HKB
who sold on commission through London factors and warehousemen, who in their turn disposed of the goods to shopkeepers or to exporters; (3) merchants directly engaged in the export trade.
With the exception of shipping and canal transport (which became important after the middle of the century) there were no considerable industries related to manufacture where large capitals were laid down in fixed plant. Even the capital sunk in permanent improvements of land, which played so important a part in the development of agriculture, belonged chiefly to the latter years of the eighteenth century. Almost the only persons who wielded large capitals within the country were those merchants, dealers, or middlemen, whose capital at any given time consisted of a large stock of raw material or finished goods. Even the latter were considerably restricted in the magnitude of their transactions by the imperfect development of the machinery of finance and the credit system. In 1750 there were not more than twelve bankers' shops out of London.[55] Until 1759 the Bank of England issued no notes of less value than L20.
Joint-ownership of capital and effective combination of the labour units in a business were only beginning to make progress. The Funded Debt, the Bank of England, the East India Company were the only examples of really large and safe investments at the opening of the eighteenth century. Joint-ownership of large capitals for business purposes made no great progress before the middle of the eighteenth century, except in the case of chartered companies for foreign trade, such as the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Turkish, Russian, Eastland, and African companies. Insurance business became a favourite form of joint-stock speculation in the reign of George I. The extraordinary burst of joint-stock enterprise culminating in the downfall of the South Sea Company shows clearly the narrow limitations for sound capitalist co-operation. Even foreign trade on joint-stock lines could only be maintained successfully on condition that the competition of private adventurers was precluded.
Joint-capital had yet made no inroad into manufacture, one of the earliest instances being a company formed in 1764 with a capital of L100,000 for manufacturing fine cambrics.[56]
The limits of co-operative capitalism at the opening of the period of Industrial Revolution are indicated by Adam Smith in a passage of striking significance:--"The only trades which it seems possible for a joint-stock company to carry on successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those of which all the operations are capable of being reduced to what is called a routine, or to such a uniformity of method as admits of little or no variation. Of this kind is, first, the banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance from fire and from sea risk and capture in time of war; thirdly, the trade of making and maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and fourthly, the similar trade of bringing water for the supply of a great city."[57]
In other words, the businesses amenable to joint-stock enterprise are those where skilled management can be reduced to a minimum, and where the scale of the business or the possession of a natural monopoly limits or prohibits competition from outside.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. iv., chap. i.
[4] Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 728.
[5] Smith, Memoirs, vol. ii., chap. iii. As the approximate calculation of a very competent business man these figures are more reliable than the official figures of imports and exports, the value of which throughout the eighteenth century is seriously impaired by the fact that they continued to be estimated by the standard of values of 1694.
[6] Whitworth's State quoted, Macpherson, vol. iii. p. 283.
[7] Annals, vol. iii. p. 340.
[8] Cunningham, History of English Industry, vol. ii. p. 287, etc.
[9] Smith, Memoirs of Wool, vol. ii. p. 113.
[10] Chalmers, Estimates, p. 148.
[11] Cf. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, vol. ii. p. 292.
[12] Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. iv., chap. viii.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Growth of English Industry, vol. ii. p. 303.
[15] Macpherson, Annals, vol. iii. pp. 155, 156.