Meanings Of Industry, Trade And Commerce

It is a definite loss to distinctness in commercial language that the terms Industry, Trade and Commerce have, through slovenliness of custom, become practically confused and interchangeable, instead of maintaining their original separate-ness of significance which their formation, as fresh forms of business demanded new verbal marks of definition, imposed.

Industry

Industry 1 is properly a general or generic term meaning any systematic work or labour - work, that is to say, which is not of a spasmodic or isolated character; which does not consist of separate acts of work independent of other workers, but different acts of work united into a system and governed by an appropriate organisation. More especially, the term is employed as descriptive in connection with the productive arts or manufactures. Individual men may labour strenuously though working separately where the labour of each is detached from that of others; but immediately these isolated efforts are united into co-operation, and the whole of the workers exert their energies in conjunction as an organised body under a regulated system for a common general end, the term industry becomes applicable, whether the combined mass of workers bo small or great. If we accept the suggested derivation from the operation of building1 we obtain a notion of the meaning which the word industry was intended to embody.

1 Industry: from the Latin industria, or diligence. The origin, however, is uncertain, but etymologists of reputation have suggested its formation from the Latin indo, or in, and struere, to build.

Etymology, A Precarious Guide To The Current Uses Of Language

For the act of building necessarily implies co-operative kinds of work, and thus the etymology concurs with the preceding explanation. The caution, however, need hardly be added that etymology is generally a precarious guide to the current uses of language. In the lapse of time, the needs of more exact and varied thought and discrimination may demand the specialisation of a term, or a restriction of its original scope of meaning, or again its generalisation in the form of the attribution of a wider significance than that which it previously possessed. And, occasionally, the usage of a term becomes directly opposed to the sense which it was invented to express. The activity and stress of business are sensitive to things, not symbols, and the carelessness and haste of usage introduce a further mode of change in the confusion of words which originally were quite distinct and applied to different, though cognate, events or conditions. The etymology of the term trade,2 however, still shows its designed use, for with a slight exercise of imagination we might connect its origin with its current usage by describing it as the path or way to the exchange of goods. Trade signifies the occupation or business of actually buying and selling commodities, and is so far distinguished from industry as being a species of that genus, and indicating the exchange between persons of the articles which particular industries manufacture or produce.

1The vast majority of the terms descriptive of intellectual and moral processes are derived from seemingly analogous physical operations: to ponder a subject is to weigh it in a mental scale (Latin pondus, a weight), and our attention (Latin ad, towards, and tendere, to stretch) is simply a representation of the physical act of the listener thrusting forward his face to catch the words more closely.

2Trade: from the Anglo-Saxon word tredan, to tread; and the term once literally meant a "path."

Trade & Commerce

The term commerce 1 - though often confused with the word trade - is more particularly applied, where some distinction is attempted, to trade or the exchange of commodities, which is conducted upon an extended scale as carried on between different countries or districts, and includes the whole of the transactions and arrangements comprised in the process. A trade may be more or less local, but commerce as a general system of exchanges involves a wider circulation of the commodities. It will further be noticed that trade with any limitation of meaning, consists of those acts of exchange which are concerned with a particular kind of commodity: thus the coal trade deals only with coal, while commerce is a series of acts of exchange which deal with all descriptions of commodities miscellaneously. Two men may trade: commerce demands a mass of men. Commerce, in short, is national in its scope, as embracing mercantile dealings between different countries; while the term trade is more particularly restricted to special industries and the internal business intercourse of a country by itself. The spacious development of commerce from the year 1820 is attributable to freedom from protracted wars, the growth of population throughout the world, colonisation and the consequent creation of fresh markets, and the extended mechanical adaptation of steam and electricity, with their results of swift communication by sea and land.

1 Commerce: derived from the Latin com (for cum), together, and merx, merchandise or ware. The term has been in use only since the sixteenth century, when it was substituted for the earlier term, merchandise.

Necessity For Precision Of Thought And Language

Business activity, as I have said, is not a congenial soil for the growth of niceties of language, and, where character and the honourable fulfilment of obligations are dominant, looseness of expression is yet consistent with strictness of fair dealing. The reader should not, however, regard the preceding observations to be irrelevant. Precision of language as the reflex of exactness of thought is always imperative: the relations of action and reaction which universally prevail in the material universe exist also between states of consciousness (which we term thinking and reasoning) and their embodiment in language. The careful thinker strives after definiteness in the words in which he embodies his thoughts: the inexact thinker accepts the first, roughly relevant, word that occurs, and his obscurity of language is a fitting index to his confusion of mind. And in no region is accuracy of language more imperative than in those states of consciousness which we term reasoning - and particularly on financial questions - for undoubtedly the vast majority of fallacies arise, not from error in the logical form of the argument but from the use by a reasoner (if, under these circumstances, he deserve the title), and more especially by contending disputants, of the same word in different senses, however subtle be the boundaries by which these senses are marked off.

Every Investor A Trader

Moreover, it will be found, if we examine our terms, that every investor is implicitly a trader, and should accordingly possess some serviceable knowledge of the events, conditions and contingencies which promote or retard the prosperity of our industries. If he be the holder of a Government Security, the value of his investment, or the price at which he could sell, is affected by the extension or restriction, the favourable or adverse nature, of the internal trade of the country, and the volume and advantageous character of the general commerce of the nation. The ordinary shares in a railway are prosperously or unfortunately influenced, not simply in value but also in the extent of the dividends, by the quantity and value of the traffic carried which again depend, inter alia, upon the magnitude and frequency of the exchanges of goods.