Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an art, a science, a profession. - Harry Gordon Selfridge

The Phoenicians a thousand years before the Christian era were fearless, progressive and splendid, but... [t]hey traded individually as did the Venetians and even the great s of Augsburg, leaving no trace of that ability which selects and teaches others to assist in any remarkable enterprise.

The last hundred years have shown... that one man cannot do it all, and that anyone who attempts to hold within his two hands all the threads of a great business of the present day fails to achieve the greatest success.

[A] hundred years ago the selling of goods at retail had settled into a system of small shops, each confining itself to a particular class of merchandise. The comprehensive trade of the sixteenth century had been divided into small sections, and the smaller the section the smaller was the study, the amount of experience and the capital required. The retail trade of shop-keeping became in consequence a petty and insignificant undertaking, necessitating little risk, little profit, and little ability, and so generally was this fact accepted that the name of shop-keeper became a term of reproach and of disrespect.