"Stores! stores! stores! miles of stores! ten thousand stores to distribute the goods needed by this one city, which in my dream had been supplied with all things from a single warehouse, as they were ordered through one great store in every quarter, where the buyer, without waste of time or labor, found under one roof the world's assortment in whatever line he desired. There the labor of distribution had been so slight as to add but a scarcely perceptible fraction to the cost of commodities to the user. The cost of production was virtually all he paid. But here the mere distribution of the goods, their handling alone, added a fourth, a third, a half and more, to the cost. All these ten thousand plants must be paid for, their rent, their staffs of superintendence, their platoons of salesmen, their ten thousand sets of accountants, jobbers, and business dependents, with all they spent in advertising themselves and fighting one another, and the consumers must do the paying. What a famous process for beggaring a nation!"
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Ch. 28.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Looking_Backward%3A_2000%E2%80%931887
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Looking Backward: 2000–1887
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian science fiction novel (1888) written by Edward Bellamy, a U.S. journalist and writer. It was the third largest bestseller of its time. Over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas, in the U.S. alone, stimulating an almost instant political mass movement.
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