of
workers employed, the increase of capital, or the value of the products
manufactured. Not only do we find small groups of men controlling
certain industries, but a selective process is clearly observable,
giving to the same groups of men control of various industries otherwise
utterly unrelated.

In the early stages of the movement toward concentration and
trustification, it was possible to classify the leading capitalists
according to the industries with which they were identified. One set of
capitalists, "Oil Kings," controlled the oil industry; another set,
"Steel Kings," controlled the iron and steel industry; another set,
"Coal Barons," controlled the coal industry, and so on throughout the
industrial and commercial life of the nation. To-day all this has been
changed. An examination of the "Directory of Directors" shows that the
same men control varied enterprises. The Oil King is at the same time a
Steel King, a Coal Baron, a Railway Magnate, and so on. The men who
comprise the Standard Oil group, for instance, are found to control
hundreds of other companies. They include in the scope of their
directorate, banking, insurance, milling, real estate, railroad and
steamship lines, gas companies, sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco
companies, and a heterogeneous host of other concerns. Not only so, but
these same men are large holders of investments in all the great
European countries, as well as India, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the
South American countries, while foreign capitalists similarly, but to a
less extent, hold large investments in American companies. Thus, the
concentration of industrial control, through its finance, has become
interindustrial and is rapidly becoming international. The predictions
of Marx are being fulfilled, even though not in the precise manner
anticipated by him.

III

During recent years there have been many criticisms of the Marxian
theory, aiming to show that this concentration has been, and is, much
more apparent than real. Some of the most important of these criticisms
have come from within the ranks of the Socialist movement itself, and
have been widely exploited as portending the disintegration of the
Socialist movement. _Inter alia_, it may be remarked here that a certain
fretfulness of temper characterizes most of the critics of Socialism.
Strict adherence to the letter of Marx is pronounced as a sign of
intellectual bondage of the movement and its leaders to the "M