AM) ON THE CONTINENT.

71

selling brokers solely represented tho interests of the importer,and the buying brokers those of the spinner, by the separate classrestraint which the business world regulates more than anyother. Tho latter had thus tho services of a class of peoplewhose interests were identical with his own, and 1 who repre-sented only the buyer’s side. With the merging of the sellingbrokers and importers into one class nothing hindered the buyingbrokers any longer from selling the cotton on their own account,or at the same time transacting business as selling brokers forimporters. Instead of buying as cheap as possible, their interestwas now very often in selling as dear as possible.

Some means were therefore necessary to force back the brokerto the interests of the spinners. This was only possible by asection of tho spinners banding together, and by means of paidexpert servants regulating the transactions of the broker.

This was achieved by tho formation of tho Cotton BuyingCo., a limited company originally consisting of 20 to 30 limitedcotton-spinning concerns (13). Its object is to buy cotton in theLiverpool market, for which the members have to pay theordinary broker’s charges ; the balance above the expenditure isdivided at the end of the year in the shape of a dividend. Thiscompany encountered at the beginning the most violent opposi-tion of the brokers. It only succeeded in holding up its headby a clever application of the antagonism—not yet vanished—between the brokers and importers, by tho new company com-bining with the latter against the broker. The company hassince then made its way on the Liverpool market under thedirection of Samuel Andrew—whom we have several timesmentioned—secretary of the large Master Spinners’ Associationof Oldham. If it only includes a minority of the total number ofspindles of Lancashire, it has certainly compelled the brokers toattend to the interests of the spinners more than before—in thesame way that the Co-operative Societies forced down the extremeprofits of the retail shopkeepers. The possibility also of anextension of the operations of the Buying Company to Americaalready influences similarly the importers. Corresponding tothe development delineated, the burdens laid on the price ofcotton by the Liverpool market have become less and less since

13. For this development, which Ellison and Fuchs did not describe, com-pare the business reports of the said company (12, Clegg-street, Oldham), and“ Co-operative Wholesale Annual ” (1883), p. 183.