70
what lie wanted. At the same time the paying capabilities of thespinners had increased sufficiently to dispense with the giving ofcredit on the part of the dealer. Since that time, therefore, thespinners began to buy direct from the brokers in Liverpool; theold dealer gradually disappeared altogether.
An event of far greater importance was the laying of thetransatlantic cable (1866) and the consequent improvement of anetwork of telegraph wires encircling the whole world. Liverpoolhad now approached nearer to the American Continent than ithad been before this time to the neighbouring city of Manchester.Therewith disappeared the necessity of a special class of businesspeople, whose particular forte had been the knowledge of theraw-material market. In a similar direction tended the openingof the Suez Canal and the extension of Indian railways. Thebrokers themselves partly became importers, the importers partlysold without consideration of the brokers, and there followed ablending of both classes. This development reached its climax,after heated contentions between the Cotton Brokers’ Associationand the Liverpool Cotton Exchange (formed by the importersin opposition), by the formation of the Liverpool CottonAssociation, consisting of both classes (1881). Therewith the olddifference was in reality banished, even though the older merchantfirms, backed up strongly by capital, frequently sold throughbrokers, in opposition to those younger firms which were at thesame time brokers and merchants. As modern technical skillonly puts aside the hand-worker understanding a. particularwork, so it puts aside also the merchant controlling only oneclosed market ; it unites the markets.
There are, therefore, only the importer and the spinner, and,between both, the buying broker left remaining as differenttypes. The buying broker so far justifies his existence that heis superior to the spinner—a non-commercial man, even to-day—in his knowledge of the market. The existence of the brokermakes it possible for the millowner to concentrate his attentionon the progress within his factory, and to trouble himself aslittle as possible about commercial conditions.
But the relation between spinner and broker had so farchanged to the disadvantage of the spinner that the class whichup to now had kept the buying brokers within bounds haddisappeared. As long as the selling broker existed in the oppositeinterest, the separation was strictly kept intact-, whereby the