As soon as we go into details and inquire into the individual items in which progress was most conspicuous, the trail leads not to the doors of those firms that work under conditions of comparatively free competition but precisely to the door of the large concerns--which, as in the case of agricultural machinery, also account for much of the progress in the competitive sector--and a shocking suspicion dawns upon us that big business may have had more to do with creating that standard of life than with keeping it down.[29]