[2 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
could be procured from some neighboring farm to tug them out of the 
slough. . . . 
The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is 
said that the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one 
dlace, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell 
far short of the demand. . . . On the best highways, heavy articles 
were, in the time of Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place 
to place by stage wagons. . . . The expense of transmitting heavy 
goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham the 
harge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve pounds 
a ton. This was about fifteen pence a ton for every mile . . . fifteen 
‘imes what is now demanded by railway companies. The cost of con- 
veyance amounted to a prohibitory tax on many useful articles. Coal 
in particular was never seen except in the districts where it was pro- 
duced, or in the districts to which it could be carried by sea, and was 
indeed always known in the south of England by the name of sea coal. 
What transportation was like in newly settled America, 
when the above conditions prevailed in the world’s leading 
commercial nation, can best be left to the imagination. 
Moreover, owing mainly to these primitive methods of 
producing and distributing goods, the buying or consumptive 
powers of the people were then exceedingly limited. Poverty 
was much more widespread than today, and not only were 
existing populations only a fraction of what they now are, but 
the per capita buying power was likewise very much lower. 
Neither had organized markets nor other parts of the modern 
machinery of credit yet been created. In consequence of these 
temporarily insuperable difficulties, the eighteenth century was 
in the main a period of small business enterprises, which could 
be organized satisfactorily enough as partnerships, with, of 
course, no stocks or bonds to sell to the public. 
The Rise of Large-Scale Industry.—Capitalism in Europe 
{ound its earliest free expression and significant development 
in commerce rather than industry. Only in wholesale com- 
mercial operations with as a rule distant lands, did the oppor- 
tunity for large profits, or the need for large capital, exist. 
Accordingly, the first important stock corporations in Europe