men who own our deposits of coal and copper and lead, and it is only
to be expected that they will take greater advantage of their legal
industrial advantage. The combinations that exist will be made stronger
and more binding, and new ones will be formed. The French copper
"corner" has taught men that under the broad protection of International
law their schemes of industrial conquest may embrace the world; and it
is not to be doubted that the temporary "corner" will yet result in a
strong permanent combination; and that the precedent set by this
successful monopoly will be eagerly followed by those who wish to secure
like profits by the control of some other form of mineral wealth.

IV.

MONOPOLIES OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION.

We have already alluded to the fact that the concentration of
manufacturing in large mills at great commercial centres has been made
possible by the development of railway transportation, and that the
rapid settlement of our Western prairies is due to the same agency; but
it is worth while to note more fully the difference between ancient and
modern conditions in the business of transportation.

In the first place, it is plain that no more than a century ago the
world had comparatively very little need for railways. Each community
produced from its farms and shops most of the things which it needed;
and the interchange of goods between different sections, while
considerable in the aggregate, was as nothing in comparison with modern
domestic commerce. The king's highways were open to every one, and
though monopolies for coach lines were sometimes granted and toll roads
were quite common, there was no possibility for any really harmful
monopoly in transportation to arise, because the necessity of
transportation was so small. Some writer has ascribed all the evils of
modern railway monopolies to the fact that in their establishment the
old principle of English common law that the king's highway is open to
every man, was disregarded. But if we sift down this ancient maxim of
law to its essential principle, we find it to be, _there must be no
monopoly in transportation_; and the problem of obtaining the advantages
of modern railway transportation and keeping up, at the same time, the
free competition that exists in transportation on a highway is seen to
be as far from solution as before.

The importance of our railway traffic is proven by statistics. Of the
total wealth annually