This is why the German economists find such difficulties in delimiting the proper domain of the domestic trades (Hausindustrie), and now identify this word with Verlagssystem, which means “working either directly or thorough the intermediary of a middleman employer (or buyer) for a dealer or employer, who pays the small producer for the goods he has produced, before they have reached the consumer.”

For more details about this subject, see an article of mine in the Nineteenth Century, August, 1900.