It was the knell of small personal enterprises, the approaching disappearance of the masters, eaten up, one by one, by the ever-hungry ogre of capital, drowned in the rising flood of great companies.
C'était le glas des petites entreprises personnelles, la disparition prochaine des patrons, mangés un a un par l'ogre sans cesse affamé du capital, noyés dans le flot montant des grandes Compagnies.