5 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and there appears to be no other means of avoiding such results 

 than that the great producers should come to some understanding 

 among themselves as to the prices they will ask ; which in turn 

 naturally implies agreements as to the extent to which they will 

 produce. Up to this point of procedure no exception on the part 

 of society can well he taken. But such an agreement, once per- 

 fected and carried out, admits of an almost entire control of prices 

 and the establishment of monopolies, in the management of which 

 the rights of the public may be wholly ignored. Society has 

 practically abandoned — and from the very necessity of the case 

 has got to abandon, unless it proposes to war against progress and 

 civilization — the prohibition of industrial concentrations and com- 

 binations. The world demands abundance of commodities, and 

 demands them cheaply ; and experience shows that it can have 

 them only by the employment of great capital upon the most ex- 

 tensive scale. The problem, therefore, which society under this 

 condition of affairs has presented to it for solution is a difficult 

 one, and twofold in its nature. To the producer the question of 

 importance is, How can competition be restricted to an extent 

 sufficient to prevent its injurious excesses ? To the consumer, 

 How can combination be restricted so as to secure its advantages 

 and at the same time curb its abuses ? 



Another cause of the so-called over-production is undoubtedly 

 due to an agency which has never before in the history of the 

 world been operative to the extent that it is at present. With the 

 great increase of wealth that has followed the increased control 

 over the forces of nature and their utilization for production and 

 distribution, there has come a desire to convert this wealth into 

 the form of negotiable securities paying dividends or interest with 

 regularity, and on the recipiency of which the owner can live 

 without personal exertion or risk of the principal. Hence a 

 stimulus for the undertaking of new enterprises which can cre- 

 ate and market such securities; and these enterprises, whether 

 in the nature of new railroad, manufacturing, or mining cor- 

 porations, once developed, must go on producing and selling 

 their products or services with or without a profit in order to 

 meet their obligations and command a share of previously exist- 

 ing trade. Production elsewhere, as a consequence, is interfered 

 with, displaced, and in not a few cases, by reason of better condi- 

 tions, permanently undersold. And the general result is appro- 

 priately recognized by the term " over-production." 



Furthermore, in anticipation of such consequences, the tend- 

 ency and the interest of every successful manufacturing com- 

 bination are to put the prices of its products down to a figure 

 where it will not pay for speculators to form new competitive 

 stock companies to be bought off or crushed by it. For, if it did 



