The change would lack a large part of its present significance if it affected only the number of middlemen. It has been a change in quality as well as quantity. The increase in business has furnished the opportunity for a redistribution of tasks, and has led to a specialization which was before impracticable. To be a jack of all trades nowadays one must be a man of supreme genius; to be master of one branch of trade is sufficient for the energy and the ambitions of the ordinary man. It pays a few men to take the position of Charles Broadway Rouse, to offer to buy anything and to sell everything. Most wholesale merchants are content to confine themselves to one branch of trade: lumber, iron, wool, leather, grain, etc. Most of these merchants, moreover, rely further on specialists to help them with certain parts of their business. They depend constantly on the banker, the speculator, the broker, the forwarder, the warehouseman, the commission merchant, and agents of many different kinds. It is impossible, in this book, to do more than suggest the complex commercial organization which has grown up in the course of the century. Only a few of the most prominent features can be treated in the following sections. =393. Insurance and speculation.=—The practice of insurance has made us familiar with the means by which producers secure themselves against some of the risks of their business. A farmer can insure his growing crop against hail, a merchant can insure his stock against loss by fire, a shipowner can insure his vessel against loss at sea. For a small annual payment, which the producer can well spare, he secures himself against a loss which might prove ruinous, if it chanced to come to him. He gains relief from anxiety, strengthens his credit (he could not borrow on the security of uninsured goods), and secures that regularity of operation which is essential to the greatest efficiency.