But side by side with these exclusive persons living the 
centre-without-margin life, was a growing population of 
second-class citizens who were engaged in international trade. 
They were the avant-garde of what later became the dominant 
middle class:

          But urban industry was not everywhere the same. In 
     many towns, and precisely in those which were the most 
     developed, there was, side by side with the craftsmen-
     entrepreneurs living by the local market, an entirely 
     different group, which worked for export. Instead of 
     producing only for the limited clientele of the town and its 
     environs, these were the purveyors of the wholesale 
     merchants carrying on international commerce. From 
     these merchants they received their raw material, for 
     them they worked, and to them they delivered it in the