financiers
that the periods of industrial depression during the past score of years
have been largely due to excessive railway building. For in a period of
active railway construction, roads are built whose only excuse for
existence is that they will encroach upon the territory of some rival.
The capital invested fails to make a return. The loss of income which
ensues decreases the purchasing power of the community; and this
combines with the sudden loss of business confidence caused by the
failure of the enterprise to bring about a general panic and crash which
affects the whole community; and by checking enterprise and industry,
damages the country ten times the amount of the original loss.

The waste of competition is by no means confined to railways. The Sugar
Refiners' trust has raised the price of sugar and thus reduced its
consumption so much that they have permanently closed several of their
factories. Yet Claus Spreckels is now building a great refinery in
Philadelphia, the output of which is to compete with the trust. All this
capital invested in that which is not needed by the community is an
injury to the public. The French Copper syndicate so raised the price of
copper that it became profitable to work old mines of poor ore, which
under ordinary circumstances could not be worked at all at a profit.
Capital was expended in opening and refitting these mines, and in
preparing them for working; while other mines, able to produce the metal
at much less cost, were reducing their output because of their contract
with the trust.

In various cities of the country, millions have been wasted in tearing
up the streets to bury the unneeded mains of competing gas companies.
The electric light competitors are stringing their wires over our heads
and beneath our feet, and by covering the same district twice or three
times, double and treble the attendant evils as well as the cost.

The waste due to intense competition in trade may be avoidable or
unavoidable; but it is certainly of enormous magnitude, although the
fact of its being a waste is still little appreciated.

The waste due to labor monopolies is much better understood. The strikes
which paralyze industry and send want and distress in ever widening
circles are universally recognized to be a waste of wealth whose annual
amount is enormous. The cost to employers and workmen of the strikes in
the State of New York in 1886 and 1887, was $8,507,449. Reckoning from