distribution and ownership. It may possibly be true, however, that one million different persons own an interest in some of the various monopolies which we have studied, excluding the monopolies in trade and labor. But even if this estimate is correct, it is a well-known fact that a few hundred immensely wealthy men hold a large share of the stock of these very profitable monopolies.
Leaving the questions which this statement opens up, for later consideration, let us consider the other classes of occupations in which men engage for the purpose of gain, and see if this far-reaching movement towards the destruction of competition has infected them, and whether it has proved, or can prove, so successful there as it has in the industries considered in preceding chapters.
The third great class of occupations, rendering professional or personal service, gives employment to over four million persons (4,074,328), and includes in its members those in widely separated ranks of society.
It is, of course, true that the competition in the professions is far more a competition of ability, real or supposed, than it is a competition of price; and the former is a