There are traders and traders—the just and the unjust—the man of honor and the rogue. We set values on thoughts and on transactions, on merchandise and on philanthropies, on ideas and on accounts; and there is a constant distribution of the affairs, as well as of the worldly goods of men.
But in a restricted sense, we think of trade as the exchange of produce which is material and mobile,—which may be touched, handled, weighed, transported, bought, and sold. The substance of the earth is constantly taking new shape before our eyes, being rearranged in kaleidoscopic combinations, and transported from port to port, from town to town, from sea to sea. One can look nowhere without seeing this ceaseless activity progressing. Everywhere there is a whir of wheels, a plash of waves, a din of assembly, as the new combinations take place.
There was a day when trade was a thing of here-and-there; a thing of sailing ships and caravans, of merchants of Bagdad, Cairo, Venice, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Damascus. Ivory, gold, gems, precious stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood, camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir, olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones were the chief articles of exchange. A very little sufficed the poor; the rich were housed in palaces and panoplied in gems.
As time went on, the processional of traders became a processional led out, in turn, by the merchants of one city after another. It is a picturesque study, that of the trade-routes of the Middle Ages! There was the Mediterranean seaboard, and there were the Baltic towns and the Hanse towns; the Portuguese mariners and traders; the Venetian merchant princes. There was the Spanish colonial trade; the Dutch trade of the East Indies; the trade of Amsterdam and London. There were the Elizabethan sea-rovers. Then came the British trade in the East Indies, and the gradual growth of the trade of France, Germany, England, and the United States. This is a story of human wants reaching out as civilization advanced, and of the extending of the earth-exchange. Everywhere there has been a correspondence between national prosperity and increasing trade.
To-day, each man demands more of the earth's products than ever before. He reaches out a hand for comforts and luxuries, as well as for necessities. He grasps not only the produces of his own and his neighbor's field and vineyard, but demands what lies across continents and seas. Instead of the ship, the camel, and the ass, we now have the ocean freighter or liner, and the flying train of cars: new forces, oil, steam, electricity, and water-power, do the carrying work of man. And hence trade has become Trade, and each trader is involved in the comfort, success, and prosperity of many others. A single commercial transaction to-day involves the lives of hundreds of thousands, competes for their toil and life-blood, carries the decision of their destiny.
A great merchant is the real Kris Kringle. He stands at the centre of exchange, distributes from the tropics and the arctic zones. He deals out fur and feathers, books, toys, clothing, engines; ribbons, laces, silks, perfumes; bread-stuffs, sugar, cotton, iron, ice, steel; wheat, flour, beef, stone; lumber, drugs, coal, leather. He scatters periodically the products of mills and looms, of shoe-shops and print-works, fields, factories, mines, and of art-workers. He thus becomes a social force of great power, a social law-giver, in fact. Under his iron rule, the lives of the masses are uplifted or cast down.
As large eras open, the ethical ideals become higher. We are beginning to inquire, as never before, into the basis of trade, the place of the trader, the right conduct of this vast problem of Distribution upon which hinges so much of human life and fate. All things look, not only to the integration of trade, but to its exaltation.
Trade has ceased to be a thing of individual energy, talent, and commercial alertness. It has risen to great proportions. The large trader is in control of national conduit, as well as of national expense. There is a great deal more in business than the art of making money. Business is, at the roots, a way of making nations; of developing the resources of a country, of handling its industries, of protecting its commerce, of enlarging its institutions, of uplifting its training, aspirations, and ideals. Traffic is educational. Imports influence the national life. We may import opium or Bibles, whiskey or bread-stuffs, locomotives or dancing pigs.
The sceptre held by Tyre and Venice is passing into our own hands. But trade, to-day, is a matter of the imagination, as well as of the stock-book. 11 needs a great imagination to handle the present-day problems of business and finance. The prosperity of a nation depends largely on the intelligence, integrity, and magnanimity of its business men. To be narrow-minded in business, is not only intellectual astigmatism, it is poor commercial policy. To make use of present opportunities to control present advantages needs a great education and a large human experience. It is the man of insight, of sympathy, of economic ideals, who will lastingly control our national prosperity and advance our industrial wealth.
With all this demand, the business man still stands largely in a class by himself, a class apart from the great leaders of the world. He is not yet received into the spiritual circles of the race. He goes about the world, sits on boards and committees, fills directorships and trusteeships, pays pew-rent, and runs towns. But when the spiritual conclaves of the world take place, when the things of life and death are inquired into, when words are said of the higher conduct of the life of man, if he draw near inquiringly or unguardedly to the sacred place, scholar and poet, priest, saint, and proud hand-worker alike rise up and say, Go away.