f a successful business
is continually increasing. The following figures illustrate the meaning
of this movement from the American cotton trade, which is not one of the
industries most susceptible to the concentrative pressure. "It will be
seen that in 756 large establishments in 1880, in which the aggregate
capital invested was five times as great as that in the 801
establishments in 1830, the capital invested per spindle was one-third
less, the number of spindles operated by each labourer nearly three
times as large, the product per spindle one-fourth greater, the product
per dollar invested twice as large, the price of the cotton cloth nearly
sixty per cent, less, the consumption _per capita _of the population
over one hundred per cent greater, and the wages more than double. What
is true of this industry is true of all industries where the
concentration of capital has taken place."[38]

It is needless to add that these large works are conducted, not by
single owners, but in nearly all cases by the managers of associated
capitals. Regarded from the large standpoint of industrial development,
all these phenomena denote a change in the sphere of competition. From
the competition of private capitals owned by individuals we have passed
to the competition of associated capitals. The question now arises,
"Will not the same forces, which, in order to avoid the waste and
destruction of ever keener competition, compelled the private
capitalists to suspension of hostility and to combination, act upon the
larger masses of associated capital?" The answer is already working
itself clearly out in industrial history. The concentrative adhesive
forces are everywhere driving the competing masses of capital to seek
safety, and escape waste and destruction, by welding themselves into
still larger masses, renouncing the competition with one another in
order to compete more successfully with other large bodies. Thus,
wherever these forces are in free operation, the number of competing
firms is continually growing less; the surviving competitors have
crushed or absorbed their weaker rivals, and have grown big by feeding
on their carcases.

But the struggle between these few big survivors becomes more fierce
than ever. Fitted out with enormous capital, provided with the latest,
most complex, and most expensive machinery, producing with a reckless
disregard for one another or the wants of the consuming public,
advertising on a prodigious