Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1920-04-30

1
continental Europe the principle OF
caveat emptor did not prevail with
the same intensity as in England. !
In most of the Latin countries the |
state, it seems, always assumed
more or less of a supervision over
| trade. If vendor and vendee met
face to face, and the vendor passed
to the vendee a commodity and the
vendee passed the vendor a coin, the
attitude of the Latin law and the
community was that the trade was a
fair exchange, that there should pass
from the vendor to the vendee a
commodity with an implied war
ranty as to worth, and that there
should pass from the vendee to the
vendor a coin with the image and
superscription of Caesar upon it, that
is with the warranty of the state as
to its worth. So fair exchange was
no robbery.
Thus you will find in the French
markets manditaire, a commission
man under government supervision
He is allowed to charge a fixed COM
mission. no less and no more, and he
is not permitted to buy and sell on
his own account.
In England trade proceeded upon
a different line of development.
Somewhere, out of our old Anglo
Saxon forbears' vigorous minds grew
the conviction that the buyer should
beware, the principle of caveat emp
tor. Out of that principle has
grown, | think, much of our vigor
of race. We are the super men of
the world and we are super men
largely because our democratic form
of government and that of England,
preceding ours, placed in the indi-
vidual large measure of RESPONSE
bility, of self-reliance. We are
taught to depend upon ourselves.
A man was expected to keep his
weather eye out for the spawned
horse. Let the buyer beware
Now the old principle is not work
ing as well as it used to work in
America. Trade has grown into
larger and larger units, and become
more and more remote from the
trader. 1t is no longer possible for
tho RI
edge that his grandfather had of the
fabrication of things. How few of
us really know the methods which
produce fabrics, foods or structural
materials. There was a day when all
men knew the making of shoe, the
weaving of cloth, the fashioning of
structural materials, bat now most
men have only reading knowledge
OF them. 1t is not possible for you
as buyers today to beware in the
same degree as it was with your an
cestors.
, So government now is beginning
to have little more supervision over
trade. Indeed we are doing today
what England attempted many hun
, dreds of years ago; in Shakespeare )
day. BY reason of the discovery of
gold in America some so or 70 years
;, previous to that time the price level
of commodities went up, in fact
o reached a new level from which
prices have never wholly fallen.
+ Money lost in value and commodities
increased in value. History records
that this resulted in great hardship
9 upon the poor, and the English par
lament turned it's attention TO mar
. ket laws. 1t passed statutes forbid
c ding three things. The English par
lament prohibited engrossing, re-
+ grating and forestalling. Engross-
i, ing and regrating are Norman French
. words. Forestalling is Anglo-Saxon.
: controlled food commodity in such
volume that he could dictate the
= price to the community. A man who
regrated bought in the markets
, foodstuffs and sold in the nearby
market at the increased price with
out benefit to the community. A
man who forestalled interferred with
the natural flow of the commodity
from the producer to the consumer
by some artificial means. About the
time of our revolutionary war, the
British statesmen, believing that the
laws were no longer effectual re-
pealed them.
We won our independence, became
republic, and for over 100 years we
went along pretty much on the old
principle of caveat emptor. In 1890,
our congress in response to much the