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BEITISH PHAEMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
noted for special branches of commercial enterprise, not by accident, but because 
resident men of genius have turned natural local capabilities into practical 
advantage. 
Now, as the cost of production must necessarily vary, so also must the cost of 
the thing produced. This variation is not limited to extensive commerce, but it, 
runs through an infinity of minute particulars, and the truth of the general fact 
will become more apparent the more it is studied in detail. 
With regard to the variation in the cost of supplying power, it is absolutely 
regulated by local circumstances. There is not a single large pharmaceutical 
establishment in town or country that cannot supply some one particular article 
more advantageously than its neighbours. 
3. In England there is an intrinsic as well as a commercial difference in the 
value of the preparations offered by different pharmaceutists. One man builds 
a laboratory and spends time and money, to which he adds whatever skill he may 
possess in selecting the best form of apparatus for making extracts ; he gets a 
sample of Conium maculatum^ strips and rejects the stalk, presses out the juice 
from the flowers and leaves, and thus obtains an exquisite, though, as far as 
amount goes, a very unproductive article. 
Another writes an order to some cheap export wholesale, buys extract of 
hemlock ready made, and sells at a lower price than that at which the first 
could make it: both preparations bear the same label, but both are surely not 
to be included in one universal tariflu I prefer, however, simple and every-day 
illustrations. Take powdered cuttle-fish as an example. A few manufacturers 
reject the whole of the outside hard shell, using only the inner soft interior sub¬ 
stance. The product is light, soft and delicate to the touch, and white. On one 
unfortunate occasion I was compelled to order a few pounds ready made ; it was 
yellowish and heavy; it was likewise—sent back. A second time the buying 
experiment was repeated from necessity. The powder forwarded was white, but 
heavy and flinty to the touch, evidently the whole cuttle-fish bone finely ground. 
These three specimens all bear the same label, are all sent out as powdered 
cuttle-fish ; are they on any principle of ethics to be retailed at the same price ? 
The first sample is worth twice the third, and three times the second sample. 
It therefore, as a practical pharmaceutist who has to get his living, refuse 
at once and utterly to join in the universal tariff. 
4. In England there are diametrically opposite modes of trade, influenced, 
often determined by locality. One man, in the roar of the full tide of a great 
thoroughfare, has a rapid retail and comparatively little on his books ; another 
(and we suppose them equal) lives in the extreme dreary grandeur of the squares. 
One turns his money over perhaps four times a year, the other will not receive 
more than a fourth of his income during the current year. Are those two men 
to charge alike ? Can they, I put it to your common sense, adopt one universal 
tariff ? 
5. A pharmaceutist, wishing that his expenditure should not exceed his in¬ 
come, goes of his own accord into a cheap neighbourhood. He there gets a good 
large house, with space and much convenience, at a very moderate rate, lie 
sells accordingly—his own immediate neighbourhood requires an approximative 
profit. Another pharmaceutist, for business purposes, takes an expensive house, 
where his taxes are about equal to the other’s rent. His own immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood expects, and practically insists on a certain higher price. Are these 
two men to sell at the same rate ? In the first case, too high a price would ensure 
rejection, and in the second, too low a price would accomplish the same result. 
Until we all stand together on one educational basis, and are prepared to 
make things according to one recognized standard (which we never shall) ; until 
we can equalize our own social position, our rents and taxes, and likewise 
equalize the pecuniary position of our eustomers; and until we are further, to- 
some extent, protected in our trade rights, there can be no universal tariff. 
