have sought to bring obstreperous business interests
under the wing of state control. These efforts have generally failed:
the business interests, through their control of the economic surplus,
have dominated the commissions and have used the machinery of the
political state as the instrument for further exploiting ventures; the
police, the courts, the executive power, the military--all have been
employed by the owners and exploiters against the workers. The issue
between the empires of industry and the political state still remains
one of the most vexing in the field of public life.

These problems of job control, of wealth and income distribution, of
industrial inter-relations and of the relation between the state and
industry are pressing for solution in every important centre of modern
economic life. Each constitutes a disturbing element and contributes its
mite to the aggregate of social instability and unrest that are racking
the economic world.

3. _World Problems_

Aside from these problems, localized in character, though world-wide in
their distribution, there are a number of other problems of a world
character which also are factors in the disorganization of economic
life. One of these world problems is the competitive struggle between
economic groups for trade, markets, resources and investment
opportunities; another is, the excessive concentration of the world's
wealth in a few centres.

4. _Competition for Economic Advantage_

The issue of non-redeemable promises to pay has crippled the world's
credit machinery. The competition for economic advantage has played
havoc with the world's social stability.

Theoretically the coffee grower of Brazil and the agricultural machine
manufacturer of Illinois produce and exchange those things that they can
turn out most advantageously. Practically the resources of the world are
monopolized by powerful financial interests each striving to destroy its
rivals, each seeking its own enrichment, and each busy reinvesting the
surplus wealth which piles up as the result of exploitation at home and
abroad.

Competition for economic advantage has followed the line of greatest
profit. The present age inherited from the medieval economic world
certain time-honored trade rivalries such as those which had existed
between Rome, Carthage and Corinth in classic times, or between Holland,
France and England in more modern days. These trade rivalries concern
themselves