THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF TRUSTS 141 



tion of manufacturing plants. In public service industries, 

 where all people have become convinced that competition 

 does result disastrously both to producer and consumer, 

 such a restrictive policy has been followed. We no longer 

 think of paralleling existing lines of railroad in order to 

 remedy the evils of extortion, and few cities will in the future 

 permit their streets to be torn up in order to install unneces- 

 sary gas or water mains. If, in manufacturing business, 

 consolidation has all, or nearly all, of the advantages which 

 it possesses in the railway, gas, or water industries, public 

 policy will dictate that the evil results of competition be 

 recognized and that future waste of capital in rival establish- 

 ments be prevented. The arguments in favor of combination 

 suffer from a superabundance of proof that monopoly is more 

 efficient in production and more healthful and rational in 

 seeking for public favor. Those who accept these argu- 

 ments as correct should carry them to their logical con- 

 clusion, and admit that competition is an undesirable remedy 

 for whatever evils monopoly may develop, and that public 

 regulation is the only available method of correction short 

 of socialism. 



Finally, it should be remarked that competition is not 

 only an undesirable, but an impossible remedy, if the ten- 

 dency to monopoly is as strong as represented. If compe- 

 tition with consolidated concerns is hopeless on account of 

 advantages in producing and marketing goods, capital will 

 soon find this out, and refrain from further meddling with 

 enterprises that are foredoomed to failure. If the business 

 world becomes convinced that competition inevitably leads 

 to suicidal warfare when large investments of capital are 

 involved, then public opinion or positive restraints of law 

 will demand that further criminal waste of capital and 

 energy shall cease. Potential competition will lose all of 

 its virtue when the futility and folly of actual competition are 

 once forced upon the convictions of those who possess capital ; 

 and, when this happens, the monopolist will soon forget that 

 the danger of rivalry ever existed. If experience ever demon- 

 strates that the arguments of many economists are correct, 

 then we shall be confronted by the grim fact that competition 



