They may be said to enjoy a degree of independence, by virtue of their foregoing as much as may be of the advantages offered by modern industrial specialisation.

So also there are the minor and interstitial trades that are still carried on by handicraft methods; these, too, are still somewhat loosely held in the fabric of the business system.

There is one thing and another in this way to be taken account of in any exhaustive survey, but the accounting for them will after all amount to nothing better than a gleaning of remnants and partial exceptions, such as will in no material degree derange the general proposition in hand.
Again, there runs through the length and breadth of this business community a certain measure of incompetence or inefficiency of management, as seen from the point of view of the conceivable perfect working of the system as a whole.

It may be due to a slack attention here and there; or to the exigencies of business strategy which may constrain given business concerns to an occasional attitude of "watchful waiting" in the hope of catching a rival off his guard; or to a lack of perfect mutual understanding among the discretionary businessmen, due sometimes to an over-careful guarding of trade secrets or advance information; or, as also happens, and quite excusably, to a lack of perfect mutual confidence among these businessmen, as to one another's entire good faith or good-will.

The system is after all a competitive one, in the sense that each of the discretionary directors of business is working for his own pecuniary gain, whether in cooperation with his fellows or not.