The Romance of Commerce

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... XXIV A REPRESENTATIVE BUSINESS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY NE of the chief differences between the commerce of the sixteenth century and of the twentieth lies in the wonderful and complicated organizations of the present day. Their magnitude makes even the largest of those of which we have been reading seem insignificant. The Phoenicians a thousand years before the Christian era were fearless, progressive and splendid, but we read of no gigantic combination of brain and muscle organized as one house. They traded individually, as did the Venetians and even the great Fuggers of Augsburg, leaving no trace of that ability which selects and teaches others to assist in any remarkable enterprise. To do business in those days was more difficult in many ways, but easier in others. The field was unexploited. The prizes were sought by fewer people. Combined specialization had not become the important factor it is to-day. Merchants were bankers, shipowners, mineowners, coiners of the country's money, as well as makers and traders' in merchandise; but in all these channels of activity they themselves transacted the business in their own counting-house, and we have seen how the famous "Golden Counting-House" of the Fuggers in Augsburg received within its spacious walls the emissaries of kings. Governments and merchants were then more closely affiliated. There was less money in the world and less need for money. Commerce was in its infancy. Competition was infinitely less, and the terrific effort to get business which now permeates the commercial world was a thing unknown. Where one Jacob Fugger, Cosimo de Medici, de la Pole or Gresham strove for success we have now literally thousands of keen, clever men as fearless, as progressive and as determined as...