Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 | Page 3

banished or lessened by their being rightly informed, and induced to enter upon a proper course.
If there were a right knowledge and just views of these subjects diffused through the community, a man would be ashamed to enter upon a business in which a sufficient number of persons was already engaged, knowing that he was thereby trifling with his time and fortunes, and perhaps encouraging in himself a love of ease, or some other desire which he was not entitled to gratify. He would rather go to some new country, where he might eat in rough independence the rewards of an actual toil. What is really required, however, is not that men should leave their own country, but enter upon such pursuits there as may preserve an equal instead of an unequal distribution of industry throughout the various fields in which there is something to be done for the general advantage. Distribution should be less a favourite department, and production more so. With more producers and fewer distributers, the waste we have endeavoured to describe would be so far saved, and there would be fewer miserable people on the earth.
Even amidst all the delusions which prevail upon the subject, it is curious to observe that there is a strong current towards a rectification of what is amiss. The interests of the individual, which produce so much fallacy, after all bring a correction. The active, original-minded tradesman, seeing that, with an ordinary share of the entire business of his department, he can scarcely make bread and butter, bethinks him of setting up a leviathan shop, in which he may serve the whole town with mercery at a comparatively small profit to himself, looking to large and frequent returns for his remuneration. The public, with all its sentimentalisms, never fails to take the article, quality being equal, at the lowest price, and accordingly the leviathan dealer thrives, while nearly all the small dealers are extirpated. Now this is a course of things which produces partial inconveniences; but its general effect is good. It lessens the cost of distribution for the consumer, and it decides many to take to new and more hopeful courses, who otherwise might cling to a branch of business that had become nearly sapless. Underselling generally has the same results. When in a trade in which distribution usually costs 43 per cent., one man announces himself as willing to lessen this by 15 or 20 per cent., his conduct is apt to appear unbrotherly and selfish to the rest; but the fact is, that for goods of any kind to cost 43 per cent., in mere distribution, is a monstrosity; and he who can in any measure lessen that cost, will be regarded by the community as acting in the spirit of a just economy, and as deserving of their gratitude. These may be considered as the rude struggles of competition towards a righting of its own evils. The public sees two selfishnesses working in the case, and it naturally patronises that which subserves its own interest.
The waste arising from an over-costly system of distribution, will probably lead to other correctives of even a more sweeping kind than that of underselling, or the setting up of leviathan shops. For the greater number of the articles required for daily use, men begin to find that a simple co-operative arrangement is sufficient. A certain number agree to combine in order to obtain articles at wholesale prices; after which a clerk, shopman, and porter suffice to distribute them. They thus save, in many trades, as much as 15 per cent. So far from their being under any peculiar disadvantage as to the quality of the articles, they are rather safer than usual in that respect; and indeed a freedom from the danger of getting adulterated or inferior goods is one of the recommendations of the system. It would probably extend more rapidly, were it not for the difficulties attending the law of partnership, which, however, will in all likelihood be speedily removed.
We make these remarks on distribution mainly in the hope of saving individuals from entering upon a career in which, not being truly useful to their fellow-creatures, they have little to expect of good for themselves. At present, shopkeeping is limited by what an able writer of the day calls the bankruptcy check;[1] that is, men go into it, and remain in it, while they can just barely sustain themselves, not regarding that they do not and cannot thrive, and that they are only adding to a mass of idleness already burdensome to the community. What we desire is, to see men so far enlightened in the principles of economy, that they will be at least less apt to rush into fields where their help is not wanted. We wish to