ABSTRACT
ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations, Ch. V. ADAM SMITH'S thesis was possibly true until the end of the nineteenth century, in spite of the contrary examples which we have been able to adduce. Such" exceptions" would probably in his mind only have served to prove the " rule", although for us they appear to prove much more, and to show how associative price regulation may develop among traders anywhere at any time. But taking into consideration the general trend of trade organisation one may well say that the end of the last and the first decades of the new century saw a decisive change from competitive to associative organisation in almost every trade in Britain. Indeed, the face of the retail trade had begun to change. Liberal writers of former epochs would scarcely recognise it any longer. There is no difficulty now in finding examples of trade associations. They cover the whole field of retail business activities. When the Committee on Restraint of Trade was sitting it could interview representatives or receive memoranda from such associations in all possible branches; they did so as regards department stores, the chemists' trade, the photographic apparatus and materials' trade, the flour and bread trade, the grocery trade, the chocolate and confectionery trade, the tobacco trade, the newspaper and periodical trade, the stationery trade, the publishing trade, the gramophone trade, the electric trades (comprising electric lamps, radio retailers, etc.), the motor, cycle and tyre trade, the hardware trade, the building material trades, the textile and clothing trades (among them retail drapers, outfitters, garment makers and milliners]." All these associations were the object of inquiry about price maintenance and trade practices.
