Thorstein Veblen
FARM LABOR FOR THE PERIOD OF THE WAR

"Farm Labour and the Country Towns", (memorandum für Statistical Division 
of Food Administration, 1918), published as: "Farm Labour for the Period of 
the War", The Public, Vol. XXI, July 13, 1918, pp. 882-885; July 20, 1918, 
pp. 918-922; July 27, 1918, pp. 947-952; Aug., 3, 1918, pp. 981-985
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I.
The Great War has thrown an unexampled strain on this country's labor 
force. All industrial undertakings are suffering from the drain on their 
labor supply, and from the disturbance which always comes on with such a 
shortage and redistribution of labor. The farm industry of the grain states 
has its share in this hardship along with the rest. But there is the 
difference that grain growing is, just now, a primary requirement, 
indispensable, beyond any other branch of industry. The fortunes of the 
Great War visibly turn on the American grain-grower's ability to feed the 
fighting nations. If the American grain supply falls below the minimum 
necessary to keep America's allies in fighting trim, then the victory will 
go to the German Empire with all that it may involve. If a reasonable 
sufficiency of American grain continues to be delivered in Europe as 
required, then the German Empire will go down to irretrievable defeat; and 
it will presumably be taken off the map by agreement between democratic 
Europe and the farmers and workmen of America.
By a combination of circumstances, unexampled and largely unforeseen, the 
chances of success or failure have come to depend immediately on the supply 
of shipping and of foodstuffs; and by force of the same circumstances 
America's part in the supply of both has been thrown into the foreground, 
as indispensable to the successful prosecution of the war. Of the two the 
increase of shipping is the more immediately urgent; but it is also the 
part which can effectually be pushed to a working sufficiency by concerted 
efforts. The need of shipping can be met in some tolerable measure by 
drawing on the available materials and consistently pushing the work in 
hand; and, indeed, it appears that the measures required to this end have 
at last been taken and are bringing the required output.
The production of foodstuffs is a somewhat different matter. It depends on 
the seasons, and the rate of production cannot be speeded up beyond the 
rate at which the seasons revolve. So that it becomes a question of how 
large a volume of output can be turned out within the run of the season and 
by use of the resources that are already employed. In effect, a limit has 
already been set to this Year's production; a limit which may be 
approximated, but not passed. There may be some slight qualification to be 
made in this broad statement, but it will have to be allowed to stand as 
substantially correct. No appreciable increase of acreage or soil fertility 
is to be looked for, and there can be no substantial change in the methods 
of cultivating and handling the crops. And it is to be noted that in 
American farming the production of other foodstuffs than the grain crops 
depends, on the whole and with slight exceptions, on the yield of the grain 
crops.
In the last resort American farming is primarily grain-farming; from which 
it follows that the American production of foodstuffs rests in the main on 
the grain-crops of the Middle West; which in turn centers in the grain-
growing prairie states. So that, by a singular turn of events, the 
prosecution of the Great War has come to depend on the season's production 
in the prairie states, more immediately and more critically than on any 
other one factor. And as the situation now stands, with the crops committed 
to the soil and the weather, substantially all that can be done by taking 
thought is to take care that there will be a sufficient labor force of the 
right kind to take care of the crops and to see that nothing goes to waste 
out of what the season brings forth.
It has been said that there is no scarcity of foodstuffs to be looked for 
during the coming crop year; that the prospective harvest, according to the 
most reliable estimates, promises to be sufficient to meet all the needs of 
the Americans and their allies throughout the coming year, with reasonable 
economy. But this appraisal of the situation appears to take account of 
present rather than prospective needs. It overlooks the fact that the needs 
both of the Americans and o f their allies are bound to be greater during 
the coming year than ever before; due to a larger consumption by the forces 
in the field and by those auxiliary forces of man power whose work is 
indispensable to the support of the forces immediately engaged in military 
operations - larger by a very considerable amount than the necessary 
consumption of the same persons would be at home and under the ordinary 
conditions of the day's work. It also overlooks the added cost of 
transportation - as counted in terms of consumption - involved in feeding 
the same number of persons at a distance. It would be a safe underestimate 
of the case to say that every addition of one man to the nation's fighting 
forces draws at least two men from the home occupations of the country; and 
it may also safely be said that the need of foodstuffs for the support of 
the men under arms will be twice as large, man for man, as the necessary 
consumption of the same men at home under ordinary conditions.
Meanwhile the supply of farm labor is subject to a steady drain - directly 
by men enlisting or being drafted into the army or navy, whether from the 
farms or from the sources from which farm-hands are habitually procured, 
and indirectly by the like demands of the other industries necessary to the 
prosecution of the war. This flow of labor from the farms and the farming 
states is nothing sudden or spectacular, but it is unceasing and it is 
forever on the increase. Every increase of the American forces in the 
field, and every extension of the war industries, brings an additional 
drain on the available labor supply; and the grain states are subject to 
this drain as much or more than any other section of the country's 
industry.
It has been said, or rather it has been shrewdly argued in certain 
quarters, that there is actually no embarrassing shortage of labor in the 
grain states today. It is argued that what is spoken of as a shortage of 
labor is in reality only a faulty distribution of the available supply, and 
that this can easily be remedied by such measures of publicity and 
management as will place the idle workmen where they are needed for work to 
be done. There is doubtless a modicum of truth in this contention, but it 
does not go far to correct the known difficulties which now face the farm 
situation in the grain states. It would perhaps not do to say that, in 
effect, it amounts to prevarication so far as concerns the question of 
farm-hands in the grain states, but it is also difficult to avoid the 
impression that this contention is put forward by interested parties 
speaking in behalf of a certain vested interest among the labor 
organisations.
But whatever may be the state of the case in this respect today, the labor 
supply is constantly dwindling and the need is growing. The demand for 
foodstuffs, and particularly for grain, is increasing and is bound to go on 
increasing. And it is time to look ahead, for the Great War is not yet 
finished. The reason why the war is not yet finished is, very simply, that 
the American people have not yet gone to work to finish it. They have not 
yet been willing effectually to make the war a joint enterprise and to go 
to work in a joint effort, at the cost of such a disturbance of private 
interests as will unavoidably be involved in bringing the war to a 
conclusion of a kind that the Americans will tolerate. The American people 
have failed to bear their part in the conduct of the war, not because they 
are unwilling or unable to bear the burden, but because they have been 
unable to make up their mind to disturb the vested interests that stand in 
the way of any effectual joint effort. The vested interests are stubbornly 
unwilling to submit to any measures that will leave them insecure or that 
will disturb the traffic from which they derive their income; and among 
these vested interests are to be counted certain corporate organisations of 
labor, as well as the business concerns with whom the labor organisations 
habitually deal. And yet it is sufficiently evident to any disinterested 
observer that if the war is to be won it will have to be at the cost of 
such derangement of the vested interests, whether of labor or of capital, 
as may be involved in any unreserved joint use of all available resources, 
including the nation's man power wherever it is to be found and regardless 
of private interests that may stand in the way.
As a working force, as a going concern engaged in the prosecution of the 
war for democracy, the American people is made up of the American farmers 
and the American workmen. The vested interests are sections and fractions 
of the community who are vested with something in the way of a customary 
claim to a preferred share in the community's joint product. Experience 
teaches that such a vested preference will be surrendered only under 
pressure of necessity, only when its retention involves palpable risk of 
its total loss. The work now in hand is work for the American farmers and 
workmen. The destiny of this nation, and of the other democratic nations as 
well, rests on the work of these two; and it all resolves itself finally 
into a question of teamwork between these two free constituents of the 
American people. What the vested interests will do toward that end is, by 
and large, a question of what they will be compelled to put up with at the 
hands of the farmers and workmen.
Meantime, the beginning of wisdom in the prosecution of the war is the 
growing of grain; and the next grave consideration is the provision of 
shipping. Both of these call for work and for a labor force to do the work; 
and, indeed, both of them call for skilled labor, each after its kind. The 
great and final need in any of the great industries is always skilled 
labor; and grain-farming is no exception to the rule. Among those persons 
who know anything about the matter it is well known that any untrained 
city-bred man who is taken on as a farm-hand is not worth his keep during 
his first year on the farm; and he will have to be quite exceptional - as, 
e.g., a trained machinist or teamster - if he is to be worth much more than 
his keep during his second year. The call of the farm is for skilled labor 
- skilled and specialised. Any capable  farm-hand is a trained workman. He 
must, in effect, have had several years of special training, such as will 
amount to an apprenticeship of several years' duration.
This special training is not to be acquired suddenly, by attending a 
suitable night school; but it is also not lost suddenly or altogether by 
those farm-hands and farm boys who have shifted into other occupations. One 
such farm-bred workman who is now employed in some other occupation is 
worth an indefinite number of equally stout and equally intelligent men who 
have never had the benefit of farm training. The like rule applies with 
nearly equal force to newcomers from the agricultural countries of Europe 
and Asia, where the extensive methods of American prairie farming are not 
in use. These Europeans and Asiatics - Greeks, Sicilians, Portuguese, 
Dutch, Lowland Chinese - are capital farmers in their own way; but they are 
not competent to produce wheat, corn, barley, rye, milk, butter, pork, 
under the conditions offered by the American prairie states. Here they 
would be rated as "newcomers," and there would be a doubt as to whether 
they are worth their keep.
To any one who is familiar with the great grain states and the many country 
towns scattered over the prairie region, it is evident that these country 
towns contain a supply of labor suitable for use on the neighboring farms; 
either immediately or with a short allowance of time to get them back into 
form. These American country towns consist mainly of retail concerns of 
many kinds, and retail professional men who help take care of the interests 
of the retail concerns that make up the town. The retail concerns are very 
numerous and of many kinds, engaged in buying farm products and forwarding 
them to the central markets or in selling and distributing all kinds of 
necessary supplies to the farm population, together with any superfluities 
which they may be able to induce the farm population to buy.
II.
The country town is an organisation of business concerns engaged in buying 
things from the farmers in order to sell at an advance to the central 
markets, and in buying things from the central markets in order to sell at 
an advance to the farmers. The country town is an organisation of 
"middlemen," and it is out of this difference between the buying price and 
the selling price that the entire town gets its living, together with 
whatever its inhabitants are able to lay up. The rest of the town depends 
on the traffic of its business men who buy and sell and make a profit in 
buying and selling.
The variety of these retail business concerns is very considerable. Not 
including professional men, such as lawyers and clergymen, who get a living 
indirectly out of the general traffic, the list will run something as 
follows: groceries, drygoods, notions, boots and shoes, clothing, 
millinery, hardware, laundry, livery, harness, vehicles, jewelry, 
implements and machinery, grain buyers, stock buyers, express and transfer 
companies, banks, drugs, lumber, coal, bakeries, meat markets, dairies, 
hotels and boarding houses, cigar stores, candy kitchens, furniture, seed 
and feed stores. For any ordinary country town of, say, ten thousand 
inhabitants, this would not be a complete list; but it includes the greater 
number of those special business pursuits that are considered indispensable 
to the traffic of buying and selling, and necessary to the comfort of the 
town's inhabitants.
There is always more or less duplication among these retail concerns - more 
or less, but usually a great deal. In such lines as groceries, coal, 
drygoods, banks, drugs, e.g., the number of concerns actually engaged will 
sometimes run as high as ten or twenty times the number required to take 
care of the traffic; and in these lines it seldom amounts to less than four 
or five times the number needed. A prairie town, county seat, of ten or 
twelve thousand will be found to support forty groceries, twelve coal 
yards, seven lumber yards, nine drug stores, ten banks, six hardware 
stores, an indefinite number of stock buyers, lawyers, real estate and 
insurance agents, clergymen and detachable politicians, who pick up a 
livelihood out of the screenings. In some lines the duplication, and the 
consequent waste of work, may be relatively slight, as, e.g., in express 
companies, meat markets, or laundries, which are likely to be local 
agencies of larger concerns located at some larger center.
Indeed, the extent of this duplication of retail establishments varies a 
good deal, not only from one trade to another, but also from place to 
place. There appears, on the whole, to be more extensive duplication among 
retail concerns in the older settled parts of the prairie states, and 
perhaps more toward the south than toward the north. As near as a general 
statement can be made to apply to the grain states - the corn belt and the 
wheat region - it would perhaps do to say that this class of wasteful 
duplication will foot up to about three fourths of all the equipment and 
workmen employed. It might appear on closer examination that this estimate 
is too high; that the wasteful use of men and equipment due to an excessive 
number of retail concerns in the country towns will not run as high as 
seventy-five percent of the total; but any deliberate survey of the known 
facts cannot well avoid placing the estimate of such waste nearer three 
fourths than one half.
It is also true that the returns on investment in this retail trade will 
not ordinarily be found to run excessively high, as things commonly go. The 
rate of profits appears to vary widely, all the way from an extremely high 
percentage - over one hundred percent in some instances - to a vanishing 
point among the less fortunate concerns, who will sometimes be found doing 
business at a loss, and who then presently end in insolvency. On an average 
the returns on investment may be quite "reasonable"; but the number of 
concerns among which these "reasonable returns" are divided is much larger 
than is necessary to take care of the trade in the most economical manner. 
"Reasonable returns" on something more than twice the investment for which 
there is any use in the trade will foot up to something over twice the 
"reasonable" total return that should "reasonably" go to the retailers for 
doing this work of marketing and distribution in a sane and economical way.
It may also be noted by the way that an appreciable proportion of this 
retail trade in the country towns is appreciably worse than useless, so far 
as it has any bearing on the net productive efficiency of the farm 
community that is served by the trade of the towns. A multiplicity of 
competing fashion shops, e.g., or of tombstone shops, or furniture stores, 
serves no better purpose than the encouragement of wasteful expenditure on 
goods which add to the discomforts of life at the cost of its efficiency. 
It is true, in ordinary times of peace, when the citizens of any well-
conducted democracy are presumed to owe no active duty to the country in 
which they live - in ordinary times no thoughtful person would be inclined 
to check up or find fault with habitual waste of this kind that conduces to 
nothing better than the. spread of fashionable discomfort. In time of 
peace, it is commonly admitted that any citizen who has reached years of 
discretion should be free to follow his natural bent into all the dips, 
spurs, and angles of human folly; but in a time of extraordinary stress, 
when the common good is at stake, when no wasteful use of resources or man 
power is to be tolerated, this pursuit of "business as usual" in the 
production of waste and inefficiency takes on another color and becomes a 
matter of legitimate public concern.
A very considerable proportion of the retail trade in the country towns, as 
well as in the cities, is taken up with, and gets its profits from, the 
production and spread of waste, discomfort, and inefficiency, in the name 
of fashion and respectability. It would not be easy to come to an 
understanding as to just how much of this retail traffic is occupied 
chiefly or wholly with supplying the means of fashionable waste and 
respectable discomfort. In most lines of the trade it is a question of more 
or less; some trades being devoted almost wholly to useless expenditures, 
others only in part; but when all due allowance has been made, it will 
always be found that it foots up to a very considerable amount of the total 
traffic. Perhaps a fair statistical estimate would run about as follows: 
Taking one retail concern with another, one third of this retail trade is 
to be written off as being productive of nothing but waste; which leaves 
two thirds of the whole to be counted in as being of some use; and of this 
remaining two thirds, again, an amount running between one half and three 
fourths- say two thirds - is further to be written off as being mere 
wasteful duplication of equipment and work among the concerns that are 
doing partly useful work.
Now, two thirds times two thirds equals four ninths - the amount to be 
allowed for useless duplication of equipment and working force in that part 
of the retail trade which serves in part a useful purpose; which is to be 
added to the one third of the whole that is already accounted for as pure 
waste; and which so brings the estimated total of useless work and 
equipment in the retail trade to seven ninths of the whole. Something like 
seven ninths of all that goes into the retail trade, in the way of stock, 
equipment, and working force, is accordingly to be set down to the account 
of useless waste and duplication. It therefore appears, on this showing, 
that something like two ninths of the number of concerns and of the workmen 
employed by them are sufficient to take care of all the useful work which 
the retail merchants of the country towns have to do.
The upshot of this computation is that the country retail trade can afford 
to set loose something like seven ninths of the working force which it now 
employs, without interfering with the useful work of marketing farm 
products and distributing useful goods to the farmers. A closer scrutiny of 
the whole matter would presumably lead to a more extreme conclusion, since 
much of the retail trade as now conducted serves the town population; and 
since this town population is itself for the most part to be regarded as 
supernumerary, for all material purposes; inasmuch as this town population 
is either occupied in the retail trade or dependent on the trade for a 
livelihood.
Something like seven ninths of the town population, perhaps, is to be 
counted as supernumeraries who contribute nothing to the net productive 
efficiency of the community from which they derive their livelihood. So 
much of the retail traffic, therefore, as serves the needs of this 
supernumerary town population is also to be counted out as being useless. 
The work of marketing farm products and distributing goods to the farm 
population is useful and necessary, of course. Some of the work that is now 
done is needed; say one fifth is needed, according to the estimate and 
computation. But it is plainly not useful and necessary that an ordinary 
county seat in the prairie states should have thirty to forty groceries, 
each with full stock, equipment, and working force, when three or four 
groceries would do the necessary work better and with less waste all 
around. Nor is it useful and necessary that such a country town should have 
ten banks and seven or eight grain buyers, and a still larger number of 
regular stock buyers, together with a small swarm of speculative buyers who 
dip into the business when they see a chance. One buyer could take care of 
the traffic just as well; and the one local post office - which is not 
ordinarily duplicated - could take care of the necessary banking operations 
more expeditiously and at a very greatly lower cost.
The objection is ready, of course, that "the benefits of competition would 
be lost." But any one who knows anything about the country towns of the 
prairie states knows that the established retailers of the place habitually 
act in collusion in all matters which seriously interest them, such as 
prices and competition. The usual organ of this collusion, or of the 
conspiracy to restrain competition, is the local Commercial Club; and back 
of the Commercial Club, and serving its purposes, is the town government, 
which is much the same thing under another name; very much after the same 
fashion as the municipal government of the larger cities in the prairie 
states is commonly a creature of the Chamber of Commerce and represents the 
larger vested interests of the place.
Now, all this arrangement of Commercial Clubs and Chambers of Commerce, and 
of municipal governments acting as executive committees of these Clubs and 
Chambers, and taking care of the vested interests back of them-all this may 
be well enough in ordinary times when there is nothing at stake, beyond the 
creature comforts of the farming community. That is to say, it is all well 
enough if the American people - the American farmers and workmen - like to 
see things done in that way. But just now the life of this American people
the American farmers and workmen - is at stake; their life, their fortunes, 
and their sacred honor. If America is to make good and win the Great War, 
all available resources - raw material, equipment, and man power - will 
have to be placed at the disposal of the American Federal Administration, 
without reservation and without any foxy intrigue looking to a 
surreptitious gain for the vested interests. It is time to quit being 
squeamish about the vested right of the country-town merchants and 
speculators to get a "reasonable return" on capital sunk in waste and 
duplication.
Of course, it is to be admitted without argument or hesitation that these 
country-town merchants, bankers, and buyers are by law and custom entitled 
to all the profits which they can get, and as long as they can get them. 
The law has always said so. These are substantial citizens, pillars of 
society in a small way, and honorable gentlemen after their kind. And it 
appears also that according to law and custom the country-town merchants 
and speculators are within their ancient rights in organising a Commercial 
Club to take care of their joint interests, to regulate prices and profits, 
to exclude outside competitors, "and for other purposes." All this 
maneuvering for private gain and special advantages may be well enough in 
time of peace. It is the time-honored customary right of the townsman to 
turn an honest penny at the cost of the countrymen, and no thoughtful 
person would aim to disturb this vested right of the townsmen in ordinary 
times of peace. But it is today no longer a question of a sportsmanlike 
regard for vested rights and legal punctilios. It is a very concrete 
question of how to set free a force of workmen for use on the farms in the 
grain states; a labor force which is at present employed by the merchants 
of the country towns in a wasteful duplication of work, just to enable an 
excessive number of middlemen to turn an excessive number of honest pennies 
- more or less honest. Just now, in an  extreme emergency, will the grain 
farmers of the prairie states continue to put up with this endless waste 
and duplication of work in their country towns? The immediate consequence 
of letting things drift as they have been doing will be to leave the grain 
farmers shorthanded on work which has to be done, on pain of national 
defeat in case of failure.
Most of the men employed in the retail trade of the country towns have in 
their time been drawn from the farms, after having learned more or less of 
farm work. The like is true for that great volume of subsidiary employments 
in the towns, which serve the local trades at the second remove. The 
greater proportion of these town workmen are fit to do farm work without 
having to relearn the trade. In fact, they constitute the one great and 
sufficient reserve of practical farm-hands which the country has to fall 
back on in the present emergency. So that the practical question is how to 
turn this force of trained workmen in the country towns to account for the 
growing of grain and meat, and the prosecution of the war turns visibly on 
the effectual solution of that problem.
Among those time-tried statesmen who are too wise to attempt anything 
effectual, the suggestion is very kindly entertained that moral suasion 
should be brought to play upon the sensibilities of these substantial 
citizens in the country towns, who are now conducting ten banks and forty 
grocery stores in a town that has use for only one of each. Circumstantial 
evidence appears to indicate that this recourse to moral suasion alone has 
been shrewdly suggested by the Commercial Clubs - the spokesmen of 
"business as usual." Moral suasion is a potent and valuable factor in human 
life, no doubt, but experience teaches that its best effects are likely to 
be slight and transient where it runs counter to a settled legal right. The 
farmers of this country, and the workmen, too, have in fact quit trusting 
their interests and ideals to the care of moral suasion in all those 
matters in which they come in conflict with the vested interests.
When a radical change of policy has become imperative, as in the present 
juncture, over-ripe statesmen will always endeavor to remedy things without 
altering them. That is the earmark of over-ripe statecraft, but it is not 
the way that is taken by the course of events.
III.
To set free this labor supply which is now employed in useless duplication 
of work in the towns, it will be necessary to derange the business traffic 
of the country towns to some extent. No considerable number of employees 
can be set loose without shutting down some of the retail establishments 
now engaged in the business; and the larger the number of establishments 
which are induced to close down, the larger will be the number of workmen 
that will become available for use on the farms. The obvious line to take 
is to reduce the margin of profits in this retail trade to such a figure as 
to make it unprofitable for the full number of establishments to continue 
in the business. This can be done by administrative regulation and 
interference, such as will reduce the total margin of profits derived from 
the traffic. If the total profits can be reduced to such a figure as to 
afford reasonable returns only for a greatly reduced number of retail 
concerns, then the difficulty will have been overcome to that extent. All 
this will bring hardship on those who are affected by it, by driving them 
out of a useless line of enterprise into some useful work, but it should 
seem that the emergency will justify such a measure even at the cost of 
some degree of hardship to one and another, for the period of the war.
The whole case is simplest on the side of the local buyers - buyers of 
grain, hogs, cattle, and produce, who forward to the central markets, 
either through commission houses or otherwise. These buyers are 
comparatively few, as contrasted with the retail sellers, and the 
commodities which they handle are of few kinds and can be standardised and 
handled under inspector's tests. So true is this, and so serious and 
persistent have been the evasive maneuvers of these buyers, that government 
regulation by means of inspection, standard grades, and tests has already 
come to be the rule in this field. At the same time the farmers who have to 
deal with them are already thoroughly distrustful of these local buyers, 
and are ready to put up with any measures of regulation that promise to 
abate the irregularities and evasion of which the buyers are believed to be 
guilty. Indeed, a very strict and comprehensive regulation of this part of 
the country-town business under Federal authority would be welcomed by the 
farming community.
It is to be noted by the way that the regulation of local markets and their 
buyers has hitherto commonly been entrusted to the state authorities, and 
there has been much dissatisfaction with the way in which the state 
regulation has worked; there are many complaints that it has been 
inefficient and unreliable. It is believed that the state authorities are 
commonly dependent on the goodwill of the Commercial Clubs and Chambers of 
Commerce for their continued tenure of office; and the Commercial Clubs and 
the Chambers of Commerce are believed to guard the special business 
interests of their respective towns, with small regard for the needs and 
interests of the farm community from which they draw their livelihood. The 
farmers of the grain states have been learning not to look for an impartial 
regulation of markets and standards at the hands of any state 
administration, the roots of whose political tenure run down through the 
local political organisation to the same persons who make up the Commercial 
Clubs and the Chambers of Commerce. The established political machinery on 
which the government of state, county, and town finally rests will commonly 
be found to be made up of, or owe allegiance to, the same persons who make 
up these commercial bodies; and these commercial bodies are organised to 
take care of the vested business interests of the place. Such is the 
farmers' view of that matter, and so sure are the farmers of the iniquity 
of this arrangement that they are now organising with all speed to take 
their case past the established state and local authorities and take over 
the control under Federal auspices.
From which it follows that if there is to be anything like an unbiased 
regulation of the marketing of farm produce in the prairie states - or 
anything which the farmers will believe to be passably unbiased - the whole 
matter will have to be taken beyond the state authorities and their 
background of Commercial Clubs, and placed under Federal surveillance. At 
the same time some care will have to be taken not to let the local 
interests of congressmen count for much in the case. Congressmen commonly 
are held in somewhat intimate bonds of goodwill with the Commercial Clubs 
of their several districts - or rather they are under the necessity of 
maintaining relations of mutual confidence with the county committees, 
which are usually made up out of the same class of persons that make up the 
Commercial Clubs, and are identified with the same local interests. This 
need not mean that congressmen are consciously partisan in their guidance 
of public affairs, but only that they are sufficiently human to take on the 
colors of their best friends. The personal equation counts for something 
even in the case of the most profound and dispassionate statesmen.
The local marketing of the main staples is a comparatively simple matter, 
apart from the "tricks of the trade," the businesslike intrigue injected 
into it by buyers and commission men each seeking his own pro t. That is to 
say, the necessary work of handling these staples, as well as the 
inspection and grading of them, is simple enough so long as it is not 
complicated by efforts to evade the rules under which it is carried on; and 
it should accordingly lend itself readily to administrative regulation, 
provided always that care is taken to remove all undue opportunity for 
surreptitious gain. The simple and obvious remedy to apply, as an emergency 
measure, and for the period of the war, is for the Administration to take 
over the marketing, as it is already taking over the surveillance of 
standards and inspection. Something has already been done in this way under 
the powers vested in the Grain Corporation. This would involve only a 
relatively slight increase in official powers, in the necessary number of 
officials, and in the amount of work to be done. Most if not all private 
buyers would drop out or would be drawn into the Administration's service; 
and in so far there would result an economy of personnel and of work. Some, 
probably few, of these private buyers could be turned to use in other 
occupations. The many wholly useless ones among them would be no more 
useless when so retired from business than they now are in carrying on a 
business that need not be done; while the greater number of their employees 
are suitable for farm work and would be set free for that use.
The retail trade, in the ordinary sense, is a larger and more complicated 
proposition. But even as regards this retail trade the magnitude and 
complications of the task will be found much less in practical fact than 
they appear from the outside and before the proposed change takes effect. 
Any reasonable measure of control designed to release farm workmen from 
their town occupations would necessarily do away with much of the work and 
management involved in the trade as it runs now. The number of retail 
concerns would fall off, and the volume of traffic would be greatly 
reduced, even if the quantity of goods handled remained the same. If, in 
effect, those who continued in the trade were put on a basis of cost plus a 
narrow margin on turnover, it is also reasonably to be expected that much 
of the working at cross purposes that now prevails among them would be 
discontinued. The number of shipments, deliveries, accountings, payments, 
etc., would decrease, with or without a decrease in the quantity of goods 
handled.
This retail trade of the country towns is part of the distributive system 
of the country. The distributive system comprises also a complete 
assortment of jobbers, who deal with factories and similar sources of 
supply on the one side, and with the retailers on the other side. All this 
involves bargaining at every move, a multiplicity of accounts, cross 
freights, competitive selling, and compromises of various kinds to 
safeguard and apportion the gains to be got in the trade. There are several 
times as many of these jobbing houses as are necessary to take care of the 
traffic, although the duplication probably does not go so far as in the 
retail trade; at the same time there appears to be going on a slight 
relative decrease in the number of jobbers, rather than the contrary.
The nature of the traffic that is to be taken care of, and the recent 
developments in the management of it, indicate plainly enough what will be 
the nature of the move which is now due to be made. The traffic is of a 
two-fold character; or rather it is of a two-sided shape. The staple farm 
products have to be assembled and forwarded to the central markets, for 
storage awaiting shipment or to be worked over into finished goods in the 
mills and packing houses and passed out again into the channels of the 
retail trade. On the other side, goods suitable for use by the farm 
community have to be assembled in the same central markets and distributed 
over the same transportation lines to the same places from which the staple 
farm products come.
In all this traffic the business men - "middlemen" - are occupied with 
getting a profit out of it, every time the goods are bought and sold. That 
is what the business men do business for. The greater the number of times 
that the goods are bought and sold between the farm and the mill or packing 
house, or between the mill or factory and the farm, the greater the number 
of business profits to be deducted from the price which the farmer gets for 
his produce, or to be added to the price which he has to pay for his 
necessary supplies; and the greater the uncertainty, miscalculation, and 
retardation to which the whole traffic is liable, between the farm and the 
factory, and back again.
Any traffic that is conducted by business men and on business principles - 
principles of purchase and sale-is necessarily subject to uncertainty, 
miscalculation, and retardation all along the line; and the greater the 
number of bargains to be made, the greater the liability to uncertainty and 
retardation. Conversely, any measures that can be taken to reduce the 
amount of bargaining - that is to say, of business - necessary to be done 
in marketing farm produce, or in distributing necessary goods to the farm 
community, should be very much to the purpose just now, when the urgent 
requirements of the war situation demand that uncertainty and retardation 
should be reduced to a minimum. In this connection "Business as usual" 
means "Uncertainty and retardation as usual."
So far as bargaining - that is to say, business - can be eliminated from 
the handling of farm produce and farm supplies, the whole country stands to 
gain in point of expedition and efficiency. Therefore, simply as a matter 
of expedition and economy, for the period of the war, all this traffic in 
marketing and distribution in the grain states should best be conducted on 
a no-profits basis, by disinterested agents of the Administration, and 
regardless of any vested interests on the part of the business men who 
would be affected by such a move. The exigencies of the war overbear all 
questions of private profit, for the period of the war; and wherever 
disregard of private profits will contribute to the effectual prosecution 
of the war, it will be simply foolish to let vested interests of this kind 
stand in the way.
It will not be necessary to take any drastic or forcible measures to 
displace these superfluous business concerns in the retail trade; such as 
conscription, confiscation, or penalisation of the supernumerary 
establishments. All that is needed is to arrange for carrying on the 
necessary work of marketing and distribution on a no-profits basis, or even 
on a narrow margin. When this is done, the superfluous retailers will 
presently withdraw, for the period of the war.
Such a retirement of superfluous business concerns in the country towns is 
the main fact to be aimed at. Doubtless there is more than one way to 
accomplish that result. What is needed now, and needed urgently, is the 
speedy choice of some reliable and expeditious method of doing it. It is a 
question of releasing the superfluous employees of these superfluous 
business concerns in time for this year's harvest, if possible; and of 
leaving them free beyond this season, for the period of the war. It is, 
therefore, necessary to take such measures at the earliest possible date, 
and to follow them up consistently until there is no more labor being spent 
on wasteful duplication of work in the country towns.
The plan which is here spoken for is simple, direct, expeditious, and 
thorough. And it has the defects which go along with those qualities. It 
proposes to correct an evil state of things by changing the state of 
things, in the face of those vested interests that live on this evil state 
of things. It is, therefore, to be expected that the whole matter will be 
quite distasteful to those superfluous merchants, bankers, etc., who will 
be constrained to go into temporary retirement or into some useful 
occupation for the period of the war. All that sort of thing is to be 
deplored, of course. At the same time it is to be noted that the proposed 
measures violate no legal rights and add nothing to the cost of living or 
the burden of taxation; quite the contrary, in fact.
For the period of the war, the proposed plan contemplates a combination of 
the methods and working forces employed in three different lines of 
enterprise that have already proved successful - the Parcel Post, the Chain 
Stores, and the Mail-Order Houses. It is proposed that the Federal 
Administration shall, for the period of the war, install a system of farm 
marketing and of retail distribution of staple merchandise at cost, to be 
organised as one undivided administrative undertaking under the parcel post 
division of the U. S. Post Office, and designed to serve all those places 
and persons whom the parcel post can effectually be made to reach. To this 
end the Administration will, for the period of the war, take over the 
traffic of the established mail-order houses, together with so much of 
their equipment, stocks, and personnel as may be useful for the purpose. 
And to do this it will also be necessary to discontinue certain 
restrictions and add something to the discretionary powers of the Post 
Office.
These mail-order houses already have the ways and means of this traffic in 
hand, tested, proved, and running smoothly; and the only serious change 
necessary to be made in their management of the traffic is to combine it 
with the parcel-post system in such a way as to eliminate all that 
expensive, vexatious, and unnecessary accounting that is now involved in 
the shipment and delivery of goods through the Post Office. Many items of 
work and expense that now have to be counted in among "overhead charges" in 
the mail-order business will drop out so soon as it is taken over and 
consolidated with the parcel post; very much as there is a saving of 
similar items made whenever several independent business concerns are 
consolidated under one management in the formation of a trust or pool. In 
the everyday transaction between the parcel post and the mail-order 
traffic, as it is now conducted, there is always a volume of unnecessary 
business to be done: fees to be collected and accounted for, risks and 
margins to be scrutinised and secured, responsibility to be apportioned, 
evaded, and enforced - all of which results in unnecessary delay, 
uncertainty, and expense in the transmission of the goods, at the same time 
that it increases the cost to the customers. It works out in the same way 
if the mail-order house arranges for the carriage and delivery through an 
express company or other agency. Delay, vexation, and hindrance come into 
play at both ends of the line, with no other net result than superfluous 
fees, invoices, vouchers, correspondence, commissions, and advanced 
charges.
Among the local business concerns whose traffic and earnings will be likely 
to suffer by such a measure, therefore, are the express companies and 
similar common carriers, whose personnel and equipment it is designed to 
release for useful work. It will accordingly be necessary to remove all 
restrictions on the size, weight, and character of parcels admitted to 
carriage by post - in fact to place all facilities of freight handling and 
transport indiscriminately at the disposal of this distributing system. The 
express companies and other concerns doing business as common carriers have 
a vested interest in all these everyday hindrances and expenses connected 
with the retail distribution of merchandise, and it may well be that they 
should, in ordinary times, be entitled to something approaching that degree 
of consideration which has usually been accorded them on this head; but at 
the present juncture, for the period of the war, it should seem reasonable 
to ask them to forgo the usual discrimination made in their favor by the 
laws governing the parcel post. As is well known, though not commonly 
spoken of, these restrictions have been laid and maintained with a view to 
the vested interests of the express companies and other common carriers, 
whom it has seemed wise to protect from the unrestricted competition of the 
parcel post. But at the present juncture, and for the period of the war, it 
should seem that expediency for the prosecution of the war must be allowed 
to take precedence of any vested interest in wasteful practices and special 
privileges. So it is of the essence of the plan here proposed to release as 
much as may be of the equipment and workmen now employed by these concerns 
in work that can more economically be taken care of by the parcel post; 
thereby setting free considerable number of workmen, teams, vehicles, and 
motors that will readily be turned to use in the production and handling of 
grain and other produce. For the period of the war, it should seem 
expedient to leave their special privileges in abeyance and retire many of 
these private business concerns from a traffic that can better be taken 
care of without them.
It may be noted that, even with the handicap imposed by all this 
superfluous business that is now involved in the transmission of 
merchandise, the mail-order business has been doing very well; so well, 
indeed, that it has, on the one hand, earned the undying hatred of the 
Commercial Clubs, Chambers of Commerce, Town Councils, and such-like bodies 
who take care of the vested interests in the marketing, carrying, and 
merchandising trade; at the same time that it has, on the other hand, 
enabled the leading mail-order houses to capitalise their business at 
something more than ten times the value of their material assets.
As this business is now conducted, the customer depends on printed 
descriptions and specifications in making his choice of goods, writes out 
his order, pays the bill with a postal money-order or its equivalent, 
commonly with the addition of a fee as well as of postage, transmits the 
requisite papers through the post office to the office to the mail-order 
house, where the order is then filled in due course, and the goods started 
on their transit, with such incidents of delay, expense, and subsequent 
accounting and adjustment as have already been alluded to above. It is here 
proposed that the local post office act as agent of the central bureau of 
distribution, through its office employees and its carriers; to take orders 
and transmit them with the least possible annoyance or delay; to accept 
payment, and to make any necessary refunds or adjustments; with no 
unnecessary writing of instruments or transmission of funds, beyond what is 
comprised in the ordinary routine of accounting between the local office 
and the Federal Headquarters.
The money transactions involved, therefore, will best be handled somewhat 
after the fashion of periodical clearings; and these periodical clearings 
will be greatly simplified, as compared with what now goes on in the 
country towns, if the local post office will at the same time take over 
what would naturally fall to it in the way of a banking business for the 
convenience of its customers. Particularly will there be a gain in 
simplicity and expedition if the same general management takes over the 
marketing of farm produce; so that the local post office also become a 
station for the purchase or receipt of farm produce as well as for the sale 
and delivery of staple merchandise. In such a case, the local office will 
carry a two-sided account with the central office, running roughly even in 
the long run, as between receipts and disbursements, but with a variable 
balance to be adjusted from time to time. There is also nothing but the 
vested interest of the local banks to hinder the local office from carrying 
on its books the accounts of its customers, subject to draft and settlement 
after the usual manner of a bank's deposit accounts. All of which will give 
its money transactions still more of the character of "clearings."
So soon as the post's transactions of purchase and sale in its dealings 
with its local customers, as well as its receipts and disbursements as a 
whole, come in this way to be offset against one another, it is evident 
that the greater part of the remittances which now are involved in the 
marketing of farm produce, on the one hand, and the sale of merchandise 
through the retail trade, on the other hand, will best be taken care of by 
clearings and balancing of accounts. Relatively little remittance of funds, 
or seasonal provision of funds for "moving the crops," will be needed to 
keep the balance; particularly if the post office arranges to carry the 
customers' balances, subject to draft. There will accordingly result a 
notable decrease in the banking operations necessary to be carried on in 
the towns.
These and other considerations of a similar bearing indicate unequivocally 
that, in order to get the full benefit of the proposed system, the post 
office must also be allowed freely to go into so much of the ordinary work 
of banking as may seem useful for the purpose. So, e.g., if the local post 
offices served also as local savings and deposit banks, in correspondence 
with a similarly empowered central, connected if need be with the Federal 
Reserve, it is evident that with such an arrangement the whole matter of 
receipts and disbursements between the parcel post and its customers would 
be greatly simplified and facilitated; and it is plain that the volume of 
necessary banking transactions in the local community would be greatly 
reduced, and that the cost of banking to the customers would also be 
materially lowered.
There is, in fact, no good reason why the local banks should not come in 
for the same kind and degree of correction as that which the exigencies of 
the war and the food supply must presently enforce among the retail 
merchants. For the prosecution of the war, superfluous banks are no more 
useful than superfluous buyers and sellers of goods. All the while it is to 
be kept in mind, of course, that these excessively numerous bankers are 
very substantial citizens, and that they are an ornament and a comfort to 
the community in which they live and from which they draw their living. 
This living that so comes to the bankers is an exceptionally good and 
respectable living, as a rule; and it is got by an unobtrusive and 
equitable apportionment of such an honest livelihood as is to be derived 
from the custody of the municipal and county funds, and from a run of 
commercial and country credit that could be taken care of at a side-counter 
in the post office. Their vested interest in so dividing and carrying on an 
excessively voluminous banking business is not lightly to be set aside; nor 
is it here proposed to interfere with their gains or to curtail their 
numbers, except transiently, as a measure of expediency, for the period of 
the war. As a matter of local pride, in which one will take comfort in time 
of peace, the spectacle of ten well-fed bankers at the county seat must 
always appeal to the sensibilities of any community that can afford to pay 
for it; it is in fact a striking evidence of the community's ability to 
pay, and as such it is probably worth its cost, in time of peace. But in 
time of war, when the nation's fortunes are in the balance, it should seem 
reasonable that the prestige-value of a superfluity of well-fed bankers 
must not be allowed to cloud the issue of national efficiency.
For the period of the war, the new plan promises to dispense with something 
more than one half of the banking that is now carried on in the country 
towns, and to simplify the remainder to such a point as to make it hard to 
recognise. The banking of the country towns is, after all, mainly 
commercial banking, and it is accordingly inflated on the same scale as the 
commercial business which it serves. And so soon as the greater part of the 
business transactions in the towns is discontinued, that much of the 
present need of "banking facilities" will also disappear, for the time 
being.
IV.
If one takes note of the experience of the mail-order houses, and so 
follows out the further logic of the situation, it will necessarily result 
that this parcel-post system of retail distribution at cost will have to 
reach back among the jobbers, mills, factories, and packing houses from 
which the merchandise is drawn. It will be found necessary to enforce 
standards of quality, purity, cost, and the like, in all the staple lines 
of merchandise to be dealt in. Even without having taken over or formally 
standardised any branch of the retail trade as such, the government has 
already found itself driven to establish and enforce standards and staple 
specifications in many lines of production; and there are accordingly a 
considerable body of inspectors and administrative officers already engaged 
in this work, and these are ready to be drawn on for the same work under 
the new plan; so that the proposed plan of control and distribution can be 
put into effect with a relatively slight increase of the staff of 
administrative officers. The officers would have to be given additional 
power and discretion, such as would, in effect, put them in the place of 
those business men who now control the business for their own profit 
instead of the public service.
It should also be plain in this connection, to any one who is at all 
acquainted with present conditions in these industries that supply staple 
goods for the retail trade - e.g., the packing houses and grist mills - 
that no system of inspection, and no regulation on the basis of inspection, 
can hope to hold these producers to a bona fide observance of the rules 
made and provided; unless the system of inspection and regulation goes the 
length of taking all responsibility and control out of the hands of all 
persons who are in any way interested in the business. In fact, it is now 
becoming plain beyond debate that it will not do to allow these great 
industrial enterprises to be managed by their owners for a profit, even 
under the most stringent standardisation and inspection. The Administration 
is continually driven to more and more arbitrary measures. The ways to 
evade specified requirements in detail are too many, too obscure, and too 
easy, for any system of inspection and legal remedy to keep up with the 
ingenuity of the interested parties. Legal remedy by litigation after the 
fact is the merest foolishness in these premises. There is no stopping 
short of a thorough revision, such as will afford no chance of gain by 
plausible evasions.
So that the great industries which turn out staple goods for the market 
will on this plan, and for the period of the war, have to be taken under 
administrative control; to be operated with a view to produce staple goods 
in prearranged quantities; to be supplied at the proper times, and at cost, 
to the distributive system whose nucleus is the parcel post. But again it 
is evident that the New Order in the retail trade cannot logically stop at 
that point.
What comes to mind in speaking of the great industries that have to do with 
the staple supplies is such things as packing houses, flour and other grain 
mills, pulp and paper mills, lumber mills, coal mining concerns, oil 
refineries, farm machinery concerns, and the like. Industrially speaking, 
all these and their like are "halfway houses," where the materials are 
worked up in their transit from their source to the final consumer of the 
goods; and their work is conditioned on the supply of materials and the 
changing circumstances which affect the supply. In some instances, indeed 
in an appreciable proportion of cases, these "midway" enterprises have 
already come to control the channels of supply on which they depend, as 
well as the channels of distribution for their products. Many of these 
large business concerns engaged in such "midway" industries, as e.g., the 
packers, already control the channels of supply for their materials and the 
distribution of their products through "car routes," "branch houses," etc., 
so that in industries of their class the whole machinery for assembling the 
materials, working them over into finished products, and distributing them 
as merchandise to the consumers is already effectually organised under a 
central management and is ready to be taken over by the Administration at 
any time, without disturbance of the regular run of the traffic.
All this is referred to here to note that such control of the channels of 
supply is sufficiently practicable to have taken effect as an ordinary 
incident in the conduct of business - it is "a sound business proposition"; 
and to note, further, that in some certain ones of these "midway" 
industries, as in the packing houses and the grain mills, the supply of 
materials is drawn from the same farms to which merchandise is supplied by 
the retail trade; and that the control of the channels of supply by the 
packers and millers is a source of sore and widespread distrust and 
irritation among the farmers. The control appears to be wholly effectual, 
by all accounts, even in these private hands; and since it is exercised for 
the benefit of the packers and millers it is felt by the farmers that it is 
exercised at their cost. All of which may or may not be true in fact; but 
the distrust is unquestionably present in force, and potent for much evil. 
The logic of the case is plain enough. Under a system of administrative 
control of such industries as the mills and packing houses it is a simple 
and obvious further step to extend the system of administrative management 
to include the marketing and transportation of those farm products which 
make up the raw materials of the mills and packing houses.
So, in following up the lines along which this postal distributing system 
will logically carry out its control of the retail trade, it appears that 
the plan will have to comprise not only the wholesale trade, but also the 
great industries which supply the great staples on the one side, and which 
take up and work over the staple products of the farms on the other side. 
All of which brings the reach of the projected system of handling and 
distribution at cost back to the country town, for the first as well as for 
the last link in its chain of operations. It is, in effect, a plan for 
taking care of the farm products all the way over the circuit from the 
farm; when the goods leave the farmer's hands at the local market as raw 
materials; through the process of working them over into staple goods for 
consumption; and back again through the processes of distribution, until 
they reach the farmer's hands as wrought goods ready for use.
The Administration already has in hand nearly all the working parts that 
would go to make up this wide-reaching administrative system, but these 
working parts will have to be co-ordinated into a balanced system directed 
from a single center, instead of being left, as now, out of touch and 
frequently working at cross purposes. And what is lacking to make the 
system complete can readily be supplied by drawing on the various private 
concerns that are now engaged in the same kind of work. In fact, all the 
needed ways and means are ready to hand, both material, equipment, 
personnel, and corporate organisation; the grand fault of the present 
working scheme being that it includes more of all these factors, each and 
several, than there is use for in the work to be done. And the main purpose 
of the plan here proposed is to release a good part of this supernumerary 
personnel, at the same time that a saving of equipment and expense is 
effected by the same move.
Most of the many business transactions now involved in the handling and 
transmission of products on their way from the farm to the factory would 
drop out; so would also the like transactions of purchase and sale between 
the factory and the delivery of the finished goods in the local market; and 
it is well known that these transactions of purchase and sale are 
accountable for a very large proportion of the amount by which the retail 
price of the finished goods exceeds the price of the raw materials - which 
is sedulously denied by the interested parties.
The market "bureaux," by means of which this plan would take care of the 
marketing of farm products, would transact very little that could properly 
be called "business." There would be no bargaining and no salesmanship 
involved in their work, which would rather be of the nature of traffic 
management. The prices decided on would be offered quite impersonally, on a 
basis of standards and tests, as computed in a system of cost accounting.
There need scarcely be any buyers of farm produce, properly speaking, under 
this arrangement. A "buyer" is of use, as such, only in case there is some 
unfair advantage to be gained in a bargain. A "buyer's" place and function 
in the economic system is to "make a good bargain," as it is so called; and 
in this case there would be no bargain to be made. The Administration, 
through its local traffic agents connected with the parcel-post 
distributing system, would make its offer of prices on a cost basis, as 
adapted by skilled accountants to the special circumstances of each 
locality; and the producers would "take it or leave it" knowing all the 
while that the price so made is made without a view to profits and that no 
man has any motive of gain in determining it. The marketing of such staples 
as grain and meat under this system would, in fact, not differ greatly from 
the current practice; and the like is true as regards the marketing of the 
finished staples through the retail trade; except for the principle 
underlying the whole traffic. In effect, the present practice is that the 
large "midway" concerns which gather in, work over, and distribute the 
produce, as, e.g., the packers, make the price at which the raw materials 
are bought and at which the finished goods are sold; and the producing 
farmers, as well as the consumers, are at liberty "to take it or leave it." 
But the principle on which the price is made by these "midway" business 
concerns is the principle of "what the traffic will bear"; that is to say, 
what will bring the largest net profits to those who so make the price. 
Whereas the principle on which prices are to be made, to both sides, under 
administrative control, is the principle of net cost. It will be for the 
producing farmers, on the one hand, and the consumers of the finished 
goods, on the other hand, "to take it or leave it." And the 
Administration's part in the management of this system will be so to 
arrange its schedule of prices as to induce the farming community to turn 
out the largest practicable output of those staples that are needed for the 
prosecution of the war.
The details of this price-making cannot be gone into here; neither can the 
related question of the form of accounts and payments to be adopted under 
the proposed plan. All that is an extensive matter, into which many other 
and larger considerations enter. The whole question of finding a 
practicable base on which to compute the prices of the several staple 
products, and the ratios or coefficients that should govern the relative 
prices of these staple farm products, on the one side, and of the staple 
goods necessary for use by the farm population, on the other side - all 
that is matter that will have to be worked out as a co-ordinate line of the 
policy to be pursued in the distribution of the food supply.
It may be in place to say that no administrative pressure is designed to be 
brought on the local concerns, whether as buyers or sellers, beyond that 
equitable pressure of competition that is implied in the buying and selling 
of goods at cost. This pressure would reasonably be expected to induce the 
greater number of them to quit the trade, whether as buyers or as sellers; 
but there need be no apprehension that the retail dealers would disappear 
altogether. Their number would be greatly reduced, perhaps, but some of 
them would doubtless continue in the trade, to serve the daily minor wants 
of their customers at least. It is true, the retail buyers would be 
expected to disappear, or virtually so; and it is not easy to see what 
place there would be for such concerns as deal in lumber, brick, coal, and 
similar articles of large bulk and staple grades.
For the convenience of customers, to meet their everyday minor needs and 
also as a further check on competitive duplication of equipment, this 
parcel-post distributing system will necessarily comprise a subsidiary 
system of local branches, of the nature of "general merchandise stores"; 
which are to be operated on the plan of the "chain stores" now in use, and 
will carry relatively slight stocks of such commonplace goods as are called 
for from day to day in small quantity and without notice. The established 
machinery of the chain stores could advantageously be turned to account; 
and the existing stocks of the vanishing local retailers would also be 
expected to go to these branches; which would in the ordinary case most 
conveniently be housed under the same roof with the post office, and 
handled in the accustomed way; the substantial difference as contrasted 
with the present usage being the absence of ordinary profits. These local 
branches will also be required to handle such local. produce as is 
distributed to local customers without passing through the central markets. 
At the same time they will take over most of the distribution of the meat 
supply, and of other perishable articles that are handled in the same 
general way, as, e.g., fruits and bakery goods. The "car routes" of the 
packing houses, which already cover the territory in a sufficiently 
thorough fashion, can be turned to use for this purpose, without delay or 
disturbance; although it may prove desirable to enlarge the existing "car 
route" scheme somewhat to take care of a somewhat enlarged traffic in 
perishable goods, such as would follow from this combination of the meat 
supply with the general trade in perishables of the same class.
So also, the hotels and inns of the country towns are likely to suffer a 
marked decline under the new plan. They will presumably run on a greatly 
reduced volume of traffic, if at all. As is well known, the greater part of 
their custom is now made up of traveling salesmen and other persons who 
have to do with the retail trade.
Their local custom is also made -up of persons occupied with the same 
retail trade, in one way or another. Should this retail trade fall off, 
e.g., by some three fourths or so, the effect on the hotel trade should not 
be hard to imagine; and as a matter of economy the effect should presumably 
be altogether salutary. Notoriously, these country-town hotels are 
extremely wasteful, not only in the use of foodstuffs but in all articles 
of consumption with which they have to do. So that any reduction of their 
trade by this means is to be counted on not only to set free a certain 
labor force now employed in unnecessary work, but it should also result in 
a very substantial economy in the daily consumption. The hotels are 
doubtless the most wasteful users of foodstuffs in the country towns.
For the period of the war, such a plan of economy and expedition in the 
retail trade will also have a substantial effect on the ordinary country 
town, as an "urban community." These towns live on the retail trade, 
directly or indirectly; and in so far as the retail trade suffers a 
reduction in the amount of work which it now involves or in the number of 
persons which it now employs, it is fairly to be expected that such of the 
town's population as are not immediately engage n the trade will also fall 
off in the same proportion. just what this proportion might be would not be 
easy to say; but it may perhaps be reasonable to expect that the town 
population at large would decline, for the time being, by something like 
one half, or two thirds. This reduction of the town population, even if it 
is only transient, will doubtless bear heavily on the local pride of the 
town-dwellers; which is to be deplored, but which, it is also fair to 
expect, will be borne with becoming fortitude in view of the nation's need 
of diverting all of the available working population to useful work. It is, 
indeed, not beyond reason to expect that the number of idle inhabitants, 
rich and poor, may decline by some nine tenths or so. Much of the ground 
space and buildings may likewise be expected to fall idle, and be turned to 
more economical use, for the time being; with the result that the local 
real estate values may be expected, transiently, to decline in a serious 
fashion; which would be deplored even more loudly.
All this disturbance of the even course of life in the country towns - the 
retail trade, the real-estate exchange, the hotel traffic, the Commercial 
Club, and the city council - all this disturbance will seem a grievous 
burden to those persons whose pleasure or profit is lessened by it; but it 
is, of course, to be counted as a transient derangement only - as a passing 
interruption of that régime of wasteful duplication, unearned incomes, and 
collusive division of profits that now goes to make up the everyday life 
and habitual interests of the town's population. It is, of course, designed 
to take effect only for the period of the war, and only as a measure of 
expedient war-time economy; and it is fairly to be expected that the 
superfluous townsmen will put up with it all in a cheerful spirit of 
patriotic sacrifice for the common good; always with a confident view to a 
speedy return to conditions that will again enable an excessive number of 
them to turn an excessive number of honest pennies at the cost of their 
country neighbors - more or less honest.
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