pe of justice and
prosperity. These fruits of a natural development have always depended
on competition, and they still depend on it, though its power will
have to be exerted in a new way. This requires a special action by the
state; but in taking such action the government is conforming its
policy to the essential part of the _laissez-faire_ doctrine. It lays
hands on industry to-day for the very reason which yesterday compelled
it to keep them off--the necessity of preserving a beneficent rivalry
in the domain of production.

_America the Birthplace of Consolidated Corporations._--Consolidations
of the kind that require vigorous treatment by the state have their
special home in America. They have taken on a number of forms, but are
coming more and more into the most efficient form they have ever
assumed, that of the corporation. The holding company is the successor
of the former trust. The method of union by which stockholders in
several corporations surrendered their certificates of stock to a body
of trustees and received in return for them what were called trust
certificates, has been abandoned, and the readiness with which this
has been done has been due to the fact that there are better modes of
accomplishing the purpose in view. A new corporation can be formed,
and, thanks to those small states which thrive by issuing letters of
marque, it can be endowed with very extensive powers. It can, of
course, buy or lease mills, furnaces, etc., but what it can most
easily do is to own a controlling portion of the common stock of the
companies which own the plants. The holding company has a sinister
perfection in its mode of giving to a minority of capital the control
over a majority. It is possible that the actual capital of the
original corporation may be mainly a borrowed fund and may be
represented by an issue of bonds, while the stockholders may have
contributed little to the cost of their plants and their working
capital; and yet this common stock may confer on its owners the
control of the entire business. The corporation that buys a bare
majority of this common stock may have an absolute power over the
producing plants and their operations. If the holding company should
secure much of its own capital by an issue of bonds, the amount which
its own stockholders would have to contribute would be only a minute
fraction of the capital placed in their hands, and yet it might insure
to them the control of a domain that