Читать книгу Our Benevolent Feudalism - William J. Ghent - Страница 10

Table of Contents

The counter-tendency toward the persistence of small-unit farming and of small-shop production and distribution must not be lost sight of, nor must the great combinations be looked upon as necessarily a proof of individual concentration of wealth. That they generally so result is hardly to be disputed; but primarily, they mean the massing together of separately owned capitals, often small, for a particular use. There is every reason to suppose that the shareholders grow in numbers, and that they increase their holdings. So that while the magnates tend to become Midases, there is a concurrent tendency making for diffused ownership. The small investor is to be found in every stratum of society, and the number of shareholders in some of the great combinations reaches an astonishing figure. The “one touch of nature” which in Shakespeare’s eyes made the whole world kin was the love of novelty; in our day it is the passion for investing in shares.

Petty industries and small-unit farming persist, despite the movement toward combination. The recent census gives the number of manufacturing establishments in the United States as 512,726, an increase of 44.3 per cent. This is a larger percentage of increase than is shown for any other of the fifteen items in the census summary of manufactures, except capital, children’s wages, and miscellaneous expenses. Doubtless many of these establishments belong to the trusts; but with all allowances the numerical growth is remarkable. The undeveloped sections show the greatest increase, but even industrially settled States, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, reveal marked gains. Professor Ely has pointed out several branches of industry in which small-shop production is increasing. Some investigations which the present writer made two years ago in two branches confirm this tendency. It is pronounced in the notion trades and in the manufacture of women’s ready-made wear. In the latter the industry has been revolutionized, the large houses being menaced with disaster and some of them with extinction. In dry-goods distribution the tendencies are confused and puzzling. While the number of general jobbing houses in New York City has decreased from thirty-five to five in twenty-five years, the remaining ones growing to enormous proportions, the number of smaller houses distributing special lines has either maintained its own or has grown. In Baltimore and St. Louis small jobbing houses persist in the face of the larger houses. In the retail trades, even in New York, despite the creation of a number of mammoth general stores, the dullest observer will note the continuance of thousands of small grocery, dry-goods, and furniture stores, confectionery and butcher shops; while custom and repairing work is still done in the little tailoring and shoemaking shops that speak a sort of defiance to the great emporiums. Through convenience of location to the community of customers about them—often, too, by the giving of credit—many of these little shops and stores furnish a social service that cannot be performed by the larger stores, which are mostly to be found massed in the central shopping district.

Something of the same nature is to be found in agriculture. Though the great estates are increasing in size, so also is the number of small holdings increasing. Nearly every State and Territory shows an increase in the number of farms, while the majority show a decrease in average acreage. The great stock-grazing farms of the West and the unproductive “gentlemen’s estates” of the East help to make the census figures misleading. It is probable that in every State real farming is done on a smaller average acreage than ever before.

Even independent capital in trading and manufactures shows an unexpected persistence. An interesting article in a recent issue of the New York Journal of Commerce puts the capitalization of the great trusts for the twelve years ending with 1901 at $6,474,000,000, of which it marks off $2,000,000,000 as “spurious common stock,” that is, stock not representing real capital in any form. Not more than $300,000,000 of new capital, it maintains, had been thrown into the consolidations. This would leave $4,474,000,000 as the sum of values already established by previous investment. On the other hand, it maintains that actual records show that in seventeen months from the beginning of 1901, in the four States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maine, the aggregate capitalization of newly organized companies with a capital of $1,000,000 and upwards is $1,969,650,000; and it calculates that for the whole country, including the large and small corporations, “the national industrial capital (exclusive of that for transportation appliances) must have increased approximately $5,000,000,000 since the end of 1900.” Several rather obvious demurrers might be made to the conclusions reached, but they need not now concern us. With all possible discounting, strong proof is given of the aggressive persistence of independent capital.