Imatges de pàgina
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meaning of the maxim, Magnum vectigal est parsimonia. The immense resources of a country where every peasant was a proprietor and almost every citizen a patriot, enabled her to nearly double her debt without impairing her credit, and to nearly double her revenue without crushing her productive powers; and the result has been that France has suffered far less from the calamitous years that have swept over the world than either Germany, Great Britain, America, or Russia. Now can we seriously entertain any doubt that, if English artisans as a rule had the careful habits, and the modest, though thoroughly comfortable, requirements, of the French peasantry; still more if they were aided and encouraged in the practice of these unfamiliar virtues by the example of those 'captains of industry' who have hitherto taught them rather how to make money than how to hoard it,-we might have tided over far more easily and speedily a crisis incomparably less severe ? 8

It is now nearly a generation since our great philosophical economist laid his finger on one of the most serious blots in our social economy-the unsoundness of our distributive system; that is, the excessive proportion which the distributors bear to the producers, the number of retailers of consumable articles in comparison with the

' Mr. Smith's comparison of the taxation, local and imperial, of the three great capitals of the world is curious and rather consolatory :

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We may be reminded of one special difference between the French and English people, which makes saving so much easier and more natural to the former, viz., their much slower rate of increase. To this may be added that their laws of inheritance foster habits of economy, which the English ones certainly do not. This is true enough; but to discuss fully the bearings of the subject would take us too far from our present topic. It may suffice at present to say that we have the vast and almost inexhaustible resources of emigration, of which our neighbours make, perhaps can make, comparatively so little use. England thus disposes of those redundant numbers which in France do not appear. In the thirty-nine. years, 1837–76, there left the United Kingdom as voluntary emigrants, destined chiefly to North America and Australia, 8,000,000 persons, or an average of 22,800 persons per annum. It has been computed that each emigrant was worth to the country or colony to which he went, quite 1757.; that is to say, speaking in commercial language, his infancy, education, training, skill, and the stock of clothes, money, and goods he brought with him were worth 1757. to the new country of his choice. On the average of the thirty-nine years, 1837-76, this country has contributed 40,000,000%. per annum in emigrants to the progress of North America and Australia, and no discussion of the progress of these new countries can be of any value which does not assign due prominence to this wonderful phenomenon. Of late years the emigration to Australia has assumed larger dimensions. In 1866–70 it was 9 per cent. of the whole; in 1876 it was 29 per cent. Shorter and cheaper passages to Australia have produced a large effect. No part of the social changes of the last forty years is more satisfactory, both to the mother-country and the colonial and foreign countries, than this voluntary emigration undertaken by the free choice, and paid for out of the savings, of the emigrants themselves.

need for them. Retail trade required, in reference to other occupations, little professional skill or knowledge, and little capital; and in consequence many scarcely qualified easily took up this line of business, or added it to their other functions. The mischief grew, and with it grew many disastrous consequences. Small shopkeepers multiplied beyond any wholesome demand; they competed with each other for a business inadequate for all, and those who might have made a decent and an honest livelihood out of a hundred customers could not do so out of fifty. Those, again, who had capital sufficient to enable them to buy their stores cheaply because on a large scale, might be satisfied with moderate profits in retailing them; those who were destitute of these advantages were forced either to ask higher prices or to serve out inferior qualities. Those, too, who gave credit to their customers did not always get paid: thence came the practice of making punctual purchasers pay for those who paid tardily or perhaps never paid at all-at once a cruelty and an injustice. Unsoundness thus crept into the entire practices of retailers in smaller towns and among poorer populations; and buyers-that is, the whole body of customers were mulcted, paid more than they need have done or ought to have done, and found that their earnings did not go as far as was essential. This was the case in the manufacturing districts. In the metropolis and in the larger cities the same unsoundness prevailed, in a somewhat varied form and on a more extensive scale. A larger proportion of those who dealt at retail shops were wealthy, and cared comparatively little what prices they paid; numbers were too busy to look closely after such matters, and were growing rich fast enough to despise them; and these two classes gave the tone to others. Numbers of them, moreover, were not over-punctual in their payments, yet too important to be pressed, and therefore could not with any propriety demur to the inflammation of their weekly bills.' Thus, in the late prosperous times since the advent of free trade, there has been an alarming growth of household expenditure which has at last led to a natural and most salutary reaction-out of which, unless I am much mistaken, there will come a gain, both moral and economical, the extent of which will amaze many and prove a genuine harbour of refuge' to not a few.

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The truth is—to speak it broadly—that the sudden and enormous prosperity of the country and the extraordinary advance in the prices of nearly all articles of general consumption during the ten years which preceded the actual collapse-coupled with the natural and inevitable rise in the style and 'standard of living' as it is calledwere fast bringing to ruin the numerous classes known as 'people of fixed incomes.' The luxuries of the parents were becoming the necessaries of the children; and what had been competence to one generation was, or was becoming, a scanty pittance to the next. The civil servants, the fundholders, the officers of the army and

navy, and clergymen above all others, felt that if they were not to sink altogether into a lower social position, they must bestir themselves in earnest. They did so bestir themselves; and a few among them, instinctively discerning where the fault lay, combined to correct it and established 'Co-operative Stores.' Never was there a more simple, more timely, more practical, more successful, more wholesome and righteous movement, or one which I incline to believe will approach nearer to a quiet social revolution, and rectify, directly or indirectly, certain symptoms in England's condition that may be safely characterised as unhealthy.

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In the course of the controversy that has arisen out of this movement, many absurd aspersions and not a few thoroughly unjust ones have been vented on both sides; but the irritation of conflicting interests will gradually subside, and the motives to the movement are obviously too strong to be effectually resisted. The truth of the case is in fact too clear, and lies too near the surface to be either concealed or contested. The wealthy, who do not need to spare their shillings or their guineas, but who do wish to have the ordinary transactions of life made smooth and facile, and surrounded by as much beauty and splendour as are attainable, will deal with butchers and grocers who come to their doors for orders and take all trouble off their hands, will give their custom to tailors and dressmakers who suit their tastes, will frequent shops which lie within easy reach, whose plate glass and decorations attract their fancy, and the fashionable locality of whose premises involves high rents, and they will have to pay, and be content to pay, for all these facilities and pleasures; and no one can fairly maintain that the tradesmen who supply their wants in this comfortable fashion are not entitled to be well paid for the expenditure which this fashion involves. Equally, on the other hand, must the more numerous classes with fixed and inadequate incomes, whose peace and respectability in life depend on keeping within these incomes, who must watch and calculate every shilling of expenditure, and who grudge no time or trouble which will enable them

We need not enter into these allegations and disputes. Where the ordinary retailers have any foundation for declaring that co-operative establishments are unduly favoured by law, as in escaping the income tax while dividing large profits among their shareholders,-by all means let this inequity be rectified, by treating them as, what in fact they have become, joint-stock companies. But as to the indignation expressed against establishments conducted on the original principle of supplying themselves cheaply by purchasing on a large scale and selling low by selling only for prompt payment, and which make no profits because they reduce their prices as they find the prices they had fixed yield a surplus over their expenses, this indignation is manifestly misapplied; while the outcry against civil servants, naval or military officers, clergymen or others, who give their vacant hours to superintending or auditing these establishments, which are and must be practically managed by paid employés, is too unfounded even to deserve discussion. It is on a par with the objections of those who would prohibit struggling barristers or clerks from devoting their unemployed evenings in writing for the press.

to limit its amount, be permitted to follow their course without being sneered at or reviled. They find thousands of tradesmen ready enough to meet their requirements; and they find, too, that by combination they can attain their ends to the mutual gain of all parties concerned. For this is one of the features of the change of system which is now in progress: the primary producers, makers, and purveyors of the articles of consumption usually obtain more for those articles than they used to do, while the purchasers of them pay less; the difference being that in the transference from the original creator to the ultimate consumer, the articles pass through fewer hands, and in a less costly fashion, and are mulcted therefore in slighter profits. The supernumerary distributors alone will be edged out, and have to find occupation and livelihood elsewhere. The distributors who hold their ground, doing a far larger business and in a more legitimate manner, will make at once more considerable and less questionable gains.

The essence of the whole question lies in these two points :-first, what is practically and usually the difference between the price which the actual consumer or purchaser of any article of food, clothing, or furniture, pays for it, and the share of that price which ultimately reaches the producer-that is, the farmer, the importer, the tailor, the shoemaker, the dressmaker, the upholsterer, and others who among them provide for the hundred wants of our complicated lives?-and secondly, what proportion of this difference is really necessary and legitimate? Few who have not been compelled to go into this inquiry have an adequate notion of how great this difference is, or how small a part of it is genuinely inevitable. I have no intention of entangling myself in interminable controversy by venturing on positive assertions or precise figures. But a few suggestions may induce my readers to believe that I am not very wide of the mark when I express my conviction that if we brought adequate information, sagacity, vigilance, and trouble to bear upon our proceedings, the average expenditure of many of our households might be reduced 25 per cent. at least, without the loss of one single comfort worth retaining. Let any one ascertain from a farmer friend the price which he receives per carcase from the butcher he supplies, or from a Liverpool merchant the price at which his cargoes of dead meat or live bullocks are sold on arrival from America, and compare it with the price the identical butcher or purveyor insists upon charging him for similar qualities of beef or mutton. Or let him, knowing-if a merchant or broker, knowing to his cost-that of late the tea, or the coffee, or the sugar he is in the habit of importing will only fetch in the market 75 per cent. of its price two or three years ago, apply to his family grocer for something like a proportionate reduction in his quarterly bills, and see the curt refusal he will receive, as if the bare proposal was amazing. Or let any man accustomed to deal with an ordinary

West End tailor-not an especially extravagant or fashionable onefind himself obliged by press of losses to inquire what price he really need pay for a substantially equal suit furnished by one a little further east or a little less known, and then calculate the difference in his family expenditure the transfer of his custom in that one item will effect. Or, finally, let him take a little pains, and he will be surprised to find that a pair of boots for which he has been accustomed to pay 358. or 408. in Mayfair without a murmur, can be obtained in quarters scarcely nearer Temple Bar, just as good, quite as lasting, and almost as seemly for 148. or 218., with perhaps no better assignable reason for the difference than that he may learn that the latter article is 'countrymade.' In a word, while the wholesale cost of many articles of general consumption has dropped 25 per cent., how few of us have been able to obtain a reduction of even 10 per cent. from our retail suppliers,at least till it was made clear that the alternative was the transfer of our custom to the Stores.' In conclusion, has not the conviction been gradually forced upon most careful housekeepers dealing with inexpansive incomes of 2,500l. a year or under, that what with illicit connivance between their servants and their tradespeople in the form of 'tips,' and laxity as to weight and quantities, and foregoing the righteous claims of ready money, and paying for the nonpayment of slippery fellow-customers, to say nothing of their own idleness and lack of vigilance—they have been in the habit undeniably of simply wasting, through one channel or another, nearly one-fourth of their annual expenditure,-which in future they will be resolute to save?

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Inevitably, in the course of a change from an unhealthy to a thoroughly sound system of dealing between man and man-as in all analogous improvements since our complicated social arrangements grew up some parties will suffer and find the ground cut from them. All that can be confidently asserted is that they cannot mend matters by opposing what is at once irresistible, righteous, and for the good of the mass of the community. Unquestionably many retail dealers will have to abandon a business which they have rarely found a satisfactory or highly profitable one, or one possible to carry on without resorting to practices more or less questionable. Many more will be driven to change from an unsound and unsafe system to a sound and safe one. Many who are now competitors will find it their interest to be associates instead. Still, numbers of the weaker, and least qualified, and least wanted, will be edged out; but few probably or none whom it is the interest of the community to preserve ;-and these will ere long, we may be pretty certain, be absorbed into other avocations.

W. R. GREG.

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