C. E. DUTTON — ECONOMICS OP CONCENTRATED CAPITAL. 9 
very large ones into vast proportions, and these supply almost, and some- 
times quite, the entire country with their products. Half a dozen Bes- 
semer steel establishments of regular capacity can furnish all the rails 
required for maintenance of track and for new constructions which the 
country requires. Four or five sugar refineries could saturate the coun- 
try with sugar. Half a dozen establishments no larger than some already 
existing could supply the full demand of the country for steel wire and 
nails. 
The same tendency is also seen to a limited extent in the great depart- 
ment stores in the retail trade of large cities. But the field in which it 
is most conspicuous of all is in the railroads themselves. When railroads 
were inaugurated sixty years ago they began as short, detached lines, each 
under independent management. By degrees they have consolidated 
into great systems, in which thousands of miles of road are controlled in 
their general operation by a single directorate. 
It would be a great mistake, however, to infer that this tendency to 
concentration is universal throughout all fields of industrial and com- 
mercial activity. The facts are quite to the contrary. Although the 
number of occupations or branches of industry in which this tendency 
has developed is now considerable, and is increasing from year to year, 
yet when it is compared with the number which show no such tendency 
it is seen to be only a small proportion. It is not exhibited in the great- 
est of all branches of industry, agriculture, nor in the manufacture of 
textile goods. In the numberless manufactures of hardware, furnishing 
goods, tools, machinery, metallic parts, notions, such as diversify so won- 
derfully the industries of the Hew England States, we find a few in- 
stances of the tendency, though in the great majority of them it has not 
yet appeared. 
The question might arise here, whether this tendency may not develop 
to such an extent as to reach other lines of industry until nearly the 
whole field is controlled by similar concentrated capital and manage- 
ment. Prediction is certainly unsafe, but it may be said that, as the in- 
dications now stand, we may reasonably anticipate that it will extend to 
other lines of industry which it has hitherto neglected. But that it will 
extend to any large proportion of them is impossible. This will appear 
when we examine more closely the causes and conditions out of which it 
has developed. 
BIRTH OF THE TRUSTS. 
I have mentioned cheap transportation and the consequent extension 
of markets as opening a great field for concentrated capital. But it has 
done something else, and that is to greatly intensify the competition for 
the possession of it. Competition has always existed in civilized com- 
