Reports. An excellent source on the recent commercial 
 development of the Balkan Peninsula is K. Griinberg, Die handelspoliti- 
 schen Beziehungen Oesterreich-Ungarns zu den Landem der unteren 
 Donau, Leipzig, 1902. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 547. U. S. Census, 1900, Atlas, 1903, 26; G. F. Kolb, Handbuch der 
 vergl. Statistik, Leipzig, 1868. 548. Amer. State Papers, folio, 1833-61, 
 Commerce and navigation, 1: 24 ff., exports for year ending Sept. 30, 
 1790. The tables are incomplete by reason of the omission of some 
 returns for August, but suffice for purposes here. I lump potash and 
 pearlash, dried and pickled fish, and the items under lumber. To guard 
 against possible errors rising from the selection of one year for illustration, 
 I have checked the figures by reference to Seybert, Stat, annals, 94 ff., 
 giving figures 1789-1817, but found no change deserving special comment 
 here. 549. Henry C. Adams, Taxation in the U. S., Baltimore, 1884, 
 10; Brewer, Cereals, in Census of 1880, Agriculture, 134; cf. E. Levasseur, 
 L'Agriculture aux Etats Unis, Paris, 1894, 22. For the agrarian charac- 
 ter of a colonial government cf. N. Y. colonial documents, 5: 682, 6: 197. 
 On the conditions of agriculture and crops. Walker, in Princeton Review, 
 1882, 255; Brewer, Cereals, 134 ff,; Shaler, Nature and man in America, 
 N. Y., 1891, 15. On expectations and disappointments see Bruce and his- 
 tories of the southern colonies in general. 550. Advantages of maize, 
 Shaler, in Winsor, Narr. and crit. hist., Boston, 1884 ff., 4: xiii. On the 
 small consumption of wheat in New England see local histories, C. F. 
 Adams, Three episodes, Boston, 1892, 685; Lawson's Union; Anderson's 
 
624 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Waterbury; etc. On the rapid rise of the wheat export, Report of a 
 Committee of the Lords of the Privy Council on the Trade of Great Britain 
 with the United States, 1791, reprinted Washington, 1888, 26 (cited 
 hereafter as Rep. on Trade, 1791); Schouler, Hist, of U. S., N. Y., 1894 ff., 
 1: 126; Brewer, Cereals, 136. 551. Statistics in Seybert, 96 ff. On flax 
 and hemp cf. Williams, Vermont, Walpole, 1794, 315; Freeman in Maine 
 Hist., Soc. 1: 249. Accounts of stock raising may be found in many 
 colonies; on the animal industry in Rhode Island cf. Channing, Narra- 
 gansett planters, Baltimore, 1886, 8; McSparran in R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., 
 3: 134. There is an interesting and valuable account of the provision 
 trade in S. Goodrich, Statistical account of Ridgefield, 1800, MS. in Conn. 
 Hist. Soc. 552. Bruce, 1: 252, 408, etc.; Fisher, Men, women, and man- 
 ners, 2: 185; Shaler in Winsor, 4: xxvii; Beer, Col. pol., 52 ff. 553. Rice: 
 Talmage in Depew, 1: 263; Beer, Col. pol., 52. Indigo: N. Y. col. doc, 
 1: 279; Beer, 103; Bishop, Hist. Am. manufactures, 1: 323, 348 ff; Wailes, 
 Miss., 1854, 134. Statistics in Seybert, 100 ff. 554. Washington to 
 Arthur Young, quoted in Storer, Agriculture, N. Y., 1887, 1: 122; Brewer, 
 Cereals, 133, 139; local histories (Baker's Montville, Gold's Cromwell, 
 Holland's Western Mass., etc.). 555. Statistics in Amer. State Papers, 
 Com. & Nav., 1: 29; Seybert, 100 ff., 106 ff. In general see Lord. De- 
 scriptions of "masting" and lumbering in Fisher, 1: 327; Sewall, Diary, 
 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 5, 5: 189; ib., ser. 1, 3: 146, 4: 90. Potash: 
 M'CuUoch, s. v.; Williams, Vermont, 317. A MS. in the Conn. Hist. Soc, 
 Hartford (Papers relating to U. S. Bank, 1816, Map M), says that 500 
 barrels of potash had frequently come to Hartford in a year, by the Con- 
 necticut River, from the single town of Derby on the Canada line. 556. 
 Quotation from N. Y. col. doc, 1: 268 (1649). See esp. Jefferson's Re- 
 port on fisheries, 1791, in Amer. State Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 8-22, with 
 statistics. Cf. also local histories, and descriptions of Mass. coast towns 
 in Mass. Hist. Soc Coll. 557. Table from the Report of Feb. 28, 1793, 
 Amer. State Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 200 ff. The government at this 
 time had no record whatever of articles imported free of duty, had no 
 record in detail of wares paying ad valorem duties, and had no record 
 of the values of articles paying specific duties. Estimates of the value 
 of imports in 1791 range from 19 million dollars (Seybert, 156), through 
 the 25 million of this table, to 29 million (U. S. Mo. Summary, Feb., 1899, 
 vol. 6, no. 8, opp. p. 1749). 558. On consumption of tea cf. Kalm,, 
 Travels, London, 1772, 492. Quotation from Seybert, 156. Some in- 
 dication of the relative importance of manufacturers' materials and of 
 finished manufactures would be given by a comparison of imports free 
 of duty, which in most instances belong in the former class, with dutiable 
 imports. Sanford, in the report of 1819, Amer. State Papers, Com. & 
 nav., 2: 394, estimated the value of free imports at five million dollars, 
 
AUTHORITIES 625 
 
 but it must have been much less in the period under consideration. In 
 interpreting the table I have sought help from the report of 1796, giving 
 an abstract of articles paying ad valorem duties under acts 1789-94, 
 Amer. State papers, Com. & nav., 1: 326 ff., and from the report of 1806, 
 Com. & nav., 1: 640, summarizing imports from Great Britain paying ad 
 valorem duties. The enumeration of articles could be much extended 
 from these sources, or from accounts of commerce in the colonial period: 
 e.g., Bishop, 1: 339 ff.; Conn. Col. Rec, 7: 583, 9: 595; Boston Town 
 Rec, 1767, 221, etc. 560. In reply to critics who may assert that this 
 picture is practically the same as that given by many authors (Earle, 
 Fisher, Adams, etc.), for the colonial period, I may say that the study 
 of local sources, (mainly from New England) has convinced me that con- 
 ditions substantially colonial in character lasted well into the nineteenth 
 century. Space is lacking for an appreciation of all the elements of pro- 
 gress; I refer to some of them in the next section and can cite ample docu- 
 mentary material, from the period limited roughly by the dates 1780 and 
 1810, for assertions in the text. 561-2. Travels and various local de- 
 scriptions of the period. 563. Quotation from Wolcott's Report, 1797, 
 Amer. State Papers, Finance, 1: 494; this is merely a summary of Hamil- 
 ton's Report, 1791, ib., 132. The first detailed statement of manufactures 
 exported dates from 1803; see the figures in Com. & nav., 1: 592. For 
 the rum export see Seybert, 100, 112. On the introduction of machinery 
 and the factory system see Wright, Ind. ev.; Bishop, Amer. manufactures, 
 1: 375 ff.; Gallatin, Report of 1810, Amer. State Papers, Finance, 2: 427; 
 and local histories. The EngUsh criticism is from Rep. on Trade, 1791, 
 30. 565. On the roads see in general Ringwalt; Edward Field, Colonial 
 tavern, Providence, 1897; and the accounts of travelers: Warville, 1788, 
 423; Anburey, 1791, 301; Wansey, 1794, 155; Weld, 1795, 22; etc. On 
 vehicles Fisher, 1: 272; Boston Memorial Hist., 2: 442; and other local 
 sources. On land transport between Pennsylvania and the West see the 
 detailed instance in Parkinson, 1798-1800, 1: 156; and cf. McMaster, 
 2: 559; Schouler, 1: 229; Ringwalt, 20, 27; Bishop, 1: 292. 566. Doc. 
 Hist. N. Y., 1: 458; Walton in Amer. Hist. Rev., Jan., 1897, 267; Fiske, 
 Critical period, 61; Schouler, 1: 80; Rhodes, 1: 216; etc. 567. Papers 
 rel. to U. S. Bank, 1816, in Conn. Hist. Soc; Kalm, Travels, 578; Doc. 
 Hist. N. Y., 2: 673, 684; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 1, 9: 121; Wansey, Jour- 
 nal, 107; Dwight, Travels, 4: 124 ff. In the South: Shaler, in Winsor, 4: 
 xxvii; Fisher, 2: 184; Wailes, Miss., 133. 568. Anburey, Travels, 2: 318; 
 Brissot de Warville, New travels, 127; Field, Col. tavern, 168. The prev- 
 alence of barter at this period, and indeed considerably later, is attested 
 by numerous local sources. 569. The names are taken from Burnley, 
 Millionaires, London, 1901, 247, and Stoddard, Men of business, N. Y., 
 1893, passim. On the market trips see in general Earle, Customs and 
 
626 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 fashions, N. Y., 1893, 206 ff.; Field, 157; and local sources. 570. On the 
 coasting trade cf. Wansey, 70; Warville, 150; and local sources. Or 
 trade between North and South: Boston Town Records, 1753, 239; Fisher 
 1: 260; Gallatin, Report on Manufactures, 435. Exports: Amer. Statt 
 Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 320, 322. Imports ib.. Finance, 1: 89. Th( 
 local divergence in the balance of exports and imports furnishes, of course, 
 some indication of the amount of interstate trade, but the means whichi 
 we have of measuring imports is too rough to permit of estimates approach- 
 ing accuracy. 572. On population of cities see Seybert, 47. Philadelphia 
 did not show its true size, as suburbs were not included in the enu- 
 meration. Other facts are from many scattered local sources. On early 
 banks see Adolph O. Eliason, Rise of commercial banking institutions in 
 the U. S., Minneapolis, 1901, 24, 29, etc. 573. The table is based on two 
 sources, the statement of exports for the year ending 1790, in Amer. 
 State Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 34, and Jefferson's report of 1793, in Amer. 
 State Papers, Foreign, 1: 301. Jefferson's report refers to conditions 
 in the summer of 1792, but the figures which he gives for exports are 
 clearly those for the year ending Sept. 30, 1970, corrected by the inclu- 
 sion of returns omitted in the regular annual report. The source of his 
 estimate of imports is not given. I have taken the gross items from 
 Jefferson's table and have included with them the statistics of West 
 India trade as given in the annual report for 1790. The discussion of 
 these statistics in following sections does not go outside the lines of books 
 mentioned in the bibliography: Beer, Ashley, etc. 579. In general 
 Bruce, Weeden, Ashley, Bishop, etc.; Boston Town Rec, 1746, 99; Fiske, 
 Critical period, 137. In local sources see especially Boston Mem. Hist., 
 2: 443 ff.; Boston Town Records; and the description of 1794 in Mass. 
 Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 1, 3: 286 ff. A petition from the N. Y. Chamber of 
 Commerce, 1803, in Amer, State Papers, Com. & nav., 1:508, asserts 
 that conditions were then reversed, and that an oak vessel could be 
 built in Europe for $36.25 against $40-45 in America, but the state- 
 ment is open to suspicion. 580. Statistics of tonnage entries according 
 to nationality and source, in Amer. State Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 47, 389. 
 The total registered tonnage of the U. S. engaged in foreign trade was in 
 1789 about 124,000; cf. Seybert, 320, Page, 188. On early voyages to 
 the East cf. Marvin, 33; Wansey, Journal, 232. On the voyage of the 
 Experiment I follow Marvin. Warville, New travels, 471, puts the size 
 at 60 tons and the crew at 11 men. This trip was regarded later as typical 
 of American enterprise; cf. Dwight, Travels, 1: 170. 583. Rep. on Trade, 
 1791, 10, 32, periods ending 1774 and 1789. Levi, 56, shows a consider- 
 able increase in American imports from England, comparing 1766-1775 
 and 1784-1792. The active import trade is described in full by Hill, 
 First stages, 508 ff.; cf. Bishop 1 : 395, 462, etc. On the course of English 
 
AUTHORITIES 627 
 
 policy see Rep. on Trade, Page, McMaster, etc. 584- Quotation from 
 Adams, in Bancroft, Hist., 1892, 5: 464; French view of the American 
 trade in Amer. State Papers, Foreign, 1: 120. 585. The description is 
 based on Jefferson's report on the privileges and restrictions of U. S. 
 trade, Amer. State Papers, Foreign, 1 : 300 ff. The report describes con- 
 ditions in the summer of 1792, "when things were in their settled order." 
 586. Jefferson's report; cf. McMaster in Camb. Mod. Hist., 7: 315; Page, 
 passim, esp. 182. 588. Figures of total exports are from Sanford's re- 
 port, Amer. State Papers, Com. & nav., 2: 391; figures of domestic and 
 foreign exports from Seybert, 93. Figures of the estimated values of 
 imports could be given for some years (cf. Seybert, 156, 266 ff.), but see 
 Sanford's report for criticism. 589. Wares which were unquestionably 
 of foreign origin (tea, wines) can be detected among the exports of 1790, 
 and doubtless foreign countries contributed to our exports of cotton, 
 indigo, etc., but the limit of one million seems safe. For quantities of 
 the chief domestic exports see Seybert, 84; estimates of per capita ex- 
 ports, ib. 87. 590. Full discussion of the treaties of the period will be 
 found in the narrative histories and in Page. The Jay treaty was of 
 importance in smoothing out the difficulties in which England and the 
 U. S. had become involved in 1794, but had not the decisive importance 
 attributed to it by Ford in Depew, 1: 21. On the Spanish treaty cf. 
 Rives, in Amer. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1898, 4: 62-79. 591. Some indication 
 of the gain in domestic exports is given by the tables in Seybert, 84 fif., 
 (quantities), or in Amer. State Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 642 (values), 
 For the growth of exports to various countries, Portugal, etc., see Sey- 
 bert, 132 ff. 592. Description of "broken voyages" in McMaster, Camb. 
 Mod. Hist., 7: 323. 593. Quotation from Seybert, 59. On foreign ex- 
 ports cf. Amer. State Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 666, 2: 392; W. G. L. Taylor, 
 in Journal of Pol. Econ., Dec, 1903, 12: 20. On ship-building and ton- 
 nage Com. & nav., 1: 508; Seybert, 318 flf. 594. Statistics of seizures in 
 Seybert, 81. For general references on the conditions of the period see 
 above under the Continental System, and the narrative histories of the 
 U. S. 595. Table showing effect of restrictions on the commerce of the 
 different States in Com. & nav., 1: 928. 596. See in general McMaster, 
 Hist., 3: 500 ff., and in Camb. Mod. Hist., 7: 353; Schouler, 2: 298, 3: 41; 
 Von Hoist, Const, hist., 1: 398; Jefferson, Works, Washington ed., 5: 415, 
 6: 94, 472, etc. Cf. Amer. State Papers, Finance, 2: 428, 689, 815 ff. 
 On the textile manufactures cf. Amer. State Papers, Finance, 3: 82; 
 Rhode Island petition of 1815, Annals of Congress, 1815-16, 1653; Wright, 
 Ind. ev., 130. 597-8. For authorities see bibhography. The estimate 
 of 7^ per cent is from Rep. on Trade, 1791, 27; for later increases see H. C. 
 Adams, Taxation, 36, Mayo-Smith and Seligman, 6. The quotation is 
 from Page, 178. 599. The figures are those accepted by the Treasury 
 
628 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Department, and frequently reprinted in the Monthly Summary. On 
 the slow growth of our export trade in the early part of the period of. 
 M'Culloch, Diet., s. v. New York. 600. For relative share of domestic 
 and foreign exports cf. Rep. of Sec. of Treas., 1838, check-list 330, doc. 
 330, 10 ff.; check-list 1348, Com. & nav., 1867, xxxi. 601. Atlas of 
 twelfth census. 604. McMaster, Hist., 2: 74, 3: 462 ff.; Ringwalt, 29 ff. 
 Local sources (chiefly from Conn, and N. Y.), show that the turnpike 
 assisted considerably in the expansion of foreign trade. 605. Estimates 
 of cost: McMaster, 3: 464; Ringwalt, 33. On plank roads cf. DeBow, 
 Indust. resources, 2 : 377 ff . 606. Max Sering, Die landwirtschaftliche 
 Konkurrenz Nordamerikas, Leipzig, 1887, 4; Ringwalt, 14; Shaler in 
 Winsor, 4: xxiii; Wailes, Miss., 130. On the need of the steamboat, 
 McMaster, 1: 412; Amer. State Papers, Misc., 1: 12; cf. Callender, 117, 
 120. 607. McMaster, 1: 432 ff., 3: 486; Lindsay, 4: 55. 608. Ringwalt, 
 18; Armroyd, Internal nav., 360, 362; Callender, 128; Reuben Davis, 
 Miss., Boston, 1889, 263. 609. Ringwalt, 41 ff.; Callender, 133. 610. 
 Shaler in Winsor, 4: xxv; N. Y. col. doc, 8: 93; Doc. hist. N. Y., 3: 659 ff., 
 McMaster, 4: 464; Purdy in Census of 1880,4: 731 ff. 611. Early rates: 
 Ringwalt, 27, 47; Armroyd, 558 ff.; 9 Niles Register, Supplement, 145. 
 Letters from the Genesee country in Doc. hist. N. Y., 2: 670; cf. McMaster, 
 3: 477 ff. 612. Ringwalt, 48, 111, 121; on the diversion of the grain 
 trade from the Miss. River later cf. M. Peto, Resources and prospects of 
 Amer., London, 1866, 61. 614. Moseley in Depew, 1: 28; Ringwalt, 105. 
 615. Ringwalt, 117, 141; Hadley in Amer. railway, 348; U. S. document 
 check-list 1761, 95. 616. Emerick, quoting Townsend, in Pol. Sci. 
 Quart., 1896, 11: 452. 617-8; Marvin, 224, 257, 267, and tables. Effect 
 of tariff in Grosvenor, Does protection protect? N. Y., 1871, 64 ff.; Wells, 
 Merchant marine, 9. 620. Figures for 1802-4 are from Amer. State 
 Papers, Com. & nav., 1: 642; figures for 1860 from the report on Com. 
 & nav. of that year. There is a discrepancy of ten million dollars between 
 the totals as I make them from the report of 1860, and as they are com- 
 monly given in the current tables of the Treasury Department; but in 
 the present state of our commercial statistics, and considering the pur- 
 pose to which the tables are applied here, it seems unnecessary to inves- 
 tigate the reasons. 622-3. Atkinson, Report on cotton manufacture, 
 in Census of 1880, 3; Postlethwayt, Diet., s. v. cotton; Hammond, 3 ff. 
 References in following sections are to Hammond, except as otherwise 
 noted. 624-5. Early gins in Postlethwayt, s. v. Cotton; Bishop, 1: 351; 
 Anburey, Travels, 2: 377. Whitney's memorial in Amer. State Papers, 
 Misc., 2: 183; cf. KetteU, Southern wealth, N. Y., 1860, 20. Wailes, 
 Miss., 367 ff., gives the specifications of a Whitney gin, and interesting 
 material on its history. See Hammond for further details and references. 
 626. Hammond, 70 ff., and table; Callender, 124; George McHenry, 
 
' AUTHORITIES 629 
 
 Cotton trade, London, 1863, 19; Davis, Miss., 78. 627. Callender, 129; 
 Hammond, 248 ff.; Kettell, 29 ff., 73, 96; McHeniy, 109, 176; Wailes, 165. 
 The quotation is from Montague Bernard, Neutrality of Great Brit., 
 London, 1870, 470. 629. Hammond, chap. 3; Callender, 126; H. R. 
 Helper, Impending crisis, N. Y., 1857, 78; Peto, 325; Homans, Cycl., 1634, 
 1850. 630. Com. & nav., 1860, 54. 631. M'Culloch, Diet., 1: 683; 
 Annals of Congress, 1823, 18. Cong., 1st sess., 1: 831; Peto, 53, 59; Sering, 
 530; Ring\valt, 155; DeBow, 1: 375. 632. Cf. tables in Report of the 
 Indianapolis Monetary Commission and in the U. S. Statistical abstract. 
 633. I select the items from table 6 in Cora. & nav., 1860, 294 fT.; the 
 figures which I give must be regarded merely as approximations. Items 
 can be checked by the summary for the years 1859-63 in Com. & nav., 
 1863, 644 ff. 634. Statistics from Com. & nav., 1790, Amer. State Papers, 
 Com. & nav., 1 : 34 ff ; Com. & nav., 1860, 294, 303. To the sugar imports 
 I add the estimated amount of the domestic product, 190,040 tons in 1860; 
 other statistical refinements seem unnecessary. Homans, Cyc, 1772, 
 estimated that the consumption of sugar per capita, excluding slaves, 
 rose from 16 lbs. 1840, to 60 lbs. 1855. U. S. Stat, ab., 1902, gives the 
 sugar consumption as 9 lbs. about 1822, 30 lbs. 1860, 636. Hill, First 
 stages, 576; Hamilton, Report on manufactures, pp. 79 and 85 of Taussig's 
 edition; statistics from Rothwell in Depew, 1: 179, and Stat, abstract, 
 1902, 550. See Callender, 130, for note on the rise in value of coal lands, 
 1824-29. 637. Swank, 352 ff.; Taussig, Tariff hist., 46 ff., 123 ff.; Wells 
 in Harper's Mag., 1875, 50: 718; Grosvenor, 183, 220 ff. References to 
 the same authors in the two following sections; add BoUes, Fin. Hist., 2: 
 379 ff. 640. Homans, Cyc, s. v. linen, silk; Com. & nav., 1860, 54-55. 
 641. On household manufactures in the South cf. P. A. Bruce, Plantation 
 negro, N. Y., 1889, 183, 228 ff. On factory industry: Von Hoist, Const, 
 hist., 1: 344; Helper, 106, 379; D. Campbell in No. Amer. Rev., 102: 41, 
 42; DeBow, Indust. res., 1: 223, 2: 101 ff., 3: 24 ff. On trade: McHenry, 
 110; Kettell, 75, 83, 90 ff., 127, etc. Extract from Helper, 22. 642-4. In 
 this brief survey I follow Taussig and Mayo-Smith and Seligman. Statis- 
 tical surveys will be found in Grosvenor, 72 ff., and in Wells, Rep. of Spec. 
 Commissioner of Revenue, 1866, check-list 1276, 39. For the effect of 
 tariff on commerce in this period see Grosvenor, 58, but note Taussig's 
 criticism. 645. Statistics from Com. & nav., 1860, 308 ff.. esp. 350. 
 646. Com. & nav., 1860, 522. 647-9. Statistics compiled from Com. & 
 nav., 1860, 50, 290. 650. U. S. Stat, abstract, table 43; Com. & nav., 
 1900, 1: 17. Measured in bulk commerce has not increased so much as* 
 measured by values, owing to the rise in prices. 651. On immigration cf. 
 Mayo-Smith, Emigration, N. Y., 1890, and Emery in Camb. Mod. Hist., 
 7: 701. Statistics of commerce per capita from the Stat, abstract. 652. 
 Conditions in 1860: Kettell, 86; Peto, 186, 240, 295; Sering, 418. Exten- 
 
630 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 sion of mileage: Bering; Emerick, in Pol. Sci. Quart., 1896, 11: 451 fF.; 
 Ringwalt; etc. Statistics in Stat, ab., 1902, 405. 653. See references 
 in introductory chapter. Consolidation and its effects: Atkinson, Indust. 
 progress, N. Y., 1890, 33, Distribution of products, N. Y., 1892, 232; 
 John P. Davis, The Union Pacific, Chicago, 1894, 114. 655. Ringwalt, 
 124, 166, 244; Atkinson, Indust. progress, 120, 197, Bimetallism in Europe, 
 Washington, 1877, 26; Stat, ab., 1902, 408. 656. Ringwalt, 153; Inter- 
 state Commerce Commisson, 13. Rep., Statistics for 1900, table show- 
 ing classes of commodities originating on lines; Moseley, in Depew, 1 : 27. 
 657. Purdy in Census, 1880, 4: 731; Jeans, 198 ff.; James, 28; Adams, 
 Railroad origins, 161; Sering, 520 ff. For tables of rates see Stat, abstract. 
 River transportation: Report on transportation to the seaboard, 1874, 
 check-list 1588-9; U. S. Census, Transportation by water; Rep. Indust. 
 Commission, 1900, 9: clxxxiv. 658. Stat, ab., 1902, 472 ff. 659. Wilson 
 in Camb. Mod. Hist., 7: 565 ff.; Peto, 218. 660. Wells, Merchant marine, 
 46, 174; Report of 1866, check-list 1276, 17 ff., App. F, 207 ff.; Report of 
 1868, check-list 1372, 52; Grosvenor, 62; Shaler, Nature and man, N. Y., 
 1891, 200. 661. Stat, ab., 1902, 477. For details see Marvin and Bates; 
 for objections to subsidies see Wells and Kelley. 663. Shaler in Winsor, 
 4: ix, Nature and man, 245; Parker in Census, Mines, 1902, 668; Census, 
 1900, 7: cccxv. 664. Census, 1900, 7: xlvii, 10: 381 ff., 763. Carpets: 
 Wharton School Stud., Univ. of Pa., 1891, 1: 26 ff.; D. J. Morrell, Report 
 of 1870, check-list 1437, 55. 665. Mulhall in No. Amer. Rev., May, 1897; 
 Wharton Studies, 1: 107. Development of manufactures in the South is 
 treated in many periodical articles. 666. Com. & nav., 1900, 1: 26; Stat, 
 ab., 1902, 264, 536. 668. Shaler, Nature and man, 213, and in Winsor, 
 4: xiii; Sering, 4, 182, 460; Levasseur, L'Agric, 56, 209; Peto, 26. 669. 
 Quotation from Wells, Report of 1866, 23. See in general the authors 
 cited in the bibliography; also Brewer, Cereals, 140; Veblen in Jour. Pol. 
 Econ., 1:70, 83 ff.; Peto, 49, 99; Sering, 195. 670. Beside Veblen, Sering, 
 Levasseur, etc., see Emery in Camb. Mod. Hist., 7: 708; Powers in Yale 
 Review, 1896, 5: 240. 671. S. J. Tilden, Writings, N. Y., 1885, 2: 487; 
 Sering, 199 ff. 672. Report of Indust. Comm., 6: 238 ff.; Census, 1900, 
 9: 387 ff., 414 ff., 433 ff.; Stat, ab., 1902, 321 ff.; Veblen, 92. 673. Ham- 
 mond, 324 ff. 675. Shaler, in Winsor, 4: viii. 676. Stat, ab., 1902, 550, 
 552. 677. Stat, ab., 1902, 214 ff.; Emery in Camb. Mod. Hist., 7: 715. 
 678. Rothwell and Cowles, in Depew, 1: 183, 332. 679-80. Instructions 
 by Bellomont, 1700, N. Y., col. doc, 4: 750; DeBow, Indust. resources, 
 1: 404; Folger, in Depew, 1: 205; Peto, 203. 682. Stat, ab., 1902, 536; cf. 
 Com. & nav., 1899, 1: 18. 683. Stat, ab.; Consular report, Aug., 1884, 
 13: 652. 684. Searles, in Depew, 1: 257 ff.; Stat, ab., 1902, 364. 685.. 
 The chief authority in this and following sections is Com. & nav., 1900. 
 692. Com. & nav., 1882, xxix; 1900, 1: 50, 64. 693. Stat, ab., 1902, 
 
AUTHORITIES 631 
 
 540 flf.; U. S. Mo. summary, June. 1902, 9: 4341. 694. Com. & nav., 
 1900, 1:63; cf. ib., 1899, 1:26. 
 
 RECENT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 698. U.S. Statistical abstract, 1911, 554. 699. Stat, ab., 1911, 759. 
 700. American Year Book, 1910, 555, from Archiv f. Eisenbahnwesen; 
 Aug. Kaegbein, Schiffahrt und Schiffbau, Handbuch, Hamburg, 1914, 
 24 fif. The tonnage for "other countries" is an approximation accurate 
 only within a few decimals. 701. Kaegbein, 26, 34. 702. The table is. 
 constructed from chap. 13 of J. H. SchooUng, British trade book, Lon- 
 don, 1911, in which certain qualifications of the figures will be found ex- 
 plained. Figures in pounds sterling have merely been multipUed by five 
 for a rough approximation in dollars. 703-706. Schooling, 278, 313 ff., 
 405. 707. Stat, ab., 1912, 375; Amer. Econ. Review, June, 1913, 3 : 344. 
 On the method of calculation see I. Fisher, Purchasing power of money, 
 N.Y., 1911, 478 ff. 708. Stat, ab., 1911, 288, 529; Poor's Manual of 
 railroads, 1911, xcvi. 709. Com. and nav., 1912, 20. 710. Stat, ab., 
 
 1912, 448; Amer. Year Book, 1913, 530 (Steuart). 711. Stat, ab., 1912, 
 429; Com. and nav., 1912, 20. 712. Amer. Year Book, 1910, 34, 321; 
 
 1913, 321 ff. 
 
632 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 TITLES OF BOOKS CITED BY ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 Note. — Books of which the full titles have already been given are 
 not, in most cases, included in the following list, which is supplementary 
 to the bibliographies and by no means a substitute for them. The list 
 includes only titles of those books which have been cited so many times 
 that a repetition of the full title would waste space, and which have been 
 cited in so many different places that the reader's time would be wasted 
 in hunting for the entry of the full title. I have thought it unnecessary 
 to give full titles of standard narrative histories, of current manuals in 
 the allied subjects of history and economics, and of local sources in the 
 history of the United States. Prices are appended to books now in print 
 in the United States and England. 
 
 Adams, Charles F., Jr. Railroads, their origin and problems. N. Y., no 
 
 date. 
 Adams, George B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. N. Y., Scrib- 
 
 ner, 1894, $2.50. 
 A. L. A. (American Library Association) Catalogue. Washington, 1904, 
 
 $.50 or $.25. . 
 American railway, The. N. Y., Scribner, 1897, $3. 
 Armitage-Smith, G. The free-trade movement. London, 1898, 2s. 6d. 
 Ashley, William J., editor. British industries. London (N. Y., Long- 
 mans), 1903, $1.80. 
 Ashley, William J. English economic history. N. Y., Longmans, 1892-3, 
 
 2 vol., $4.50. 
 Ashley, William J. The tariff problem. London, 1903, 2s. 6d. 
 Baring-Gould, Sabine. Story of Germany. N. Y., Putnam, 1886, $1.50. 
 Bastable, C. F. Commerce of nations. N. Y., Scribner, 1899, $1. 
 Beazley, C. R. Prince Henry the Navigator. N. Y., Putnam, 1895, 
 
 $1.50. 
 Beer, Adolf. AUgemeine Geschichte des Welthandels. Wien, 1860- 
 
 1884, 5 vol. 
 Beer, George L. Commercial policy of England toward the American 
 
 colonies. N. Y., Macmillan, 1893, Columbia Studies, 3, II, $1.50. 
 Bishop, J. Leander. History of American manufactures. Philadelphia, 
 
 1861-68. 3 vol. 
 Bonnassieux, Pierre. Les grandes compagnies de commerce. Paris, 
 
 1892. 
 Bourne, Edward G. Spain in America. N. Y., Harper, 1904, $2.00. 
 
AUTHORITIES 633 
 
 Bourne, H. R. Fox. Romance of Trade. London, no date. 
 
 Bowker, R. R. and George lies. Reader's guide in economic, social, and 
 
 political science. N. Y,, Putnam, 1891, $1. 
 Bowley, Arthur L. England's foreign trade in the nineteenth century. 
 
 London (N. Y., Scribner), 1893, $1. 
 Bruce, Philip A. Economic history of Virginia. N. Y., Macmillan, 
 
 1896, 2 vol., $6. 
 Bucher, Carl. Industrial evolution. N. Y., Holt, 1901, $2.50. 
 Callender, G. S. Early transportation and banking enterprises of the 
 
 States. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Boston, 1902-3, 17: 111- 
 
 162. 
 Cambridge Modem history. N. Y., Macmillan, 1902 ff., $4 a volume. 
 Chapman, S. J. History of trade between United Kingdom and U. S., 
 
 London (N. Y., Scribner), 1899, $1. 
 Cheyney, Edward P. European background of American history. N. Y., 
 
 Harper, 1904, $2. 
 Cohn, Gustav. System, Bd. 3, Nationalokonomie des Handels, Stuttgart, 
 
 1898. 
 Coman, Katharine. Industrial history of the U. S. N. Y., Macmillan, 
 
 1905, $1.25. 
 Corne wall- Jones, R. J. British merchant service. London, 1898, 14s. 
 Cunningham, William. Growth of English industry and commerce. 
 
 Cambridge (N. Y., Macmillan), 1896-1903, 2 vol, in 3, $11.50. 
 Cunningham, William. Rise and decline of the free-trade movement. 
 
 London, 1904, 2s. 6d. 
 D'Avenel, Georges. Histoire ^conomique. Paris, 1898, 4 vol. 
 DeBow, J. D. B. Industrial resources of the southern and western States. 
 
 New Orleans, 1853, 3 vol. 
 Depew, Chauncey M., editor. One hundred years of American com- 
 merce. N. Y., 1895, 2 vol. 
 Edgar, William C. Story of a grain of wheat. N. Y., Appleton, 1903, $1. 
 Ehrenberg, Richard." Zeitalter der Fugger. Jena, 1896, 2 vol. 
 Fairlie, J. A. Economic effects of ship canals. Annals of Amer. Acad., 
 
 Philadelphia, 1898, 11: 54-75, $.25. 
 Falke, Johannes. Geschichte des deutschen Handels. Leipzig, 1859-60, 
 
 2 vol. 
 Fisher, Sydney G. Men, women and manners in colonial times. Phila., 
 
 1898, 2 vol., $3. 
 Fry, Henry. History of North Atlantic steam navigation. N. Y., Scrib- 
 ner, 1896, $2.50. 
 Fuchs, Carl J. Handelspolitik Englands und seiner Kolonien. Leipzig, 
 
 1893, Schriften Ver. f. Soc, LVII, Bd. 4. 
 Gastrell, W. S. H. Our trade in the world. London, 1897, 6s. 
 
634 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Green, Mrs. J. R. Town life in the fifteenth century. N. Y., Macmillan, 
 
 1894, 2 vol., $5. 
 Hadley, Arthur T. Railroad transportation. N. Y., Putnam, 1903, $1.50. 
 Hammond, Matthew B. The cotton industry. Pub. Amer. Econ. 
 
 Assoc, 1897, 2 series, no. 1. N. Y., Macmillan, $1.50 or $2. 
 Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2 ed., Jena, 189^1901, 
 
 7 vol. 
 Hatfield, Henry R., editor. Lectures on commerce. Chicago, 1904, 
 
 $1.50. 
 Hewins, W. A. S. English trade and finance. London (N. Y., Scribner), 
 
 1892, $1. 
 Heyd, Wilhelm. Geschichte des Levantehandels. Stuttgart, 1879, 2 
 
 vol. 
 Histoire generale du IVe siecle a nos jours. Paris, 1894-1901, 12 vol. 
 Hobson, John A. Evolution of modern capitaUsm. N. Y., Scribner, 
 
 1897, $1.25. 
 Homans, J. Smith, editor. Cyclopedia of commerce. N. Y., Harper, 
 
 1858. 
 Hulbert, Archer B. Historic highways of America. Cleveland, 1902-5, 
 
 16 vol., $35. 
 Hunter, William W. History of British India. London (N. Y., Long- 
 mans), 1899, 2 vol., $10. 
 James, Edmund J. The canal and the railway. Pub. Amer. Econ. 
 
 Assoc, 1890, 5: 282-329. 
 Jeans, J. S. Waterways and water transport. London (N. Y., Spon), 
 
 1890, $5.50. 
 Jessopp, Augustus. Coming of the friars. London, (N. Y., Putnam), 
 
 1889, $1.25. 
 Jevons, W. S. The coal question. London, 2 ed., 1866. 
 Johnson, Emory R. American railway transportation. N. Y., Appleton, 
 
 1903, $1.50. 
 Jusserand, J. J. English wayfaring life. N. Y., Putnam, 1890, $3. 
 Lamprecht, Karl. Deutsche Geschichte. Berlin, 1894 ff. 
 Lavisse et Rambaud, see Histoire generale. 
 Levasseur, E. Histoire des classes ouvrieres et de I'industrie en France 
 
 avant 1789. 2 ed., Paris, 1900-01, 2 vol. 
 Levi, Leone. History of British commerce, 1763-1878. 2 ed., London, 
 
 1880. 
 Lindsay, W. S. History of merchant shipping. London, 1876, 4 vol. 
 Lord, Eleanor L. Industrial experiments in the British colonies. Bryn 
 
 Mawr dissertation, 1896. 
 McCarthy, Justin. History of our own times. N. Y., Harper, 1901, 
 
 3 vol., $6.25; and various other editions. 
 
AUTHORITIES 635 
 
 M'CuUoch, J. R. Dictionary of commerce. Philadelphia, 1847, 2 vol. 
 Macgregor, John. Commercial statistics. 2 ed., London, 1850, 5 vol. 
 Macpherson, David. Annals of commerce. London, 1805, 4 vol. 
 Maginnis, A. J. The Atlantic ferry. N. Y., Macmillan, 1900, $2. 
 Mahan, A. T. Influence of sea power upon history. Boston, Little, 
 
 1893, $4. 
 Marvin, Winthrop L. The American merchant marine. N. Y., Scrib- 
 
 ner, 1902, $2. 
 Mayo-Smith, Richmond, and E. R. A. Seligman. Commercial policy of 
 
 the U. S., 1860-90. Leipzig, 1892, Schriften Ver. f. Soc, XLIX. 
 Mongredien, Augustus. History of the free-trade movement in England. 
 
 London, Cassell, no date. Is. 
 Morley, John. Life of Richard Cobden. London (N. Y., Macmillan), 
 
 1881, 2 vol., $3. 
 Neumann-Spallart, F. X. von. tjbersichten der Weltwirtschaft. Ed. by 
 
 F. von Juraschek, Berlin, 1896. 
 Nicholson, J. S. History of the English com laws. London, 1904, 2s. 6d, 
 NicoUs, W. J. Story of American coals. 2 ed., Philadelphia, Lippincott, 
 
 1904, $2. 
 Ocean steamships. N. Y,, Scribner, 1891. 
 
 Oxley, J. M. Romance of commerce. N. Y., Crowell, 1897, $1.25. 
 Page, T. W. Earlier commercial policy of the U. S. Journal of Pol. 
 
 Econ., Chicago, 1901-2, 10: 161-192. 
 Palgrave, R. H. I. Dictionary of political economy. London (N. Y., 
 
 Macmillan), 1894-99, 3 vol., $19.50. 
 Pigeonneau, H. Histoire du commerce de la France. 2 ed., Paris, 1887, 
 
 2 vol. 
 Porter, G. R. Progress of the nation. London, 1836 ff., 3 vol. 
 Rand, Benjamin. Selections illustrating economic history, 4 ed., N. Y., 
 
 Macmillan, 1903, $3. 
 Report of a Committee of the Lords of the Privy Council on the trade 
 
 of Great Britain with the U. S., 1791. Reprinted, Washington, 1888. 
 Ringwalt, J. L. Development of transportation systems in the U. S. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1888. 
 Roscher, Wilhelm. System, Bd. 3, Nationalokonomik des Handels. 
 
 6 ed., Stuttgart, 1892. 
 Schanz, Georg. Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters. 
 
 Leipzig, 1881, 2 vol. 
 Schmoller, Gustav. The mercantile system. N. Y., Macmillan, 1902, 
 
 $.75. 
 Seebohm, Frederic. Era of the Protestant Revolution. N. Y., Longmans, 
 
 1903, $1. 
 Seeley, J. B. Expansion of England. Boston, Little, 1900, $1.75. 
 
636 A HISTORY OF COMMERCE 
 
 Seignobos, Charles. Political history of Europe since 1814. N. Y., 
 
 Holt, 1899, $3. 
 Bering, Max. Die Landwirthschaftliche Konkurrenz Nordamerikas. 
 
 Leipzig, 1887. 
 Seybert, Adam. Statistical annals. Philadelphia, 1818. 
 Social England, ed. by H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann. London (N. Y., 
 
 Putnam), 1894 ff., 1901 ff., 6 vol., $5 each. 
 Statesman's Year-Book. London (N. Y., Macmillan), annual, $3. 
 Stephens, H. M. Story of Portugal. N. Y., Putnam, 1891, $1.50. 
 Swank, J. M. History of the manufacture of iron. 2 ed., Philadelphia, 
 
 1892. 
 Taussig, Frank W. Tariff history of the U. S. N. Y., Putnam, 1897, 
 
 $1.25. 
 Vemon-Harcourt, L. F. Achievements in engineering. N. Y., Scrib- 
 
 ner, 1891, $1.75. 
 Vogel, Charles. Du commerce de I'Angleterre et de la France. Paris, 
 
 1864, 2 vol. 
 Ward, T. H. editor, Reign of Queen Victoria. London, 1887, 2 vol., 
 
 32s. 
 Waterston, William. Cyclopedia of commerce. London, 1847. 
 Weeden, W. B. Economic and social history of New England. Boston, 
 
 Houghton, 1890, 2 vol., $4.50. 
 Wells, David A. Our merchant marine. N. Y., Putnam, 1890, $1. 
 Wells, David A. Recent economic changes. N. Y., Appleton, 1898, $2. 
 Williams, Ernest E. "Made in Germany," 5 ed., London, 1897, 2s. 6d. 
 Wilson, A. J. Resources of modern countries. London, 1878, 2 vol. 
 Wright, Carroll D. Industrial evolution of the U. S. N. Y., Scribner, 
 
 1895, $1.25. 
 Zimmern, Helen. The Hansa towns. N. Y., Putnam, 1889, $1.50. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aegina, 19. 
 
 Africa, circumnavigation of, 130. 
 commerce with England, 221; 
 with the Ignited States, 572. 
 Agriculture, medieval, 35; modem, 
 
 139; recent, 280. 
 Alexander the Great, 21. 
 Alexandria, 22, 27. 
 Alum, 82. 
 Amber, 103. 
 
 America, discovery of, 133. 
 Amsterdam, 156, 194. 
 Antioch, 23, 27. 
 Antwerp, 74, 109, 154. 
 Asia, knowledge of, 128. 
 
 See also Levant, China, India, 
 Japan, 
 Assize of bread, 51. 
 Association, mercantile, medieval, 
 115; modem, 143; recent, 
 336. 
 Assyria, 11. 
 Athens, 19. 
 
 Australia, commerce with England, 
 361; with United States, 572. 
 Austria, modem, 259; recent, 423. 
 and Pmssia, to 1866, 396. 
 
 Babylon, 11. 
 
 Balkan states, 451. 
 
 Baltic trade, medieval, 102; modem 
 
 252; recent, 347. 
 Baltimore, 476, 536, 571. 
 Banking, early, 120, 150; recent, 
 
 337. 
 Barbadoes, 221. 
 Barcelona, 99. 
 Belgium, 420. 
 Bessemer, 285. 
 Bill of exchange, 120. 
 Bordeaux, 74. 
 Boston, 476, 536, 570. 
 Brazil, 185. See also South 
 
 America. 
 
 Bremen, 257. 
 
 British North America, 221. 
 
 Bmges, 75, 97, 105, 109. 
 
 Canada, commerce with United 
 States, 537, 574. See also 
 England, colonies. 
 Canals, 211, 292. See also United 
 
 States, canals. 
 Canals, ship, 308. 
 Carthage, 14, 22, 27. 
 Charlemagne, 29, 57. 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 385, 387. 
 Chemical industry, 286. 
 China, commerce with England, 
 360; with Russia, 268; with 
 United States, 482, 538, 574. 
 Coal, 274, 317. 
 
 and iron, 215, 275. 
 in England, 356, 381; in United 
 States, 530, 548. 
 Cobden, Richard, 369, 412. 
 Coeur, Jacques, 232. 
 Colbert, 242, 246, 247. 
 Colonial policy, modem, 171; re- 
 cent, 350. 
 Columbus, 133. 
 
 Commerce, early medieval, 36; later 
 medieval, 44; modem, 128; 
 recent, 270. 
 general, 1. 
 
 qualities of existing, 327. 
 obstacles to, 2. 
 political conditions, 4, 31, 124, 
 
 161. 
 statistics, recent, 271, 273. 
 Commercial policy, municipal, 50; 
 
 national, 126; recent, 347. 
 Company, joint stock, 146. 
 Company, regulated, 145. 
 Compass, 73. 
 Constantinople, 29, 86, 87. 
 Continental system, 343. 
 
 effect on the United States, 493. 
 
 637 
 
638 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Copper, in United States, 561. 
 
 Corinth, 19, 22. 
 
 Corn, see grain, wheat. 
 
 Com (maize), in United States, 459, 
 
 557. 
 Com laws, England, 368. 
 Cotton, 82, 321. 
 
 in United States, 490, 519, 558. 
 
 manufacture, 214; in England, 
 357; in United States, 531. 
 Crimean war, 443. 
 Crises, modem, 158; recent, 337. 
 Crusades, 86. 
 
 Denmark, recent, 425. 
 Dutch, see Netherlands. 
 Dye stuffs, 81, 287. 
 
 Egypt, ancient, 9. 
 
 Embargo, in United States, 494. 
 
 England, medieval, 109; modem, 
 
 199; effect of Napoleonic 
 
 wars, 335; recent, 354; pres- 
 ent, 373. 
 colonies, modem, 220, policy, 
 
 226; recent, 361, policy, 387. 
 commercial policy, modem, 
 
 224; recent, 365; proposed 
 
 changes, 386. 
 exports, modern, 209; recent, 
 
 355, 375; "decline," 381. 
 imports, modern, 219; recent, 
 
 358, 375. 
 manufactures, modem, 210; 
 
 recent 356, 382. 
 pohtical development, 199, 212, 
 
 368. 
 ports, modem, 202; later, 224; 
 
 present, 378. 
 shipping, 110, 222, 371, 377. 
 statistics, 205, 206, 355, 374. 
 and the United States, 359, 
 
 379; pohcy (1789), 486. 
 Erie Canal, 506. 
 Exchange, produce, modern, 155; 
 
 recent, 335. 
 stock, 156. 
 
 Fairs, medieval, 63; of Champagne, 
 
 65; of England, 67. 
 Feudalism, 32; dechne, 123, 161. 
 Fish, in Baltic commerce, 103, 252. 
 Flandere, 97, 108. 
 Flanders galleys, 97. 
 
 Florence, 98, 99; modern, 265. 
 Fondaco dei Tedeschi, 95. 
 France, modern, 229; effect of Na- 
 poleonic wars, 345; recent, 
 409. 
 colonies, modem, 236; recent, 
 
 416. 
 commercial policy, modem, 
 
 242; recent, 410, 414, 487. 
 manufactures, modem, 244; 
 
 recent, 410, 415. 
 political development, 123, 409, 
 
 414. 
 shipping, modern, 234, 343; re- 
 cent, 416. 
 statistics, modern, 238 
 Frankfort on the Main, 156, 257. 
 Free trade period, 348. 
 Fugger family, 152. 
 Fulton, Robert, 505. 
 Furs, medieval, 38; from Baltic, 103, 
 252; from America, 464. 
 
 Genoa, 90, 98. 
 
 Germany, medieval, 95, 104; mod- 
 em, 250; recent, 391, 399. 
 colonies, 404. 
 commercial policy, recent, 396, 
 
 405. 
 manufactures, modem, 256; 
 about 1800, 393; recent, 401. 
 mercantile organization, 403. 
 political development, medie- 
 val, 124; modern, 255; re- 
 cent, 391. 
 shipping, 405. 
 statistics, 400. 
 Gilds, craft, 49; evils of the, 140; in 
 France, 244; in Germany, 
 256. 
 merchant, 47. 
 Gladstone, W. E., 368. 
 Gold, in Australia, 338, 361; in 
 
 United States, 525. 
 Grain trade, recent, 318. 
 Greece, ancient, 17; recent, 452, 
 
 Hamburg, 74, 156, 257, 335. 
 Hanseatic League, 104; decline, 25?; 
 Henry the Navigator, 130. 
 Hungary, see Austria. 
 Huskisson, 366. 
 
 India, British, 360. 
 
INDEX 
 
 639 
 
 Indigo, 81; in United States, 461, 
 
 503. 
 Insurance, 159, 333. 
 Iron, medieval, 37; modem, 215; 
 recent, 283; as a ware, 317. 
 in England, 356, 375; in Ger- 
 ' many, 401; in United States, 
 
 530, 559. 
 Italy, medieval, 84; modem, 263; 
 recent, 429. 
 agriculture, 433. 
 colonies, 435. 
 commercial policy, 432. 
 manufactures, 434. 
 political development, 124, 263, 
 
 428, 430. 
 shipping, 435. 
 
 Jamaica, 221. 
 
 Japan, conflict with Russia, 450; 
 
 commerce with United 
 
 States, 538, 575. 
 Jews, ancient, 12; medieval, 117. 
 
 Law, John, 159. 
 
 Leghom, 265, 430. 
 
 Leipzig, 257. 
 
 Levant trade, 79. 
 
 Linen, 83, 321. 
 
 Liverpool, 224, 378. 
 
 London, 41, 74, 156, 202, 224, 378. 
 
 Louis XIV of France, 235. 
 
 Lubeck, 105. 
 
 Machine tools, 284. 
 
 Machinery, 281, in England, 357; 
 
 in Germany, 393, 401; in 
 
 France, 410; in United States, 
 
 560. 
 Manors, medieval, 34. 
 Manufactures, medieval, 42; town, 
 
 48; modern, 140; recent, 281. 
 
 See also names of chief 
 
 countries, 
 local distribution, 287. 
 Market, origin, 33; town, 51. 
 Marseilles, 18, 99. 
 Mercantile system, 167. 
 Merchant, early, 39; medieval, 113; 
 
 recent, 332. 
 commission, 142. 
 wholesale, 141. 
 Merchants Adventurers, 201. 
 Staplers, 110. 
 
 Mesta, in Spain, 179. 
 
 Money, medieval, 118; modem, 136. 
 
 Napoleon I, 342. 
 
 Ill, 411, 414. 
 Nasmyth, James, 283, 284. 
 Navigation, medieval, 72; modem, 
 
 ^ 136; recent, 302. 
 
 acts, English, 223, 226, 370. 
 Netherlands, modem, 190; recent, 
 
 418. 
 Neutral trade, 344. 
 New Orleans, port, 536, 571. 
 New York, port, 476, 535, 570. 
 Norway, recent, 426. 
 
 Philadelphia, port, 476, 477, 536, 
 
 571. 
 Ports, medieval, 74. 
 Portugal, modem, 184; recent, 438. 
 Potash, in United States, 462. 
 Prices, regulation of, 52. 
 Privateering, medieval, 76; French, 
 
 342. 
 Protection, see commercial policy. 
 Provisions, recent, 320; in United 
 
 States, 460, 524, 557. 
 Partnership, 116. 
 Pedler, 113. 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 367. 
 Persia, ancient, 11. 
 Peter the Great, 267. 
 Petroleum, 318; in United States, 
 
 561. 
 Phoenicians, 12. 
 
 Piracy, medieval, 75; modem, 136. 
 Pisa, 90, 98. 
 
 Post, modem, 143; recent, 309. 
 Prussia, rise of, 257; conflict with 
 
 Austria, 396. 
 
 Railroads, 295. 
 
 Rhodes, 23. 
 
 Rice, in United States, 461, 503. 
 
 Richelieu, 234. 
 
 River trade, medieval, 55; in 
 
 Russia, 443; in United States 
 
 473, 503. 
 Roads, Roman, 28; medieval, 33, 
 
 54; recent, 290; in England, 
 
 210. 
 Robbers, medieval, 56. 
 Rome, ancient, 26, 29. 
 Roumania, 452. 
 
640 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rubber, 322. 
 
 Russia, modem, 267; recent, 441. 
 
 agriculture, 447, 
 
 commercial policy, 443, 446. 
 
 Eastern trade, 450. 
 
 manufactures, 445, 446. 
 
 ports, 443. 
 
 railroads, 444, 448. 
 
 Saint Mary's Falls canal, 507, 544. 
 Seleukia, 23. 
 Servia, 452. 
 
 Shipping, see names of chief coun- 
 tries. 
 Ships, ancient, 13; medieval, 71; 
 
 modern, 129, 136; recent, 
 
 302. 
 Siemens-Martin steely 286. 
 Silk, 82, 321. 
 
 Silver, from America, 135, 182. 
 Slave trade, medieval, 37, 79; 
 
 abolition of the, 316. 
 Smuggling, on the Continent, 345; in 
 
 England, 366; in France, 411. 
 South America, 346; commerce with 
 
 United States, 538. 
 South Sea Bubble, 158. 
 Spain, medieval, 99; modem, 174; 
 
 recent, 436. 
 colonies, modem, 180; recent, 
 
 437, 438. 
 Speculation, modern, 156; recent, 
 
 333 
 Spices, 38, 79. 
 Staple, 110; in Germany, 255; 
 
 abolition of the, 347. 
 Steam engine, 276. 
 Steamboat in United States, 503. 
 Steamships, 304. 
 Steel, recent, 285. 
 
 Suez canal, ancient, 10; recent, 308. 
 Sugar, medieval, 80; modem, 136, 
 
 239. 
 beet 323. 
 
 in United States, 566. 
 Sweden, modern, 266; recent, 426. 
 Switzerland, 422. 
 
 Telegraph, early, 310; electric, 311; 
 
 submarine, 312. 
 importance to commerce, 330. 
 Tin, ancient, 13; medieval, 109. 
 Tobacco, from America, 136; in 
 
 United States, 460, 503. 
 
 Tolls, medieval, 57; in France, 243; 
 
 in Germany, 255, 258. 
 abohtion of, 347. 
 Turnpikes, in Europe, 291; in the 
 
 United States, 502. 
 
 United Kingdom, see England. 
 United States, recent, 456. 
 
 and England, 479, 537, 572. 
 
 and the West Indies, 480, 488, 
 537. 
 
 agriculture, 459, 462, 555. 
 
 canals, 506, 544. 
 
 commercial pohcy, 1789 ff., 
 485, 495; 1815 ff., 534; 1860 
 ff., 568. 
 
 exports, 458, 489, 518, 553. 
 
 fisheries, 463. 
 
 imports, 464, 528, 564. 
 
 manufactures, early, 464; ef- 
 fect of stoppage of com- 
 merce, 494; in North, 524; 
 1815-1860, 529; 1860-1900, 
 548. 
 
 mercantile organization, 474. 
 ports, 476, 535, 570. 
 
 railroads, earlv, 510; present, 
 541. 
 
 river trade, 473, 503. 
 
 roads, 472, 502. 
 
 shipping, colonial, 481; to 
 1815, 492; to 1860, 514; de- 
 cline, 545. 
 
 statistics, 458, 464, 478, 489, 
 498, 518, 540, 553, 564, 571. 
 
 Venice, 75, 84, 87, 90; policy, 93; 
 modern, 263. 
 
 Wars, modem, 165; recent, 342. 
 Wares, medieval, 37; modem, 135; 
 
 recent, 315. 
 Watt, James, 276. 
 Wax, 103, 252. 
 Wheat, in United States, 460, 525, 
 
 556. 
 Whitney, Eh, 521. 
 Wool, medieval, 110; recent, 321. 
 Woolen manufacture, in England, 
 
 215; in the United States, 
 
 532. 
 
 Zollyerein, 395. 
 
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