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.
Such facts, however, do not carry on the surface their real import. Independent capital persists as a force, but the units that compose it melt like bubbles in a stream. These companies are but the raw or “partly manufactured” material out of which the great combinations are made. Formation, growth, and absorption into a trust are generally the three terms in their life-history; or if, through ill environment or spirited warfare waged against them, they fail to get secure footing, they soon slip back into the slough of disaster. The fate of independent tobacco factories, sugar and oil refineries, railroads, independent companies of one kind or another, is constantly before us. If they are worth having, they are more or less benevolently assimilated; and if they are not worth having, they are permitted to struggle onward to the almost inevitable collapse.