day of small, divided, competing industrial organizations has gone by. The growth of corporations is one feature of the universal evolution. The big ones we have are here to stay in some form, and grow larger, rather than smaller. They will survive the collapse of their inflated capitalization just as the railroads have survived a like experience. What harm will they do to society as permanent institutions?

There is one result attending them which it is impossible to contemplate without a feeling of regret, whether the feeling be entirely justifiable or not. It is the limitation of individual opportunity and the diminution of individual independence which the new order involves. But these are inseparable concomitants of the system. They can be prevented by law only by forcibly breaking up the large organizations and compelling men to go back to the old business methods. That, I assume, is not regarded as possible by any intelligent man.

The other most important result of the aggregation of business in few hands, and the one which we think and talk about most, is the control which it places in the hands of the great organizations over production, supply and prices. Does this menace the welfare of society, and is there any legal remedy for that wrong?

Such a situation contains within itself some elements of selfregulation against extremes. The putting of a very extravagant price on a commodity defeats its own purpose by breeding insuppressible competition, or, if the price be maintained, by restricting the market. But within these limitations there is a margin of overcharge which will yield a maximum of profit and may be permanently maintainable. One mill per pound on sugar would mean about half a cent a month per capita for the people of the United States-not much of a burden, even if it were an unjust one, but amounting in the aggregate to $4,500,000 per annum. If the sugar trust is doing 75 per cent of the business of the country, as is said to be the case, and receiving one-tenth of a cent a pound more than a just price, it is taking from the people more than three and a third million dollars a year to which it is not in justice entitled. And with its terrible power to punish competition, it might be able to maintain that unjust imposition permanently. That may be, and probably is, in some measure, what the Standard Oil Company has been doing for years pastenforcing prices so little too high that they do not invite dangerous competition, nor provoke violent resistance from consumers, but enough too high to constitute a wrong toward the public of great magnitude in the aggregate. If all commodities

should be brought under similar control by like organizations and treated in the same way, the immensity of the robbery of the public would be enormous, and none the less robbery because perpetrated by means of infinitesimally small extortions. It is to some such complexion as this that the present development seems to me to point as its ultimate result.

Here we have elements of permanent and serious evil. The levying of unjust prices, or the exercise of unjust, arbitrary control over production or exchange is a wrong, simple, primary and direct, which is not mitigated by its skillful distribution among its subjects in such manner that they can bear it, and live to bear it to the natural end of life. The building up of vast fortunes in few hands by means known to be iniquitous but nevertheless tolerated by law, and the discontent and disloyalty to government and law which such things are bound to produce, are evils even greater in magnitude.

Here we have, to my mind, the main problem. How shall we distinguish among corporations? Shall we put arbitrary limitations upon their capital or the amount of business they may do, or the territory they may occupy with their trade? Shall we attempt to exercise a control by law over the great ones which we do not exercise over the small ones? In the exercise of that control, shall we prescribe prices by law, and undertake to say beforehand how much the sugar trust and the Standard Oil Company shall charge the people for sugar and oil? Is the legislature wise enough to exercise such a power safely? If it were, could it do it without impairing the principle of free competition?

In nearly all our legislation, so far, we have followed the theory of the common law that the power to control the production and prices of commodities is one so sure to be abused that it is too dangerous to be entrusted to anyone, and that the remedy against such wrongs is to forbid outright all organizations and combinations of men the effect or operation of which will be to put that power in their hands. But nothing can be clearer than the ineffectualness of such laws to meet present conditions. For years past, the states have been enacting them in terms of increasing severity, while the trusts and combines have been thriving as though anti-monopoly statutes were only food for their growth. We shall gain nothing by persevering in that direction. The law must change its methods. It must direct its prohibitions and penalties against the real wrongs. It is impossible to meet the conditions of 1900 with the laws of 1700. We must recognize and deal with the situation as it is.

It does not hurt us to get our sugar from one trust and our oil from another, if we get them at fair prices. It does not hurt us that railroads agree on rates, if they are fair ones. If the courts of the United States had been at liberty in dealing with the Trans-Missouri Freight Association to inquire into the justness and fairness of the rates fixed by it, the merits of the question could have been considered and the real wrong, if there was any, would have been reached. But the Sherman bill, as the Supreme Court decided, gave the court no such power. It was compelled to declare the association illegal because it was forbidden; and it was forbidden because there was, in the judgment of the law, danger that it would use its power to injure the public. If the Constitution would give Congress power over the whole subject of railroad transportation, state as well as interstate, and Congress would give the courts the power to investigate rates, charges, rules, and regulations which it has given to the Inter-State Commerce Commission, and render judgments accordingly, or would give the Inter-State Commerce Commission the powers of a court, little more would be required to put that great department of public concern under the complete control

of the law.

I think the time is ripe for this step forward. The InterState Commerce Commission has done an invaluable work, one beneficial in its immediate results, but still more valuable in leading the way toward a more perfect system. The people are quite prepared in their minds now for governmental supervision of railway rates; not the fixing of rates in advance, but the declaration by law of principles upon which rates shall be established and a compulsion by law of the observance of those principles. We have come to this frame of mind with regard to railroads because the combinations and consolidations which they have made among themselves have placed the public at their mercy. Nothing but the strong hand of the government can protect the people from extortion by the railroads if they choose to practice it.

We have not quite reached the same attitude of mind with regard to commodities. But when we come to the point at which all commodities will be supplied to us as sugar and oil are now, each by a single concern powerful enough to control the trade of the country in its line, and the fact becomes apparent that that vast centralization of control is to be a permanent condition, we shall be as ready for governmental interference in those fields as we are now with regard to railroads. If we are to

have such interference, it is none too soon to begin to feel our way toward it now.

He would be one of those who "rush in where angels fear to tread" who would undertake to formulate offhand a plan for dealing with so great and difficult a problem. But a man would confess his disbelief in the capacity of the race for self-government who should give it up as unsolvable. It is the glory of the common law that it grows with the needs of society, and, either by its own processes, or by pointing the way to the necessary legislation, finds an adequate remedy for every new wrong. The wrong to be remedied in the case of oppressive dealing with the public by the trusts is the abuse of power over production and trade secured by great aggregation of capital and working instrumentalities in the imposition of unjust prices. Where a wrong of that kind has been perpetrated, it ought to be possible to allege and prove the fact and punish the perpetrator. While the law is not wise enough to say what the price of sugar ought to be next year, it ought to be able to find out with reasonable certainty whether or no a given price was a fair one last year.

A bit of useful side-light is thrown upon the trust problem byits analogy with the labor problem. The labor union is only another form of trust and combination. Every organized strike, the object of which is to compel an employer by some kind of punishment to do something that he is unwilling to do is as distinctly unlawful by all the law in the books as the combination of employers to control prices or production. And yet we cannot abolish labor unions by law. No one is proposing to do it. The people will not permit it. It would be ruinous to the best interests of society to do it. If workingmen were forbidden to organize if each one of them were required to make his own terms with the great employers and hold his place at his employer's mere option-they would speedily become slaves, eating their bread by the grace of their masters. Having permitted and recognized the unions, we must allow them to make their organization effective, if it is to mean anything; and this, not by mere argument, or persuasion, or entreaty, which would avail nothing with certainty, if it were certain that nothing more could follow; but by meeting threat with threat and compulsion with compulsion. When the employer says, "Come to my terms, or go without your dinner," the union must be permitted to answer, "Come to our terms, or shut up your shop."

Combinations of capital and combinations of labor are alike inevitable concomitants of social growth, steps in the evolution of the race. The forces which impel them are stronger than the