intimate a union that each individual undertaking completely loses its independence; the management of the trust can close it down, reconstruct it, transfer it to another place, do whatever seems likely to be advantageous to the trust as a whole. The owner of the individual undertaking of course continues to receive his profits regularly, and these profits may even be larger than before; but the entire management is vested in the solidly constructed capitalist combine, the trust.
Syndicates and trusts exercise an almost complete control over the market. They no longer fear competition, for they have crushed competition. Its place has been taken by capitalist monopoly, that is to say, by the dominion of a single trust.1
In this way the concentration and centralisation of capital gradually lead to the suppression of competition. Competition has devoured itself. The more frantic the development of capitalism, the quicker did centralisation proceed, because the ruin of the weaker capitalists was more speedily effected. In the end the centralisation of capital, arising out of competition, proved fatal to competition. “FREE COMPETITION” HAS BEEN REPLACED BY THE DOMINION OF CAPITALIST COMBINES, BY THE RULE OF SYNDICATES AND TRUSTS.
A few examples may be given, to show the enormous power wielded by trusts and syndicates. In the United States as long ago as 1900, that is to say in the very beginning of the twentieth century, the proportion of production in the hands of syndicates and trusts was as follows: Textiles, more than 50 per cent.; glass, 54 per cent.; paper, 60 per cent.; metals (excluding iron and steel), 84 per cent.; iron and steel, 84 per cent.; chemicals, 81 per cent.; etc. It need hardly be said that during the last two decades the power of the combines has enormously increased. In actual fact, the whole industrial production of the U.S. is to-day controlled by two trusts, the Standard Oil Trust and the Steel Trust; all the other trusts are dependents of these. In Germany, in the