stant period here under
consideration a so-called commission business could scarcely be said
to exist; and this is true also of speculation in the narrower sense.
While buying and selling on time were not infrequent, especially in
the grain market, the transactions were upon an infinitely smaller
scale than as conducted at present, when, as the saying goes, "goods
is sold a dozen times before it is actually available." The unsound
methods at present in vogue, based as they are upon fluctuations in
price, were then scarcely known. "Goods in exchange for goods or its
equivalent in money" was the motto of the Hanseatic merchant, who,
however, was by no means always entirely guiltless of fraudulent
operations. Often enough the lowermost layers of herring in the keg
consisted of spoiled goods, and not infrequently a bale of linen had
to be returned from station to station to the place whence it was sent
in order that it might be reexamined as to quantity and quality. In
these transactions the crafty dealer usually preferred to take
advantage of the proverbial simplicity of the Norwegian.

The scope of the Hansa trade was greater than one would imagine. It
was greater, for example, than that of the maritime towns of Germany
for the period immediately preceding the era of steam navigation,
_i.e._, about 1830. The fish trade was at that early period far more
brisk, partly because the herring then visited the shores of the
Baltic, and partly because the church laws relative to abstinence from
meat during the fasts were rigidly observed by all the states of
Christian Europe. A few figures will serve vividly to illustrate this
change: In 1855, 3,700 kegs of herring were imported by way of Lubeck,
as against 33,000 kegs for the period 500 years previous; and in the
year of war, 1369, despite the embargo with Denmark, a great consumer,
the exports of herring from thirty Hanseatic ports yielded a sum of
130,000,000 marks, 40,000,000 of which fell to the share of Hamburg,
then a much smaller city than Lubeck.

It is natural, in the light of these commercial conditions, that
industry, and handicraft also, must have greatly flourished. In those
days there were twice as many bakers in Lubeck as at present. The
coopers, also, in view of the great demand for herring kegs, were in
high repute, and scarcely less so the brewers, who at that time
greatly excelled their South German competitors. The beer of Hamburg
or Rostock was never absent