EXCHANGE AND MARKETS 35

party to the bargain, the more likely is it that the trade
will open at the one rate which will hold so long as any
trading remains mutually advantageous.
When the bargainers are not alone, but each forms part
of a group, with varied desires and unequal resources, such
tentative rates of exchange may also be set up. The
individuals most anxious to effect a bargain may start the
exchanges, and when they have finished, some of those
remaining may have to be induced, by some modification
of the rate of exchange, to part with some of their store,
But if, before any rate is established, the dealers, as we
may now call them, make themselves acquainted with the
general supply of goods available for exchange by each
side, there is a good deal of probability that the rate at
which trade is opened will be that which will hold till the
close. Those anxious not to lose a chance of disposing
of their goods will be restrained from accepting terms of
too little advantage, when they have discovered that their
refusal of these terms is not very likely to lose them the
trade. Thus, a difference between casual exchange between
two individuals and the exchanges in a market, where many
traders are gathered, is that a definite rate of exchange, the
rate to which special attention was directed above, is more
likely to be established in the market than in the case of
casual exchange,
A market is established wherever a number of dealers
in the same commodity are brought together. The gathering
in one place is not essential, for the purposes such a
gathering serves can nowadays be accomplished, in a large
degree, by use of modern methods of communication, the
post, telegraph and telephone, or even by means of the
press, more particularly by trade newspapers. The gathering
in one place serves very largely to establish quick and
effective intercommunication between different traders,
Each can acquaint himself with the rates at which others
are dealing, and can guide his own actions thereby. But
these items of information can now be supplied without the
necessity for having the actual presence of the traders at
the same spot. To that extent, therefore, traders may form