read of Peel's Coffeehouse,1 while Dickens tells us in the Pickwick Papers that the lower class of attorneys, those of the Insolvent Court, had no office, but frequented the coffeehouses round the court for the transaction of their business. Even political affairs were transacted in such rooms: the famous People's Charter, the first step in the great Chartist movement, was agreed to at the British Coffeehouse.

1) Page 181.

CHAPTER X.

Peculiar Features of Business in Early

Victorian Times.

Notwithstanding all the defective descriptions of business transactions referred to in the preceding chapters, it should not be supposed, however, that modern readers cannot glean any accurate ideas from literature about Early Victorian business and its methods. There are many peculiarities in commerce and industry which have entirely disappeared now in the never ceasing changes of practical life, but which are still much in evidence in the literature. of that period.

Perhaps the most striking of all these characteristics was the prominent rôle played in England's foreign trade by the West Indies. Numerous references to these colonies are to be found in novels. Ships usually sailed for the West Indies, either for trading purposes, or to the naval stations out there.1 Rich business people often made their fortunes by the West India trade, or by owning plantations there.2 In almost the only instance Dickens ever wrote a story of seafaring and colonial life, he laid the scene in the West. Indies. At the beginning of the century Pitt still estimated that out of every pound of income for his income tax profits from abroad amounted to 7d., mainly from the West Indies. It is true that between 1831 and 1850 the principal exports from those islands

1) Samuel Warren, The Diary of a Late Physician, vol. I, p. 407; Marryat, Peter Simple, p. 327.

2) W. M. Thackeray, Barry Lyndon, p. 331. Howard, Rattlin the Reefer, vol. II, p. 71. London, 1836. In Marryat's novels the West Indian trader also figures prominently.

3) Charles Dickens, Stories and Sketches, p. 100.

4) W. H. Mallock, op. cit., p. 86. McCulloch, op. cit., p. 348. The decline was chiefly due to the exports of coffee, sugar, molasses, rum and cocoa remaining about stationary.

1

fell off by about 65 per cent., but literature, which is always slow to leave the beaten path of tradition, still adhered to the old notion that colonial trade was chiefly carried on with the West Indies. Only Disraeli's Sybil contains two references to the decayed trade of the West Indies. It should not be overlooked that, great though the decline may have been, those small islands still occupied the third and fourth rank in the statistics of the exports and imports of the United Kingdom for the year 1854.2 The important rôle they played in English trade is further evidenced by the fact that the first docks constructed in the Port of London3 were the West India Docks, whose construction in 1802 was necessitated by the numerous thefts of the costly West Indian products. This first enterprise was followed in 1805 by the London Dock Co., and in 1828 by the St. Katherine's Docks, both mentioned by Dickens as competing establishments in his Sketches by Boz.5

6

Being the oldest English colonies, and for a century and a half the most important, it is no wonder that in their trade with the mother country certain practices of long standing had developed. In Jacob Faithful we read of a wharfinger, Mr. Drummond, that later on he moved in a very different sphere, being then "a consignee of several large establishments." This points to a form of business which was very common in those days, especially in the West India trade. It was organized as follows. The planter in the colony formed a connection with a mercantile firm in London or one of the large "outports." He bound himself to ship his entire crop to this particular firm, for sale on commission in the latter's market. On such consignments the English merchants advanced

1) Sybil, pp. 96, 347.

2) McCulloch, op. cit., pp. 350, 351.

3) The Commercial Dock, destined for the storage of timber, dates back to the eighteenth century.

4) Kirkaldy, British Šhipping, p. 493. To the construction of this Dock also dates back the introduction of a regular warehousing system, imitated by the Dutch "veemwezen." See McCulloch, op. cit., p. 1385.

5) Ch. X. The River.

6) Wharfingers are owners of riverside warehouses and of lighters for the conveyance of merchandise to and from those warehouses.

7) This seems to have been a much used term to denote a business concern in those days; confer: Frank Fairlegh, p. 168; The Diary of a Late Physician, vol. II, pp. 266 and 284; Jacob Faithful, p. 125; Alton Locke, p. 35. 8) English ports other than London.

large sums of money, to enable the planter to finance his concern while the crop was growing. As the commission usually amounted to 22 per cent., and the London firm, moreover, acted as buying agent for the plantation, charging the same percentage on all the stores sent out,' we may well believe that this kind of business, which like Mr. Dudley's, was chiefly carried on in Mincing Lane, was a very profitable one.

Though in the first half of the nineteenth century, with its regularly recurring speculative manias, operators mainly sought their field of activities on the Stock Exchange, either in railway shares, company promoting, or foreign loans, there are also indications in Early Victorian fiction of speculations in other domains, notably in colonial produce. This commodity was no doubt one of the most suitable for such purposes, owing to its high prices and the great fluctuations in its value during and after the Napoleonic wars.

Mr. Dudley, the great merchant in Warren's Diary of a Late Physician,2 to whom we have already made many references in this essay, had a floating capital of some hundred and fifty thousand pounds outside his shipping business, and was willing to employ this large sum profitably. As soon as the "brokers" became aware of this fact―i.e., the produce brokers selling the goods for the commission houses described above-they prevailed upon him to place his capital at their disposal. Being fully conversant with the prospects of any article sold in Mincing Lane, they could easily find out which market could be "cornered," as the modern expression runs, with the best chances of success. So "the world heard of a monopoly of nutmegs" one day, while on another occasion a corner was made in atta of roses.

When such a cornered commodity had been forced up to quadruple the cost, the brokers gradually put their stocks on the "gaping market," and handsome profits were realized, in which the capitalist shared. We see that everything was as nicely planned and carried through as on modern exchanges. From the fact that the author adds that "this is the scheme by which many splendid

1) McCulloch, op. cit., p. 363; Colony Trade.

2) Vol. I, p. 409.

fortunes have been raised," we may safely conclude that it was by no means an uncommon thing in those days.1

Generally speaking it may be said that the impression left upon the reader by the description of business transactions in Early Victorian novels is that all trading, especially to overseas countries, was of a highly speculative nature, and attended with great uncertainty. The very word by which overseas business was denoted points to this hazardous nature of such undertakings: the word "venture" was the usual term for them, which in this particular sense has to a great extent gone out of use. The word "speculation" was likewise a favourite term for business enterprises. It must be added that the method generally adopted of shipping goods on consignment contained in itself a great speculative element, apart from the further uncertainties attendant upon commerce.

We need not be surprised at overseas trade being denoted as "ventures" and "speculations," when we further remember the conditions under which it had be to carried on a hundred years ago, conditions which it is somewhat difficult for twentieth century

1) The anonymous author of Business Life (London, 1861, 2nd ed.) speaks of produce speculations as a common feature of business in his time. He exclaims indignantly: "What is the meaning of speculating in the funds, railway shares, hops, tallow, corn, tea, sugar, spice, and a thousand other things, where the articles were never even seen, or intended to be purchased, but simply the differences paid." (p. 103).

2) In the Report of the Select Committee of Manufactures, Commerce, and Shipping we read that a great speculative feature of the manufactures in producing "on speculation" to wait the chance of a market—a practice denounced in Shirley had disappeared by 1833 (p. 46). This seems to be doubtful, however: the speculation still continued; it had only changed its nature. As another witness stated, a practice had greatly prevailed of late years of making large consignments to foreign countries (p. 35). The prevalence of this new speculative method is proved by the fact that older Business Letter Writers are chiefly devoted to this kind of business.

3) Salanio says to Antonio: „Believe me, Sir, had I such venture forth, the better part of my affections would be with my hopes abroad." (The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene I). The oldest company incorporated in England was called the Company of Merchants Adventurers, this being in fact the usual designation of foreign traders. Kirkaldy observes (op. cit., p. 157): "There was but little regular or systematised trade ... (it) was for the main part carried on by a system of ventures."

4) When Mr. Dudley has purchased shares in two vessels, and sets up in business on his own account, Warren says of him: “In a word, he went on conducting his speculations with as much prudence as he undertook them with energy and enterprise." Anderson's Mercantile Correspondence (30th edition, 1890) contains numerous instances of the use of the term 'speculation' in this older sense, e.g. on pp. XXXI, 54, 58, 75, 93, etc.