I. From Large Scale Industry to Mammoth Industry
ONE of the most notable of the economic phenomena of the post-war epoch in Europe is the vigorous concentration of capital. This process of concentration has assumed a new form. We were already familiar with the growth of cartels and syndicates in which a number of like undertakings were associated to a certain degree, but still maintained substantial independence. Now we have to do with combines in which the independence of the amalgamated undertakings has disappeared, and in which the most heterogeneous enterprises are united under a single management. These combines I shall speak of as ‘concerns’ (see footnote).
Official statistical data give no adequate impression of this tremendously important development. Since capital itself has an obvious interest in keeping these combinations as much as possible in the dark, even the most indefatigable of investigators finds it very difficult to gain a true conception of what is going on.
The prevailing obscurity has been dispelled by a comprehensive research undertaken by the German Metalworkers’ Union.* Careful study of the industrial and commercial newspaper press, continued during several years, has enabled the Metalworkers’ Union to sketch the progress of the movement to form “concerns,” in so far as this movement starts from the smelting industries. Although the investigation is restricted to German firms, it has an international significance, for what is taking place in Germany is paralleled in other lands of high industrial development. The only difference between Germany and other countries relates to the speed of the process, and not to its character.
What is the upshot of this investigation? The book shows how one undertaking after another is passing under the control of one among several powerful capitalist groups, and is thus forfeiting its independence. The absorption into a combine is occurring, not only in the case of enterprises of medium size, but also in the case of very large undertakings, so that from one day to the next these pass under the dominion of concerns which have hitherto been their rivals. So overwhelming is the annihilation of independent undertakings that, as we read, we cannot but be reminded of the annihilation of independent craftsmanship in the nineteenth century by the growing machine industry. The most notable characteristic of this process of absorption is quite a new one. Whereas before the war such amalgamations took place only among enterprises carrying on the same kind of production, combines are now formed out of units between which, at the first glance, no natural tie seems to exist and no sort of association to be possible.
Take, for example, the Siemens-Rhine-Elbe-Schuckert-Union, in which Hugo Stinnes# exercises a preponderant influence. The main constituents, of this concern were two, the Rhine-Elbe-Union, Limited, and the Siemens-Schuckert Company. The former was an amalgamation of the Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks Company, the Deutsch-Luxemburgische Bergwerks und HŸtten Company, and the Bochumer Verein fŸr Bergbau und Gussstahl-fabrikation. The latter was an amalgamation of the Schuckert Electrical Works, the Siemens-Halske Company, and the Siemens-Schuckert Company. As a result of these various amalgamations, in the Siemens-Rhine-Elbe-Schuckert-Union there are now peacefully combined under one management: collieries, blast-furnaces, steel works, rolling-mills, machine factories, paper-mills, china factories, etc.
Even more heterogeneous is Hugo Stinnes Limited, in which Hugo Stinnes’ private interests are concentrated under this gentleman’s absolute control. Here there is no end to the multiplicity of the amalgamated undertakings. Stinnes seems to play the part of a collector who indiscriminately sweeps into his net everything that he finds in his path. In the Ruhr he has coal mines; in Hamburg, oil-mills and shipping concerns; in Potsdam, film-producing enterprises; elsewhere, a tannery; in Berlin and Vienna, book-publishing houses and newspaper enterprises (in Vienna he publishes no fewer than three newspapers): in North Germany he owns landed estates: in Austria he holds shares in the biggest industrial enterprise of the country, the Alpine Montan Company: in Czecho-Slovakia he owns sugar works; in Sweden, a ship-yard; in Naples an aluminium factory. In a word, the Stinnes’ interests are all-embracing and omnipresent. No country, no industry, no branch of commerce is safe from this great purchaser. Stinnes, indeed, turns up everywhere – but in some of the other great amalgamations the bazaar-like multiformity is almost as remarkable.
The book I am summarising enumerates about two dozen such “concerns,” but six of these are already conspicuous among the rest, and it can easily be foreseen that sooner or later they will swallow the lesser combines and such outside undertakings as still remain independent.~
The industrial magnates’ annexationist designs do not relate to private enterprise alone. The great concerns want to absorb the leading State-capitalist undertakings of Germany. For more reasons than one they cannot endure the existence, outside their sphere of influence, of great independent enterprises in the form of these State-capitalist undertakings. Their immediate aim is to wrest the coal mines and the railways from the State. This design is not of very recent date. It is several years now since Stinnes, operating through some of the London banks, tried to get his grip on the German railways. Although this plan has not yet been realised, its realisation would seem to be only a question of time.
It should be noted, moreover, that a movement in favour of the denationalisation of the railways is now manifest in every country where these concerns are still State property. We see this in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Belgium, and, above all, in fascist Italy.
Inasmuch as the railways are not always paying enterprises, and, indeed (owing to the way in which they were neglected during the war), need in many cases annual subsidies, the keen desire of private entrepreneurs to get possession of them may seem remarkable. But there are two good reasons for this desire. In the first place there is the hope of acquiring the railways at knock-out prices, so that under private management they might be made to pay a large return on the capital invested. In the second place (and this is the more important consideration), the industrial magnates believe that the control of the railways will enable them to expand their enterprises immeasurably. The European entrepreneurs have studied the American parallel, and do not forget the pronouncement of the Inter-State Commerce Commission in the United States: “In any industry, whoever controls the avenues of transportation of either the raw material or the finished product can speedily drive all competitors out of existence.”
We can foresee, therefore, that the passing of the railways into the hands of private enterprise will accelerate rather than retard the concentration of capital.
It would be a great mistake to regard this movement towards the concentration of capital as restricted to Germany. I have treated the German concentration in fuller detail because the before-mentioned book gives so clear a picture of what is in progress. But the same thing is going on everywhere. In the United States, even before the war, the concentration of capital had become a byword. There is abundant proof that the effect of the war has been to favour the tendency, and that concentration of industrial capital has gone further in the American Union than anywhere else in the world.§
It is true that in the United States, as compared with Europe, this movement towards the concentration if capital has taken a somewhat peculiar form. In the United States, the interlocking of various branches of industry, beginning with the production of raw materials, passing through the various stages of manufacture, and going on to include transport, has not yet been noted. The transatlantic concentration of capital has been mainly displayed in the formation of trusts (the Standard Oil Trust, the Steel Trust, the Shipping Trust, and so on) which have come to exercise a dominant influence both in economic and political life.
As a matter of course, in all other countries, capital is following the example set by Germany and the United States.
These tendencies are especially conspicuous in France. The largest “concern” in that country is one that is grouped round Schneider and the Creusot works. Francis Delaisi, writing on the European Steel Industry in the Manchester Guardian Commercial (the Reconstruction number of July 12, 1923), says: “It would be too long a task to enumerate all the companies in which the Schneider group is interested. Their number has been found to reach 182. It is doubtful whether Hugo Stinnes controls more.”
Simultaneously there is going on a concentration and organisation of the whole smelting industry and iron manufacture. The most powerful section of this is the Commute Des Forges, whose economic strength gives it a decisive voice in the central industrial organisation known as the Union des Industries Metallurgiques et Minieres. To safeguard their influence in the Chamber, the combined industriel magnates have created an electoral machine of their own, the Union des Interets Economiques, which influences opinion by its publications. To quote Delaisi once more (Manchester Guardian Commercial, November I, I923): “Thus the Comité des Forges, or the collection of organisations to which it is customary to refer under this name, represents the greatest single economic, political, and social force which exists in France. Herr Stinnes in Germany has no greater force at his disposal.”In England prior to the war, individualism was dominant in the industrial field. Powerful combines did, indeed, exist, but only in certain industries. The war has brought about a great change in the organisation of British industrial life. This transformation is no chance matter, being the outcome of certain directives elaborated by a parliamentary committee during the third year of the war. Thus we read in the Economist for December 29,1923: ‘In view of this consensus of expert opinion, it is not surprising that Lord Balfour of Burleigh’s Committee on Commercial and Industrial Policy, which reported in December, 1917, should have adopted the doctrine so propounded. After noting the existence of a widespread belief that a re-examination of British trade organisation had become necessary on account of the increasing intensity of foreign competition, based largely on combination in respect of production and distribution, they declared their general agreement with the view that the individualistic methods hitherto pursued on the whole in this country needed to be supplemented or replaced by co-operation and coordination as regards the obtaining of supplies, production, and marketing abroad. They recognised that the adoption of this course would lead to combinations to control the domestic market, but they held that such development is not only practically inevitable under modern economic conditions, but it is in some cases desirable in itself.”
We need not be surprised, therefore, to find that the British movement towards the concentration of capital is quite as far advanced as the same movement on the Continent. In the British Isles to-day there are industrial combines even greater than those of Stinnes and Schneider-Creusot. Hitherto, however, the prevailing mode of combination has been the “horizontal” one, this meaning the union of similar industrial undertakings. These are not simply organised in cartels, for the lesser enterprises are actually merged in the greater ones.
Above all in the iron and steel industry powerful combines have rapidly been formed. It is on record that, by the end of the war, one-fourth of all the enterprises in the steel industry were producing more than three-fourths of all the steel turned out by British works; and that, as far as pig iron is concerned, one-fifth of the undertakings were producing more than half of the iron.
Since then, the larger enterprises have gained ground considerably. More and more, the lesser undertakings are swallowed by the greater, and ere long the whole iron and steel industry of the country will be controlled by a very few combines.
The same concentration is taking place in other industries. In the shipping trade, for instance, Lords Inchcape and Kylsant now control one-fifth of the mercantile marine of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Colonies.
Ninety per cent of the production of cables is in the hands of the Cablemakers’ Association.
The process of concentration is well marked in the case of food supplies. The United Dairies, founded in the year 1915, now control more than one-twelfth of the milk production of the country, and have in their hands considerably more than half of the supply of dairy products to London. This combine has forty-five dairies in England and Wales, and a widespread organisation for the purchase and sale of dairy produce. It is, therefore, a gigantic mixed undertaking. In a report recently issued by a committee of enquiry appointed by the Department of Agriculture we are told that the United Dairies can practically dictate prices to all the producers – and that in certain districts the producers are entirely dependent upon the combine. The consumers, too, find themselves to an increasing extent at its mercy.
But the “vertical” form of combination, the fusion of undertakings engaged in different branches of industry, has likewise, of late years, made extensive progress in Britain. This especially applies to the joint organisation of the iron trade and the coal trade.
Even more remarkable is the amalgamation of various branches of industry in the armaments industry, the electrical industry, and the chemical industry.
The famous British armaments’ firm of Vickers has, through the purchase of shares, acquired a controlling influence in various motor works, carriage works, wire works, and electrical works. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co. own coal mines, iron and steel works, and machine factories.
In the electrical industry, the movement towards combination is mainly directed by two concerns, the English Electric Co. and the General Electric Co., both of which are interested in almost all branches of the electrical industry.
Unquestionably, however, the greatest ramification of interests is that shown by a chemical undertaking, the firm of Lever Brothers. Before the war, this had already swallowed about forty different companies. Of late its expansion has been enormous, and by the beginning of 1921 the number of companies under its control had increased to 140. Soap is the leading product of the combine; but Lever Brothers’ interests embrace banking, shipping, the manufacture of machinery, coal mining, oil refining, the fishing industry, paper milling, etc.
Besides these well-organised combinations, there exist in every industry more or less effectively integrated cartels.
The trustification of British banking must not be overlooked.This development has been a rapid one. Some ten years ago, there was little sign of any such tendency in the banking world, but to-day there are very few really independent banks. More and more everything passes under the control of the five great banking combines.
In Belgium and in Italy the same concentration of capital is going on, the combines being both horizontal and vertical. Everywhere, industrial individualism is decaying. More and more, the process of amalgamation is putting the control of enterprise into the hands of a few autocrats of capital. The development from large-scale industry to mammoth industry is universal.
This development is inevitable. It is not the outcome of any special conditions of time or place, but is the logical consequence of the advance of capitalist organisation.
2. Economic Causes.
No matter what form the concentration of capital may take, the underlying motive is always the same. Capital wants to minimise the risks attaching to the multiformity of its enterprises.
Owing to the extensive specialisation and differentiation of the process of production, isolated entrepreneurs find it more and more difficult to supervise the whole field with which their activities are concerned. Each of them indiscriminately flings his wares into the market, without concerning himself how many others may be producing similar wares, and with no previous knowledge of the market’s capacity for absorption. In earlier days, this disorganisation of production led to prolonged crises, which at times ruined whole branches of industry. Until recently, however, the regulation of production was mainly in the hands of commercial enterprises organised for this special purpose, which collected orders and passed them on to the producers, or gave orders on their own account.
But these enterprises competed with one another for business, and were therefore unable to prevent the glutting of the market with certain wares. There has, therefore, been an increasing tendency for producers to undertake the marketing of their own wares, and to combine in order to eliminate competition.
This attempt to eliminate competition led to the formation of what we know as cartels and syndicates. Their essential peculiarity is that the independence of the individual members of the cartel or syndicate is substantially maintained, being restricted only as regards the prices of raw materials or finished products. In a few instances, the cartel or syndicate has a word to say anent the amount of production.
Ere long, however, most of these cartels began to assume a new character. Passing on from the functions of defence and regulation, they began to assume the offensive, to dictate, and by drastic measures to compel outside organisations to enter the combine. The most advanced development along such lines has been that of the American trusts. In these, the combined undertakings forfeit their individual independence. Sometimes voluntarily, and sometimes under compulsion, all undertakings in one branch of industry are placed under joint management.
The “concern”# goes further than either the cartel or the trust. In the ‘concerns’ there is a fusion of undertakings, not merely in the same branch of production, but of the most diversified kinds, all of these passing under the control of a single group of entrepreneurs. The main impetus to their formation is likewise to be found in the economic needs of the process of production. Their primary aim is to do away with middlemen’s profits in all the processes that intervene between the obtaining of the raw material and the delivery of the finished product to the consumer. Thus the essential economic basis of a concern is the mining industry – in the widest possible sense of the term mining. A concern usually begins by the combination of a coal mining enterprise with a smelting enterprise. The next stage is to include a machine factory in the combine. Thereafter, the concern thrusts its tentacles into all branches of production, and then goes on, by acquiring means of transport, ships, and the like, to provide for the distribution of its wares to the consumer.
This abolition of middlemen’s profits is not the only advantage gained by the formation of a concern. The intimate association of smelting, coal mining, and the manufacture of machinery, facilitates a more intelligent and economical use of energy. The producer does all his work, so to say, “with the same heat”; he utilises alt by-products in the place where they come into existence, thus saving much freightage; and lie escapes the need for securing all his supplies in the open market. The various branches of his undertakings help one another; ‘one hand washes the other.’ It is no longer necessary to maintain individual branches for the sale of wares, nor need an army of travellers be kept at work. These functions are concentrated in the sales’ department of the concern, which has its own offices all over the world, and ships in its own bottoms across every sea samples of the products which it manufactures.
There is something simultaneously impressive and alarming about this new type of organisation. impressive, because it represents the most rational type of production conceivable within the framework of capitalism. Alarming, because the control of these mammoth organisations is in the hands of a very few individuals by whom the advantages arising from the concentration are turned to account for personal enrichment, and not for the welfare of the workers; and because every benefit accruing from the new form of combination serves to enhance the power of the concern and to bring more and ever more undertakings and branches of production under its exclusive control.
Does the future belong to the trust or to the concern?
This question need not be fully discussed here. The decisive factor will be the conditions peculiar to each country. Where the control of raw materials, or (as in the United States) the control of particular branches of manufacturing industry, the trusts will be the predominant types of amalgamation. Elsewhere, concerns will flourish. These two forms of organisation represent the greatest conceivable concentration of the forces of capital. Their aim is to make an end of the anarchy of production with its attendant dangers, and to resolve the hitherto prevailing discordance of interests into a harmony whose fundamental tone is – increased profits.
At this stage, there is only one way in which the power of capitalist organisations can be yet further intensified, and that is by their expansion across national frontiers and by a mutual understanding in the world market. Such is the last multiplier of the might of the employing class.
3. Technical Causes.
An important impulse towards the concentration of capital originates, nowadays, from the technical side. The methods of production are continually being improved; and, as a result of such improvements, extant machinery has to be scrapped and replaced by new.
Long ago, in the first volume of Capital, Karl Marx referred to the revolutionising influence exerted by technical advances. What he said then is still fully applicable to-day. “Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative. By means of machinery, chemical processes, and other methods, it is continually causing changes, not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour process. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionises the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of work-people from one branch of production to another”.*
The modern system of commodity production has only become possible thanks to the invention of machinery, the severance of labour from individual energy and capacity, and technical developments in the domain of transport. We know what widespread repercussions all these technical advances entailed; we know how many human beings had to suffer hunger and poverty because they were suddenly rendered superfluous by the invention of machines. It is not our business here to consider all these accompaniments of advances in the technique of manufacture. Enough for our present purpose to show that the drawbacks attendant upon the advances still persist undiminished, and that they affect the employing class no less than the working class. For, if the discovery of a new means of production may suddenly render a thousand skilled hands idle, it may and does also at the same time reduce the worth of quantifies of good machinery to that of scrap iron. With an eye to their own interests the employers have often to retard the utilisation of technical improvements. But this can only be advantageously done when there is an international understanding among all the employers engaged in the particular branch of industry. In default of such an international understanding, it will be futile in the long run for any employer to resist the introduction of improved, technical methods.
Now, every such technical improvement involves an enormous outlay. Large quantifies of capital are needed, larger quantifies than private enterprises can usually command. For this reason, the unceasing advances in the technique of manufacture would suffice, even in the absence of other motives, to force upon the individual entrepreneur the surrender of his independence. Moreover, the old form of joint-stock company to encourage the introduction of fresh capital into the undertaking proves increasingly inadequate. The investment grows too risky, for no one knows to-day whether an enterprise founded to carry on production by the most up-to-date methods may not become obsolete and therefore valueless within a few years, even before it has got seriously to work.
This perpetual dread of new discoveries in the field of technique is one of the main reasons why the introduction of machinery has failed to bring about, as its natural consequence, a general shortening of the hours of labour, and has, indeed, led rather to the prolongation of the working hours and to the harnessing of women and children to the process of production. The employer want to safeguard themselves against the risks of a rapid depreciation of their “fixed” capital. They try to do this by running their plant for the maximum number of hours daily, so that it may pay for itself in a very few years.
No doubt the employers have always had to face such risks, but nowadays the peril is greatly accentuated. We must not forget that for several years the forces of production in the industrial countries of Europe were concentrated upon the manufacture of munitions and other war materials. The creative energies of inventors were directed into the same channels. Although some of the war-time discoveries have been made available for the purposes of peaceful production, we are justified in saying that, generally speaking, throughout the war, there were in Europe no notable improvements in the technique of production.
All this leeway has now to be made up, and rapidly, for Europe’s transatlantic rivals have to be taken into account. No doubt the United States played a big part in the war; but the Americans did not send nearly so large a proportion of their human material into the arena, nor for so long a period. In the States, there was no arrest in the advance of technique; there was continued progress in Europe (I speak especially of the Continent), the employees could hardly have made headway against their better equipped American competitors unless wages had been forced down to the starvation level-unless the backwardness of technique had been compensated by the fleecing of the workers.
Here are a few data showing the industrial development of the States.
From 1913 to 1923, the steel production of the United States increased by nearly fifty per cent whereas even in the fifth year of the peace the total production of Europe was less than it had been ten years earlier. The following table shows the world production of pig iron in millions of tons:
| STEEL | PIG IRON | ||||
| 1913 | 1921 | 1923 | 1913 | 1921 | 1923 |
| Great Britain | |||||
| 7664 | 3703 | 8480 | 10260 | 2616 | 7360 |
| United States | |||||
| 31301 | 19744 | 44400 | 30653 | 16506 | 39500 |
| France | |||||
| 4614 | 3010 | 4750 | 5126 | 3308 | 5000 |
| Belgium | |||||
| 2428 | 780 | 2185 | 2428 | 862 | 2118 |
| Luxembourg | |||||
| 747 | 1117 | 955 | 1350 | – | – |
| Germany | |||||
| 18631 | 8700 | 5000 | 9000 | 6096 | 4000 |
| Czechoslovakia | |||||
| – | 904 | 738 | – | 532 | 590 |
| TOTALS* | |||||
| 75019 | 42487 | 72573 | 77182 | 34700 | 64580 |
*(including countries not mentioned above)
And yet, during 1923, the steel foundries of the United States were working at only about four-fifths of their full strength. Already in 1917 the actual, figures of 1923 had been attained, and since then the plants have been considerably enlarged.#
There has been a marvellous expansion of the motor industry in the States. In the year I922, a record was created when two million four hundred thousand motor cars were turned out. But this record has been surpassed, for the total production of 1923 is estimated at nearly four million cars. It is supposed that these figures will be exceeded in 1924.
The utilisation of water power is being extensively developed, the amount of energy drawn from this source having been doubled during the last five years.
Canada is participating in the industrial expansion. The advance made in the supply of electrical energy in the Dominion may be measured by the fact that the average reduction in the cost of electric light during the last decade amounts to twenty per cent. In Quebec and Ontario, where water power has been pressed into the service for the supply of electrical energy, the reduction to forty per cent. During the same numbers show a general rise of about wholesale prices. It follows that the price of electricity is considerably greater than that indicated by the foregoing percentages.
This immense expansion in American manufacturing industry is enforcing on Europe the perfection of industrial technique. American competition cannot be adequately met by mere thrift, by saving expenses through amalgamations, and the like. It has become essential to improve the technical groundwork of manufacture, to make an increasing use of the latest discoveries in technique. That is why a fusion of enterprises is necessary, partly in order to secure the capital requisite for the improvements, and partly in order to distribute the risk.
4. Dearth of Capital and Glut of Capital.
Still, neither the economic factors of concentration nor the technical factors would have led to so great an acceleration of the movement in Europe had it not been for the existence of the necessary conditions in the capital market. The acceleration would not have occurred unless there had been a glut of capital on the one hand and a dearth of capital on the other.
The Great War provided both these conditions. Like other wars, it proved an abundant source of profit for capital. Especially in heavy industry, thanks to the monopoly established in this field even before the war, and thanks to the special importance of heavy industry in the supply of the requisites for war, capital secured an especially profitable investment. It has been no chance matter, therefore, that the process of concentration has been so active in heavy industry, and that the movement in favour of the concentration of capital is centred in this field.
What the war began, post-war developments have continued and intensified. Above all in the countries with a greatly depreciated currency, powerful capitalist groups have had exceptionally favourable opportunities for increasing their bloated war profits, and for bringing the enterprises of less favoured rivals under their control. Within a few years Stinnes has been able to raise himself to the position of the fourth richest man in the world. This, and other less notorious instances of enrichment, has been achieved at the expense of rival capitaliste who were less unscrupulous or less markedly favoured by circumstances.
An additional factor of the quickening of the pace of concentration has been the great fluidity of capital during the post-war epoch. In many countries, the governments have allotted large sums to the indemnification of enterprises damaged by the war. Furthermore, in various ceded territories, undertakings have been purchased by industrialists belonging to the annexing nation.
Nor must it be overlooked that “reconstruction,” just like war, offers splendid opportunities for profit-making. The capitalists have had yet further chances of extending their interests. The war profits and the reconstruction profits have as a rule accrued to the same capitalise groups.
But the depreciation of the currency has certainly been the most potent of all the causes of bloated fortunes. What vast sums could be accumulated by speculation in this domain, is shown by the long list of new capitalise magnates who, only a few years ago, were among the small fry. Some even, like Bosel (now one of the richest among Austrian bankers, and a man who can encounter a Rockefelle on equal terms), have risen from the very bottom of the ladder.
The depreciation of the currency has not only provided these chances of enrichment by speculation; it has also opened splendid possibilities of profiteering to the employing class, owing to the way in which it has continually cheapened the cost of labour. When the purchasing power of money is falling, the employers need not trouble to hammer wages, for they pay their hands in money whose real value continually diminishes – whose real value may even diminish although the nominal wages are increased.
Inflation is not only a weapon against the manual workers, it is also a means for expropriating the middle class and even the lesser capitalists. These latter cannot hold their own when values fluctuate so extensively. For the most part they are not in a position to safeguard themselves by the acquirement of substantial values. They can only keep alive by eating up their own capital. They must either sell parts of their enterprises, or else must give other and stronger capitalists a controlling influence in the undertakings.
There is no exaggeration in saying that the war and its devastating consequences have created the conditions for the rapid concentration of capital. Thanks to the war, the diffuse and comparatively ill-organised form of capital has given place to a more highly developed, more concentrated, and enormously more powerful form. It is essential that the workers should take these facts into account, should take thought how they can best cope with forces hitherto unknown and undreamed of.
NOTES
I. From Large Scale Industry to Mammoth Industry.
* Die Konzerne der Metallindustrie. [The “Concerns of the Metal Industry.”] Published by the Executive Committee of the German Metalworkers’ Union. The “Metalworkers’ Union” of Germany is closely analogous to the British Amalgamated Engineering Union, but is even wider in its scope. -The report is published by Alexander Schlicke and Co. of Stuttgart.
# Hugo Stinnes’ death occurred after the earlier part of this book was written.
~ It seems extremely probable that the movement towards the concentration of capital will continue in Germany, and that in twenty-five years or so the whole of German industry will be directed from a very few economic centres. Already, in my opinion, there are definite indications of the formation of about six huge concerns, which are trying to share among themselves and to organise the entire domain of heavy industry Dr. R. von Ungern-Sternberg, Berliner Tageblatt, October 24, 1923.
§ “There can be no doubt that the development of monopolist organisations has gone further in Germany than in America – that competition has been abolished or greatly restricted in more branches of industry here than in the U.S. Nevertheless, despite all the fusions and amalgamations that have recently occurred in Germany, the so-called development towards great concerns, the welding together of various undertakings by way of fusions and controlling companies, has gone further in America than anywhere else – Robert Liefmann, Kartelle und Trusts, Stuttgart, 1922.
2. Economic Causes.
* The English word “concern”, in the sense of a “firm”, a “business”, having been Germanised as “Konzern”, is now being used by the Germans in the restricted signification defined in the text. The only option would seem to be to re-import the word, and to use it in the same restricted meaning.- E. & C.P.
3. Technical Causes.
* “Capital”, translated from the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1896, pp. 492-3.
# “Die Konzerne der Metallindustrie” [The “Concerns of the Metal Industry”]. Published by the Executive Committee of the German Metalworkers’ Union. The Metalworkers’ Union of Germany is closely analogous to the British Amalgamated Engineering Union, but is even wider in its scope. The report is published by Alexander Schlicke and Co. of Stuttgart.