No one who observes the trend of things, however, can have failed to note how, from both sides, the middleman, quâ middleman, is liable to be squeezed out. These very large retailers tend more and more to become, little by little, manufacturers instead of merely agents for the manufactures of other people. Very often they are actually forced to this by the difficulty of obtaining a regular supply of goods of satisfactory quality from the existing factories. One of the largest companies doing a miscellaneous retailing business has an enormous estate in the neighbourhood of London covered with orchards where fruit is grown for sale and for jam-making; and it has factories of various kinds dotted all round the Metropolis, though a few years ago it was a simple trading concern which manufactured nothing. On the other hand, large manufacturers in many trades (of which the boot trade is an example which must have come under the notice of every reader) are tending to open retail shops of their own in favourable localities, so as to obtain the retailer's commission as well as the manufacturer's profit. Evidently these large manufacturer-shopkeepers are more likely to be extensive advertisers than small one-shop retailers. Another circumstance which will tend to the increase of advertising is already apparent in the growing tendency of the public to prefer branded or packed commodities before bulk goods. Such groceries as tea, oatmeal and the like are more and more purchased in packets bearing a manufacturer's name or trade-mark, instead of being purchased from bulk and wrapped up by the grocer. The obvious reason is that by this means a housewife can secure a greater uniformity of quality. She finds that she likes a certain manufacturer's oatmeal better than any other, and always buys it; whereas if she bought bulk-oatmeal she would have the product now of one mill, now of another, and these products would vary. The only way in which a manufacturer can call attention to his speciality is to advertise it. The immediate consequence of this movement is the degradation of the retailer, who ceases to be the custodian (so to speak) of his customers' interest and becomes a mere hander-out of packed specialities. It is not very likely that every manufacturer of such specialities will become a retailer with shops everywhere; but it is practically certain that trusts will be formed on a sort of co-operative principle by combinations of manufacturers, who will divide among themselves the expense of organisation and obtain the whole profit without having to share it with any middleman. And in many departments of commerce the elimination of the retailer will be secured by the utilisation of improved transport, orders being received at the works by letter or telephone and executed direct from manufacturer to consumer. Such business can only be stimulated through advertisement, and the newspaper of the future constitutes