We can still see in Massachusetts rural towns the little shoe shops in which the predecessors of the existing factory workers soled and heeled the shoes which shod our armies in the early days of the Civil War.

Every city and town had its own slaughter house; New York had more than two hundred; what is now Fifth Avenue was frequently encumbered by large droves of cattle, and great stockyards occupied territory which is now used for beautiful clubs, railroad stations, hotels, and the highest class of retail establishments.
In this period before the Civil War comparatively small single owners, or frequently copartnerships, controlled practically every industrial field.

Individual proprietors, not uncommonly powerful families which were almost feudal in character, owned the great cotton and woolen mills of New England.

Separate proprietors, likewise, controlled the iron and steel factories of New York State and Pennsylvania.

Indeed it was not until the War that corporations entered the iron industry, now regarded as the field above all others adapted to this kind of organization.