Consulado de mercaderes

The Consulado de mercaderes was the merchant guild of Seville founded in 1543; the Consulado enjoyed virtual monopoly rights over goods shipped to America, in a regular and closely controlled West Indies Fleet, and handled much of the silver this trade generated.

A consulado was founded in Mexico City in 1594, controlled by peninsularwholesale merchants who dealt in long distance trade, who often married into local elite families with commercial ties. Their assets had to amount to at least 28,000 pesos. Although they were not supposed to deal in local retail trade, they often did some indirectly. They mainly lived in Mexico City and had positions on the city council cabildo. A number of them were connected to the crown mint in the capital. They diversified the assets locally, investing in urban real estate. In the eighteenth century, as New Spain's economy boomed, consulados were established in the port of Veracruz and in Guadalajara Mexico, indicating increased trade and the expansion of the merchant elite. The consulado in late colonial Mexico had approximately 200 members, who divided themselves into two factions based, the Basque and Montañés, even though some were from neither of those Iberian regions. American-born merchants came to be part of the consulado in the later colonial period, but a small number of peninsular merchants dominated. Goods were shipped from the Spanish port of Cádiz to Veracruz, but many of the goods were produced elsewhere in Europe.

Junior Achievement

Junior Achievement (also JA or JA Worldwide) is a non-profit youth organization founded in 1919 by Horace A. Moses, Theodore Vail, and Winthrop M. Crane. Junior Achievement works with local businesses and organizations to deliver experiential programs on the topics of financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship to students in kindergarten through high school.

History

Boys' and Girls' Bureau of the Eastern States League was founded in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1919 to help educate young people moving from rural America to the country's booming cities about the means of production and free enterprise. The following year, the organization's name was changed to the Junior Achievement Bureau. The name was modified in 1926 to Junior Achievement, Inc.

Following World War II, the organization grew from a regional into a national organization. In the 1960s, it began to grow internationally, as well.

For more than 50 years, the organization was known mostly for the JA Company Program, an after-school program where teens formed student companies, sold stocks, produced a product and sold it in their communities. The student companies were overseen by volunteer advisers from the business community. In 1975, Junior Achievement introduced its first in-school program, Project Business, featuring volunteers from the local business community teaching middle school students about business and personal finance.