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Updated: May 4, 2025
The old offences of forestalling and regrating may have been lost sight of, and possibly the statutes against them fallen into disuse, although they were expressly made perpetual by the 13th Elizabeth in 1570 and not repealed until the 12th George III in 1772; but the principle invalidating restraint of trade and contracts in restraint of trade remained as alive as that prohibiting unlawful combinations of labor.
The prejudice against regrating, that is to say, middlemen, continues, as is shown in a Statute of Edward VI, providing that no one shall buy butter or cheese unless to sell the same only by retail in open shop. That is to say, there must be no middleman between the producer and the retailer, and a definition of the word "retail" is given.
"Regrating" is defined in some of the early dictionaries as speculating in provisions; the offence of buying provisions at a market for the purpose of reselling them within four miles of the place.
But in artificial commodities it is easier; so in the Northern Pacific corner, a nearly perfect engrossing; the shares of stock went to a thousand dollars, and might have gone higher but for the voluntary interference of great financiers. Leiter's Chicago corner in wheat, Sully's corner in cotton, were almost perfect examples of engrossing, but failed when the regrating began.
Regrating meant buying to sell again at a higher price without having made any addition to the value of the goods; forestalling was going to the place of production to buy, or in any other way trying to outwit fellow-dealers by purchasing things before they came into the open market where all had the same opportunity; engrossing was buying up the whole supply, or so much of it as not to allow other dealers to get what they needed, the modern "cornering of the market."
Her conversation, if conversation it could be called, was a perpetual rebating and regrating, especially with her sister-in-law; if Lady Cecilia did but say there were three instead of four, it was taken up as "quite a mistake," and marked not only as a mistake, but as "not true."
The greatest need of criminal legislation is in the writer's opinion in matters of business or corporate fraud, and in revival of our older English law against the extortion or regrating of middlemen, the engrossing of markets, the artificial enhancing of the prices of the necessaries of life, and the withholding, destruction, or improper preservation of food.
Regrating is narrowed to victuals, alive or dead, and to the reselling them at the fair or market where they were bought or within four miles thereof; and engrossing is given a definition very similar to our "buying of futures."
"Poor man!" said I. "Learn that in those very days, when it shall be with the making of things as with the carter in the cart, that there he sitteth and shaketh the reins and the horse draweth and the cart goeth; in those days, I tell thee, many men shall be as poor and wretched always, year by year, as they are with thee when there is famine in the land; nor shall any have plenty and surety of livelihood save those that shall sit by and look on while others labour; and these, I tell thee, shall be a many, so that they shall see to the making of all laws, and in their hands shall be all power, and the labourers shall think that they cannot do without these men that live by robbing them, and shall praise them and wellnigh pray to them as ye pray to the saints, and the best worshipped man in the land shall be he who by forestalling and regrating hath gotten to him the most money."
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