arge workshops were built up into factories, or were
shut up because the factories could make goods at less cost. So the
growth has gone on, and each advance in carrying on production on a
larger scale has resulted in lessening the cost of the finished goods.
Competition, too, which at first was merely an unseen force among the
scattered workshops, is now a fierce rivalry; each great firm strives
for the lion's share of the market. Under these conditions it is quite
natural that attempts should be made to check the reduction of profits
by some form of agreement to limit competition. Many plans have been
tried which attempted to effect this by mere agreements and contracts,
methods which left each property to the control of its special owners;
but none have been permanently successful. By the trust plan of
combination, the properties are practically consolidated; and the
failure of the combination through withdrawal of its members is avoided.
It offers to manufacturers, close crowded by competition, a means of
swelling their profits and ensuring against loss; and encouraged by the
phenomenal success of the Standard Oil combination, they have not been
slow to accept it.

The point to which we need to pay especial attention, in the foregoing
consideration of the causes which have produced trusts, is the fact that
the cost of production is continually being cheapened as it is carried
on on a larger and larger scale. And because the cheaper mode of
production must always displace the mode which is more expensive: as
Prof. Richard Ely expresses it, "Production on the largest possible
scale will be the only practical mode of production in the near future."
We need not stop to prove the statement that the cost of production by
the modern factory system is a small fraction of that by the old
workshop system. The fact that the former has beaten the latter in the
race of competition would prove it, if it were not evident to the most
careless observer. But it is also a fact that the trust, apart from its
character as a monopoly, is actually a means of cheapening production
over the system by independent factories, for it carries it on on a
larger scale than it has ever before been conducted. Our review of the
trust from the trust makers' standpoint showed this most forcibly; and
we shall see more of it as we study further the methods by which the
monopoly gains an advantage over the independent producer in dispensing
with what we m