Solicitation

Solicitation is the act of offering, or attempting to purchase, goods or services.

Quotes

 * Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride. Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit.
 * Charles Péguy, Basic Verities, A. & J. Green, trans. (New York: 1943), p. 83