1. Consider some articles of your clothing; try to ascertain from what different sources the materials were gathered by the merchant for the manufacturer, and how the finished product reached you. Do the like for a common implement, a lead-pencil or pocket knife, or an article of furniture. What countries were drawn upon to supply the food and setting of your breakfast table? [Compare The cost of a dinner, Outlook, March 13, 1897, quoted in Clow’s Introduction to the Study of Commerce, Silver, Burdett & Co., 193-194.] 2. What articles would you have to do without if your supply were limited to the things produced within a radius of 10 miles of your home? Within a radius of 100? Within a radius of 1,000? 3. Ice was given as an example of a ware which varies greatly at different times. Are all wares subject to such variation? [If you find what seems to be an exception, verify it by the wholesale prices quoted in newspapers.] 4. What is the use of grain elevators and wheat speculators? 5. Can you detect any difference between city people and country people in making a bargain? 6. What has been the attitude of the North American Indians to trade? With what wares have traders had to tempt them? 7. Arrange the following articles in the degree of their transportability, _i.e._, according to the distance which they may be carried with profit: raw cotton, coal, potatoes, silver, building stone, gold, wheat, cotton cloth, diamonds, hay, coffee, salt, silk ribbons, copper. [The price per pound of many of these wares is given in the newspaper.] 8. Give an instance of articles wasting, unused for lack of good wagon-roads; for lack of railroads. 9. In what regions has piracy persisted to recent times? [Read some description of Borneo or of the Philippine Islands, or a description of Chinese junk trading and Chinese river life.] 10. What effect did the Civil War have on American commerce? [See reference in chap. 51.] 11. In what regions of the world is land trade still unsafe? 12. To what restrictions, if any, does an American merchant have to submit who desires to trade in one of the following wares: cigars, gunpowder, whisky, lottery tickets, imported iron, cigarettes, improper literature? 13. Government restrictions now are due usually to one of three objects: (1) collection of revenue, (2) protection of other producers, (3) protection of the consumer and the public. Classify the wares above according to the object of the legislation. 14. Read Bourne, Romance of trade, 96-137, on the close relations of politics and commerce. BIBLIOGRAPHY