THE ROMANCE OF COMMERCE.•
MR. SELFRIDGE'S very interesting book will be a surprise to many readers. As a highly successful man of business in the United States before he transferred his activities to London, he might naturally have been expected to tell us a good deal about the growth of trade in America, American methods, and so forth. As a matter of fact, less space is devoted to the United States than to any other of the great trading countries of the world. The only American enterprise of which anything approaching a detailed account is given is the founding of the fortunes of the house of Astor. The names of Rockefeller and Carnegie are not even mentioned. The romance of cotton, steel, and wheat is left untouched so far as America is con- cerned. Neither Chicago nor Pittsburgh appears in the index. Mr. Selfridge abstains from any comment on the operations which- have inspired the pens of the late Frank Norris, Mr. Upton Sinclair, and Mr. Montagu Glass, the author of Potash and Perlmutter. But this is not due to any disloyalty to the land of his birth. The omission is the logical result of his scheme, which is primarily not to give a picture of commerce as it is organized to-day in any country, but rather to trace its origins and recount its progress from the earliest times down to the close of the eighteenth century. Exception, however, is made in favour of the Hudson Bay Company and the great trading family of the Mitsuis in Japan, who have been uninterruptedly engaged in commerce for three hundred years. And in the last chapter Mr. Selfridge gives us a brief account of a representative twentieth- century Department Store, with " an organization chart " showing how the staff of a house employing from five thousand upwards can best divide responsibilities in the conduct of its business, Of the ancients, the Phoenicians command Mr. Selfridge's most unstinted admiration. They were the first of the merchant adventurers, and it is his aim to show—whether in the growth and greatness of Venice, in the dynasty of the Fuggers of Augs- burg, in the activities of the Hanseatic League and of the English Guilds, or in the careers of such men as the de is Poles, the Greshams, and George Heriot—that " a great business may become almost a principality, and finder broad, capable administration make princes of its members." He further maintains that no game or sport is so interesting or inspiring, and that in the palmy days of the merchant adventurers, " not only to make a fortune, but to surround its accumulation with adventure, was then as truly the fashion in life as in story-books." This keen interest in the records of the past, coupled with a genuine enthu- siasm for the resourcefulness and tenacity with which the pioneers of commerce faced and overcame the difficulties which hampered them—oppressive laws, the tyrannous exactions of Sovereigns, bad roads, piracy and robbery—lends a peculiar interest to this recital, One hardly expected to find in a representative of the most up-to- date methods of trade such veneration for his predecessors, such a ready recognition that they had the root of the matter in them, and that many of their principles are just as applicable to modern con- ditions as to those which prevailed in the days before steam and electricity had lent wings to commercial enterprise.
Sir Henry Newbolt has told us lately that we are all poets, though for the most part unconsciously. Mr. Selfridge insists in his opening chapter that we are all traders, whatever our calling, and that without trade no nation ever became great or strong. Indeed, he is almost inclined to invert the old saying that trade follows the flag, and say that the flag follows trade, in the sense that the merchant
• The Romance of Commerce. By H. Gordon Selfridge. With Illustiationa. London ; John Lane. ROL 6d. netj
adventurers have always been among the greatest Empire-builders. So far from trade being derogatory to dignity, he urges that it offers unequalled scope for the highest talents and the most beneficent activities. But it must be " broad " commerce based on fair dealing. He never wearies of insisting that honesty pays, and pleads for greater sportsmanship as essential to sound business trans- actions. He is never so pleased with his heroes as when they stood up to grasping Kings and told them plain truths. The generosities and charitiee and public-spirited actions of the old merchants are not forgotten, and he is liberal in acknowledging the services of far-sighted men, such as William Paterson, who failed to make fortunes for themselves but were fruitful in ideas. Incidentally we may note that Mr. Selfridge com- mends Paterson'a denunciation of the method of raising money for Government use by lotteries, and that, so far as we can see, he is consistently in favour of free exchange. He devotes a brief chapter to the fantastic side of the romance of commerce, as illustrated by the trade in rarities and the tulip mania, and deals at some length with the meteoric career of John Law.
Another very interesting and well-written chapter, contributed by a writer whose name is not given, discusses the connexion of trade and the English aristocracy, fortified by a number of exceedingly apt quotations from Boswell, George Meredith, Defoe, (a favourite author of Mr. Selfridge), and others, and abound- ing in curious personal anecdotic information. We may specially note the passage which describes the coats-of-arms of new creations, and the way in which they commemorate the origin of the fortunes of their owners, and the hilarious footnote on the " Beerage." Altogether, this is a most instructive record of conspicuous instances of " trading families laying the foundation of nobility by their wealth and opulence." The sketch of the Hudson Bay Company makes very good reading. Mr. Selfridge does full justice to the philanthropic schemes of Lord Selkirk, whom he calls a great man, strong and determined as he was unselfish, but " un- equal to the great death-dealing blows which equally strong and determined men can deliver, men whose training had been in the keen school of commerce, men who unfairly took the advantages which a new, thinly settled, dishonestly administered country permits." This only shows that it is much easier to illustrate the romantic side of commerce than to prove the truth of the maxim that honesty is the best policy. In the chapter on the Medici Mr. Selfridge, while enlarging on their enterprise, munificence, and magnificence, disclaims all intention of discussing their political methods. " As with Cosimo so with Lorenzo, it is not within our limits to go too far into his political career." His admiration for their achievements leads him to turn a blind eye to their methods. Even the merchant adven- turers, his especial heroes, were not above reproach. As he himself says, " they did what all slave-traders did." But while he admires their spirit, he does not ask us to imitate all their methods. He lays it down in the most explicit manner that the good modern man of business should be not only honest but humane and considerate to his employees and sportsmanlike to his rivals. It is gratifying to have Mr. Selfridge's testimony that it rests with England to become again " by far the greatest manufacturing centre of the world," if she combines the old enterprise with a due recognitipn of the fact that Government should be conducted " on the principles which the great science of business teaches."
The value of the book is greatly enhanced by its lavish and admirable illustrations. Many of these are facsimiles of curious old prints, engravings, maps, and charts in the author's possession. The portraits, generally reproduced in Rembrandt photogravure, are thirty-six in number and mostly of great artistic merit—notably the two splendid pictures of Sir Thomas Gresham, Holbein's George Gisze, Merchant of the Steelyard, and the fine engraving by Raffaelh3 Morghen after Vasari's portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici. Other striking mezzotints and engravings are from the collection of Mr. John Lane, while Mr. Selfridge has ransacked the British Museum for prints and engravings of old London, chiefly before the Great Fire, and other cities, British and foreign, including the lost town of Ravenspur.
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