8. Retail stores.—The retail store is of almost equal historic importance with the itinerant merchant as a means of reaching the consumer. For many years before the development of town life and before the days of cheap and easy means of communication, the local shop practically controlled the distribution of goods at retail. Its advantages proved so remark able that even the modern development of land and water transportation, the extraordinary growth of advertising and the resulting important changes in trade relations have scarcely affected its influence. Today the great mass of such staples as groceries, clothing, drugs, dry-goods, hardware, furniture, etc., are still marketed thru the retail store. Retail stores sell chiefly to consumers by "over-the-counter" meth ods. They may receive many orders by telephone, and usually they deliver a large proportion of the goods sold. Their delivery clerks may call upon the regular customers and solicit orders for the day, altho this expensive custom is being supplanted by the in creasing use of the telephone. Retail merchants in certain rural districts stock up wagons with salable merchandise and dispose of the load by making house to-house calls upon the farmers in the neighborhood; and many retail stores combine selling by mail with the ordinary distribution thru regular store channels. Yet if a retail establishment has facilities for deal ing directly and personally with customers who come to the store to buy, it should be classed as a retail store, no matter how many other retail selling meth ods it may use in combination with its over-the-coun ter activities.
9. Specialty first retail stores were probably what we now call specialty stores; each store dealt in only one kind of goods or in two or more closely allied lines. These stores grew up in the towns. In ancient and medieval times there was little country life as we know it now; the population of almost all countries was congregated in towns or around castles, because the unsettled conditions of the times made isolated residences unsafe. The towns that were of sufficient size harbored enough little spe cialty shops to satisfy most of the demands of the in habitants; and the smaller places that could not sup port a complete group of specialty shops in all lines, depended on itinerant merchants for what their own stores could not supply.
With the increased safety of more settled times the county outside of the towns became more thickly settled. For each group of country dwellers there was some center, a cross-roads, perhaps, or a small town. Here there might be a few specialty stores, but ordinarily- the population tributary to the small trading center was not large enough to support spe cialty shops in all lines. The itinerant merchants de clined in importance, and there was need for some method of supplying all the wants of the country communities.
10. General stores.—Out of this need developed the country general store. In a small country com munity there is not enough business to support a separate grocer, a separate dry-goods merchant, a separate jeweler, a separate hardware dealer, and so on, but there is usually more than enough business to provide a living for one dealer handling all these lines and many others besides. We do not know when the general store first appeared, but it certainly was a much later development than the small one-line specialty shop. In the United States the specialty store and the general store seem to. have grown up together. In earliest colonial times we find them both, and both have continued in their respective fields to the present time.
11. Department stores.—A third form of retail store is the department store. In essentials it is a general store on a large scale. It is not a country but a city institution, because only in the city is suf ficient trade found to support it. Probably the de partment store developed first in France, altho the United States and other countries were quick to adopt it. Today it is found almost everywhere in the civilized world, and its rapid growth, its problems, and its possibilities have been potent in breaking down old trade walls and in complicating the market situation.
Some of the reasons for the popularity of the de partment store are the following: (1) Possibility of economies in operation. Manv so-called overhead expenses of a retail store necessitating a certain mini mum expenditure for a store of any size, are not, the oretically, increased proportionately by an increase in the business of the establishment. Rent, delivery ex penses, advertising and managerial salaries are some times used as illustrations of this fact. It is not clear that department store selling expenses are now lower than selling expenses of first-class specialty stores ; but no doubt the expected possibility of economies in operation was one of the reasons for the early de velopment of the department store form of store or ganization. (2) Convenience to the public. It is a convenience for a shopper to be able to purchase many kinds of goods at one store; hence a depart ment store is expected to draw trade if it is to show large sales. (3) From the two foregoing reasons for the popularity of the department store arises the third, the possibility of doing a large business on a comparatively small capital. Greater profits, of course, are the ultimate reason for the investment of capital in a department store instead of in a specialty store, and these profits are expected to result from.the economies in operation, the large sales, the quick turns of stock, and the other profit-making factors which, theoretically at least, are characteristic of the depart ment store.