turn
aside all departments of government from their legitimate work and
occupy them with measures to advance special interests, some commendable
enough, others a mere excuse for stealing from the public treasury, but
all alike claiming attention and action, while the business of the
people goes all awry.

It has seemed necessary to thus briefly discuss these two opposing
theories of society, individualism and societism, in order to show the
impracticability of either when applied to the society of to-day without
limitation and modification by the other; and that in adopting or
rejecting any remedies that may be proposed for the industrial evils
which we have discussed, we should be guided by the facts as we find
them, and not by blind adherence to abstract principles.

Let us now gather up the salient decisions which we have reached in all
our past investigation. We have discovered that a great industrial
revolution is in progress, by which manufacturing, mining, and
transportation to a very great extent, and other industries to a
considerable extent, have been and are being concentrated in the hands
of a very few competitors. We have found that by the laws of competition
this reduction in the number of competitors greatly increases the
intensity of competition and the resulting waste and instability of
price, and finally brings monopoly into existence. This monopoly we have
determined to be a serious infringement on the rights of the people, and
we have found that the losses due to intense competition and the
fruitless attempts to defeat monopoly by adding new competing units have
wasted the wealth of the nation in uncounted millions. We are now to
consider the remedies proposed for these evils.

The most obvious remedy for monopoly, and the one which has been tried
and persevered in with the most remarkable faith, is _the creation of
new competitors_. Does a railroad monopoly oppress us? Build a competing
line. Is the gas company of our city charging us $3 per thousand for gas
which cost but 50 cents to produce and deliver? Let us start another gas
company and tear up all our pavements again to lay its mains. Has the
sugar trust put up the price of sugar two cents per pound? Well, "sugar
can be produced anywhere by the expenditure of labor and capital," the
Trust's lawyers say, and so _we_ will "trust" that some enterprising
manufacturer will take the field against the combination. But if we do
any of these things,