116 The Siock Market Crash—And After 
sell his various plants to independent producers and 
make them compete with each other. Despite the 
fact that this organization has made Ford one of 
the richest men in the world, the public appreciates 
the fact that he has given them a cheap car. The 
economies he and other captains of large industry 
have achieved are so surprisingly great that probably 
nothing can now stem the rising tide of mass 
production. 
The big examples of mass production today, as 
instanced by Henry Ford, General Motors, West- 
inghouse and General Electric, the great railway sys- 
tems, the big banks and so on, have reduced costs to 
the consumer by reducing costs in general. Of course, 
their aim has been to increase their own profits; but 
this has usually been accomplished not by raising 
prices to the consumer but by reducing costs and gen- 
erally even by reducing prices in order to command 
broader markets. 
To go back to the régime of small fixed charges 
and large unit costs would be detrimental to the con- 
sumer interests of the nation. It would mean waste- 
ful production. It would result in-the instabilities 
of cutthroat competition. The railroads found out 
long ago, as Hadley expressed it, that “sometimes it 
pays to run at a loss.” A bankrupt railroad may 
change hands, but it cannot go out of business. It 
goes into the hands of a receiver, but it still runs; 
for to stop running would not stop the interest on 
the bonds representing the sunk capital. Today the 
enormous sums that are put into mass production