The clothier agreed or disagreed, without any attempt at "bargaining." If satisfied with the offer, he would instantly pick up the cloth, and go off with it to the merchant's house, where the transaction would be completed. Within less than half an hour the clothiers would be seen thus leaving the market; in an hour the business would be over, and at half-past eight the bell would be rung again, to announce that the market had closed and that there must be no more sales. Any clothier who had not sold his cloth would then take it back with him to his inn. "Thus," says Defoe, "you see Ten or Twenty thousand Pounds value in cloth, and sometimes much more, bought and sold in little more than an hour.... And that which is most admirable is 'tis all managed with the most profound Silence, and you cannot hear a word spoken in the whole Market, I mean by the Persons buying and selling; 'tis all done in whisper.... By nine a Clock the Boards are taken down, and the street cleared, so that you see no market or Goods any more than if there had been nothing to do; and this is done twice a week. By this quick Return the Clothiers are constantly supplied with Money, their Workmen are duly paid, and a prodigious Sum circulates thro' the Country every week." It is no less interesting--and, also, no less material to the present inquiry as to the influence of transport conditions on trade--to learn how the cloth purchased in these particular circumstances was disposed of in days when travel through the country was still attended by so many difficulties. The supplies intended for home use were distributed in this manner: Leeds was the head-quarters of a body of merchants who were in the habit of going all over England with droves of packhorses loaded up with the cloth which had been bought in the open-air market, as already described. These travelling merchants did not sell to householders, since that would have constituted them pedlars. They kept to the wholesale business, dealing only with shopkeepers in the towns or with traders at the fairs; but they operated on such a scale that, Defoe says, "'tis ordinary for one of these men to carry a thousand pounds value of Cloth with them at a time, and having sold it at the Fairs or Towns {147}where they go, they send their Horses back for as much more, and this very often in the Summer, for they chuse to travel in the summer, and perhaps towards the Winter time, tho' as little in Winter as they can, because of the badness of the Roads." Other of the buyers on the Leeds market sent their purchases to London, either carrying out commissions from London traders or forwarding on consignment to factors and warehousemen who themselves supplied wholesale and retail dealers in London, besides despatching great quantities of coarse goods abroad, especially to New England, New York, Virginia, etc. The Russian merchants in London also sent "an exceeding quantity" to St Petersburg, Riga, Sweden, Dantzic and Pomerania.