624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for American business enterprise I believe to be the organization 

 of retail distribution, wbich, among other economies, can rid itself 

 of the expense of solicitation. We have already great bazaars 

 which combine the variety of a country store by assembling un- 

 der one roof the special departments of ordinary city warehouses : 

 is it not possible to organize for such marts stated circles of cus- 

 tomers, on whose steady trade the proprietors can rely — circles 

 sufficiently large for adequate support, independently of showy 

 premises or other advertisement ? Some such organization could 

 offer customers lowered prices in consideration for their agree- 

 ment to forego the luxury of buying at random. Some such im- 

 provement in retailing would make it possible to introduce certain 

 advantages of British co-operation among a public who prefer 

 individual enterprise to board-management. A buyer in Eoch- 

 dale or London hears from a co-operative salesman the exact 

 truth regarding the quality of his flannel, coffee, or gloves. The 

 salesman has no interest in deceit, and money is expended to the 

 best possible advantage. The profit which attends this replacing 

 an antagonism of interests by an identification has been remark- 

 ably exemplified in New England by the factories mutual-insur- 

 ance companies. These concerns insure more than four hundred 

 million dollars' worth of mill-property, at one fourth the cost of 

 non-co-operative underwriting. 



Briefly to summarize them, the chief evils attendant upon com- 

 petition are those which grow out of ignorance concerning what 

 competitors are doing in a given field ; the excessive cost of solicita- 

 tion in its various forms and consequences ; the absence of respon- 

 sibility when business is in the hands of small firms ; and lastly, 

 the immense tax commonly included in the prices of retail sale. 

 It was in the business of transportation that the losses attend- 

 ing unrestricted competition were first severely felt, and first 

 sought to be remedied. Shippers, by adroitly playing one line off 

 against another, were able to lower rates much beyond fair lim- 

 its, especially when ill-considered rivalry or the profits of promo- 

 tion and construction had created unnecessary roads. To prevent 

 the recurrence of costly and sometimes ruinous tariff wars, agree- 

 ments as to rates were made — only to be broken whenever it suited 

 the interests of any one of the parties to do so. This experience 

 at last led to the device of the pool, an ingenious attempt to retain 

 the beneficial features of competition while discarding its evils. 

 A pool, let us say, comprises four trunk-lines connecting Chicago 

 and New York ; their business for a certain period prior to the 

 formation of the pool is ascertained to have been in the propor- 

 tions of thirteen, eighteen, twenty-eight, and forty-one per cent. 

 Freight is then apportioned in these ratios ; but if the expressed 

 desires of shippers would vary this allotment, it is maintained. 



