But wherever such retail combinations are possible they are found.

Among large producers and large distributing agencies the same tendency prevails, especially in cases where the market is largely local.

Free competition of prices among coal-owners or iron-masters gives way under the pressure of common interests, to a schedule of prices; competing railways come to terms.

Even among large businesses which enjoy no local monopoly, there are constant endeavours to maintain a common scale of prices.

This condition of loose, irregular, and partial co-operation among competing industrial units is the characteristic condition of trade in such a commercial country as England to-day.