Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/609

Rh $1,019,106,616 to $1,885,861,676, so that in that decade there was an increase of 17,408 establishments, to an increase of only $866,755,060 in the value of products. In 1870 there were 252,148 firms and corporations so employed, producing $4,232,325,442 in manufactured products; or an increase of 111,715 establishments in the decade from 1860 to 1870, gave an increase of $2,346,461, in the value of products. In 1880, the number of manufacturing establishments was returned at 253,852, producing articles valued at $5,365,579,191, or an addition of only 1,704 firms and corporations was accompanied with an increase of product of $1,133,537,749. Here, then, is a demonstration that the average product of a manufacturing establishment in the United States in 1880 was just sixty per cent greater than it was in 1860.

The following are other illustrations pertinent to this subject: "It is a characteristic and noteworthy feature of banking in Germany," says the London "Statist," "that the bulk of the business is gradually shifting from the small bankers, who used to do a thriving business, to the great banking companies, leaving quite a number of small customers almost without any chance to prosper in legitimate operations concentration of capital and business in the hands of a limited number of powerful customers being the rule of the day."

The tendency to discontinue the building and use of small vessels for ocean transportation, and the inability of such vessels to compete with vessels of larger tonnage, is shown by the statement that while a steamer of from 200 or 300 tons requires one sailor for every 19·8 tons, a steamer of from 800 to 1,000 tons requires but one sailor for every 41·5 tons. In like manner, while a sailing-vessel of from 200 to 300 tons requires one sailor for every 28·9 tons, a sailing-vessel of five times the size, or from 1,000 to 1,600 tons, requires but one sailor for every 60·3 tons. And as it is also claimed that other economies in the construction of the hull or the rigging, and in repairing, are concurrent with the reduction of crews, it is not difficult to understand why it is, that large vessels are enabled to earn a percentage of profit with rates of freight which, in the case of small vessels, would inevitably entail losses.

It was a matter of congratulation after the conclusion of the American war in 1865, that the large plantation system of cotton-raising would be broken up, and a system of smaller crops, by small and independent farmers or yeomanry, would take its place. Experience has not, however, verified this expectation; but, on the contrary, has shown that it is doubtful whether any profit can accrue to a cultivator of cotton whose annual crop is less than fifty bales. "Cotton (at the South) is made an exclusive crop, because it can be sold for cash—for an actual and certain price in gold. It is a mere trifle to get eight or nine cents for a pound of cotton, but for a bale of 450 pounds it is $40. The bale of cotton is therefore a reward which the anxious farmer works for during an entire year, and for which he will spend half as much in