§ 6. Different Species of Middlemen.--It may be well here to say something on the general position of the "middleman" in commerce. The popular notion that the "middleman" is a useless being, and that if he could be abolished all would go well, arises from a confusion of thought which deserves notice. This confusion springs from a failure to understand that the "middleman" is a part of a commercial System. He is not a mere intruder, a parasitic party, who forces his way between employer and worker, or between producer and consumer, and without conferring any service, extracts for himself a profit which involves a loss to the worker or the consumer, or to both. If we examine this notion, either by reference to facts, or from _à priori_ consideration, we shall find it based on a superstition. "Middleman" is a broad generic term used to describe a man through whose hands goods pass on their way to the consuming public, but who does not appear to add any value to the goods he handles. At any stage in the production of these goods, previous to their final distribution, the middleman may come in and take his profit for no visible work done. He may be a speculator, buying up grain or timber, and holding or manipulating it in the large markets; or he may be a wholesale merchant, who, buying directly from the fisherman, and selling to the retail fishmonger, is supposed to be responsible for the high price of fish; he may be the retailer who in East London is supposed to cause the high price of vegetables.