impossible in the case of the private
venture or of the partnership. It does for business organization what
the machine did for production.

The corporation came into favor at a time when business was expanding
rapidly. Surplus was growing. Wealth and capital were accumulating.
Industrial units were increasing in size. It was necessary to find some
means by which the surplus wealth in the hands of many individuals could
be brought together, large sums of capital concentrated under one
unified control, the investments, thus secured, safeguarded against
untoward losses, and the business conservatively and efficiently
directed. The corporation was the answer to these needs.

"United we stand" proved to be as true of organizers and investors as it
was of producers. The corporation was the common denominator of people
with various industrial and financial interests.

The corporation played another role of vital consequence. It enabled the
banker to dominate the business world. Heretofore, the banker had dealt
largely with exchange. The industrial leader was his equal if not his
superior. The organization of the corporation put the supreme power in
the hands of the banker, who as the intermediary between investor and
producer, held the purse strings.

4. _Capitalist against Capitalist_

The early American enterprisers--the pioneers--began a single-handed
struggle with nature. Necessity forced them to cooperate. They
established a new industry. The factory brought them together. They
organized their system of industrial direction and control. The
corporation united them. They turned on one another in mortal combat,
and the frightfulness of their losses forced them to join hands.

The business men of the late nineteenth century had been nurtured upon
the idea of competition. "Every man for himself and the devil take the
hindermost" summed up their philosophy. Each person who entered the
business arena was met by an array of savage competitors whose motto was
"Victory or Death." In the struggle that followed, most of them suffered
death.

Capitalist set himself up against capitalist in bitter strife. The
railroads gouged the farmers, the manufacturers and the merchants and
fought one another. The big business organizations drove the little man
to the wall and then attacked their larger rivals. It was a fight to the
finish with no quarter asked or given.

The "finish" came with periodic regularity in the seventies, th