wn in the United States these
cheap pictorial theaters have appeared and their number will, doubtless,
considerably swell the total of business establishments. In the small
towns of the State of New York, the writer made an investigation and
found that there were frequently several such places in the same town;
that they were practically all built by the same persons, started by
them, and then leased to others. These were generally people with small
savings who, in the course of a few weeks, lost all their money and
retired, their places being taken by other victims of the speculators.
What seemed to the casual observer an admirable and conspicuous example
of an increase in petty business, proved, upon closer study, to be a
very striking example of concentration, disguised for purposes of
speculation.

Thus reduced, the increase of small industries and retail establishments
affects the contention that there is a general tendency to concentration
very little. It does perhaps seriously weaken, or even destroy, some
extreme statements of the theory, contending that the process of
monopolization must be a direct, simple process of continuous absorption
and elimination, leaving each year fewer small units than before. Small
stores do exist; they have not been put out of existence by the big
department stores as was at one time confidently predicted. They serve a
real social need by supplying the minor commodities of everyday use in
small quantities, just as the petty industries serve a real social need.
Many of them are conducted by married women to supplement the earnings
of their husbands, or by widows; others by men unable to work, whose
income from them is less than the wages of artisans. Together, these
probably constitute a majority of the small retail establishments which
show any tendency to increase.[99]

The effect of this increase is still further lessened when it is
remembered that only the critics of Socialism interpret the Marxian
theory to mean that _all_ petty industry and business must disappear,
that all must be concentrated into large industrial and commercial
units, to make Socialism possible. If we are to judge Marxism as the
basis of the Socialist movement, we must judge it by the interpretation
given to it by the Socialists, and not otherwise. There is no Socialist
of note to-day who does not realize that many small industrial and
business enterprises will continue to exist for a very long time, even