United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As time passed, the high cost of living was universally ascribed, as we saw, to the insatiable greed of the middlemen and the sluggishness of the authorities, whose incapacity to organize and unwillingness to take responsibility increased and augured ill of the future of the country unless men of different type should in the meanwhile take the reins.
It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no time to adjust itself to the new conditions. Three million pounds were ear-marked for South Africa, which gives a price per slave of from 60l. to 70l., a sum considerably below the current local rates. Finally, the compensation was made payable in London, so that the farmers sold their claims at reduced prices to middlemen.
To the middlemen of every sort the President was bluntly candid: "The eyes of the country are especially upon you," he said. "The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food," in a disinterested spirit.
"Porto." "Ke Soko?" "Hatsi soko": "Who are you?" "Porto." "What's the news?" "No news." Although these Portos are less interesting to the ethnologist than the philanthropist, they being by-products of his efforts, I must not leave Fernando Po without mentioning them, for on them the trade of the island depends. They are the middlemen between the Bubi and the white trader.
Another cause of emigration is to be found in the high and exorbitant rents at which land is held by all classes of farmers with some exceptions we admit, as in the case of old leases but especially by those who hold under middlemen, or on the principle of subletting generally.
Lord Inchiquin enjoys a good reputation as a landlord; but his tenants refuse to pay more than Griffiths's valuation, and I hear that other great landlords in the county are not much more fortunate. What is most singular of all is that the middlemen, who are subletting and subdividing their holdings at tremendous rack-rents, are among the most prominent in refusing to pay the chief landlord.
And the last statute we shall note, like the first, is concerned with regrating and engrossing; that is to say, it re-enacts the Statute of Edward VI prohibiting the engrossing of butter and cheese, and prohibiting middlemen. Thus restraint of trade and freedom of labor begin and end as the most usual subjects of English popular law-making.
The blockading fleet is even embarrassed as to the imports the Germanic body receives indirectly through neutral countries that is, imports not produced in the importing countries themselves, but provided through the neutral countries as middlemen. It is embarrassed in three ways.
Trade soon became the Alpha and the Omega of all tribal diplomacy, and the Iroquois were discerning enough to realize that their natural rôle was to serve as middlemen between the western Indians and the English.
"Authority is asked also to establish prices, but not in order to limit the profits of the farmers, but only to guarantee to them when necessary a minimum price which will insure them a profit where they are asked to attempt new crops and to secure the consumer against extortion by breaking up corners and attempts at speculation, when they occur, by fixing temporarily a reasonable price at which middlemen must sell.
Word Of The Day