104 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After

industries, locomotives being the exception, the
“large concerns have gained more than the middlesized
 establishments.” The report of the Committee
 ‘‘assumes that the advance in security prices of
a group of concerns within an industry, relative to
the other concerns in the industry, indicate that that
group is making more of a success of its business than
the other concerns.” If this assumption is correct,
then the advance in utility stock prices, for example,
is solidly based. Mr. Hoover's Committee discloses
a situation which, it says, may have any one of
several explanations. It adds:
“It may indicate that the large concerns are finding
 the economies which the Federal Trade Commission
 figures for several years ago did not disclose at
that time. It may indicate that the large concerns,
because of modern methods and conditions of selling
and distribution, are taking a larger and larger share
of the nation’s business, as was indicated by the record
 of individual establishments given above. This
may be even at a higher cost than their competitors.
Or finally, it may indicate that the same dogma, which
expresses itself so often in mergers and consolidations—the
 belief in the universal advantages of size
and large-scale production—is thus expressing itself
in the valuation of corporation securities” (pages
199, 200).
The Committee's further study indicates that the
“large concern will maintain steadier operation than
an equivalent number of small concerns.” The explanation
 follows: