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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 915 
great measure accomplished ; and similar changes in the attitude of economists to 
monopolies and combinations are now in progress. It is clear that Combinations 
and partial Monopolies will play a great part in future economic history ; that 
their effects contain much good as well as much evil, and that to denounce them 
without discrimination would be to repeat the error which our forefathers made 
with regard to Protection. If we do not take Time by the forelock, and begin early 
to consider how their evil effects may be minimised and their possible good 
developed, we shall miss an opportunity that will never recur ; for a later gene- 
ration will find it more difficult to extricate the good from the evil than those who 
are contemporary with that great growth of the facilities of communication which 
are giving to the forces of combination and monopoly a new character, and in some 
directions a new strength. 
So far nearly all the younger economists appear to be agreed. But while some 
would not be sorry to see small firms displaced by large, large firms by Trusts, and 
Trusts by Government Departments, others, in whom the Anglo-Saxon spirit is 
stronger, regard these tendencies with very mixed feelings, and are prepared to exert 
themselves to the utmost to keep Government management within narrow limits. 
They are most anxious to preserve the freedom of the individual to try new paths 
on his own responsibility. They regard this as the vital service which free com- 
petition renders to progress, and desire on scientific grounds to disentangle the case 
for it from the case for such institutions as tend to maintain extreme inequalities 
of wealth ; to which some of them are strongly opposed. In order to preserve 
what is essential in the benefits of free competition, they are willing to have a great 
extension of public control over private and semi-public undertakings; but, above 
all, they look to the extension of the new force of public opinion as a means of 
eliminating much of the evil effects of competition, while retaining its good effects. 
I have spoken of some aspects of competition, but those of which I have said 
nothing are more numerous, and certainly not less important. I have purposely 
put aside, as belonging to a different order of inquiry, the moral aspects of competition, 
and all study of its bearing on those who are least able to help themselves. ButI 
should have liked, if time had sufficed, to compare the tendency towards the for- 
mation of vast Trusts with that towards national or even international federation 
of Trade Unions; and, again, with the growth of the centralised force of the Co- 
operative Wholesale Society. I should have liked to examine the new forms of 
indirect competition between industrial groups, each of which is in direct com- 
petition with a third one, and so on. 
I have, however, taxed your patience too long already, and must ask you to be 
lenient in your judgment of this imperfect and fragmentary study. I have endeavoured 
to give some illustrations of the changes which are coming over economic studies. 
I believe that the great body of modern economists think that the need of analysis 
and general reasoning in economies is not less than our predecessors supposed, but 
more. And this is because we think economic problems more difficult than they 
did. We are recognising more clearly than they did that all economic studies 
must have reference to the conditions of a particular country and time. Economic 
movements tend to go faster than ever before, but, as Knies pointed out, they tend 
also to synchronise; and the economists of our own country have much more 
to learn now than fifty years ago from the contemporary history of other countries ; 
but in spite of the many great benefits which we are deriving from the increase of 
our historical knowledge, the present age can rely less than any other on the 
experience of its predecessors for aid in solving its own problems. 
Every year economic problems become more complex ; every year the necessity 
of studying them from many different points of view and in many different con- 
nections becomes more urgent. Every year it is more manifest that we need to 
have more knowledge and to get it soon in order to escape, on the one hand, from 
the cruelty and waste of irresponsible competition and the licentious use of wealth, 
and on the other from the tyranny and the spiritual death of an ironbound’ 
Socialism. 
