Chesterton is a bit rough on trade and traders - in The Universe According to G. K. Chesterton: A Dictionary of the Mad Mundane and Metaphysical (a posthumous compilation by Dale Ahlquist published by Dover Inc., 2011) he defines the verb 'trade' thus:'To buy things for less than their worth and sell them for more than their worth.' Harsh but fair - but now slightly inaccurate, in these straitened times when prices are so easily checked, the person asking more than true value (whatever that is!) may find few takers. As an old trader once quipped: 'the right price is the wrong price…'
On traders themselves GKC seems to have it about right:
Men who cannot do anything else except exchange; who have not the wits or the force or fancy or freedom of mind or the humour and patience to bring anything into existence; who can only barter and bargain and generally cheat, with the things that manlier men have made.
The world of eBay and the car boot sale foreseen...He wrote this in GK's Weekly in 1933.