7. What would be the effect on trade in your State if tolls were levied on the border of every county, or even inside the counties? 8. Using a good map find from the scale of miles the length of one of the stretches mentioned in sect. 66 (for example, Mainz to Cologne), and insert the toll stations; then transfer this, changing the scale if necessary, to some road or railroad entering the place where you live. 9. Modern railroad officials are sometimes called “robber barons.” Assuming the truth of charges made against them, discuss the appropriateness of the term, indicating points of likeness and of difference with respect to medieval nobles. 10. Compare medieval and modern compulsion in the choice of routes. What is alleged to be the attitude of transcontinental railroads to the construction of the Panama Canal? 11. Using the method suggested in sect. 66 apply the statements in sect. 70 to conditions at home, and show how much medieval tolls would add to the present low charges of transportation. BIBLIOGRAPHY By far the best reference that can be given is Jusserand, **English wayfaring life. If a library containing older books is available much of interest will be found in Smiles, *Lives of the engineers, London, 1862, vol. 1. A good study will be found also in the Economic Review, vol. 7, July, 1897: Alice Law, English towns and roads in the thirteenth century. CHAPTER VIII FAIRS =71. Fairs; the reason for their existence.=—The foregoing description of medieval commerce will have shown that trade was far less extensive than it is now, and will suggest the reason for one of the characteristic trading institutions of the time—the fairs. Every person with wares to sell seeks a purchaser who desires those particular wares and who will give him in exchange something that he himself desires. Nowadays, for instance, a farmer brings his country products to the city, seeks out a produce merchant who will give him money for it, makes his purchases at the dry goods store with the money, and returns contented; he has exchanged his surplus for what he lacks. If there is no special store where he can sell his produce he must seek out buyers by going around to the separate houses, and if there is no general store where he can make his purchases he must again hunt up the individuals who make or sell what he desires. Where exchange is still relatively rare it may be a very troublesome process to find the buyers and sellers of particular wares, and the following device has almost always been adopted to meet the difficulty; people who desire to trade agree to meet at a certain time and place, so that there will be every chance that buyer and seller will find each other and secure that coincidence of supply and demand which exchange implies. The current of trade is dammed for a time as it were; then allowed to flow in much greater volume for a little while, then dammed again.