Brokers are persons employed as middlemen to transact business or negotiate bargains between merchants or individuals. There are bill or exchange brokers who buy and sell foreign bills; note brokers who deal in promissory notes; stock brokers who buy and sell stocks for others; ship brokers who buy and sell cargoes in transit or upon arrival; insurance brokers who are middlemen between the insurance companies and the insured; custom house brokers who act for merchants m getting consignments through the custom house; and brokers in cattle, in dry goods, in coffee, in cotton, in drugs, in flour, in grain, in hides, in oil, in real estate, in sugar, in tobacco, in wool; in everything or anything that is bought or sold in large quantities.

By attending to one class of business constantly brokers acquire a more intimate knowledge of its various details, of the houses from which to buy, of the best market for sales, and of the credit of those engaged in it, than could possibly be expected of a general merchant.

The large manufacturers living outside of the great centers find it to their advantage to engage brokers to buy their raw material for them, so we find that each broker has his regular customers, and for a small commission he goes into the market and buys or sells as carefully as though he were spending his own money. It is for these reasons - from a sense of the advantages to be derived from using brokers in the transaction of business - that they are so extensively employed in New York, Chicago, London, and other great cities.

In France the brokers are called agents de change, and their number in Paris is limited to sixty. They are severally obliged to give bonds for the prevention of abuses, and are not allowed to charge more than a fixed rate of commission.