All of the leading trusts and railways were, even at their inception, intimately connected through cross investments and interlocking directorates. Writing in 1904, Mr. Moody, an eminent financial authority, said: "Around these two groups [the Morgan-Rockefeller interests], or what must ultimately become one greater group, all other smaller groups of capitalists congregate. They are all allied and intertwined by their various mutual interests. For instance, the Pennsylvania Railroad interests are on the one hand allied with the Vanderbilts and on the other with the Rockefellers. The Vanderbilts are closely allied with the Morgan group, and both the Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt interests have recently become the dominating factors in the Reading system, a former Morgan road and the most important part of the anthracite coal combine which has always been dominated by the Morgan people.... Viewed as a whole, we find the dominating influences in the trusts to be made up of an intricate network of large and small capitalists, many allied to another by ties of more or less importance, but all being appendages to or parts of the greater groups which are themselves dependent on and allied with the two mammoth, or Rockefeller and Morgan, groups. These two mammoth groups jointly ... constitute the heart of the business and commercial life of the nation."[48]
How tremendous is this corporate control over business, output, and wage earners is indicated by the census of 1909. Of the total number of establishments reported as engaged in manufacturing in 1904, 23.6 per cent were under corporate ownership, while in 1909 the percentage had increased to 25.9. Although they controlled only about one fourth of the total number of establishments, corporations employed 70.6 per cent of all the wage earners reported in 1904 and 75.6 per cent in 1909. Still more significant are the figures relative to the output of corporations. Of the total value of the product of all establishments, 73.7 per cent was turned out by corporations in 1904 and 79 per cent in 1909. "In most of the states," runs the Census Report, "between three fifths and nine tenths of the total value of manufactured products in 1909 was reported by establishments under corporate ownership." Of the 268,491 establishments reported in 1909, there were 3061 which produced 43.8 per cent of the total value of all products and employed 30.5 per cent of the wage earners. It is, in fact, this absorption of business by a small number of concerns which marks the great concentration of modern industry. The mere number of corporations is not of much significance, for most of them are petty.