776 
ANNUAL MEETING. 
no new idea of his ; he believed that gentlemen in the wholesale trade had no business 
sitting at the Council. He had said so before, and he now repeated it, probably for the 
last time, that wholesale gentlemen had better be in their counting-houses instead of 
interfering with'what the retail trade perfectly well understood, or, if they did not, they 
would try. They were too old now to be patronized in that way. He had brought 
this matter forward before, as Mr. Bremridge could bear witness; and, to bring the 
matter to an issue, he believed the document which he had submitted had been laid be¬ 
fore Mr. Flux, but he regretted to find that the Society had no power. The Act of 
Parliament was so worded that they had no power to touch these gentlemen, who were 
not Pharmaceutical Chemists, and consequently any one might go to-morrow and start 
anything they pleased, calling it a Legal Co-operative Store or an Undertakers’ Co¬ 
operative Store if they liked, and then they would double their business, because, after 
killing their clients, they could bury them : by employing some “modified” gentleman, 
and putting on the bottles “ Dispensed for the Civil Service Co-operative Society, 
Limited, 28, Haymarket, by W. J. Jones, Chemist and Druggist,” all difficulty would be 
got over. They might give a man like that about £100 a year, and he would think 
himself well paid; and in that way eight gentlemen with capital might go and swamp 
the whole trade. After all the efforts to ameliorate their condition, and all that sort of 
thing, that was what the Pharmaceutical Society had come to. It was a shadow and 
an illusiou ; and as to the Pharmacy Act, it was evident that anybody could drive a 
coach and four through it. He believed other gentlemen present were prepared to go 
into this matter, and he had simply come down to see that they had fair play; but he 
had been led by the strength of his feeling on the matter to go into it at greater length 
than he had intended. 
Mr. Sciiacht (Clifton) said he understood, from an observation which had been made, 
that this subject would be gone into more fully at a later period, and, therefore, he 
would beg leave, as a country member, to advert to a subject which interested him 
more than this one, although it had, no doubt, its legitimate attractions for gentlemen 
resident in London. He particularly wished to raise a discussion on a question, which 
not only he, but a great number of other members were interested in, viz. the aid 
which the Society afforded to the cause of the scientific education of the body. He 
need not enter into the question of whether it was or was not the duty of the Society 
to engage in this work. The history of the Society showed that every Council, as it 
had succeeded its predecessors, had made this a fundamental part of their operations ; 
and they all knew that a very large sum of money had been annually devoted to this 
purpose. If any corroboration of this statement were required, he need only refer to 
the present Report, which contained several statements on the subject; and in reference 
to them, he would ask leave to quote a few words of his own, his excuse for doing 
which must be, that the figures had been published some six months, and, as far as he 
knew, their accuracy had not been in the least degree challenged. The sentence which 
he was about to quote was read at the last Pharmaceutical Conference, and was to this 
effect:—“ I find upon the authority of the Register lately issued in accordance with the 
provisions of the Pharmacy Act, that there are 10,184 master Chemists and Druggists 
in England and Wales. The proportion which the Assistants and Apprentices bear to 
the principals is a little difficult to determine absolutely, but, from the evidence of a 
few lists I have made of their exact numbers in places of somewhat varied character, I 
come to the conclusion to estimate them as H to 1. This would give the number of 
the Assistants and Apprentices, or the student class of our body, as I shall call them, 
as 13,578. Again, I estimate the average length of time a young man remains in the 
ranks of this class (taking into account the chances of his removal by death, by change 
of occupation, and by promotion to the rank of master) to be about eight years. Hence 
these 13,578 are renewed every eight years, in other wmrds, an average of 1693 fresh 
young men are annually entering the business. In the future, therefore, when matters 
have settled into their normal working, we may expect to have to provide opportunities 
for scientific instruction for about this number (1693) annually. But in the meantime 
it must be remembered, that a large proportion of the existing student class (the 13,578) 
have never yet been scientifically educated, and that they will be pressing for opportu¬ 
nities also. What that proportion may be I have but few data to judge from, but if it 
be only half, then 6789, whose need is urgent, must, for the present, be added to the 
list, raising the number of probable annual applicants to about 3000.” Having read 
