On the alleged concentration of economic power

This article presents critical comments upon certain aspeets of the statistical analysis used by Professors Berle and Means in their discussion of the concentration of economic power in a small list of large corporations. My two principal points ares that the authors treat all non-financial corporations as a single class in their analysis, with the result that they fail to reveal the dorninant influence of the publie utilitles (including railroads) upon their statistical findings and fail also to bring out the great diversity in degree of concentration among various lines of Industry; and that, by confining their analysis of the income data to corporations earning net in coae, the authors are using a sample which presumably is not adequate or repre sentative and concerning the adequacy or representativeness of which they present no evidence. Less important points include: the authors' use of different measures of wealth in comparing the rate of growth for different classes of corporations, and their treatment of "medium-sized" corporations as a significant class. These, and numerous minor points, force me to the conelusion that their statistical argument does not constitute a scientific proof.