The vital importance of this truth cannot be over-estimated. For so long as we refuse to recognize it, so long as we attempt to stop the present evils of monopoly by trying to add a feeble one to the number of competing units, or by trying to legislate against special monopolies, we are only building a temporary dam to shut out a flood which can only be controlled at the fountain head.
The facts of history testify to the truth of this law. Monopolies were never so abundant as to-day, never so powerful, never so threatening; and with unimportant exceptions they have all sprung up with our modern industrial development. The last fifteen years have seen a greater industrial advancement than did the thirty preceding, but they have also witnessed a more than proportionate growth of monopolies. How worse than foolish, then, is the short-sightedness that ascribes monopolies to the personal wickedness of the men who form them. It is as foolish to decry the wickedness of trust makers as it is to curse the schemes of labor monopolists. Each is working unconsciously in obedience to a natural law; and the only reason that almost every man is not engaged in forming or maintaining a similar monopoly is that he is not placed in similar circumstances. Away, then, with the pessimism which declares that the prevalence of monopolies evidences the decay of the nobler aspirations of humanity. The monopolies of to-day are a natural outgrowth of the laws of modern competition, and they are as actually a result of the application of steam, electricity, and machinery to the service of man, as are our factories and railways. Great evils though they may have become, there is naught of evil omen in them to make us fear for the ultimate welfare of our liberties.
To the practical mind, however, the question at once occurs, what light have we gained toward the proper method of counteracting this evil?