DISTRIBUTING CHARGES 305 



share of the produce for itself far more than it 

 could claim as the cost of its services. In some 

 cases its profits may actually double the price 

 of an article. There is nothing more remarkable 

 in our modern economic conditions than the extra- 

 ordinarily large number of retail shops. Their 

 multiplicity may be of assistance in inducing the 

 public to spend its money. But they are main- 

 tained very largely by the habits of their cus- 

 tomers, who, in defiance of the axioms of political 

 economy, support certain shops, not because 

 they expect better goods or lower prices than 

 elsewhere, but because they have contracted a 

 habit of dealing with them. When so many are 

 selling, individual profits cannot exceed a low 

 average : there is keen competition : this is apt 

 to deaden the appreciation of high morality ; 

 and trade may degenerate into a method of 

 " getting hold of other people's money without 

 getting taken up by the police." 



The rendering of services of satisfactions, that 

 is to say, which do not take a material form are 

 the most obvious of the influences that enable 

 some individuals to appropriate money from 

 others. These are not included in a nation's 

 wealth ; but they comprise nearly all of its higher 

 activities the utilities which we derive from 

 letters, science and art, from religious and secular 

 instruction, from medical assistance everything, 

 in short, which raises life above sensuous enjoy- 

 ment or a struggle for gain. Lawyers and politi- 

 cians may complicate affairs which might be 

 simply transacted, may earn money and credit 

 by appealing to impulses that are not amongst the 

 proudest attributes of humanity ; but it is hardly 

 conceivable that a civilized community could 

 make shift without them. We must be rapidly 

 carried in railways and tramcars to maintain the 



