etween alcohol and
tobacco. The sporting tastes of man supply a strong sympathetic bond
between many trades. The same is true of literary, artistic, or other
tastes, which by the simultaneous demand which they make upon several
industries, in some proportion determined by the harmonious
satisfaction of their desires, throw these industries into sympathetic
groups.[114] These four bonds mark an identity of interest between
different industries.

The relationship is sometimes one of divergency or competition of
trades. Where the same service may be supplied by two or more
different commodities the trades are related by direct competition.
Oil, gas, electricity, as illuminants, are a familiar example of this
relationship. Many trades which produce commodities that are similar,
but far from identical in character, feel this relationship very
closely. The competition between various kinds of food, which with
different kinds and degrees of satisfaction may produce the same
substantial effects, between fish and meat, between various kinds of
vegetables and drinks, enables us to realise something of the
intricacy of the relations of this kind. In clothing we have
antagonism of interests between the various fabrics which has led to
great industrial changes. The most signal example is the rise of
cotton, its triumph over woollen clothes by the earlier application of
the new machinery, and over silk by the early superiority of its
dyeing and printing processes.[115] So in recent years in the conflict
among beverages, tea, and in a less measure cocoa, have materially
damaged the growth of the coffee industry so far as English
consumption is concerned. Where such rivalry exists, an industry may
be as powerfully and immediately affected by a force which raises or
depresses its competitor as by a force which directly affects itself.

Sec. 9. The growth of numerous and strongly-built structural attachments
between different trades and markets related to different localities
implies the existence of a large system of channels of communication
throughout our industrial society. By the increased number and
complexity of these channels connecting different markets and
businesses, and relating the most distant classes of consumers, we can
measure the evolution of the industrial organism. Through these
channels flow the currents of modern industrial life, whose pace,
length, and regularity contrast with the feeble, short, and spasmodic
fl