who travels through rural Ireland is the immense number of little shops.
They are scattered along the highways and at the crossroads; and where
there are a few families together in what is called a village, the
number of little shops crowded round these consumers is almost
incredible. What are all these little shops doing? They are supplying
the farmers with domestic requirements: with tea, sugar, flour, oil,
implements, vessels, clothing, and generally with drink. Every one of
them almost is a little universal provider. Every one of them has its
own business organization, its relations with wholesale houses in the
greater towns. All of them procure separately from others their bags of
flour, their barrels of porter, their stocks of tea, sugar, raisins,
pots, pans, nails, twine, fertilizers, and what not, and all these
things come to them paying high rates to the carriers for little loads.
The trader's cart meets them at the station, and at great expense the
necessaries of life are brought together. In the world-wide
amalgamation of shoe-makers into boot factories, and smithies into
ironworks, which is going on in Europe and America, these little shops
have been overlooked. Nobody has tried to amalgamate them, or to
economize human effort or cheapen the distribution of the necessaries of
life. This work of distribution is carried on by all kinds of little
traders competing with each other, pulling the devil by the tail; doing
the work economically, so far as they themselves are concerned, because
they must, but doing it expensively for the district because they cannot
help it. They do not serve Ireland well. The genius of amalgamation and
organization cannot afford to pass by these shops, which spring up in
haphazard fashion, not because the country needs them, but because
farmers or traders have children to be provided for. To the ignorant
this is the easiest form of trade, and so many are started in life in
one of these little shops after an apprenticeship in another like it.
These numerous competitors of each other do not keep down prices. They