a self-balanced, passably independent industrial system, — such a coalition of business enterprises as is loosely called a " trust,"
Such a business coalition, if it is comprehensive and closely controlled, can adjust the output of goods and services to the market with some nicety, and can maintain the balance of the ruling prices, or the price scale agreed upon, with such effect that the received capitalization need not become obsolete even in the face of very radical improvements in the processes of industry. Its effect, in the case of ideal aucceas, is to neutralize the cheapening of goods and services effected by current industrial progress. It offsets industrial improvements in so far as these improvements affect the coat of goods more than they affect the value of the money metals. It might seem at first sight that by this inhibitory effect of the trust the entire advantage derivable from industrial improvements within the scope of the trust should inure to the gain of the business men in the combination, but such does not appear to be the practical outcome. The practical outcome appears more nearly to be that material advantage inures to no one from