Much has been said and written in regard to the high cost of living. Marvelous and many are the theories advanced to cheapen table necessities. Ordinarily a topic so much discussed would have become stale long ago but this one seems ever new. Out of it all, however, will soon come some workable plan that will enable consumers to get together in a spirit of helpfulness and organize for mutual protection. People well informed have no fight to make with the average run of middlemen. A very large percentage of them are progressive citizens and honest to the core. They have been and still are performing a great service, and but few of them are getting rich. Their multiplicity, however, is largely responsible for the high cost of living today, and in addition to this they are hampered by a clumsy, antiquated, wasteful system of distribution. It is this entire system that we are warring against, and it must eventually be stored away in the world's garret among other second-hand and discarded methods of commerce. The following form of illustration is old, but the stage setting here is new. Woodlawn is a part of Chicago, a resident district, and yet, in a section seven blocks long and three blocks wide there are 35 retail grocery stores, meat markets and delicatessens, all told. It does not take any great stretch of the imagination to see the endless and enormous expense including clerk hire, telephones, rentals, interest on investment, delivery service, insurance and a dozen other items, all of which the consumer must pay. I live in a small apartment building in Woodlawn, and there are at least seven or eight difierent grocery and market wagons, belonging to as many different firms, that deliver goods at that building from one to three times daily. This is not economy-it is burning money. One cooperative grocery and meat market combined located anywhere in the territory mentioned could easily handle all the business