Retailers' Profits
In regard to certain classes of goods, the consumer continues to be convinced that the price he pays to the retailer is far too high compared with the price paid to producers. This charge is not one which can safely be brought against any class of trade so far as most manufactured articles are concerned, and least of all the draper. Mr. Chitham, speaking at the Drapers' Summer School at Oxford last Monday, was able to show, on the authority of statistics compiled by the Bank of England and the London School of Economics, that the. average rate of net profit in all classes of retail trade was 5.7 per cent., an amount certainly not excessive in view of the services rendered and the risks taken. But what is true of manufactured goods is not necessarily true of all goods—for example, milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables, fish, that come mostly from the farmer or the fisherman. Even in these cases the smaller retailers. may not make undue profits, but the distributive trades as a whole do—and this is a serious part of the whole problem of marketing which so far has been almost untouched by the marketing schemes. When the dis- tributors of • farm produce are content with profits as small as the draper makes, the farmer and the consumer will be much better off.
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