enormous prices. To take a humble example--In many a remote Swiss
village, rapidly grown into a fashionable resort, the local washerwomen
are able to charge prices twice as high as those paid in London,
probably four times as high as the normal price of the neighbourhood.

Grocers or clothiers are not able to combine with the same effect, for
the consumer is far less dependent on local distribution for these
wares. But wherever such retail combinations are possible they are
found. Among large producers and large distributing agencies the same
tendency prevails, especially in cases where the market is largely
local. Free competition of prices among coal-owners or iron-masters
gives way under the pressure of common interests, to a schedule of
prices; competing railways come to terms. Even among large businesses
which enjoy no local monopoly, there are constant endeavours to maintain
a common scale of prices. This condition of loose, irregular, and
partial co-operation among competing industrial units is the
characteristic condition of trade in such a commercial country as
England to-day. Competitors give up the combat _a outrance_, and fight
with blunted lances.

Sec. 3. Syndicates and Trusts.--But it is of course extremely difficult to
maintain these loose agreements among merchants and producers engaged in
intricate and far-reaching trades. A big opportunity is constantly
tempting one of them to undersell; new firms are constantly springing up
with new machinery, willing to trade upon the artificially raised
prices, by under-selling so as to secure a business; over-production and
a glut of goods tempts weaker firms to "cut rates," and this breaks down
the compact. A score of different causes interfere with these delicate
combinations, and plunge the different firms into the full heat and
waste of the conflict. The renewed "free competition" proves once more
fatal to the smaller businesses; the waste inflicted on the "leviathans"
who survive forms a fresh motive to a closer combination.

These new closer combinations are known by the names of Syndicate and
Trust. This marks another stage in the evolution of capital. In the
United States, where the growth is most clearly marked, the Standard Oil
Trust forms the leading example of a successful Trust. In 1881, this
Standard Oil Company having maintained for some ten years tolerably
close informal relations with its leading competitors in the Eastern
States, and having cr