tive power. In our
study of the question whether improved method and improved
organization tend to promote or to check further improvement, we have
found that these beneficent changes are naturally self-perpetuating,
so long as the universal spring of progress, competition, continues. A
proviso has perforce been inserted into our optimistic forecast as to
the economic future of the world--if nothing suppresses competition,
progress will continue forever.

_Monopoly and Economic Progress._--The very antithesis of competition
is monopoly, and it is this which, according to the common view, has
already seated itself in the places of greatest economic power.
"Competition is excellent, but dead," said a socialist in a recent
discussion; and the statement expresses what many believe. There is in
many quarters an impression that monopoly will dominate the economic
life of the twentieth century as competition has dominated that of the
nineteenth. If the impression is true, farewell to the progress which
in the past century has been so rapid and inspiring. The dazzling
visions of the future which technical gains have excited must be
changed to an anticipation as dismal as anything ever suggested by the
Political Economy of the classical days--that of a power of repression
checking the upward movement of humanity and in the end forcing it
downward. No description could exaggerate the evil which is in store
for a society given hopelessly over to a regime of private monopoly.
Under this comprehensive name we shall group the most important of the
agencies which not merely resist, but positively vitiate, the action
of natural economic law. Monopoly checks progress in production and
infuses into distribution an element of robbery. It perverts the
forces which tend to secure to individuals all that they produce. It
makes prices and wages abnormal and distorts the form of the
industrial mechanism. In the study of this perverting influence we
shall include an inquiry as to the means of removing it and restoring
industry to its normal condition. We shall find that this can be
done--that competition can be liberated, though the liberation can be
accomplished only by difficult action on the part of the state.

_The comparatively Narrow Field of Present Action by the
State._--Economic theory has always recognized the existence and the
restraining action of the civil law, which has prohibited many things
which the selfishness of individuals