56. Town policy; imports, exports, protection.—Every town felt a community of interests among its inhabitants and a competition with the inhabitants of other towns, which expressed themselves in a town policy very like the national commercial policy of the modern state. We can consider this municipal policy under several different heads.
(1) Every town had what may be called a “revenue tariff,” consisting of duties levied on articles brought within the walls, with additional dues for the use of the market. As an example we can cite a brief extract from one of the London tariffs, giving the customs on victuals. “Every load of poultry that comes upon horse, shall pay three farthings, the franchise excepted.... If a man or woman brings any manner of poultry upon horse, and lets it touch the ground, such person shall pay for stallage three farthings. And if a man carries it upon his back and places it upon the ground, he shall pay one half-penny, of whatever franchise he may be.” It is interesting to note that this custom still survives in some European cities (octroi).
(2) Prohibitions to export goods, now rare in national policy (though suggested recently to keep English coal at home), were common in the town policy, when the supply of necessaries was small. “No butcher, or wife of a butcher, shall sell tallow or lard to a strange person for carrying to the parts beyond sea; by reason of the great dearness and scarcity that has been thereof in the City of late.” “No person shall carry corn or malt out of the City, under penalty of forfeiture.”
(3) The modern idea of protection was applied by the towns in a number of different ways. Bread from one part of London could not be sold in another part, which formed a separate jurisdiction. The protection at this period was attained more commonly, however, by aiming it against persons rather than wares; the merchant always accompanied his wares at this period, so it was easy to discriminate against “foreigners,” by making them pay special dues from which members “of the franchise,” i.e., townspeople, were excepted, and by restricting their chances for profit. Reference has been made above to the monopoly of retail trade reserved to townspeople and designed to protect the “home market.”
57. The market and its regulations.—(4) The market was an institution used in this period to regulate trade for the benefit of the townspeople; the name is applied now especially to meat shops simply because regulations were imposed on butchers after other dealers were freed from them. The townspeople were afraid that traders bringing provisions for sale could impose on their needs and force higher prices by making separate individual bargains. Therefore they required the country people to bring their provisions to a certain place (market-place) at a certain time, that they might have the benefit of competition among sellers; and tried to force the traders to sell out their stock before the close of the market. That all the townspeople might have an equal chance they were forbidden to buy goods on their way to market (“forestalling”); to buy larger amounts than they needed (“engrossing”); and to buy goods for retailing before the ordinary consumers had supplied their needs (“regrating”). After the close of the market the town shop-keepers looked after the needs of retail trade.
Ignorance and distrust were still so powerful in the town period that merchants were subject to constant supervision; they had to employ officials to weigh and measure for them, and could not employ brokers to hunt up customers unless the agents were also officials acting under oath.
58. Attempts to regulate prices. The assize of bread.—The town government went even so far as to set the prices at which wares must be sold. We are familiar, nowadays, with instances of the regulation of prices by public authority, as in the case of hack fares. Such instances, however, are now exceptional, while in the Middle Ages innumerable attempts at public regulation, covering practically all wares, were made at different times and places. Most of them were soon given up, because they defeated their own object; when the price was set too low the ware was no longer offered, and people suffered more by going without than by paying the higher price. Thus it was found unwise to set a price for a necessary like wheat; and high wheat prices were allowed to work their own cure by the inducement they offered to an increase in supply. It was as hopeless to set a fixed price for bread, but the government determined that at least the baker should not make improper profits from the necessities of his customers. It established, therefore, the “assize of bread,” a sliding-scale which fixed the weight or the price of a loaf according to the market price of wheat, and so restricted the power of the baker to raise his charges unduly. The same system was applied to ale, and assizes of this kind have lasted down to the nineteenth century in some countries.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Show what would happen to our modern cities if there were an interruption of commerce, either physical (perhaps the giving out of coal) or political (wars, strikes attended with violence, etc.).
2. Study the effect on a modern city of such a brief interruption as a great blizzard.