ABSTRACT
THE connection, rapidly growing closer, between industrial combinations-dominant concerns or manufacturers' associations-and retail trade associations, must be viewed on the background of the change which the structure of production and distribution has been undergoing. The small self-producing shopkeeper is dying out. The importance of the small shoemaker, the small confectioner, the small tailor, even the small baker and the small butcher, has been greatly reduced. It is still true that there are 500,000 retail shops in England and Wales, and some 575,000 in Great Britain, and that the "small independent retailer is still by far the most important of the various channels of distribution ".1 But most writers dealing with such figures tend to overlook the fact that the" number" of small retail shops is not characteristic of their problem, just as, for instance, in agriculture the number of smallholdings does not mean much if a comparative figure of their productive value is omitted. 2 The independent small farmer may be a national and social asset, but nevertheless his economic value to agriculture and the nation can be measured only by comparing the acreage he occupies with the total acreage under cultivation and the value of the food he produces with the total produced or required. 3 A middle-sized farmer may in that respect, and even more in
regard to certain branches of production, surpass the achievements and, thereby, the national " economic" significance of a considerable number of smallholders.
