ANALOGY WITH THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 875 
which had been traditionally maintained outside municipal 
boundaries, asserted itself in the seventeenth century. In 
recent years there have been similar changes; the com- 
petition of comparatively small capitalists with one another 
can no longer bérassumed ; immense strides have been made 
in the way of organising business management, so as to 
control the whole process of production in some great depart- 
ment of industry. The growth of trusts in America, which 
are profoundly affecting English industry, both by their 
example and by the competition they carry on, is in many 
ways alien to English commercial tradition. The sentiment 
in favour of publicity in transactions, and the competition of 
buyers and sellers in a market, has never obtained such a 
hold in America as it had in English life. The mediaeval 
dislike of forestalling and regrating—of private bargaining 
outside the market—never seems to have crossed the 
Atlantic; and there has in consequence been greater oppor- 
tunity for organising systems of control, which embrace the 
production of the material for some manufacture and the 
distribution of the product by retailing agents. It is not 
possible for all the buyers and sellers, who are practically 
interested in transactions in some class of goods, to meet on 
the same spot; the old methods of securing publicity are in- 
applicable ; “common estimation” can no longer be discerned 
from the higgling of the market. The facilities for transport which have 
are so great, that buyers of the produce of Virginia or ow 
California are to be found all over the globe. The postal ae oh 
service and the electric telegraph bring buyers and sellers system. 
from distant regions into communication; while they help to 
diffuse information publicly through the newspapers, they 
have a still greater effect in giving extraordinary facilities for 
private communication. Since the seventeenth century, when 
business became a matter of private enterprise, it has tended 
more and more to take a speculative character. Reliable 
private information and judicious forecasts of probable changes 
are the chief elements in planning and carrying through a 
successful deal. The methods, which are appropriate for 
transactions involving considerations of world-wide supply 
and demand, are completely different from those which were