My feelings in the matter are quite definite. I find
myself heart and soul on the side of the small shopkeeper. The President of the Board of Trade would doubtless assert that he abundantly shares these human sympathies ; in fact, he proclaimed recently that the small retailer was " the backbone of the nation " ; I should be happier
had his words not had about them the formal compassion of obituary notice, and did I not feel that, owing to the pressure economic circumstances almost beyond the President's control, nation is in danger of losing this particular backbone. E numerically the, small traders today occupy a central position. As Russell Thomas pointed out in the debate, they stand today in very large majority. Whereas the co-operative societies possess 12,03o shops, whereas some 27,500 shops are owned by the ch stores, the retail traders number as many as 960,500, represen some 3,000,000 people either engaged in, or dependent on, the re trade. Nor, if we are to take the figures published in the Board Trade Journal, has the starvation period yet been reached ; by large the retail trader is still doing fairly well. But that is not point ; the point is that he cannot possibly, if present condit persist, continue to do fairly well. Every week that passes assistant or some partner is called up for National Service. Supp are diminishing, and it is inevitable that in the present shor of commodities and transport that the wholesaler should seek simplify his daily problems by selling to the large shop rather to the small shop.
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