by a set of
irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their
caprice and for their profit, were intrusted to a single syndicate
representing the people, to be conducted in the common interest for
the common profit. The nation, that is to say, organized as the one
great business corporation in which all other corporations were
absorbed; it became the one capitalist in the place of all other
capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all
previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the
profits and economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of
trusts had ended in The Great Trust. In a word, the people of the
United States concluded to assume the conduct of their own business,
just as one hundred odd years before they had assumed the conduct of
their own government, organizing now for industrial purposes on
precisely the same grounds that they had then organized for political
purposes. At last, strangely late in the world's history, the obvious
fact was perceived that no business is so essentially the public
business as the industry and commerce on which the people's livelihood
depends, and that to entrust it to private persons to be managed for
private profit is a folly similar in kind, though vastly greater in
magnitude, to that of surrendering the functions of political
government to kings and nobles to be conducted for their personal
glorification."

"Such a stupendous change as you describe," said I, "did not, of
course, take place without great bloodshed and terrible convulsions."

"On the contrary," replied Dr. Leete, "there was absolutely no
violence. The change had been long foreseen. Public opinion had become
fully ripe for it, and the whole mass of the people was behind it.
There was no more possibility of opposing it by force than by
argument. On the other hand the popular sentiment toward the great
corporations and those identified with them had ceased to be one of
bitterness, as they came to realize their necessity as a link, a
transition phase, in the evolution of the true industrial system. The
most violent foes of the great private monopolies were now forced to
recognize how invaluable and indispensable had been their office in
educating the people up to the point of assuming control of their own
business. Fifty years before, the consolidation of the industries of
the country under national control would have seemed a very daring
experiment