Our bakers, butchers, dairy-men, are everywhere in a constant state of suspended hostility, each endeavouring indeed to get the largest trade for himself, but abiding generally by a common scale of prices.

Wherever the local merchants are not easily able to be interfered with by outsiders, as in the coal-trade, they form a more or less closely compacted ring for the maintenance of common terms, raising and lowering prices by agreement.

The possibility of successfully maintaining these compacts depends on the ability to resist outside pressure, the element of monopoly in the trade.

When this power is strong, a local ring of competing tradesmen may succeed in maintaining enormous prices.

To take a humble example--In many a remote Swiss village, rapidly grown into a fashionable resort, the local washerwomen are able to charge prices twice as high as those paid in London, probably four times as high as the normal price of the neighbourhood.
Grocers or clothiers are not able to combine with the same effect, for the consumer is far less dependent on local distribution for these wares.