[Sidenote: MODERN CONDITIONS RENDER IT MORE DIFFICULT THAN FORMERLY FOR SMALL MERCANTILE HOUSES TO SUCCEED.] Whatever be the operations of speculators who employ little or no capital of their own, or the nature of the transactions of those who risk what they have belonging to them by consigning goods of various descriptions to distant markets in the future, there can never be the same gluts that have characterized the trading of former times. It would, indeed, seem that the commerce of the world must by degrees be carried on more and more by a smaller number of powerful merchants, relatively to the increase of populations and the growth of commerce, and less and less by a greater number of small weak houses. The nature of the system which is growing up under the new order of things will preclude from serious competition any but those who can afford from the commencement to start upon somewhat the same principles of action as those who already carry on and regulate the trade of the world. What chance, for instance, can a man have who starts in the Manchester goods trade, with a view to shipments to the great foreign and colonial markets, unless he can be in a position, by means of his telegraphic information from all the necessary quarters, not only to avoid sending from Manchester, goods to any particular quarter where the market is unfavourable, but also to divert a shipment already on the passage from its intended destination to some other point where, in the meantime, prices have risen? As the system by which the interchange of commodities is effected becomes more and more perfected, and as the division of labour settles itself down into a well-defined science by the good and skilful workmen concentrating their efforts, and by the bad and unfit labourers being forced to abandon what they are unsuited for, so will the demand for all the great luxuries and necessities of life be supplied more completely on the joint stock principle. We see this in all directions growing up under our eyes. Wherever a large demand exists for any service, such, for instance, as transport, or for any article of use or consumption, there will the means of supplying both be organized. We have seen it in armies, in fleets, and in the government of countries for centuries; and we have been watching it for forty years in, perhaps, the most astonishing instance there is, viz., in railways. Formerly everybody drove in his own coach about the country, now nobody does. We have seen it for years past in banking, which, from the nature of the business, would be the most easily reformed upon the joint stock principle. It has also been working and making inroads upon commercial houses with a force which in the end will be irresistible, and which from year to year makes it more difficult for small firms with small capitals, to hold their own against the larger organisations, just as it is out of the question for any private person now to start a bank.