Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1885 — The Middlemen. [ARTICLE]

The Middlemen.

Thirty years ago, a young man who had acquired experience, knowledge, and reputation, and perhaps saved a couple of hundreds in the employment of a considerable mercantile or manufacturing firm, would start on his own account as a broker or other business intermediary, transacting the actual sales and purchases, mastering and conducting the details which his employers could afford to neglect, doing in liis department the work of a score or more of different firms, needing lit--116 capital but the confidence of his original employers and those with whom he had been brought into contact in their service. Commerce could afford liberal shrewdness, foresight, and diligence secured a minor but valuable share of the ample profits made in long roundabout passage between the original producer and the ultimate consumer. Nowaday the steps are much fewer; one intermediary after another has been suppressed. The manufacturer buys his materials, not perhaps from the actual producer, but from his factor. Orders are sent direct by telegraph, commissions are comparatively few and scanty, and the brokers who yet remain are compelled to secure business by services which only considerable capital can afford. The business even of large and longestablished firms is seriously reduced, the smaller one after another have disappeared or been absorbed; and the opportunities for new men with no capital but brains and- character, are yearly more and more closely contracted. The professions are crowded, competition has in many cases redncetTtheir remuneration, generally dividing the business among a greater number; and even where the. heads pf a profession make as much or more ihoney than ever

the juniors are compelled to wait longer arid work harder and later.—Macmillan’s Magazine.