THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 587 



recent years in the relations of labor and capital, and how clearly and 

 unmistakably these changes are consequents or derivatives from a 

 more potent and antecedent agency. 



Machinery is now recognized as essential to cheap production. No- 

 body can produce effectively and economically without it, and what 

 was formerly known as domestic manufacture is now almost obsolete. 

 But machinery is one of the most expensive of all products, and its 

 extensive purchase and use require an amount of capital far beyond 

 the capacity of the ordinary individual to furnish. There are very 

 few men in the world possessed of an amount of wealth sufficient to 

 individually construct and own an extensive line of railway or tele- 

 graph, a first-class steamship, or a great factory. It is also to be re- 

 membered that for carrying on production by the most modern and 

 effective methods large capital is needed, not only for machinery, but 

 also for the purchasing and carrying of extensive stocks of crude ma- 

 terial and finished products. Sugar can now be, and generally is, 

 refined at a profit of an eighth of a cent a pound, and sometimes as 

 low as a sixteenth ; or in other words, from eight to sixteen pounds of 

 raw sugar must now be treated in refining in order to make a cent ; 

 from eight hundred to sixteen hundred pounds to make a dollar, from 

 eighty thousand to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds to make a 

 hundred dollars, and so on. The mere capital requisite for providing 

 and carrying the raw material necessary for the successful prosecution 

 of this business, apart from all other conditions, places it, therefore, of 

 necessity beyond the reach of any ordinary capitalist or producer. It 

 has been before stated that, in the manufacture of jewelry by ma- 

 chinery, one boy can make up nine thousand sleeve-buttons per day ; 

 four girls also, working by modern methods, can put together in the 

 same time eight thousand collar-buttons. But to run an establishment 

 with such facilities the manufacturer must keep constantly in stock 

 thirty thousand dollars' worth of cut ornamental stones, and a stock 

 of cuff-buttons that represents nine thousand different designs and 

 patterns. Hence from such conditions have grown up great corpora- 

 tions or stock companies, which are only forms of associated capital 

 organized for effective use and protection. They are regarded to some 

 extent as evils ; but they are necessary, as there is apparently no other 

 way in which the work of production and distribution, in accordance 

 with the requirements of the age, can be prosecuted. The rapidity, 

 however, with which such combinations of capital are organizing for 

 the purpose of promoting industrial and commercial undertakings on 

 a scale heretofore wholly unprecedented, and the tendency they have 

 to crystallize into something far more complex than what has been 

 familiar to the public as corporations, with the impressive names of 

 syndicates, trusts, etc., also constitute one of the remarkable features 

 of modern business methods. 



And when once a great association of capital has been effected, it 



