_Limits to aggregation._--It is easy to see that the advantages of great establishments cannot always be gained. The limits of demand restrict the possibility of profit in supply. The element of space in connection with the market and in relation to the buyers makes an important limit. Special advantages of location on a small scale may outweigh the advantages of aggregation. Utilization of forces in nature, like pure water or water power, or special qualities of raw materials, may outweigh all other considerations. In general the requirement of interested oversight in a single superintendent has checked such growth. The more perfect, however, the system of management, the less effective is such a limitation. It is possible with extreme division of labor to make distinct rules take the place of personal direction, and oversight is reduced to a minimum. All these limitations serve to check the too rapid growth of this factory system and to hold in check the tendency to misuse of power in possible monopolies. Any raising of prices which diminishes the demand destroys the advantage of a great combination. It makes its profits by the quantity of its products sold. A reduction of the quantity much more certainly than a reduction in price destroys the advantage. Hence a monopoly gained in the ordinary progress of trade can seldom operate for any long time to advance prices, though it may destroy the competition of smaller establishments completely.
_Disadvantages of aggregation._--It is impossible to overlook a considerable number of disadvantages to the welfare of a community in a too rapid aggregation of its industrial enterprises. It changes large numbers of laborers from independent workers to wage earners, and thus makes them a part of the great machine, with an immense momentum in production which does not so readily yield to the fluctuations of demand. An independent worker is not worried if he has a leisure day. The great establishment cannot adjust its machinery to a lessened demand without a uniformity of reduction in wages or time of employment, or else the discharge of numbers of employés. This is one of the causes of over-production so evident in certain directions upon the coming of financial crises. Another great disadvantage is seen in the breakdown of any such enterprise. Then its employés, trained for its particular uses, find themselves not only without employment, but unfitted to drop into other niches of usefulness. The absolute routine of the great establishment so fixes habits as to make very difficult a change of work except in line of promotion in a similar organization. The dissatisfaction and distress from such absence of employment is more apparent than in ordinary poverty.