of irresponsible corporate
officers. Broadly speaking, the railway property of the country is owned
by men worth their millions; and the small holdings are being rapidly
absorbed every day. But the case is not true of railways alone.
Telegraph lines, telephone, and electric light plants, our mines, and to
a large extent our factories, which were once held by private owners,
are now controlled by corporations whose shares are quoted on the
exchanges and are consequently subject to a forced variation, dictated
according as "bull" or "bear" has the ascendancy. And when the ownership
of a property is once brought into this channel, it is no longer a
suitable investment for the man of small means. It is the prey of men
who practically make bets as to what its future price will be, and
manipulate the price, if possible, to win their bets. If it is ever
again held for investment simply, it is when it is locked in the safe of
some modern Croesus.

We have shown now the extent to which the congestion of wealth has gone.
We have shown that other men are poorer that these men may be richer. We
have explained that these great fortunes have been made, not by
legitimate enterprise, but largely by "lucky gambling." And finally we
have seen how the transfer of each enterprise to the control of stock
speculators adds it eventually to some already overgrown fortune. The
connection with the subject of the present volume is obvious. The
cotton-seed oil mills of the South, once held by private owners, are now
in the hands of a trust whose certificates are quoted on the
stock-exchanges, and are held only by men of large capital, or by stock
gamblers. This is a typical example of the change which is everywhere
occurring. Private enterprise gives way to the stock company, and that
in turn gives way to the trust. The salient fact, then, we may express
in similar terms to those of our first law of competition, as follows:
_The congestion of wealth tends to increase inversely with the number of
competing units._

The facts we have stated make it impossible for the greater monopolies
to defend themselves, on the ground that their profits inure to the
benefit of any great number of people. But this is not an innocuous
state of affairs. It is one of serious injustice and evil. The workman
who struggles hard to save a hundred dollars a year can receive only a
paltry three dollars and a half of interest or less, if he deposits it
in a saving-bank.