Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/114

104 coöperators who, as a company, carry on, say, a process of manufacture, is more complex as well as more extensive, there is the fact, here chiefly to be noted, that the entire assemblage of industrial structures is, by the addition of these new structures, made more heterogeneous than before. Had all the smaller manufacturing establishments carried on by individuals or firms been destroyed, the contrary might have been alleged; but, as it is, we see that in addition to all the old forms there have come these new forms, making the totality of them more multiform than before. Mr. Leslie further illustrates his interpretation by saying: "Many of the things for sale in a village huckster's shop were formerly the subjects of distinct branches of business in a large town; now the wares in which scores of different retailers dealt are all to be had in great establishments in New York, Paris, and London, which sometimes buy direct from the producers, thus also eliminating the wholesale dealer." Replies akin to the preceding ones are readily made. The first is that wholesale dealers have not been at present eliminated; and can not be so long as the ordinary shopkeepers survive, as they will certainly do. In the smaller places, forming the great majority of places, these vast establishments can not exist; and in them, shopkeepers carrying on business as at present, will continue to necessitate wholesale dealers. Even in large places the same thing will hold. It is only people of a certain class, able to pay ready money and willing to go great distances to purchase, who frequent these large establishments. Those who live from hand to mouth, and those who prefer to buy at adjacent places, will maintain a certain proportion of shops, and the wholesale distributing organization needed for them. Again, we have to note that one of these great stores, such as Whiteley's or Shoolbred's, does not within itself display any advance toward homogeneity or despecialization; for it is made up of many separate departments, with their separate heads, carrying on business substantially separate—all superintended by one owner. It is nothing but an aggregate of shops under one roof instead of under the many roofs covering the side of a street; and exhibits just as much heterogeneity as the shops do when arranged in line instead of massed together. That which it really illustrates is a new form of integration, which is the primary evolutionary process. And then, lastly, comes the fact that the distributing organization of the country, considered as a whole, is by the addition of these establishments made more heterogeneous than before. All the old types of trading concerns continue to exist; and here are new types added, making the entire assemblage of them more varied.

From these objections made by Mr. Leslie, which I have endeavored to show result from misapprehensions, I pass to two others which are to be met by taking account of certain complicating facts liable to be overlooked, Mr. Leslie remarks that "in the early stages of social progress, again, a differentiation takes place, as Mr. Spencer has