Page:Karl Kautsky - The Social Revolution - tr. Wood Simons (1902.djvu/152

 to production for 200,000 than for 800,000 industrial plants. The same is the case with the cost of the supervision of industries. Of the 200,000 industries, the smallest to be sure demands practically no supervision. In this class are those with less than five laborers. Here the manager is also a worker. Over 12,000 exceed this limit. But their supervision also demands considerably more directive power than those of 800. Other savings are attained in that the trusts abolish the struggle of competing industries for markets. Since their appearance in the United States the number of commercial travelers employed has decreased. One of the most striking of these cases is instanced by J. W. Jenks in his treatise concerning the trust. The extension of production has so increased that the number of unskilled laborers employed in these plants have increased 51 per cent and of the skilled 14 per cent. At the same time the number of commercial travelers has decreased 75 per cent. Jenks also states that many trusts have, according to their own statements, saved from 40 to 85 per cent of their advertising expenses.

Finally the raising of wages in industry would set free a large number of labor powers whose existence to-day is merely parasitic. They maintain a wretched existence to-day in their little shops, not because these shops are a necessity but because their possessors are in despair of finding their bread in any other place or