actual or potential, it is under the same kind of
pressure that acts upon the independent producer--pressure to
economize labor. It may be able to make even greater progress than a
smaller corporation could make, for it may be able to hire ingenious
men to devise new appliances, and it may be able to test them without
greatly trenching on its income by such experiments. When it gets a
successful machine, it may introduce it at once into many mills.
Consolidation without monopoly is favorable to progress. With the
element of monopoly infused into it, a great consolidation frees
itself from the necessity for progress, and both experience and _a
priori_ reasoning are against the conclusion that, under such a
regime, actual progress will be rapid. The secure monopoly may
stagnate with impunity, and the reason why many corporations which
have looked like monopolies have not actually stagnated is that their
positions have not been thus secure. They have had some actual rivals
and many potential ones. The part of the protective system which tends
to make them more secure in their monopolistic position strikes at the
most vital part of the industrial system, the progress within it, the
element which adds daily to man's power to create wealth and enables
the world to sustain an increasing population in an increasing degree
of comfort. True monopoly means stagnation, oppression, and what has
been called a new feudalism, while consolidation without monopoly
means progress, freedom, and a constant approach to industrial
democracy. One of the essential means of securing this latter result
is the retention of so much protection as is needed to keep American
ingenuity and organizing power alive and active, while abolishing that
excess of it which fosters monopoly and does away with the necessity
for exercising these traits. There will be disagreement as to the
point at which the dividing line should, in particular cases, be
drawn; a protected interest will claim a duty of fifty per cent where
twenty would amply suffice and where every excess above this would be
pernicious. There should, however, be no serious disagreement as to
what we want--progress and the repression of monopoly which bars
progress; and there should be little disagreement as to the principle
to be followed in making a protective system contribute to these ends.
It must assuredly not bar out the foreigner when the American trust
has put its prices at an extortionate l