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 (C) COMMERCE

(1)

(a) Principal Branches of Trade

Internal commerce is comparatively restricted, since the agricultural population, which forms the greater part of the community, has few wants that are not supplied by its own production. One small miscellaneous store, selling articles of clothing, sugar, coffee, rice, tobacco, salt, and so forth, suffices for the needs of a village. Trade on a large scale is thus seated in the towns, and here also many commodities are supplied direct to the consumer by the producer, who brings in vegetables, milk, fowls, eggs, &c., especially on market days, from the surrounding country. This practice is facilitated by the Oriental mode of grouping sellers of particular products in a distinct part of the bazaar or market. As regards home produce, internal trade is most actively occupied in supplying the demand of cities and localities which are not self-supporting, and in concentrating any surplus, as well as articles which have a better market abroad, in the hands of exporters. For example, cereals go in large quantities from Homs and Hama to Aleppo, Tripoli, Beirut and the Lebanon, from the Hauran to Damascus and Haifa, from Gaza and Bir es-Seba to Jerusalem and Jaffa. Among native manufactures, oil, soap, textiles, and leather are the most important articles of distribution; tobacco and salt are Government monopolies (see p. 128). The chief centres of local supply are commonly also engaged in serving the foreign export houses. It is noticeable that, although, of course, there are large and small dealers, and often intermediaries between them, a strict differentiation between wholesale and retail trade is not observed.

An important and more remunerative department of domestic trade is concerned with the distribution of imports. The two great importing centres are Beirut [2947]