survey conducted by the economist Shaw Livermore and published in 1935 found that over 40% of the industrial trusts formed between 1888 and 1905 had failed by the early 1930s. Another 11% were “ ‘limping’ units, whose records were . . . a mixture of good and bad. . . . In general, the bad results have been witnessed in the more recent years of the period under review.” Of the trusts that survived, most became much smaller. A study by economist Richard Caves and his colleagues of forty-two manufacturing firms that were dominant in 1905 and still in existence in 1929 found that their average
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