rthermore, he sees what the superficial
observer constantly overlooks, namely, that these petty industries are,
for the most part, unstable and transient, being continually absorbed by
the larger industrial combinations or crushed out of existence, as soon
as they have obtained sufficient vitality and strength to make them
worthy of notice, either as tributaries to be desired or potential
competitors to be feared. Petty industries in a very large number of
cases represent a stage in social descent, the wreckage of larger
industries whose owners are economically as dependent as the ordinary
wage-workers, or even poorer and more to be pitied. Where, on the
contrary, it is a stage in social ascent, the petty industry is,
paradoxical as the idea may appear, frequently part of the process of
industrial concentration. By independent gleaning, it endeavors to find
sufficient business to maintain its existence. If it fails in this, its
owner falls back to the proletarian level from which, in most instances,
he arose. If it succeeds only to a degree sufficient to maintain its
owner at or near the average wage-earner's level of comfort, it may pass
unnoticed and unmolested. If, on the other hand, it gleans sufficient
business to make it desirable as a tributary, or potentially dangerous
as a competitor, the petty business is pounced upon by its mightier
rival and either absorbed or crushed, according to the temper or need of
the latter. Critics of the Marxian theory have for the most part
completely failed to recognize this significant aspect of the subject,
and attached far too much importance to the continuance of petty
industries.

IV

What is true of petty industry is true in even greater measure of retail
trade. Nothing could well be further from the truth than the hasty
generalization of some critics, that an increase in the number of retail
business establishments invalidates the theory of a progressive
concentration of capital. In the first place, many of these
establishments have no independence whatsoever, but are merely agencies
of larger enterprises. Mr. Macrosty has shown that in London the cheap
restaurants are in the hands of four or five firms, and this is a branch
of business which, because it calls for relatively small capital, shows
in a marked manner the increase of establishments. Much the same
conditions exist in connection with the trade in milk and bread.[97]
Similar conditions prevail in almost all th