Arranging in their logical order the laws of competition which we have found, we have the following diagram:
In any given industry the tendency toward monopoly increases: (1.) As the waste due to competition increases. The waste of competition increases in proportion to its intensity. (1.) The intensity of competition increases as the number of competing units decreases. (2.) The intensity of competition increases with the amount of capital required for each competing unit. (2.) As the number of competing units decreases. (3.) As the amount of capital required for each competing unit increases. (4.) As the number of available natural agents decreases.
The preceding diagram sets plainly before us the three great salient causes from which have grown the long list of monopolies under which our civilization labors. First, the supply of natural agents of which new competitors in any industry may avail themselves has been largely exhausted, or has been gathered up by existing monopolies to render their position more secure; the world has not the natural resources to develop that she had a century ago. Second, the concentration of all the productive industries, except agriculture, into great establishments, while it has enormously lessened the cost of production, has so reduced the number of competing units that a monopoly is the inevitable final result. Last, the enormous capital required for the establishment and maintenance of new competing units tends to fortify the monopoly in its position and render the escape of the public from its grasp practically impossible. These terse statements contain exactly the kernel of potent truth for which we are seeking; MONOPOLIES OF EVERY SORT ARE AN INEVITABLE RESULT FROM CERTAIN CONDITIONS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION.