e hard to deny that much of this increase in productive power,
which the originators of the protective system anticipated, has been
practically realized. The manufactures which have been carried through
a period of weakness have actually developed competing strength. We
have acquired the power to make things far more cheaply than any one
could formerly make them, and the cheapening process still goes on.
Our manufacturing centers are alive with machinery, much of which is
of our own devising. Thanks to the progressive character of these
industries, the waste which attended the introduction of them has been
largely atoned for. On dynamic grounds, and solely on those grounds,
has the policy of protection fairly well vindicated itself. And now we
have come to the point where that saving element in the protective
system is in danger of vanishing. Indeed, the excessive part of the
protective tariff now acts positively to check the progress that it
once initiated, for monopoly is hostile to that progress. The whole
force of the argument based on mechanical invention and the
development of latent aptitudes in our people now holds as against the
monopoly-building part of the tariff. Keep that portion of a duty
which is not needed to save an independent producer from foreign
competition, which is needed only to enable the trust to charge an
abnormal price and still keep the foreigner out of our markets, and
you build up a monopoly which is unfavorable to continued improvement
in the productive arts.

Competition is the assured guarantee of all such progress. It causes
a race of improvement in which eager rivals strive with each other to
see who can get the best result from a day's labor. It puts the
producer where he must be enterprising or drop out of the race. He
must invent machines and processes, or adopt them as others discover
them. He must organize, explore markets, and study consumers' wants.
He must keep abreast of a rapidly moving procession if he expects to
continue long to be a producer at all.

_The Effect on Progress of Consolidation without Monopoly._--Does a
monopoly live under any such forward pressure? Certainly not. It may
make some improvements, for it can gain wealth by so doing; but it is
not forced to make them or perish. Here we encounter a wide
distinction that is in danger of being overlooked. A vast corporation
that is not a true monopoly may be eminently progressive. If it still
has to fear rivals,