s the very
structure of society. Prices do not conform to the standards of cost,
wages do not conform to the standard of final productivity of labor,
and interest does not conform to the marginal product of capital. The
system of industrial groups and subgroups is thrown out of balance by
putting too much labor and capital at certain points and too little at
others. Profits become, not altogether a temporary premium for
improvement,--the reward for giving to humanity a dynamic
impulse,--but partly the spoils of men whose influence is hostile to
progress. Under a regime of trusts the outlook for the future of labor
is clouded, since the rate of technical progress is not what it would
be under the spontaneous action of many competitors. The gain in
productive power which the strenuous race for perfection insures is
retarded, and may conceivably be brought to a standstill, by the
advent of corporations largely exempt from such competition. There is
threatened a blight on the future of labor, since the standard of
wages, set by the productivity of labor, does not rise as it should,
and the actual rate of wages lags behind the standard by an
unnaturally long interval. There is too much difference between what
labor produces and what it ought to produce, and there is an
abnormally great difference between what it actually produces and what
it gets.

_The Fields for Monopolies of Different Kinds._--Monopoly is thus a
general perverter of the industrial system; but there are two kinds of
monopoly, of which only one stands condemned upon its face as the
enemy of humanity. For a state monopoly there is always something to
be said. Even socialism--the ownership of all capital, and the
management of all industry by governments--is making in these days a
plea for itself that wins many adherents, and the demand that a few
particular industries be socialized appeals to many more. The
municipal ownership of lighting plants, street railways and the like,
and the ownership of railroads, telegraph lines, and some mines by the
state are insistently demanded and may possibly be secured. We can
fairly assume that, within the period of time that falls within the
purview of this work, general socialism will not be introduced. In a
few limited fields the people may accept governmental monopolies, but
private monopolies are the thing we have chiefly to deal with; and it
is to them, if they remain unchecked, that we shall have to attribute
a di