So long as a population is scattered into groups in small towns, and hampered by difficulty and expense in transportation, there is an evident advantage in the retail-shop system. But we can hardly with convenience remain a nation of shopkeepers in the present and future state of concentration and with cheapened transport. It is only necessary to observe the different ways in which we supply ourselves with commodities, according to where we live, in order to understand the tendencies at work. In a village remote from any large town there are generally one or two general shops, at which a highly miscellaneous collection of merchandise is handled. The smaller the village the more miscellaneous the stock kept at a single trading establishment. In a small town the shops differentiate themselves more: but they still cross the boundary lines of trade, and one gets tobacco at the chemist's and goes to the draper's for writing materials and books. When we come to towns somewhat larger, trades keep more to themselves, and it is often possible to find a place where there are no miscellaneous shops at all, except those owned by the industrial co-operative societies now so common and so useful to the thriftier artisans. It is only when we enter the largest towns and cities of all that we find large shops divided into departments and again selling almost everything under one roof. The conditions in these large towns are an index to what is likely to occur a hundred years hence: because (as has already been seen) towns will certainly grow, and the population will become more concentrated, while, even where improved facilities for travel enable men to live at a great distance from their work, the same facilities will enable their wives to do their shopping in the centres of commerce. Consequently, except for a few highly perishable commodities, such as milk, butter and the like, small shopkeepers in residential neighbourhoods will be driven out of business, as they are in fact already being driven out of it in the suburbs and dependencies of all large cities. It is always possible for a large miscellaneous trader to sell at a smaller percentage of profit than a trader in a single class of merchandise: and by his bulkier purchases the former is also able to start with a lower cost price, and thus he is in every way better situated to meet the demand for cheapness. He can also meet the demand for convenience, because when he is getting almost the whole trade of a family, even at some little distance, he can afford to arrange for the transportation of goods in ways convenient to the purchaser. Thus the small shopkeeper will lose custom in every way and the large shopkeeper will gain custom. But there is still a middleman. We have not yet begun to see how he is to be eliminated, but only how he is to be limited in his numbers while being individually pampered with increased trade.