The church history of many a small place is very much to the point. We see three or four denominational bodies struggling with small congregations, inadequate buildings and general poverty when by uniting they might fill all these lacks simply by saving what they are now spending on duplication. Doctrinal differences are said to keep them apart; but to the non-theological mind these differences are not greater than these that must always exist between thoughtful men in the same religious body. It is pleasant to see an occasional lapse into sanity, shown by the union of such churches and the consequent strengthening and growth of a town’s religious life. Probably it is not too much to say that the whole problem of Christian Unity is but a phase of this general question of duplication and omission. In the business world our two sins flourish like green bay trees. Small villages have two groceries and no hardware store; large cities may be overrun with one trade while there is lack of another. These things ought to adjust themselves, but they do not. One can pick out duplication and omission in the stock of a single institution. On asking for something at a department store recently I was met with the remark, “Isn’t that funny? You are the fifteenth person who has asked for that in the last three days!” The fact was noted as merely curious and interesting and there was apparently no intention of remedying the omission, even by cutting out some of the superfluous styles of neckties. The most flagrant example I know of duplication in the business and industrial world is the duplicate telephone company. A telephone company is a good example of a mutual enterprise; its value to any subscriber depends on the existence of all the other subscribers. If a man could afford to buy up the company and discontinue all the telephones but his own, the value would disappear. Two companies are simply a nuisance, involving duplication of plant with no resulting convenience. The same is not true of gas or water companies, because here one user does not depend on the others. You would get just as good service if the electric company concluded to serve you, and you alone. There is, to be sure, wasteful duplication in these cases also, but in the instance of the telephone it is accompanied with necessary deterioration of service. I suppose I need say little about the existence of our two sins in the household. We are honeycombed with them from the rural dinner table where there are no soup and three kinds of pie, to the housewife who yields to the temptation to buy another evening dress and “can not afford” an outing costume. What we need everywhere is some kind of a Board of Equalization, with autocratic powers, that will rigourously suppress all our duplication and with the money saved supply our omissions for us.