why, in all the literature I have read, have I not seen the word cadger, instead of what was usually given, peddler? Sometimes junk man, sometimes tinker, sometimes tradesman, but never cadger. And I have read American lit. and British lit., old and new. My Roget's thesaurus doesn't give cadger as a synonym for peddler, nor does the M-W on-line thesaurus, though it does have two other intriguing words: higgler and piepoudre. Anybody got any info. on them?

cadger in this sense is bordering on being considered archaic, I would think. citations go back to the days of Dickens.

A buck hanging on each side o' his horse, like a cadger carrying calves. - Sir Walter Scott, The Black Dwarf

piepowder (the usual spelling) comes from med.(Anglo-)L. pede-pulverosus dusty of foot, dusty-footed, also as n., a dusty-footed man, a dustyfoot, a wayfarer, itinerant merchant, etc.; found also in 15th c. English, and in 15–16th c. Scottish versions of the Burgh Laws. ME. had pie-poudres, pie-powders n. pl., wayfarers, esp. in the designation Court of Piepowders = Court of wayfarers or travelling traders, whence through the attrib. use in Piepowder Court came the less correct Court of Piepowder, a court formerly held at fairs and markets to administer justice among itinerant dealers.

a higgler is just a dusty-footed haggler!

He was a foot-higgler now, having been obliged to sell his... horse, and he travelled with a basket on his arm.
- Thomas Hardy, Tess