Q: How Did Bilbo and Frodo Support Themselves?

Respond: I word – plastics. Sorry, incorrect movie. There is no precise, canonical description of the source of Bilbo and Frodo's wealth (from their family unit), other than the treasure Bilbo brought back with him to the Shire. And according to Frodo he gave most of that treasure abroad.

Bilbo Baggins in Bag End
Bilbo Baggins in Handbag Finish

Some people presume that Bilbo was a land-owner and must accept supported himself from the proceeds (perhaps rents) of whatever his state was used to practise. The Baggins of Bag End probably owned The Colina, which could mean that the Gamgees and their neighbors were rent-paying tenants only I always had the impression that the Gamgees worked for the Baggins of Bag Cease, and and so they may take been residential servants, not tenants.

Otho Sackville-Baggins owned a fair amount of land that he left to his son Lotho. With financing from Saruman Lotho added to his holdings (co-ordinate to Farmer Cotton) by ownership farms, mills, ale-houses, and other property across the Shire. So nosotros can infer from Lotho's investment activity that property and business organization both could be bought and sold (although Frodo's sale of Bag Finish to Lobelia also confirms this).

Bungo Baggins (Bilbo's father) laid down bottles of vino (Onetime Winyards from Southfarthing) in Bag End. Did Bungo own the vinyard or trade in wine?

The Hobbit seems to imply that Bilbo owned the meadows he could wait out upon between his garden and the river (the H2o), merely that may but be a trick of wording. Still, the wealthier hobbits were supposedly modeled on Victorian aristocrats and even farmers like the Cottons and Maggots owned land, so what could fix Bilbo apart from other hobbits such that he was considered "wealthy"?

I dubiety Tolkien would accept attempted to engineer a complete economic blueprint for the Shire but his underlying assumptions may take been that the wealthiest hobbits "worked deals" for state and commodities. They would not take done the work of business owners (such equally farming the land, milking the cows, taking goods to markets). More than likely I call back they would have bought and sold things in quantity and arranged for their disposal through functionaries or factors.

In other words, the wealthy hobbits probably financed business deals as investors. Occasionally they might buy a whole business concern or a parcel of land, which they could so own or sell as required.

Someone like Bilbo might have the means to buy a quantity of things grown or made in some other office of the Shire for sale in and effectually Hobbiton and Bywater (not to mention the presents he brought in from Dale and Erebor to give away at his goodbye political party). This might include anything from ponies to rope to pottery to wine to tobacco. The local aristocrat probably controlled most of the local trade, taking his profits from the transactions and hiring local workers to handle the details.

Larger families like the Tooks and Brandybucks, who still resided together, may have worked their properties like family or clan estates, selling goods and special foods to local villagers and other wealthy families. Such a system would allow many families to own their own country and back up themselves through limited trade but would ensure that long-altitude merchandise was handled under the auspices of only a few.

Lotho became exceedingly wealthy by hobbit standards considering he sold a lot of food and commodities to Isengard (Saruman), exporting as much equally he could from the Shire (and depriving the hobbits of much of their own goods). The situation in the Shire seems grim when Frodo and his companions return but I think Tolkien meant to convey that Saruman only sucked the Shire dry of whatever he could, at offset to back up his war against Rohan and afterward out of pettiness and spite.

Hobbits who could raise their own food would have a run a risk to survive despite whatever was seized by the ruffians. Simply hobbits living in the villages (the tradesmen and workers) must have been completely dependent upon patronage from Saruman'south ruffians. After they just started taking whatever they wanted the working hobbits would have been impoverished.

In ane of his letters Tolkien noted that hobbits had no appetite for greed or wealth, then it seems incongruous to assume that many of them would be similar Lotho. Just if Bilbo and Frodo were wealthy landowners they must have relied upon rents from farmers and shepherds who used those lands to support themselves and their families. But Tolkien says nothing almost where the wealth came from. Nor does he suggest how hobbits defended their wealth. At that place are no banks in the Shire. When Frodo sold Purse End what did he do with the payment? Did he send it off in a cart along with the furniture he kept?

Although rarely mentioned in the stories money was certainly used in the Shire and elsewhere. Bilbo even gave away copper pennies to hobbit children, and so it must have been fairly common. The utilize of money implies that a sizable population of specialist workers existed: merchants, craftsmen, laborers, and other skilled professions must have existed in the Shire, Buckland, and Bree. These specialists would create the need for the foods and goods produced by the small farms and great estates. The Shire could not be as a wholly closed economy (Tolkien understood that) but it seems to have been painted with broad strokes of self-sufficiency subtly overcast past the vague business organisation dealings of the wealthy.

Nosotros know these trades happened because of the scattering of anecdotes Tolkien used to embellish the details of the Shire, but we don't know how often they happened or how meaning they were. I retrieve Tolkien would have understood that the deals would have been substantial and continuous, happening on an almost calendaric basis. In fact, many of the deals would have been annual activities driven by agriculture. Hides, wool, slaughtered meats, wines, and nigh anything that local farmers could not produce in sufficient quantities to support themselves and the villages would accept been "brought in" by the wealthy families or their agents or business organisation partners.

The hobbits' wealth, however, does not appear to have been concentrated in the heads of the families. Tolkien does non represent the Shire arrangement quite the aforementioned equally the English language arrangement of the 1800s. He in fact rules out primogeniture (by which the majority of a family's wealth was retained and managed by its caput, the heir of the previous lord). In the English system the process of dividing wealth amid heirs was complicated and discouraged. At that place is no mention of entailment (the concentration of family wealth in a single heir) or disentailment (the transfer of wealth to multiple or secondary heirs instead of the primary heir)

See also:

  • Where There Banks in Eye-earth?
  • Is there Money in Middle-world?
  • The Merchants of Heart-world

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