Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/342

308 estimated, then a great additional gain is made by the retail dealer selling an inferior article.

Where the number of workmen living on the same spot is large, it may be thought desirable that they should unite together and have an agent, to purchase by wholesale those articles which are most in demand, as tea, sugar, bacon, &c., and to retail them at prices, which will just repay the wholesale cost, together with the expense of the agent who conducts their sale. If this be managed wholly by a committee of workmen, aided perhaps by advice from the master, and if the agent is paid in such a manner as to have himself an interest in procuring good and reasonable articles, it may be a benefit to the workmen: and if the plan succeed in reducing the cost of articles of necessity to the men, it is clearly the interest of the master to encourage it. The master may indeed be enabled to afford them facilities in making their wholesale purchases; but he ought never to have the least interest in, or any connexion with, the profit made by the articles sold. The men, on the other hand, who subscribe to set up the shop, ought not, in the slightest degree, to be compelled to make their purchases there: the goodness and cheapness of the article ought to be their sole inducements.

It may perhaps be objected, that this plan is only employing a portion of the capital belonging to the workmen in a retail trade; and that, without it, competition amongst small shopkeepers will reduce the articles to nearly the same price. This objection would be valid if the objects of consumption required no verification; but combining what has been already