Question

Who were jobbers? What is their role?

Answer 1

Hint: They were considered as the important part of the employment processes in nations, which were moving towards industrialization or were heavily industrialised.

Complete answer:
Jobbers were the people who were employed by the employers to meet their needs pertaining to working capital. Their role involved them to do following:
a. These Jobbers used to employ the workers and were responsible for the whole recruitment process.
b. These people were the trusted people of the employers. Their major role of providing workers to the industrialists required them to employ the people from their own villages.
c. They also used to provide money to these workers in the time of extreme financial crisis.
d. But, as the need of the workers grew, the domination and power of jobbers increased as they had control over the main organ of economic and industrial development i.e. the workers. After that, they began demanding favours for the recruitment and their power increased at an alarming rate.
e. Jobbers also used to help the workers to settle in the cities.

Note: Jobbers have many other roles, as per systems of economics. Don’t confuse yourself with the modern terms associated with them. In the status quo, jobbers are also known as stock jobbers. They maintain the liquidity in the stock market by selling and buying the securities, which they own. In other terms, they are quite synonymous with ‘middlemen’ or ‘brokers’.