Word: merchant
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Nancy Donnelly, 20, of Oxon Hill, Md., had a rather unusual ambition for a woman: she wanted to be an officer aboard a ship. So she enrolled last year in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., which began accepting women in 1974 (current enrollment: 975 men and 25 women). But her career ran aground on an uncharted double standard...
...organize the procurement of foreign arms, Congress set up the Secret Committee last September and authorized it to trade American produce for needed armaments. Current chairman of the committee is English-born Philadelphia Merchant Robert Morris, 42, and the committee's contract has been assigned to his own trading house of Willing & Morris. The committee offers American tobacco, lumber, rice, flour and other products in exchange for European gunpowder and other war supplies. The northern colonies usually ship their goods directly to European ports, principally Amsterdam, Nantes and Bilbao; the southern colonies make their exchanges through Dutch, Spanish...
...already created a business boom, and not everyone is hurt by the price increases. Some farmers, for instance, have discovered that if they can hold part of then-produce off the market at harvest time, they will soon get higher returns. Merchants who can procure scarce products are making bigger profits than ever before. One Massachusetts merchant who owns several privateers reports that profits of 100 percent on sugar and 150 percent on linen and paper are "more than common." Jonas Philipps of Philadelphia says that European goods command a profit of 400 percent there...
...such various activities, it is easy to see that Josiah Wedgwood not only gets what he wants but that his wants are conceived on a very grand scale. They have served to make him one of the richest manufacturers in England and an exemplar of the modern type of merchant. Yet he was born to relative poverty 46 years ago, the 13th and youngest child of a potter in Staffordshire. His schooling ended at the age of eight, when his father died, and he had to go to work as an apprentice in a pottery run by an older brother...
Using the facades of an international merchant, Beaumarchais has set up a company, Roderique Hortalez & Cie., in the former Dutch embassy in Paris. The company is to buy arms and ammunition from French arsenals and ship them to America, either directly or through islands in the Caribbean, where they will be exchanged for American products, then forwarded to America. If the Americans run out of produce or cannot deliver on tune, the arms will be shipped on credit. If they do have valuable goods, Roderique Hortalez & Cie.-meaning Beaumarchais and two partners-stands to make a sizable profit. Either...