system had gained a foothold in nearly every line,
even the corporation had made its appearance, yet small-scale production
prevailed in practically every field. In the decade preceding the War,
vans were still making regular trips through New England and the Middle
States, leaving at farmhouses bundles of straw plait, which the members
of the household fashioned into hats. The farmers' wives and daughters
still supplemented the family income by working on goods for city
dealers in ready-made clothing. We can still see in Massachusetts rural
towns the little shoe shops in which the predecessors of the existing
factory workers soled and heeled the shoes which shod our armies in the
early days of the Civil War. Every city and town had its own slaughter
house; New York had more than two hundred; what is now Fifth Avenue was
frequently encumbered by large droves of cattle, and great stockyards
occupied territory which is now used for beautiful clubs, railroad
stations, hotels, and the highest class of retail establishments.

In this period before the Civil War comparatively small single owners,
or frequently copartnerships, controlled practically every industrial
field. Individual proprietors, not uncommonly powerful families which
were almost feudal in character, owned the great cotton and woolen mills
of New England. Separate proprietors, likewise, controlled the iron and
steel factories of New York State and Pennsylvania. Indeed it was not
until the War that corporations entered the iron industry, now regarded
as the field above all others adapted to this kind of organization. The
manufacture of sewing machines, firearms, and agricultural implements
started on a great scale in the Civil War; still, the prevailing unit
was the private owner or the partnership. In many manufacturing lines,
the joint stock company had become the prevailing organization, but even
in these fields the element that so characterizes our own age, that of
combination, was exerting practically no influence.

Competition was the order of the day: the industrial warfare of
the sixties was a free-for-all. A mere reference to the status of
manufactures in which the trust is now the all-prevailing fact will
make the contrast clear. In 1865 thousands of independent companies were
drilling oil in Pennsylvania and there were more than two hundred which
were refining the product. Nearly four hundred and fifty operators were
mining coal, not even dimly fores