in the general dynamic movement is progress in
organization. That which we have primarily studied is the marshaling
of forces for mere production--the creation of efficient mills, shops,
railroads, etc. This, however, carries with it a tendency to create
large mills, shops, and railroad systems, and, in the end, to combine
those which begin as rivals in a consolidation in which their rivalry
with each other ceases. This means a danger of monopoly, and is the
gravest menace which hangs over the future of economic society.

If anything should definitely end competition, it would check
invention, pervert distribution, and lead to evils from which only
state socialism would offer a way of escape. Monopoly is not a mere
bit of friction which interferes with the perfect working of economic
laws. It is a definite perversion of the laws themselves. It is one
thing to obstruct a force and another to supplant it and introduce a
different one; and that is what monopoly would do. We have inquired
whether it is necessary to let monopoly have its way, and have been
able to answer the question with a decided _No_. It grows up in
consequence of certain practices which an efficient government can
stop. Favoritism in the charges for carrying goods is one of these
practices. Railroads have become both monopolies and builders of other
monopolies. Certain principles, which we have briefly outlined, govern
their policy, and the natural outcome of their working is
consolidation. This creates the necessity for a type of public action
which is new in America--the regulation of freight charges.

Akin to this is the necessity for keeping alive competition in the
field of general industry by an effective prohibition of various
measures by which the great corporations are able to destroy it. The
dynamic element in economic life depends on competition, which at
important points is vanishing, but can, by the power of the state, be
restored and preserved, in a new form, indeed, but in all needed
vigor. With that accomplished we can enjoy the full productive effect
of consolidation without sacrificing the progress which the older type
of industry insured.

The organization of labor, its motives, its measures, and its
tendencies,--including a tendency toward monopoly,--we have examined.
Through all the wastes and disturbances which the struggle over wages
occasions we have discovered a certain action of natural economic law,
and have seen what type o