BIG AND LITTLE SHOPKEEPERS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 12

BIG AND LITTLE SHOPKEEPERS

The struggle of the small shopkeeper with the great company owning a huge "department store" or a host of retail branches is a familiar feature of economic life in Western Europe, and some the Continental oountries have attempted to make it lesa unequal by legislation. In Prussia_ and_ Austria respectively the State discriminates agaiaßt the "universal provider 1 " by taxation and otherwise ; and tho_ French Budget for the current year, whioh haa been recently passed, imposes a graduated tux on trade licenses according to the number of branch shops owned by a firnf engaged in retail trade. According to the text adopted by the Senate, the tax payable was £o increase by 25 per cent, if the number of branches was ten or less, and was to go on. increasing by four stages, being doubled when they exceeded 100. When the Finance Bill came back to the Chamber, however, a. fresh_ scale was proposed, beginning at an additional 33 per cent, if the number of branohos was under ten, and rising to 100 per cent, if it exceeded lifty. The finance Minister objected, with come reason, that the system uttacked kept down prices locally, and that people complained of the rise in tho cost of living, and then set themselves to increase it by legislation: but tho Chamber adopted the revised text by 271 votes to 233. The fact is that France-, in epite of its Socialists, to tstill the country of tbo euiull ptOPfie* JtoLoad thveoLiU .eM&fclttt*