THE FUTURE OF SHOPKEEPING.
THE public laughs at the evidence which the tradesmen are giving before the Committee of Inquiry into the Store system, and it must be owned not without some reason. There is something almost comic in the helpless rage with which the unhappy witnesses denounce their successful rivals, the pro- found ignorance they display of the first principles of economics, and the naivete' with which they admit that they regard under- selling as almost a moral offence. When a respectable chemist is asked if he would be surprised to hear that the chemist's de- partment of the Civil Service Stores made up prescriptions at charges sixty per cent. lower than his own, and answers that "he should not be surprised at anything the Stores might do," and suggests the existence of a conspiracy among civilians to suppress the middle-classes, it is difficult to avoid a smile ; but there is serious matter behind the wrath which dictates so )nal a propos an answer. Nothing comes out so strongly in the trades- men's evidence as the depth and genuineness of their alarm, and from all the information which reaches us, it is exceedingly well founded. The wholesale dealers are killing the retailers. The effect of the new system of distribution in the districts as yet attacked by it, is much more serious than the general public has hitherto believed. They see multitudes of shops, and think there is room for the Stores and for the shops together, but that is not quite the case. The Stores do not, of course, obtain a monopoly of custom, or anything like it, but they do absorb just so much of it as to make the difference between profit and loss, and they do force down prices over a whole range of articles in general demand until, as the tradesmen who deal in these articles say, they "can- not make a living." Tradesmen of the very best position are finding themselves compelled to make reductions varying from ten to twenty per cent. without being able to enforce cash pay- ments in return ; and these reductions are often not recouped by any large extension of business. Residents in West London have been drowned of late in circulars from shops of excellent stand- ing, offering large reductions, which we must say, in justice to those who issue them, are usually bond fide, the cheating which the witnesses before the Committee allege being either absent, or confined to the quality of the goods. The per-centage, that is, is certainly not put on in order to be taken off. A reduction of this kind is heavily felt, even by the man "in a large way," though he makes it in hope of more business ; while it com- pletely ruins the little tradesman, who, with perhaps £1,000 in his business, has to over-house himself, provide himself with means of delivery, and keep more assistants than he can find full work for. He has no chance whatever of taking four or five houses, throwing them together, and doing business upon "Store,"—that is, upon wholesale principles. He loses just that ten per cent, which he reserved for the maintenance of himself and his family, and might just as well close his shop, as, indeed, he is doing. The agents who sell shops say there never were so many to let in West London before, one very fair authority declaring that a distinct reduction is taking place in shop-rents, as heavy as that which has occurred in farms. And apparently the movement is only just beginning. The Stores are multiplying rapidly, and multiplying- their separate depart- ments, too. They seem to have overcome their great difficulty, that of selling perishable articles, and will, we believe, very soon get rid of their impeding rules about delivery, the profit on wholesale trade being sufficient to allow of delivery at a low rate per parcel. One of them, for example, has attacked the butchers. The managers of this concern promise to deliver meat three times a day, and they issue circulars which, if the meat sold is only as good as they declare it to be, must be fatal to the butchers. Indeed, even if the meat is not the absolutely best—and it may be, for aught we know, —they will hit the butchers cruelly, for not one shop in ten can live by best meat alone. The reduction in this case is enormous ; the best lamb, for example, being offered at 25 per cent. less than the neighboining first-class butchers will sell it at. It is offered at elevenpence, in a district where everybody who buys lamb pays fifteenpence. That is an attraction for all but the wealthy or the fastidious which is irresistible ; and the fastidious and the wealthy alone cannot maintain the butchers, who nuust get rid of second-class joints and supply second-rate customers. The same establishment is either about to attack the poulterers, or has commenced doing so, and the reductions in that trade will be even heavier; while a West-End Billings- gate, on Store principles, is by no means beyond the reach of possibility. There is, in fact, scarcely any article which can- not be sold in this way. Nor is this all the poor shopkeepers have to endure. The game is as open to private capitalists as to civil servants, and they are coming in. If the demand for any article can be increased to wholesale proportions, through the multitude of customers attracted, wholesale prices will pay very well, and shopkeepers with the needful capital and organ- isation, and above all, buildings—for that is the most pressing difficulty—can virtually become "Stores." Firms like Messrs. Shoolbred—whom we mention because they are too well known to be advertised by comment—add all manner of departments to their business, and virtually set up Stores, which are as destructive to pettier tradesmen as the Co-operative establishments, or indeed more so, because they do not bother themselves with hard-and-fast rules about ready money, and only insist on cash when not quite sure of payment on demand. That firm, to give only one illustration, at this moment are sell ing first-rate" pressed corned beef," cooked and without bone, at Sd. a pound, that is, at about two-thirds of the price at which one's own cook, dealing with a good butcher, can prepare it in one's own house. Competition like that is final for the little men, and we see no reason whatever to doubt that it will ex- tend, until a great revolution is accomplished,---until the work of distribution, as it is called, that is, the work of the inter- mediary between the manufacturer, or importer or producer, and the consumer, is done almost exclusively by wholesale firms, operating on the wholesale scale, and at very nearly wholesale prices. It pays the manufacturer to sell a ton of nails at half the retail price, and if the distributor can sell a sufficiency of hundredweights to make up a ton, it will pay him, too. He only wants, say, two per cent. on his money, if he can turn it over six times a year. There are, of course, businesses in which individual taste is everything, or individual capacity, —Bond Street, for instance, is beyond Store competition—but the immense mass of ordinary distribution which maintains the entire rank and file of the shopkeeping army can, it is clear, be done in the wholesale way. As it is also clear that the public likes that way, likes its economy, likes the variety offered, likes very big shops in fact, we do not see what, in the long-run, the small dis- tributors are to do but take themselves away. They may growl or groan, but the vast army of purchasers will pay no heed to them.
The process is no injury to the State, of course, but rather a benefit. A needless and very expensive system of inter- mediation is abolished, the consumer benefits, and there is more money left with purchasers to buy fresh products. The obliterated tradesmen will probably earn as much as over- lookers for the great shops, and their assistants can serve in stores as easily as in retail establishments. But we confess we think the tradesmen who are to be swept away are a little hardly dealt with by public opinion. They have been very convenient servants, and nobody who has benefited by their services cares one jot what becomes of them. When a hundred peasant freeholders in Cumberland are bought out by a great landlord, and become bailiffs or labourers, all observers mourn, and say so many good and independent citizens have been obliterated, to the gain possibly of the wealth, but to the loss of the character of the community, which requires not only men, but men who are independent, and have a hope before them. But when a hundred shopkeepers are absorbed by one great Store, nobody professes to mind, or rather the majority secretly rejoice, and say they should not have charged so much for the articles they sold. Yet the shopkeepers were independ- ent, like the freeholders, had every inducement to save money, displayed the industry which comes of ownership, and performed all the duties of citizens, as well as any class in the country. Their position offered a chance to all worthy journeymen of which they were eager to avail themselves, and their shops were to millions the only open roads to either wealth or independence. The disappearance of the small establishments, in fact, destroys the hopes of a class numbering tens of thousands, and compels them either to remain in servitude all their lives, or to turn to occupations for which they are not fit. Mr. Spink, chemist and druggist, talks nonsense, when he hints that there may be a conspiracy to suppress the middle-classes ; but it is evident that if the process goes on—and it must go on—a section of the
middle-class, and a very valuable one, will speedily disappear, and that, pro taut°, the variety of our community will be diminished. A dozen Stores will supply a medium town with everything, and economy in such towns being a rule of life, a matter of pride among housewives, and almost a moral duty, five hundred shops, after a losing struggle protracted till their owners are ruined, will quietly disappear. It is all for good, no doubt, but shopkeepers cannot be expected to see it, and as they have performed a service in their time, and are a con- venience even now, we think ridicule may be spared. Never laugh at the dying,—even if they are enemies.
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