Horse trading

There are numerous surviving archaeological and monumental elements, including trails, bridges, way stations, market towns, palaces, staging posts, shrines and temples along the route.

[2] As standards for ethical business declined in the United States in the Gilded Age, the activities of horse traders came increasingly to be seen as the natural and, in part, desirable product of a competitive market rather than as symptoms of moral depravity.

In an 1893 New York Times editorial criticizing a proposed law to make it illegal for a newspaper to falsely state its circulation figures, the author declared that "if the lying were stopped by law, the business of horse trading would come to an end, and the country taverns and groceries in the Winter season would be deprived even of the limited eventfulness which they now enjoy".

[3] Reflecting this attitude, the term horse trading was widely adopted as a way to describe what might be seen as unethical business practices in a more positive light.

It is likely the 1898 publication of Edward Noyes Westcott's David Harum – whose title character saw all business through the lens of horse trading – played a key role in this.