nment or the use
by another person, it would entitle such other person to whom the
ticket was given to use the seat, but only under the title of the
original holder; and if the assignment was later forbidden, or for
other reasons the right recalled by the management, the holder would
have no greater title to the seat; the contract is _assignable_, but
not negotiable. The assignee takes it merely as standing in the place
of the original holder and subject to all the equities between him and
the management. If, for instance, the ticket were given him by fraud,
the right to use it might be revoked and the transferee would have
no greater right than the original holder. But if the ticket were
_negotiable_, like a bank-note payable to bearer, the holder, not
actually himself the thief, would have an absolute title to the
seat without regard to anything that happened prior to his getting
possession of the ticket.

Now it is obvious that it is for the enormous convenience of business
to have business documents made negotiable. If a banker can loan on a
bill of lading or a warehouse receipt, or a trader can buy the same,
or if a man can give a trust receipt to his banker agreeing that all
his general shipments or stock in trade shall be the property of that
banker until his debt is paid, it makes enormously for the rapid
turning over of capital, and the extension of credit. Of course, an
enormous proportion of business in the United States is conducted upon
credit, and without the invention of the negotiable instrument those
credits could not be secured without an actual delivery of the
commodities intended to secure them. And the custom of business is to
consider most such documents negotiable even when in fact they are not
so. It is more than usual to loan money upon warehouse receipts, bills
of lading, stock certificates or trust receipts of all descriptions,
regardless of the question whether the law of the State makes them
negotiable. Hence the very great tendency to make such instruments
negotiable by statute; and I find many such laws, beginning in 1893
in North Carolina, as to warehouse receipts, while the Massachusetts
statute concerning stock dates from 1884.

A reaction to the English common law is the statute, common in recent
years, prohibiting sales in bulk. It appears to have been a growing
custom for merchants, particularly retail merchants, when in financial
difficulties to sell their entire stock in trade to