ow of commerce in earlier times. This advance in functional activity
of distribution is thus expressed by Mr. Spencer:--"In early English
times the great fairs, annual and other, formed the chief means of
distribution, and remained important down to the seventeenth century,
when not only villages, but even small towns, devoid of shops, were
irregularly supplied by hawkers who had obtained their stocks at these
gatherings. Along with increased population, larger industrial
centres, and improved channels of communication, local supply became
easier; and so frequent markets more and more fulfilled the purpose
of infrequent fairs. Afterwards, in chief places and for chief
commodities, markets themselves multiplied, becoming in some cases
daily. Finally came a constant distribution, such that of some foods
there is to each town an influx every morning; and of milk even more
than once in the day. The transition from times when the movements of
people and goods between places were private, slow, and infrequent, to
times when there began to run at intervals of several days public
vehicles moving at four miles an hour, and then to times when these
shortened their intervals and increased their speed, while their lines
of movement multiplied, ending in our own times, when along each line
of rails there go at full speed a dozen waves daily that are
relatively vast, sufficiently show us how the social circulation
progresses from feeble, slow, irregular movements to a rapid, regular,
and powerful pulse."[116]

The differentiation of function in the several parts of the industrial
organism finds a partial expression in the localisation of certain
industries. As there is growing division of labour among individuals
and groups of individuals, so the expansion of the area of competition
has brought about a larger and larger amount of local specialisation.

Roughly speaking, the West of Europe and of America has specialised in
manufacture, drawing an ever larger proportion of their food supplies
from the North-West States of America, from Russia, the Baltic
Provinces, Australia, Egypt, India, etc., and their raw materials of
manufacture from the southern United States, South America, India,
etc., while these latter countries are subjected to a correspondent
specialisation in agriculture and other extractive arts. If we take
Europe alone, we find certain large characteristics which mark out the
Baltic trade, the Black Sea trade, the Danub