io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Stewart for crushing out so many small dealers are the same 

 parties that say the great curse of society is the number of mid- 

 dle-men it has to carry. If there were anything in this, then 

 Stewart certainly operated in the right direction by getting rid 

 of a portion of the incumbrance ; and he got rid of it in the right 

 way, for he allured the customers to his shop by giving better 

 bargains. Something was saved to buyers when they patronized 

 him. Each buyer carried away a little bonus when he left Stew- 

 art's store. Something better than a chromo was obtained. It 

 was a cent a yard on cashmeres, perhaps, an eighth of a cent on 

 calico, a shaving on tapes, and a trifle on a paper of pins — just 

 enough to get so much of the trade of the small fellows that they 

 must retire. 



Of course it follows that, if he still made too much profit, then 

 he ought to have sold cheaper yet, so as to have driven out 

 another lot of traders. But when we say " ought " in such a case, 

 we must have some rule of a practical nature by which to deter- 

 mine the matter. This we do not have. We know that this mer- 

 chant sold goods at so little profit that he ruined hundreds of 

 competitors, and compelled their retirement from the field. Shall 

 we say that they ought to have sold any lower ? How can we ask 

 him to sell at a profit on which the average trader breaks and 

 starves ? Shall we say that he did so much business that he was 

 able to do it for less ? But that does not meet the point. That is 

 only saying he should have done less, and not that he should have 

 done it cheaper. Society had no claim on him in this regard, and 

 would have made nothing had it tried to enforce any. Had so- 

 ciety asked him to • sell less, all the goods not sold by him must 

 have been sold by others, and at as high or higher rates. So 

 society would not have been relieved of its burden of parting 

 with so much of its product as was represented in the commis- 

 sions or profits taken by Stewart. 



But there is another view of it that brings us to the same con- 

 clusion. Stewart was in business for about forty years, and for 

 many years sold twenty millions of goods per year. Had he sold 

 but fifteen millions per year at a profit of five per cent, and in- 

 vested the profit with his usual sagacity, he would have been 

 worth more than thirty millions at the end of his forty years. 

 That he left but thirty millions proves that his profit was not over 

 five per cent on the average. The margin for labor to gain from 

 is, therefore, in the neighborhood of five per cent, because Stewart 

 has proved that the ordinary man can not part with more than 

 that and continue in business. In other words, business stops 

 when the margin goes down much below that rate. 



There are some lines of business in which the profit is at times 

 more than five per cent, but in the long run the average can not 



