placement of human labour by machinery similar
to that which is taking place in manufacture will take place in
distribution. So far as the wants of large classes of the public
become regular and their consumption measurable in quantity, machinery
will unquestionably take over the labour of distribution, especially
in the large towns which are absorbing in a way convenient for
mechanical distribution a larger proportion of the consuming public.
With each new encroachment of machinery into the domain of the
distributing trades the characteristics of machine-industry, enlarged
mass of the business, increased area of the market, increased
complexity of relations to other trades, increased specialisation of
local activity will be clearly discernible.

We thus see in the several departments of industry, under the pressure
of the same economic forces, an expansion of size, a growing complexity
of structure and functional activity, and an increased cohesion of
highly differentiated parts in the business, the market, and in that
aggregation of related trades and markets which forms the
world-industry. The physical instrument by which these economic forces,
making for increased size, heterogeneity, and cohesiveness,[123] have
been able to operate is machinery applied to manufacture and transport.
Moreover, each new encroachment of machinery upon the extractive and
the distributing industries brings into prominence within these
processes the same structural and functional characteristics.

[Illustration: COMPARATIVE VALUE OF FOREIGN TRADE IN EUROPEAN
COUNTRIES.]

FOOTNOTES:

[99] Cf. Chap. VI. for a discussion of this equation of maximum
profit.

[100] _Report to Labour Commission on Employment of Women_ (1893), p.
125.

[101] _Statistical Abstract_, 1878-92, p. 182

[102] _Social Peace_, p. 126; cf. also Brentano, _Hours, Labour, and
Production_, p. 60.

[103] _Contemporary Review_, 1889, p. 394.

[104] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 216.

[105] _Principles of Economics_, 2nd edit., p. 282.

[106] Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 90.

[107] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, 2nd edit., p. 283.

[108] The works of Messrs. Colman, at Norwich, comprise among others
the following subsidiary departments:--Coopery, engineering shop, saw
mills, box-making, packing, paper-making, printing, laboratory. To the
most highly developed businesses of pottery and machine-making schools
of art and desig