we have referred
to, but the check works imperfectly. At some points it restrains the
corporations quite closely and gives an approach to the ideal results,
in which the consolidation is very productive but not at all
oppressive; while elsewhere the check has very little power,
oppression prevails, and if anything holds the exactions of the
corporation within bounds, it is a respect for the ultimate power of
the government and an inkling of what the people may do if they are
provoked to drastic action.

_Two Policies open to the State._--The alternatives which are open to
us are, in this view, reduced to two. Consolidation itself is
inevitable. If, in any great department of production, it creates a
true monopoly which cannot be otherwise controlled, the demand that
the business be taken over by the government and worked for the
benefit of the public will become irresistible. If it does not become
a true monopoly, the business may remain in private hands. Inevitable
consolidation with a choice between governmental production and
private production is offered to us. We are at liberty to select the
latter only if potential competition shall be made to be a
satisfactory regulator of the action of the great corporations.

_The Future Dependent on Keeping the Field open for
Competitors._--Potential competition, on which, as it would seem, most
of what is good in the present economic system depends, has also the
fate of the future in its hands. Existing evils will decrease or
increase according as this regulator shall work well or ill. Yet it is
equally true that the government has the future in its hands, for the
potential competition will be weak if the government shall do nothing
to strengthen it. It is, indeed, working now, and has been working
during the score of years in which great trusts have grown up; but the
effects of its work have been unequal in different cases, and it is
safe to say that, in the field as a whole, its efficiency has, of
late, somewhat declined. With a further decline, if it shall come,
prices will further rise, wages will fall, and progress will be
retarded. The natural character of the dynamic movement is at stake
and the continuance of so much of it as now survives and the
restoration of what has been lost depend on state action.

_The Impossibility of a Laissez-faire Policy._--Great indeed is the
contrast between the present condition and one in which the government
had little to do but to