The only way to make money was by long term investment in plant and equipment, to increase production and lower costs, and then pay out the company profits in dividends to shareholders. Under a gold standard, inflationary credit expansion was difficult and limited, any artificial credit expansion was cut short by people demanding payment in gold and the resulting recessions, required to clean up the errors made during the artificial boom, were relatively mild. In the past, people made money off company stock through dividends. Our competition started to lose some of the larger, much more profitable facilities because they didn't maintain their less profitable ones. When the contracts came up for renewal at the larger facilities, we had credibility, a good reputation to back us up, and a map showing the sizable coverage area we had. Soon word spread to the larger facilities about our services. Sure it was with the small facilities, but looking at a map it looked impressive. How did that bite our competitor you may ask? Because now we had a sizable market share in that state. We snatched up as many of those contracts as we could. One of our competitors dropped a lot of smaller facilities in one state they serviced because they weren't making the return they wanted. The vast majority of corporations, like the one I work for, doesn't do such stupid things because the boss/owner is in the business for the long term. The other elephant in the room is that this strategy very often bites you in the ass very badly.