The pack-horse method of carriage was not peculiar to Manchester trade, but obtained generally. The system of travelling merchants was, however, especially characteristic of the Lancashire and Yorkshire cloth area, and these merchants were known as “Manchester men.”[202] In view of the fact that they were frequently men of considerable wealth, it is easy to understand why they disliked being regarded as hawkers and pedlars subject to duties on account of their particular kind of trade. From Leeds these “‘Manchester men’ used to go with Droves of Pack-horses loaden with ... goods to all the fairs and Market-towns almost all over the Island, not to sell by Retale, but to the shops by Wholesale, giving large credit. It was ordinary for one of these men to carry a thousand pounds worth of Cloth with him at a Time; and, having sold that, to send his Horses back for as much more; and this very often in a Summer.”[203] In all probability the description is generally true of Manchester in the early eighteenth century. But, at this time, the public carrier was beginning to displace the pack-horse,[204] and consequent upon his emergence, the particular class of merchants referred to ceased to travel with their goods, instead, they carried patterns and solicited orders, and afterwards dispatched the goods by the carriers. Thus there arose a class of men known as “riders-out,” and after the middle of the century advertisements for them become very frequent in _The Manchester Mercury_. “It was during the forty years from 1730 to 1770 that (Manchester) trade was greatly pushed by sending these riders all over the kingdom.”[205] [Footnote 202: Smiles, _Lives of the Engineers_ (1862), i., pp. 178-181. Westerfield, _Middlemen in English Business_ (1915), pp. 313-314.] [Footnote 203: Defoe, _A Tour through Great Britain_ (1769 edition), iii., p. 126.] [Footnote 204: Westerfield, _ibid._, pp. 362-363.] [Footnote 205: Aikin, _ibid._, p. 184.]