ABSTRACT
We can easily see why the arts of exchange lie remote from the mind of the husbandman and craftsman. The simple villager is habituated to deal with material and with tools; to handle his fellow-men in commerce demands novel qualities of mind for which his experience affords no guide. Still more is this the case with children and young people. They are fascinated by animated nature, and can readily find interest in sheep and cattle; the craftsman and his tools afford equal pleasure; all such objects centring round the homestead create vivid interests and expand the mind; the open face of nature also finds subconsciously a full response; but the abstract processes of barter and purchase leave them cold. Certainly an interest in book-keeping and arithmetic, as well as in coins, can be acquired by a young and intelligent mind, but there is no native force which compels the normal child to excitement over bargains. It was only in the seventeenth century when, as we shall see, the demands of commerce made an imperious claim on English society, that the authorities first made it incumbent on the schools to impart commercial arithmetic. The real benefit that commerce bestowed upon the young, and upon all homely minds whose interests centred round the homestead, was in the satisfaction of curiosity, in hearing strange and distant news brought by the road, the avenue both of commerce and knowledge. The trader was the great teacher of geography: he came from afar; the news that he told was as precious as the goods which he carried in his pack. The economics of trade were beyond the child's range but the general idea of transport was analogous
to the idea of mechanical power: the one assisted his imagination in mastery over materials while the other enlarged his vision over space. This primitive type of merchantman is still with us: there are thousands of men and a few women who tramp the lanes of England with drapery or other light wares, relieving the tedium of lonely cottages and villages by combining business with the chatter of the wayside. Even
34 THE CHILDREN OF ENGLAND in America, where the post carries every sort of goods to the remotest hamlet from the wholesale houses in Chicago, the pedlar maintains a successful competition.
