54 J. A. HOBSON 



must pass to the manufacturer, and from the manufacturer 

 or wholesale merchant to the retailer and the consuming 

 public. There may be other opportunities of cornering sup- 

 plies, but the industrial stream most commonly is narrowed 

 in the transport stage; if, then, effective competition can 

 there be stopped, the profits of the producer can be sucked by 

 paying low prices for his goods while the consumer is squeezed 

 by high prices for his commodities, and these gains can be 

 shared by the railroads with any industrial confederates with 

 whom they are in league. The power of the railroad over the 

 greater part of the republic to make or mar cities, industries, 

 the welfare of entire states, has been too notorious to require 

 discussion. The very self-sufficiency of America, the pride of 

 her economic policy, has fed the railway power, increasing the 

 part played by land transit, diminishing the part played by 

 ocean carriage in her distribution of raw materials and com- 

 modities. So far as internal traffic is concerned, the Missis- 

 sippi and, during a portion of the year, the northern chain of 

 lakes, afford the only check upon the control of the railroads 

 over the grain and meat traffic from the west and the middle 

 states to the thickly peopled east, the distribution of manu- 

 factured goods from the northeastern states over the whole 

 continent, and the carriage of coal and iron from the mines 

 to the manufacturing centers. Corners in grain and in cattle 

 can be formed or broken only by the active agency of the rail- 

 roads, as is proved by recent cases in the courts. The an- 

 thracite coal mines of Pennsylvania are absolutely owned or 

 fully controlled by the seven railroads which traverse the 

 district, and which for this purpose are operated as a single 

 system; the greater part of the soft coal mines are similarly 

 held by other non-competing roads, and the silver and copper 

 mines of Colorado, Nevada, Montana, are little more than 

 annexes of the railroads. While, with the mining and manu- 

 facturing development of America, the railroads have assumed 

 an absolutely more important part in the economic life of the 

 nation, this power itself is rapidly concentrating into a few 

 large units. So far as the most important traffic is concerned, 

 that between the middle west and the eastern states, this 

 tendency has gone so far already that three groups, fairly 



