What is true of petty industry is true in even greater measure of retail trade. Nothing could well be further from the truth than the hasty generalization of some critics, that an increase in the number of retail business establishments invalidates the theory of a progressive concentration of capital. In the first place, many of these establishments have no independence whatsoever, but are merely agencies of larger enterprises. Mr. Macrosty has shown that in London the cheap restaurants are in the hands of four or five firms, and this is a branch of business which, because it calls for relatively small capital, shows in a marked manner the increase of establishments. Much the same conditions exist in connection with the trade in milk and bread.[97] Similar conditions prevail in almost all the 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.