of his
neighbor's mouth, converts a nation of brethren into a mass of
hostile units, and finally involves capitalists and laborers in one
common ruin."

The crises due to this unregulated production, and the costliness of
the struggles, led to the formation of joint-stock companies.
Competition was giving way before a stronger force, the force of
co-operation. There was still competition, but it was more and more
between giants. To adopt a very homely simile, the bigger fish ate up
the little ones so long as there were any, and then turned to a
struggle among themselves.

Another thing that forced the development of industry and commerce
away from competitive methods was the increasing costliness of the
machinery of production. The new inventions, first of steam-power and
later of electricity, involved an immense outlay, so that many persons
had to combine their capitals in one common fund.

This process of eliminating competition has gone on with remarkable
swiftness, so that we have now the great Trust Problem. Everyone
recognizes to-day that the trusts practically control the life of the
nation. It is the supreme issue in our politics and a challenge to the
heart and brain of the nation.

Fifty years ago Karl Marx, the great Socialist economist, made the
remarkable prophecy that this condition would arise. He lived in the
heyday of competition, when it seemed utter folly to talk about the
end of competition. He analyzed the situation, pointed to the process
of big capitalists crushing out the little capitalists, the union of
big capitalists, and the inevitable drift toward monopoly. He
predicted that the process would continue until the whole industry,
the main agencies of production and distribution at any rate, would be
centralized in a few great monopolies, controlled by a very small
handful of men. He showed with wonderful clearness that capitalism,
the Great Idea of buy cheap and sell dear, carried within itself the
germs of its own destruction.

And, of course, the wiseacres laughed. The learned ignorance of the
wiseacre always compels him to laugh at the man with an idea that is
new. Didn't the wiseacres imprison Galileo? Haven't they persecuted
the pioneers in all ages? But Time has a habit of vindicating the
pioneers while consigning the scoffing wiseacres to oblivion. Fifty
years is a short time in human evolution but it has sufficed to
establish the right of Marx to an honored place among the pione