496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



omnipresent, and there is good reason to believe that current price 

 movements portend an imminent check to the development and satis- 

 faction of extravagant social desires. Collectively and individually, we 

 are living better than ever before. We are working shorter hours, 

 occupying better homes and cleaner cities, wearing better clothing, eat- 

 ing better food and being better educated — not only is this true of the 

 wealthy and well-to-do, but of the poor and the indigent as well. But 

 this rational form of " consuming-power " should not be confused with 

 improvidence, or what has been associated in some minds with the al- 

 leged engulfing " cost of high living." Eational standards of living 

 are justified by coextensive industrial efficiency. Progressive well-being 

 tends to affect consumption and production in direct proportion; in- 

 deed, the stimulus to increased production normally exceeds the desire 

 to spend, and no lasting influence towards advancing prices or costs 

 results. If, however, expenditures are permitted to infringe upon the 

 capital of the country, or of any particular group of the population, or 

 even upon the rate of accumulation of savings, the effect on prices and 

 costs will be immediate. 



The centralization of industrial control, resulting in " wide-scale " 

 enterprise and exclusive " occupation of the field," tends to eliminate 

 output and advance costs. It makes little difference whether the dif- 

 ferential advantage of centralization is of the nature of special privilege 

 or superior efficiency of organization. In either case, industrial rivalry 

 is forced from the field and, in the absence of official restraint, the ex- 

 action of monopoly charges is inevitable. The consequent shifting of 

 the incidence of industrial returns may be ascertained by enumerating 

 the respective beneficiaries and exploitees of the profit-taking process — 

 the trade advantages of the one class measure the economic disability 

 of the other class; and the attenuation of the incomes of the less 

 favored, as a means to augment the profits of the more favored, is a 

 significant attribute of changing social costs. 



By the grace of strategic advantages of occupation and centralization, 

 persons deriving incomes through proprietorship in relatively highly 

 organized and capitalized industry are the recipients of differential 

 gains which tend always to transcend price increments. Such persons 

 are secure in the realization of a progi'essive ratio of purchasing power 

 to prices. The so-called industrial and transportation trusts, the bank- 

 ing rings and investment pools, the labor unions and cooperative so- 

 cieties, and the associations of commission men and retail merchants 

 are simply concerned in seeking to acquire the advantages of exclusion 

 and organization. In each instance, united action for the elimination 

 of waste and competition is the initial motive. " Cooperative efficiency 

 in production " is the shibboleth of industrial organization ; but one sel- 

 dom fails to observe the tendency to a gradual metamorphosis of sue- 



