goods by withdrawing their custom; and scamped work, adulteration, and fraud were common. =159. Development of the commercial organization. Rise of wholesalers.=—Reviewing the substance of the last few paragraphs we find that the advance in agriculture was local and incomplete, while in manufactures it failed, in great measure, to displace a wornout system inherited from a preceding period. Only in commerce itself were the changes rapid and general in western Europe. Methods of business which before had been practised in only a few Italian cities, were now adopted in the country north of the Alps, and developed rapidly in the leading commercial districts. A class of professional wholesale merchants now sprang up. Before this time, of course, merchants had on occasion dealt in considerable quantities of wares, but even the leading medieval merchants seem to have been glad to keep up their business by selling in small quantities to consumers. Only in the last century of the Middle Ages do we find in Germany merchants who confined themselves entirely to wholesale trade. As yet they had not become specialists in any one particular ware. An idea both of the variety and of the extent of their transactions can be gained from the business of John von Bodeck, who was a merchant in Frankfort about 1600. He bought silk and drugs in Venice, spices in Amsterdam, and sent them for sale to Hamburg; he bought iron and wax in Hamburg and sent them to Spain; he bought indigo and wool in Spain and sent them to Amsterdam and Antwerp; he bought rye in Amsterdam and sent it to Genoa.