Febkuart 2, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



183 



known. To-day the great enterprises of 

 the world are in the hands of corporations, 

 and the time is fast approaching when they 

 will absorb all important undertakings. 

 Why? Simply because the railroad and 

 the steamship— cheap and rapid transpor- 

 tation, all the while growing cheaper and 

 quicker— ever widening the area of profit- 

 able distribution, furnish the opportunity, 

 otherwise lacking, for the employment of 

 larger and still larger capital. This op- 

 portunity permits and encourages the con- 

 centration of financial resources; so that, 

 within limits not yet ascertained, the larger 

 the business the greater its possibilities of 

 gain. But the legitimate, the inevitable 

 offspring of corporations is monopoly. 

 Why? Simply because the operation of 

 these massive forces— reaching and oppos- 

 ing in every market of the world— begets 

 an extremity of mutual danger which al- 

 ways invites and often compels a common 

 agreement as to prices and productions; 

 that is, a trust. Just as the implements of 

 warfare may become so devastating in their 

 effects that nations will be forced to live 

 in amity, so the destructiveness and ex- 

 haustion of commercial strife in these 

 larger spheres of action will make combina- 

 tion a necessity. 



So, in the measureless and transforming 

 effects of modern transportation, and the 

 ends to which it resistlessly tends, I find 

 the primary cause of the economic revolu- 

 tion upon Avhich we have entered. The 

 incoming of these new and unfettered 

 forces not only changed the basic function 

 of society, but greatly disturbed its indus- 

 trial order. In the effort to restore a work- 

 ing equilibrium strange questions arise and 

 novel dfficulties are encountered. Already 

 we are compelled to doubt the infallibility 

 of many inherited precepts and to reopen 

 many controversies which our grandsires 

 regarded as finally settled. The ponderous 

 engine that moves twice a thousand tons 



across an empire of states, the ocean 

 steamer that carries the population of a 

 village on its decks and the products of a 

 township in its hold, the vast mergers of 

 producing and distributing machinery 

 whose colossal grasp covers land and sea, 

 are indeed splendid evidences of construct- 

 ive genius and financial daring, but more 

 than this, they are economic and social 

 problems whose complexity bewilders and 

 whose magnitude dismays. They force us 

 to discredit the venerable maxim that ' com- 

 petition is the life of trade,' and warn u'^ 

 I think, that the political economy of the 

 future must be built on a nobler hypothesis. 

 If it be true in the long run, as I believe 

 experience teaches, that where combination 

 is possible competition is impossible, is it 

 not equally true that combination becomes 

 possible just in proportion as transporta- 

 tion becomes ampler, speedier and cheaper? 

 So the opportunity, if not the necessity, for 

 combination has already come in many 

 lines of activity and will certainly come 

 in many more. For the circumstances that 

 permit competition, its sine qua non, is 

 mainly difference of conditions. Practically 

 speaking, this difference is chiefly found 

 in the means. of distribution. As that dif- 

 ference disappears, with the constantly 

 diminishing time and cost of transport, the 

 ability to combine will increase and the in- 

 ducement to do so become overwhelming. 

 That seems to me the obvious tendency of 

 industrial and social movements to-day, 

 and that tendency, I predict, will be more 

 and more marked as time goes on. 



How fast the process will develop, or 

 what phases it will assume, does not yet 

 admit of confident forecast. Many experi- 

 ments will be tried, many failures occur, 

 before the readjustment is accomplished. 

 Remedies will be sought in profit-sharing, 

 in the distribution of corporate stocks 

 among employees, in the socialization of 

 public utilities, in largely increasing the 



