XII The Evils Due to Monopoly and Intense Competition
It is a strange thing when we come to analyze the various social evils which demand our attention, and which every true man longs to cure, to find how great a proportion can be traced back to the one great evil of faulty competition. As a preliminary to a survey of these evils, in order that we may understand the necessity that all good men and true should exert themselves in applying the remedy, let us see just what conditions of our industrial society we should seek to work toward. What is the theoretical perfection of human industry?
Probably all thinking men, whatever their belief and practice, will acquiesce in the proposition that the end we should aim to secure is “the largest good to the greatest number.” As we are discussing here only economic questions, this means that the end to be sought is that the largest number of people should have secured to them the greatest possible amount of the necessaries and comforts of life; or, more simply, that the total of human happiness to be derived from the world’s production of wealth should be the greatest possible. Now for our present purpose we may assume that since all men desire wealth, the greater its production, the greater will be the number of human desires gratified. From this it follows that our social organization should be such as to increase to the greatest possible degree the world’s stock of wealth.
There is no easier or safer way of studying questions of economics than to consider the community as a unit, and see what is for the interest of the people as a whole; what conduces most to the “common wealth”; and if we do this, whenever the question concerns production alone, the task is simple, because the interests of the people as a whole are judged in the same way as the interests of a single person. Whatever tends to increase the total amount of wealth in the world, therefore, benefits the community as a whole; and whatever diminishes the supply is an injury. All work of every sort which tends to aid in the economical production of wealth and its transfer to the consumer is a benefit to the community; and any thing which destroys wealth, lessens its production, or hinders men from exerting themselves to produce it, is an economic injury.
What, then, are we to say of the condition known as over-production? Is it not a fact that some lines of industry are so overdone that the production is far in excess of the demand, and is not this an evil rather than a benefit? Do not periods of business depression occur when all industries stagnate for want of a market for their goods? The true answer to this question is: Over-production is not a fault of production, but of distribution. It is true that, in special industries, a surplus of production sometimes occurs, due to over-stimulation, or too rapid growth; but over-production as commonly spoken of, refers to a general state of trade, in which demand for all sorts of goods seems to fall far below the market supply. But this lack of demand is not due to lack of desire. The desires of men are always in excess of their abilities to supply them; it follows, therefore, that the condition known as over-production consists in a lack of ability to purchase goods rather than in a lack of desire to purchase them. This lack of ability has evidently to do with the distribution of wealth rather than its production.
While it is easy to formulate laws to govern the theoretically perfect production of wealth, to whose justice all men will consent, we cannot go far in the details of the ideal distribution of wealth without reaching points upon which the views of different parties are diametrically opposed. Some foundation principles, however, let us state, believing that in their truth the great majority of men will concur.
In the chapter on the theory of competition we saw that, if we conceived the results of the labor of the whole community to be placed in a common storehouse and gave to each man the right to draw from it an amount just equal to the benefit derived from the goods which he had placed within it, the ideal of a perfect system of distribution of wealth would be realized. No human judgment, however, is, or ever can be, competent to measure the exact industrial benefits which each person confers upon the community at large. We must inevitably permit men to measure the result of their own work by securing for it such an amount of the results of others’ work as they can induce them to give in exchange. But while we cannot measure exactly the benefit which each person confers, we can see cases in which the reward received is manifestly out of all proportion to the benefit conferred. Consider the fortunes which have been accumulated by some of our Midases of the present decade. It is quite certain that the benefits which Cornelius Vanderbilt, for instance, conferred on the community by his enterprise and business sagacity, by his work in opening new fields of industry, forming new channels for commerce, etc., were so valuable that he honestly earned the right to enjoy a large fortune. It is equally certain that a great part of his gains had nothing whatever to do with any benefit conferred upon the community, and that the fortune of $100,000,000 or so which he accumulated was an example of inequitable distribution of the products of the world’s industry. Stating this in the form of a general principle, we should say: The amount of wealth which any man receives should bear some approximate relation to the benefit which he confers upon the world.
We have already stated that, by the law of supply and demand, the rewards of each worker are regulated in theory even more perfectly in accordance with our ideas of liberty than they could be on the basis of actual benefit conferred. For it is inconceivable that people would submit to pay for what was beneficial to them instead of what they desired. A man who prefers to purchase wines instead of books with his surplus money would think it a great injustice if he were prevented from doing as he preferred with his own. But so long as every one is at liberty to use his income in buying whatever he desires most, demand—the willingness to pay money for the gratification of the desire—will exist, and so long as demand exists it will be met by a supply, furnished by those who are desirous of money and what it will bring. It is inconceivable, then, that any juster arrangement than this law of supply and demand can ever be practicable for regulating the compensation of each individual. The man who can drive a locomotive will receive larger wages than the man who shovels the earth to form its pathway, because the supply of men competent to drive an engine is small in proportion to the number of men who are wanted for that work, while almost any man can shovel dirt. Let us state, then, for our second principle: The amount of wealth which any man receives should depend on the ratio between the demand which exists for his services and the supply of those able to render like service. Farther than these statements of the ideal principles governing the economical production and equitable distribution of wealth we need not go at present.
Let us turn now to examine the result of a violation of these principles in some of the crying evils of the present day which are wholly or in part due to the growth of monopoly and the waste of competition.
Every candid man will acknowledge that the enormous congestion of wealth in a few hands which exists to-day is a danger to be feared. We have had it constantly dinned in our ears that in this free land the ups and downs of fortune were such that the rich man of to-day was apt to be the beggar to-morrow; also that almost invariably a rich man’s sons were reckless spendthrifts. These things, aided by the abolition of primogeniture and entails, it was said, were to prevent the growth of a moneyed aristocracy in this country. The propounders of this amiable theory never explained how the community received reparation for the destruction of wealth which the spendthrift sons were to carry on; but so long as the theory has failed to work in practice, that does not matter so much.
A few years ago it was a favorite occupation of newspaper paragraphers to estimate the Gould and Vanderbilt fortunes; but lately they seem to have given them up as beyond the limits of even their robust guessing abilities. Some idea of the latter’s fortune may be gained, however, by realizing the fact that the Vanderbilt railway system now has a total extent of nearly 12,000 miles, the total value of which can hardly be less than one thousand millions of dollars. Probably not less than half of the securities of these companies are owned by the Vanderbilt family, and it is well known that their investments are by no means confined to railways. The important fact is, that this fortune grows so fast now that it is sure to increase; and will double itself every fifteen or twenty years, because all that its owners can spend is but a drop in the bucket toward using up their income. But this fortune, while the largest which is still under one name, is but one of many enormous ones. The names of Gould, Flagler, Astor, Rockefeller, Stanford, Huntington, and a host of others follow close after the Vanderbilts. In the days of our grandfathers, millionaires were no more plentiful than hundred-millionaires are to-day.
We have next to show the present and prospective evils which result from this congestion of wealth. The first and most obvious one is its injury to the remainder of the people of the country, by the diversion from them of wealth which they have rightfully earned and which they would receive were it not for the tax of monopoly. It is obvious that a certain amount of wealth is annually produced by the industry of the country from which the whole wants of the country must be supplied. This amount may be greater, indeed, when a Gould or a Flagler or a Crocker directs the enterprise; but for the most part it is indisputable that the owners of these colossal fortunes have made them, not by any stimulus of the production of wealth by their owners, but by a diversion of the produced wealth in the general distribution from others’ pockets to their own. In short, all other men are poorer that these many times millionaires may be richer. To show how these fortunes have in many cases been obtained, I cannot do better than to quote a writer not at all likely to err by undue severity to our millionaires, as he is himself the president of a railway system a thousand miles in extent:
The great majority of the phenomenal fortunes of the day are the result of what may be called lucky gambling.... Man is a gambling animal by nature, and modern methods have enormously developed both its facilities and its temptations and have opened large fields in which gambling is not held to be disreputable.
Under such stimulus is it wonderful that its growth has been phenomenal? Wall street is its head-quarters, and millions upon millions of dollars are accumulated there to meet the wants of the players. Railroad stocks are its favorite cards to bet upon, for their valuation is liable to constant fluctuation on account of weather, crops, new combinations, wars, strikes, deaths, and legislation. They can also be easily affected by personal manipulations.... Money makes money, and money in great masses has its attractive power increased. The aspect of phenomenal fortunes, therefore, is a social problem of some importance. Their manner of growth and their manner of use are to be observed, and what restrictions, if any, should be placed on their accumulation should be considered.5
The fact pointed out by General Alexander in the above quotation is one which is far too lightly appreciated. The evils of railway management by which the owners of the stocks and bonds of the company are victimized to enrich stock speculators are much too complex and numerous to be described here. The state of affairs can be briefly summed up, however, with the statement that our present system of conducting corporate enterprises results inevitably in the gravitation of their ownership into the hands of the holders of large fortunes. The railways of the country are an instance in point. Time was when the stocks and bonds of railways were owned by people of small means all over the country. But after many severe lessons in the shape of stocks wiped out, and bond interest scaled down, these small holders were taught the folly of investing their savings in business over which they had practically no control, and thus placing them at the mercy of irresponsible corporate officers. Broadly speaking, the railway property of the country is owned by men worth their millions; and the small holdings are being rapidly absorbed every day. But the case is not true of railways alone. Telegraph lines, telephone, and electric light plants, our mines, and to a large extent our factories, which were once held by private owners, are now controlled by corporations whose shares are quoted on the exchanges and are consequently subject to a forced variation, dictated according as “bull” or “bear” has the ascendancy. And when the ownership of a property is once brought into this channel, it is no longer a suitable investment for the man of small means. It is the prey of men who practically make bets as to what its future price will be, and manipulate the price, if possible, to win their bets. If it is ever again held for investment simply, it is when it is locked in the safe of some modern Crœsus.
We have shown now the extent to which the congestion of wealth has gone. We have shown that other men are poorer that these men may be richer. We have explained that these great fortunes have been made, not by legitimate enterprise, but largely by “lucky gambling.” And finally we have seen how the transfer of each enterprise to the control of stock speculators adds it eventually to some already overgrown fortune. The connection with the subject of the present volume is obvious. The cotton-seed oil mills of the South, once held by private owners, are now in the hands of a trust whose certificates are quoted on the stock-exchanges, and are held only by men of large capital, or by stock gamblers. This is a typical example of the change which is everywhere occurring. Private enterprise gives way to the stock company, and that in turn gives way to the trust. The salient fact, then, we may express in similar terms to those of our first law of competition, as follows: The congestion of wealth tends to increase inversely with the number of competing units.
The facts we have stated make it impossible for the greater monopolies to defend themselves, on the ground that their profits inure to the benefit of any great number of people. But this is not an innocuous state of affairs. It is one of serious injustice and evil. The workman who struggles hard to save a hundred dollars a year can receive only a paltry three dollars and a half of interest or less, if he deposits it in a saving-bank. But the capitalist who is clearing a hundred thousand a year may make twice or thrice that interest from his investments. In short, the charge is: That monopoly and intense competition, with the variation in price which they cause, have shut out the small capitalists of the country from the ownership of the most profitable sorts of property; and by confining them to other lines, have decreased their possible income from their investments.
A further evil resulting from the congestion of wealth is what is commonly spoken of as over-production. We are confronted of late years with the strange spectacle of factories and mills shut down for months at a time, of markets which, at various times, are glutted with every sort of commodity. All sorts of causes are given; all sorts of remedies are suggested and tried. Where is the true one? With the exception of a few special cases, the fault is not that there are no people who want the goods. Probably ninety-nine families out of every hundred would buy more if they had the money to buy with. In many cases the lack of money to buy with is due to the fact that the bread-winners are out of employment because of the glutted markets and idle mills. In this way the evil tends to perpetuate itself and grow worse. Now combine this fact with the fact that the holders of monopolies are in the receipt of incomes so great that, in many cases, they are quite unable to spend them. Also, that this income is largely locked up to wait the chance of profitable investment, or is used in speculation. Is it not obvious, now, that the reason why people cannot afford to purchase the goods, with which the storehouses are glutted, is that too large a proportion of profits has been diverted to swell fortunes already enormous? Have we not in this way accounted for a large amount, at least, of the over-production which is throwing out of employment thousands of workmen, rendering useless a vast amount of valuable capital, and affecting from time to time the business of the whole country with a veritable paralysis?
The facts bear out this theory. For, at many times when producers in every industry are complaining of dull times because people who buy have no money to spend, there is an abundance of money to be had for investment. Fortunately, the evil seen from this aspect must, to a certain extent, be but a temporary one, and will tend to work its own cure. For as the world’s stock of invested wealth continues to grow, there is less opportunity for its profitable investment in improving undeveloped natural resources. The greater portion of our wealth we save and invest, the faster will the rate of interest tend downward. But, as this occurs, the operators of mills and mines have to pay less out of their receipts as interest on their borrowed capital, and can, therefore, pay more to their workmen.
There is another way in which monopoly works to cause over-production, with its attendant evils. Suppose a trust is formed in some manufacturing industry, where the working capacity is just equal to supplying the demand. The first work of the trust is to raise the prices perhaps 20, 30, or 40 per cent. Of course this causes a falling off in the demand, and the trust has to shut down some of its mills to ward off over-production. The true cause of over-production in this case is, that the prices are not in equilibrium with the relation between supply and demand. Let prices come down, and the demand will increase. The working of this special case gives us an idea of the way in which general over-production is caused. For it is well known that monopolies have raised the prices and reduced the consumption not of one, but of hundreds of articles. If the men who are made idle by the over-production in these industries flock into other occupations to secure work, they reduce wages there; so that, in any case, their purchasing power is reduced, and this tends to perpetuate and increase the evil. Of course it is not pretended to claim that all industrial depressions have been due to over-production, or the local congestion of the world’s income. But that a large part of it may be justly laid to this cause, seems to be beyond question.
We have shown that the congestion of wealth is very largely due to the growth of monopoly, and we have discussed the more immediate evils that result from this congestion of wealth. But when we attempt to describe the evils and abuses which follow close after, as a result of the power which monopoly has placed in the hands of a few, we may well pause at the task. The whole array of perplexing social problems comes before us, and we realize more and more what a curse monopoly has become. The philanthropist tells us that poverty, and all the distresses that follow in its wake, are largely due to the fact that our workingmen under present conditions must live from hand to mouth, must rely on charity for aid in every emergency, and must, therefore, decrease in manliness and self-reliance and the ambition to better themselves, as the practical impossibility of success is comprehended.
Good men are lamenting because the Church has, to a great degree, lost its hold on the laboring classes, and are casting about on all sides for a remedy. Will they ever find one as long as the wage-worker carries in his bosom a rankling sense of injury done him? Injury which he feels that the Church is merely seeking to drug with charity instead of wishing to cure it with justice? There is great need that the Church, not alone by the sermons of its most enlightened thinkers, like Dr. Heber Newton, but by the daily practice of the rank and file of its membership, should recognize, as it never yet has done, the great principles of human fraternity, and move intelligently and earnestly to remedy the great evils that menace us.
Even the evil of intemperance can be traced back to a connection with monopoly. Who shall blame the tired laborer, if after a week with sixty hours of unremitting toil, he takes refuge from the dreariness and lassitude of physical exhaustion, the hopelessness of ambition-quenched life, and perhaps the discomforts and disquiet of the place he calls home, in a long draught of that which does, for the time, create in him an image of exhilaration, strength, self-respect, and manhood? It is but an image, indeed, and to all but the victim it is a caricature; but when a man cannot hope for the reality, to only imagine for a brief hour that he is indeed a king of men, and that care and woe and degradation are no longer his lot, is a refuge not to be despised.
There is indeed a class of philanthropists who say, with some truth, that the laboring classes as a whole have now more than they will spend for their own good, and declare that higher wages means merely more spent on sprees and debasing sports, of different sorts but universally harmful. On the other side, the wise philanthropists who are trying to help their fellow-men in that best of all ways, by teaching them to rely on themselves, testify that their efforts to make men independent are largely hampered because it is so extremely difficult for a workingman to live in any other way than from hand to mouth, especially in our large cities. The true solution seems to be that all these reforms must go hand in hand. We must teach men how to make nobler uses of their incomes and themselves, while we endeavor to bring about reforms that shall give them greater comforts and more leisure to use for either self-improvement or self-debasement.
Much more might be said of the indirect effects which result from the taxation which monopolies inflict upon the community for their own profit; but they are now so generally realized and understood that we can devote our time more profitably to the investigation of other evils.
Under the ideal system of competition which we studied in Chapter X., we found that all occupations were competing with each other; so that if, from any cause, one calling became especially profitable, men would flock to it and bring down the profits to a normal point. Monopolies have seriously interfered with this important and beneficent law. How often do we hear the complaint of the great difficulties that beset young men on their first entrance to business or industrial life in securing a situation. The monopolized industries shut out new competitors by every means in their power. The trade-unions limit the number of apprentices which shall be allowed to learn their trade each year. The result is, first, a most deplorable tendency to idleness on the part of young men just at the time when they should be most active; and, second, a still larger increase of men in the professions and non-monopolized callings, tending to still further increase the competition in those callings, where returns are already inferior to what they should be. Surely, we must begin to appreciate how vitally important to every person in the land is this matter of competition and monopoly.
The evils which we have thus far considered pertain to the distribution of wealth. Let us now turn our attention to the production of wealth. Our second law of competition stated that the waste due to competition varied directly as its intensity. We have frequently referred to this waste of competition; let us now inquire more fully concerning its amount and effect. In the first place, however, let us settle the question, once for all, that waste or destruction of wealth of any sort is an economic injury to the community. We have, indeed, already explained this in the first paragraphs of the chapter; but while all authorities on economics agree on this point, the general public is still seriously infected with the fallacy that waste, destruction, and unprofitable enterprises are beneficial because they furnish employment to labor. If this were merely a theory, we could afford to ignore it; but the trouble is that it is acted upon, and works untold evil and damage to the world. To take a typical case, people reason that damage done by flood or fire or storm is not a total loss because employment will be furnished to many in repairing and rebuilding after the devastation. They do not stop to reflect that so much wealth has been wiped out of the world, and that instead of the destruction furnishing so much additional employment, it has only changed the direction of the employment. For money nowadays is always spent, either directly, by its owners, or by some one to whom he lends it. And wherever money is spent it furnishes employment. Therefore, if the money which was used in repairing and rebuilding had not been required for that work, it would have been spent in some other direction and furnished employment to labor there. Understanding, then, that the economic interests of the community are best served when each one of its members exerts his energies with the greatest result and with the least waste in producing wealth, let us see to what extent intense competition and monopolies have violated this law.
In his interesting book entitled “Questions of the Day,” Prof. Richard P. Ely, of Johns Hopkins University, refers to the building of two great railways with closely paralleled roads already in operation, the Nickel Plate, and the New York, West Shore and Buffalo, and says:
“It is estimated that the money wasted by these two single attempts at competition amounts to $200,000,000. Let the reader reflect for a moment what this means. It will be admitted that, taking city and country together, comfortable homes can be constructed for an average of $1,000 each. Two hundred thousand homes could be constructed for the sum wasted, and two hundred thousand homes means homes for one million people. I suppose it is a very moderate estimate to place the amount wasted in the construction of useless railroads at $1,000,000,000, which, on the basis of our previous calculations, would construct homes for five millions of people. But this is probably altogether too small an estimate of even the direct waste resulting from the application of a faulty political economy to practical life. When the indirect losses are added, the result is something astounding, for the expense of a needless number of trains and of what would otherwise be an excessively large permanent force of employés must be added. Of course, nothing much better than guesswork is possible, but I believe that the total loss would be sufficient to provide a greater portion of the people of the United States with homes.”
But it seems quite possible to make a closer estimate of the wealth wasted by the construction of unneeded railways than the general one above. There are now, in round numbers, 158,000 miles of railway in the United States. The two lines named above have a total extent of nearly 1,000 miles; and while they are the most flagrant examples of paralleling in the country, there is no small number of other roads in various parts of the country which, except for their competition with roads already constructed, would never have been built. Considering the fact that the paralleling has been done in regions where the traffic was heaviest and where the cost of construction was greatest, it seems a conservative estimate to say that 5 per cent. of the capital invested in railways in the United States has been spent in paralleling existing roads. But the total capital invested in the railways of the United States is about $9,200,000,000, 5 per cent. of which is $460,000,000. It is also to be remembered that this 7,500 miles of needless road has to be maintained and operated at an average expense per mile per annum of $4,381, or a total annual cost of nearly $33,000,000. Taking Prof. Ely’s estimate of $1,000 as the cost at which an average size family can be provided with a comfortable home, and we find that the cost of these unneeded railways would have provided 460,000 homes, sufficient to accommodate 2,300,000 people. Say that 3 per cent. of the cost of these homes is required annually to keep them in repair, then this could be furnished by the $33,000,000 now paid for the operating expenses of needless railways, and an annual margin of about $19,000,000 would be left, or enough to provide each year homes for nearly 100,000 more people in addition. Of course, this is merely a concrete example of what possible benefits we have been deprived by wasting our money in building needless railways.
As a matter of fact, the money we have spent on unprofitable railways, as well as those totally useless, has wrought us an amount of damage far in excess of their actual cost. It is generally agreed by financiers that the periods of industrial depression during the past score of years have been largely due to excessive railway building. For in a period of active railway construction, roads are built whose only excuse for existence is that they will encroach upon the territory of some rival. The capital invested fails to make a return. The loss of income which ensues decreases the purchasing power of the community; and this combines with the sudden loss of business confidence caused by the failure of the enterprise to bring about a general panic and crash which affects the whole community; and by checking enterprise and industry, damages the country ten times the amount of the original loss.
The waste of competition is by no means confined to railways. The Sugar Refiners’ trust has raised the price of sugar and thus reduced its consumption so much that they have permanently closed several of their factories. Yet Claus Spreckels is now building a great refinery in Philadelphia, the output of which is to compete with the trust. All this capital invested in that which is not needed by the community is an injury to the public. The French Copper syndicate so raised the price of copper that it became profitable to work old mines of poor ore, which under ordinary circumstances could not be worked at all at a profit. Capital was expended in opening and refitting these mines, and in preparing them for working; while other mines, able to produce the metal at much less cost, were reducing their output because of their contract with the trust.
In various cities of the country, millions have been wasted in tearing up the streets to bury the unneeded mains of competing gas companies. The electric light competitors are stringing their wires over our heads and beneath our feet, and by covering the same district twice or three times, double and treble the attendant evils as well as the cost.
The waste due to intense competition in trade may be avoidable or unavoidable; but it is certainly of enormous magnitude, although the fact of its being a waste is still little appreciated.
The waste due to labor monopolies is much better understood. The strikes which paralyze industry and send want and distress in ever widening circles are universally recognized to be a waste of wealth whose annual amount is enormous. The cost to employers and workmen of the strikes in the State of New York in 1886 and 1887, was $8,507,449. Reckoning from this as a basis, it is probable that the total annual cash cost of strikes in the United States is twenty or twenty-five million dollars. The results of these strikes in decreasing the purchasing power of employés and thus causing overproduction, and in discouraging enterprise and increasing the cost of capital, serve to spread their effect throughout the whole industrial community and thus cause an actual loss and injury many times that borne by the parties directly engaged.
It is thus evident that the waste due to the intense competition which the concentration of productive enterprise has brought about in modern times is a matter of startling proportions. We are wasting and destroying wealth all the time sufficient to go a long way towards abolishing all the poverty in our midst; and the blame for this state of affairs we are now able to place where it belongs.
Surely with a full appreciation of these evils, every honest and patriotic man must be willing to use every endeavor to strike at the root of the evil. The public indeed is, and has long been, a unit in its opposition to monopoly; but in endeavoring to defeat monopoly it has taken just the course which could give no permanent gain. Cities have beggared themselves to aid competing railway lines only to see them consolidated eventually with the monopoly which it was expected to defeat. The multitude regard Claus Spreckels as a benefactor—and will till he forces the Sugar Trust to divide their 25 per cent. profits with him in return for the control of his refinery.
It is no benefit to us if in steering away from the Scylla of monopoly, we be wrecked on the Charybdis of wasteful competition. We have been trying for a score of years now to defeat monopolies by creating competition; but in spite of a universal public sentiment in favor of the reform, and notwithstanding the millions of wealth which we have poured out like water to accomplish this object, monopolies to-day are far more numerous and powerful than ever before. The people who are groaning under their burden of oppression are anxious for relief. The remedy they have so long and faithfully tried to apply has but made a bad matter worse; and it is small wonder that, despairing of other relief, they are adopting false and injurious plans for bettering themselves which serve merely to extend the monopoly policy into all industrial affairs.
We are threatened with a state of society in which most of the principal industries will be wholly given over to monopoly. Those in each occupation will band together to secure the greatest returns for themselves at the expense of all other men; while the few occupations which cannot thus combine in a monopoly—farming, and the different sorts of unskilled labor—will be filled to overflowing with those crowded out of other callings. Those who follow them will do so only because the monopolized occupations are closed to them. Thus will our farming population degenerate into a peasantry more miserable than that of Europe, and our laborers be ground down to a level lower than they have yet known. Is there a probability that such a state of affairs will come to pass? There might be if the public were not keenly alive to the curse of monopoly. But as it is, the greater danger is that through ignorance a wrong course may be adopted for the cure of our present evils, which will aggravate instead of curing them.