It must not, however, be assumed that improved methods of production yield their full benefit through competition to the consuming public. On the contrary, much of the economy of machine-production fails to exercise its full influence upon retail prices. There are two chief reasons for this failure. To one of these adequate attention has been already drawn, the growth of definite forms of capitalist monopoly, which secure at some point or other in the production of a commodity, as higher profits, that which under free competition would pass to the consumer through lower shop prices. The second consists in the abnormal growth of the distributive classes, whose multiplication is caused by the limitation which the economy of machinery imposes upon the amount of capital and labour which can find profitable employment in the extractive and manufacturing processes. A larger and larger number of industrial workers obtain a living by a subdivision of the work of distribution carried to a point far beyond the bounds of social utility. For, on the one hand, when competition of manufacturers and transporters is more and more confined to a small number of large businesses which, because their united power of production largely transcends the consumption at profitable prices, are driven into closer competition, a larger amount of labour is continually engaged in the attempt of each firm to secure for itself the largest share of business at the expense of another firm. On the other hand, shut out from effective or profitable competition in the manufacturing industries, a larger amount of capital and labour seeks to engage in those departments of the distributive trade where new-comers have a better chance, and where by local settlement or otherwise they have an opportunity of sharing the amount of distribution that is to be done. Hence a fall of wholesale prices is usually not reflected in a corresponding fall of retail prices, for competition in retail trade, as J.S. Mill clearly recognised, "often, instead of lowering prices, merely divides the gains of the high price among a greater number of dealers."[238]