The telegraph has, moreover, enabled commerce to dispense with a whole army of middlemen, commission merchants, and brokers, who were necessary under the old system, but who have now been released to find more useful employments. Merchants in the wool trade, for example, send their buyers to the countries of production on fast steamers, transmit their instructions by telegraph, and bring the wool directly to the country of consumption, cutting out entirely the middlemen of London, Antwerp, and Havre, who once controlled the trade. Before the first Atlantic cable was laid it cost about 3 per cent to get cotton through the hands of the commission merchant and broker; the cable did away with the old consignment system, and in a dozen years the charge was reduced to about 1 per cent. =391. Functions of the merchant.=—I spoke above of the elimination of unnecessary middlemen. To many people all middlemen seem unnecessary, and fit only for elimination. These people regard as worthless drones all who are not engaged in the work of raising raw materials, of manufactures, or of transportation; they see no reason why a man who merely sits in an office, receives reports and writes letters, who perhaps rarely sees the wares he “handles,” should grow rich off society. The defence of the middleman may be given in the words of an English writer, describing the important part which merchants play in marketing the great output of the British iron industry. “The merchant usually has a better knowledge of the conditions affecting different markets than the producer. He comes more directly in contact with the buyer; he knows better to whom credit can safely be given, and is prepared to risk credits that the manufacturer would often refuse; he is well posted in railway and shipping rates and conditions, understands the peculiarities, practices, and requirements of particular markets, and has all other necessary commercial information, including freights and tariff duties, at his fingers’ ends.” Surely the functions thus suggested are sufficiently important to keep specialists employed, with profit to society as well as to the individuals engaged. =392. Growth in number and variety of the mercantile class.=—In fact, the class of middlemen, those who are occupied merely in the exchange of wares, has increased greatly in the course of the century. The great commercial machine runs now with such power and smoothness, only by the help of myriads of men who get their livelihood by tending it. In Prussia, for example, the number of wholesale merchants or firms increased twenty-fold in sixty years.