All of them may reach some formal or tacit agreement not to fight each other too fiercely, especially in cutting prices. They must respect him as he is bound to respect them. His big rivals, if he has any, are probably few in number. Finally he can advertise on a national or international scale, put costly programs on coast-to-coast radio networks, and set up his own wholesale or retail selling systems. He can take advantage of any, patents that come his way or of any discoveries made in his laboratories. He has enough work to keep specialists busy dealing with problems of management, maintenance, repair, scientific research, finance, accounting, labor relations, public relations, and selling. He can make all the parts he needs for his assembly line, or carry the material through all its stages from the raw state to the finished article. Since his machines are so designed that they do exactly what is required of them, he is able to use workers who possess no great skill and need little training. He has machines and workers for each process or part of a process, and may be able to keep them busy all the time. His production takes advantage of the opportunities for a high degree of division of labor. He may even own his sources of supply-coal or ore mines, forests, power stations-and have his own string of ships, freight cars, oil tankers, or trucks. He can buy in great volume at low prices. The big fellow can get a lot of capital or credit cheaply, especially when his firm is known to be flourishing. The advantages enjoyed by large units are too obvious to need detailed description. When that condition was reached, little men would have small chance of invading the market. The odds are that eventually many of the competitors would kill each other off, and production would settle down in the hands of a few large firms. If you could think of some desirable product which no one else was making-such as the dry-ice union suit for hot weather suggested by a Baltimore professor in the 1930’s-you could get away on a small scale during the first summer, grow rapidly, and rake in the monopoly profits of your brain child until competitors appeared and made the article so plentiful and cheap that it could be bought in the chain stores or mail-order houses. If the field was entirely new, as was that of automobile production in the early years of this century or that of radio in the early 1920’s, there might be a chance for all to try their luck. It would be sheer madness to try to compete with the established giant firms in such industries. You would not, for example, be well advised to resume your civilian career by trying to put a new brand of cigarette, gasoline, or automobile on the American market. This is even more true if a small firm tries to break into territory which is dominated by big corporations. Everybody knows that in many kinds of business the large firm has a great advantage over the small one.
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