p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 / Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852
ECONOMY IN DISTRIBUTION
We had lately occasion to proceed by an omnibus from a country town to a station on a railway, by which we were to return to the city where we have our customary abode. On arriving at the station, we learned that we should have to wait an hour for an up train, the omnibus being timed in relation to a down one, which was about to pass. Had this arrangement been the only one readily practicable, in the case, we should have felt it necessary to submit uncomplainingly to the loss of our hour; but it really was not so. We had come in one of three omnibuses, none of which had more than two or three passengers. Why should not one have come at this hour with down passengers, and another come an hour later with up ones, thus by the same trouble giving more accommodation? We found that the three omnibuses are run by so many hotels, and that an arrangement for general convenience was impossible, as it might have interfered with the hotel business. On the continent, the government would have ordered matters otherwise: with us, the genius of laissez faire permits them to be as we describe.
It is in the same part of the country that a system exists amongst bakers, which we described many years ago in these pages. There are three towns, triangularly arranged, about ten miles from each other. One or more bakers in each has a van, in which he sends bread every day to the other two. As there is no witchcraft in the making of bread, it might be as well for the inhabitants of each town to be supplied by the bakers of their own place exclusively, and then the expense of the carriage would be saved. Such, however, is the keenness of competition in the case, that each baker strives to get supporters in the neighbouring towns, and willingly pays for van, horse, and driver in order to retain their custom. We presume each van goes thirty miles a day, and that there is not much less than 2000 miles of this unprofitable travelling weekly in connection with the three towns.
Any one who has a sincere respect for the principle of untrammelled industry, must lament to see these its abuses or drawbacks. But our commercial world is full of such anomalies. The cause is readily traced in the excessive number of persons engaged in the various trades. Not many years ago, the number of bakers in a town known to us, of the same size as one of those above referred to, was fourteen, while everybody acknowledged that four might have sufficed. In such circumstances, it is not wonderful that expedients like that of the van are resorted to, notwithstanding that it can only diminish the aggregate of profit derived by an already starving trade.
Few persons who walk along a street of nicely-decorated and apparently well-stocked shops, have the slightest conception of the hollowness of many of the appearances. The reality has been tested in part by the income-tax inquisition, which shews a surprising number of respectable-looking shops not reaching that degree of profit which brings the owner within the scope of the exaction. It may be that some men who are liable, contrive to make themselves appear as not so; but this cannot be to such an extent as greatly to affect the general fact. In the assessing of the tax, no result comes out oftener than one of this kind: Receipts for the year, L.2200; estimated profit at 15 per cent., L.330; deductions for rent of shop, taxes, shopmen's wages, and bad debts, L.193; leaving, as net profit, L.137. The commissioners are left to wonder how the trader can support his family in a decent manner upon so small a return, till they reflect that possibly a son brings in a little as a shopman, or a daughter as a day-governess; or that possibly an old female relative lives with the family, and throws her little income into the general stock. It is, after all, a fact capable of the clearest demonstration, that a vast number of shopkeepers' families maintain decent appearances upon an income below that enjoyed by many artisans—what goes, in the one case, for the decent appearances, being enjoyed in substantial comforts in the other, or else misapplied, to the degradation of body and mind.
The evil primarily lies in an erroneous distribution of industry. Where twenty men offer themselves to do a duty to society for which three are sufficient, it cannot be good for any party; whereas, were the extra seventeen to apply themselves to other departments of the labour required for all, it would be better times for the whole twenty. The light, easy, and pleasant occupations are those most apt to be beset by superfluous hands. Shopkeeping is generally easy, and often pleasant; hence the excessive number of individuals applying themselves to it. In the difficulties of the case, conspicuousness of situation, extravagant decoration, and abundant advertising, are resorted to, as means of obtaining a preference. Many, to help out profits, resort to tricks and cheating. The expense thus incurred, above what is necessary, in distributing certain goods, must be enormous. To bring most articles to the hands of the consumer should be a simple business. Every member of the public must feel that his clothes will be as good, coming from a wareroom on a third floor at L.30 a year, as from a flashy corner shop which costs L.300. He will feel that to make him buy a new hat when he needs one, it is not necessary that an advertising van should be continually rumbling along the streets. His tea and sugar from the nearest grocer cannot be any better because of there being fifty other grocers within two miles of his residence, and forty of these not required. Yet, by reason of the great competition in nearly all trades, these vast expenses, which do nothing for the public, are continually incurred. Means misapplied are means lost. The community is just so much the poorer. And we must pronounce the superfluous shopkeepers, those who live by the rents of fine shops, and those who are concerned in the business of advertising beyond what is strictly necessary for the information of the public, as incumbrances on the industry of the country.
One unfortunate concomitant of competition is, that it prompts in the individual trader an idea which places him in a false position towards the general interest. It is the general interest that all things fit for use should be abundant; but when a man is concerned in producing any of those things, he sees it to be for his immediate interest that they should be scarce, because what he has to sell will then bring a greater price. It is the general interest that all useful things should be produced and distributed as cheaply as possible; but each individual producer and distributer feels that the dearer they are, it is the better for him. It is thus that a trade comes to regard itself as something detached from the community; that a man also views his peculiar trading interest as a first principle, to which everything else must give way. It might, indeed, be easily shewn, that whatever is good for the whole community, must be in the long-run beneficial to each member. He either cannot look far enough for that, or he feels himself unable to dispense with the immediate benefit from that which is bad for the public. In short, each trade considers the world as living for it, not it as living for the world—a mistake so monstrous, that there is little reason to wonder at the enormous misexpenditure to which it gives rise.
The idea essentially connected with these false positions, that because there are certain persons in a trade in a particular place, they ought to be there, and that the primary consideration regarding them is how to enable them to continue living by that trade—as if they were fixed there by some decree of Providence—is one of the most perverse and difficult to deal with in political economy. The assertion of any principle ruling to the contrary purpose, seems to the multitude of superficial thinkers as a kind of cruelty to the persons, the severity of the natural law being, by an easy slide of thought, laid to the charge of the mere philosopher who detects and announces its operation. In reality, those are the cruel people who would contentedly see a great number of their fellow-creatures going on from year to year in a misery, which, being brought upon themselves by ignorance, and the want of a right spirit of enterprise, can only be 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
