the
"trusts," is not to annihilate the latter's power, but to share it. The
"trusts," on the other hand, are seeing that common action with the
small capitalists, costly as it may be economically, may be made to pay
enormously on the political field by putting into the hands of their
united forces all the powers of governments.

If the principle of economic union and consolidation has made the great
capitalists so strong, what will be the result of this political union
of all capitalists? How much greater will be their power over
government, courts, politics, the press, the pulpit, and the schools and
colleges!

It is not the "trusts" that society has to fear, nor the consolidation
of the "trusts," but the organized action of _all_ "Interests," of "Big
Business" _and_ "Small Business," that is, of _Capitalism_.

A moment's examination will show that there is every reason to expect
this outcome. Broadly considered, there is no such disparity between
large capitalists and small, either in wealth and power, as at first
appears. All the accounts of the tendency towards monopoly have been
written, not in the name of non-capitalists, but in that of small
capitalists. Otherwise we might see that these two forces, interwoven in
interest at nearly every point, are also well matched and likely to
remain so. And we should see also that it is inconceivable that they
will long escape the law of social evolution, stronger than ever to-day,
toward organization, integration, consolidation.

Messrs. Moody and Turner, for example, finished a well-weighed study of
the general tendencies of large capital in this country with the
following conclusion:--

"Through all these channels and hundreds more, the central machine
of capital extends its control over the United States. It is not
definitely organized in any way. But common interest makes it one
great unit--the 'System,' so called.

"It sits in Wall Street, a central power, directing the inevitable
drift of great industry toward monopoly. And as the industries one
after another come into it for control, it divides the wealth
created by them. To the producer, steady conditions of labor; to
the investor, stable securities, sure of paying interest; to the
maker of monopolies and their allies, _the increment of wealth of
the continent, and with it the gathering control of all mechanical
industry_."[32] (My italics.)

Ce