e large cities of this
country. Single companies are known to control hundreds of saloons,
restaurants, cigar stores, shoe stores, bake shops, coal depots, and the
like. A multitude of other businesses are subject to this rule, and it
is doubtful whether, after all, there has been the real increase of
individual ownership which Mr. Ghent concedes.[98] However that may be,
it is certain that a very large number of the business establishments
which figure as statistical units in the argument against the Socialist
theory of the concentration of capital might very properly be regarded
as so many evidences in its favor.

A very large number of small businesses, moreover, are really
manipulated by speculators, and serve only as a means of divesting
prudent and thrifty artisans and others of their little savings.
Whoever has lived in the poorer quarters of a great city, where small
stores are most numerous, and has watched the changes constantly
occurring in the stores of the neighborhood, will realize the
significance of this observation. The writer has known stores on the
upper East Side of New York, where for several years he resided, change
hands as many as six or seven times in a single year. What happened was
generally this: A workingman having been thrown out of employment, or
forced to give up his work by reason of age, sickness, or accident,
decided to attempt to make a living in "business." In a few weeks, or a
few months at most, his small savings were swallowed up, and he had to
leave the store, making place for the next victim. An acquaintance of
the writer owns six tenement houses in different parts of New York City,
the ground floors of which are occupied by small stores. These stores
are rented by the month just as other portions of the buildings are, and
the owner, on going over his books for a period of five years, found
that the average duration of tenancy in them had been less than eight
months.

During the past few years in the United States, as a result of the
development of the many inventions for the production of "moving
pictures," a new kind of cheap, popular theater has become common.
Usually the charge of admission is five cents, whence the name
"Nickelodeon"; the entertainment consists usually of a number of more or
less dramatic incidents portrayed by means of the pictures, and a few
songs, generally illustrated by pictures, and sung to the accompaniment
of a mechanical piano. In almost every to