trade to be taken over by the State. There will be no scope at all for individual brilliancy; counter clerks will take orders with about the same capabilities, and what "rises" there may be will go either by routine or by the recommendations of foremen. These latter, as to-day they do, will recommend juniors who appeal to them for one reason or another. The same thing will happen if the grocery trade in the alternative becomes one vast Trust.
This tendency is as observable in a London bank as in a London cement factory. The bank manager watches and considers the personal characteristics of his clerks with an anxious solicitude. He notes the particulars of his clerk's dress and the details of his home life. A subordinate, who hopes for promotion must be careful never to be seen wheeling a perambulator for his wife; it would, if he happened to become manager of a suburban branch, damage the standing of the Bank in the eyes of the customers, excellent accountant though he may be. On the other hand he must be an excellent accountant, and he must impress his superior with his knowledge of human nature. He must be able to gauge, both with his intuition and by the skilful utilisation of local gossip, what customers it is safe to trust with those overdrafts that are the life of suburban trade.
It is very much the same in cement or kindred
been empowered with charters to become administrative, examining, or penal bodies, of solicitors, barristers, surgeons, doctors and even pharmacists,—to become close corporations.
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