its, and that the trusts are taking our profits away from
us. It is true that we want to destroy the trusts in order that our
profits may remain to us. And why can we not do it? Why not? I say, why
not?"

"Ah, now we come to the gist of the matter," Ernest said with a pleased
expression. "I'll try to tell you why not, though the telling will be
rather hard. You see, you fellows have studied business, in a small way,
but you have not studied social evolution at all. You are in the
midst of a transition stage now in economic evolution, but you do not
understand it, and that's what causes all the confusion. Why cannot you
return? Because you can't. You can no more make water run up hill than
can you cause the tide of economic evolution to flow back in its channel
along the way it came. Joshua made the sun stand still upon Gibeon, but
you would outdo Joshua. You would make the sun go backward in the sky.
You would have time retrace its steps from noon to morning.

"In the face of labor-saving machinery, of organized production, of the
increased efficiency of combination, you would set the economic sun
back a whole generation or so to the time when there were no great
capitalists, no great machinery, no railroads--a time when a host of
little capitalists warred with each other in economic anarchy, and when
production was primitive, wasteful, unorganized, and costly. Believe me,
Joshua's task was easier, and he had Jehovah to help him. But God has
forsaken you small capitalists. The sun of the small capitalists is
setting. It will never rise again. Nor is it in your power even to make
it stand still. You are perishing, and you are doomed to perish utterly
from the face of society.

"This is the fiat of evolution. It is the word of God. Combination is
stronger than competition. Primitive man was a puny creature hiding in
the crevices of the rocks. He combined and made war upon his carnivorous
enemies. They were competitive beasts. Primitive man was a combinative
beast, and because of it he rose to primacy over all the animals. And
man has been achieving greater and greater combinations ever since. It
is combination versus competition, a thousand centuries long struggle,
in which competition has always been worsted. Whoso enlists on the side
of competition perishes."

"But the trusts themselves arose out of competition," Mr. Calvin
interrupted.

"Very true," Ernest answered. "And the trusts themselves destroyed
competitio