nities, that many possible
advantages are lost; that combinations properly controlled have,
within themselves, the capabilities of accomplishing much good.
Despite the threatened damage of these monster combinations prices
have been quietly and steadily declining in nearly every direction;
railroad freights have slipped down, notch after notch. Association
after association has come and gone, and the Interstate Railway Law
itself is in danger of being set aside for something better. The
people are learning to have less fear of these combinations, and more
confidence in themselves and for the underlying laws of trade. The
year ends with gratifying results to business men in every avenue of
activity. The action of the Treasury Department furnishes a hint to
the country that a large supply of currency may soon become a
necessity. The evil that would result from an unexpected and prolonged
financial stringency cannot be measured. Over five thousand new
corporations, firms and business associations have started in the
South last year, as against something like 3,700 for 1888. Never in
our history was there such an incubation of new business ventures. A
stringency in money will destroy these by the thousand. Two or three
scores of railroad enterprises which have reached the stage of
bond-issuing would also be thrown aside, and thousands of enlargements
of manufacturing and mining properties would be postponed; but it is
useless to borrow trouble, or to paint dismal possibilities, as it is
to be presumed that the people and their spokesmen fully understand
the question. There is not a single branch of business in which
reasonable fault can be found with results, excepting the one general
result of very narrow margins. Consuming-capacity, on the whole, has
increased. The wage-earners are earning as much as for years past, and
are receiving more for their expenditures; that is to say, less of the
product of labor in the aggregate is being absorbed by middlemen, or
what might be termed non-productive agencies. The production of labor
is being more evenly and equitably distributed than ever before. The
ideal justice dreamed of by the philosophic socialists is within
reach. In short, the wage-worker is better off, has more advantages,
greater opportunities, and is yearly becoming a more important factor
in the Government.

As long as railway gross and net earnings continue to improve no
reaction is to be feared, according to the d