This waste resulting from cross freights is only a small part of a similar waste that results from competition in the task of distribution—or retail trade.
We are all familiar with the amazing results obtained by the national enterprise known as the Post Office, and how, for the insignificant sum of two cents, a letter written in New York can be delivered in an incredibly short space of time in San Francisco, and even perhaps more incredibly in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
Let us consider for a moment the cost of doing this were letters distributed throughout the country in the same way as our other commodities, as for example, milk, coal, or bread. It would be interesting to calculate how many hundred dealers in milk there are in New York[68] or London, equipped with their own horses, wagons, and men, each engaged in delivering milk all over the city; add to these the thousands distributing in like manner bread, and the thousands distributing coal, and so on with butter, eggs, meat, fish, vegetables, and all other things that enter into our daily consumption.
Every block of houses is served with milk by this large number of milk dealers instead of by one, as would be the case if the distribution of milk were in the hands of one agency; so every block is furnished with butter, eggs, meat, fish, and vegetables by this large number of dealers in butter, eggs, meat, fish, and vegetables, instead of by one, and so on, through every article that enters into our daily use.
Compare with this the economy of time, labor, and expense effected by the Government Post Office through sorting letters beforehand according to streets, and confining the distribution in any one street to a single carrier who distributes the letters with the greatest economy of time and labor, from door to door.
No practical business man would be guilty of the stupidity of putting a hundred men to do the work that could be done just as well by a single man; and yet, this is exactly the stupidity of which the competitive system is guilty. Let us consider the unnecessary number of butcher shops in the city of New York.[69]
Before methods of communication had attained their present development, it was necessary that there should be butcher shops in every block to satisfy the needs of the people in the block. But to-day, the telephone service permits of ordering meat at a great distance, and the automobile permits of this meat being rapidly delivered to the consumer. The best housekeepers residing downtown to-day go for their meat to a butcher who lives in Harlem. Now there is no reason why this Harlem butcher should not furnish all the meat to the island of Manhattan, or indeed to all in Greater New York. But there is a reason why under our competitive system this should not take place, and this is the stupidity of butchers in particular and the stupidity of the community at large. Most butchers believe that they can make most money by cheating their customers; and the public at large believe all butchers equally dishonest and therefore deal with the butcher nearest them. This stupidity is to a great extent justified. The art of the butcher consists in finding out to which customers he can sell third-class meat at first-class prices;[70] and as a rule, he is so successful in doing this that no butcher is ever known to fail. On the contrary, they all grow rich. This being the rule, the public is justified in giving up the expectation of being honestly served, so that it is only the most intelligent housewives who discover that there are butchers who do not have dishonest methods. Thus the stupidity of butchers and public tends to encourage the multiplicity of shops and keeps in the butcher business an enormously larger number than is necessary. If now we take into consideration that what is true of butchers is true of almost every dealer in the articles of food we consume, we shall appreciate how much waste of human effort there is in this business of distribution. But all this waste, encouraging stupidity in the customer and dishonesty in the retailer, is endorsed because it "makes character!"
Last but not least is the loss of by-products that inevitably results from manufacturing upon anything less than a gigantic scale.
The managers of the Standard Oil Trust testify that among the waste products capable of being utilized in sufficiently large refineries are gasoline, paraffine, lubricating oil, vaseline, naphtha, aniline dyes, and no less than two hundred drugs; and that the total value of these waste products is actually as great as that of the oil itself.[71]
Is or is not the contention with which this chapter started, justified? It was charged that the competitive system is stupid because wasteful and disorderly, and that it was unnecessarily immoral, unjust, and cruel. The testimony of men recognized as the highest authorities has been produced to demonstrate its wastefulness: