Principles of western civilisation

XI TOWARDS THE FUTURE 417

lesser rivals, because of the peculiar inherent strength of which they become possessed simply as fighting organisations tending in time to become absolute.

Fora time the largeness of the stage upon which the economic drama is being enacted makes it difficult for the mind to hold the controlling principle of the situation. Yet as the small industry grows by the natural laws of the competitive struggle into the great industry, there begins to arrive a condition in which we see, just as in the relations of capital to labour, that the ultimate conditions of free competition are not really present. Despite the great advance that has been made from the past in the conditions of competition, the ulti mate governing principle of the economic development remains that of a past phase of the evolutionary process. Weare regarding a free fight, of which the principles and controlling meaning are still entirely in the present, in which the forces engaged must tend to eliminate all elements but those contributing to success in such a free fight, and in which the whole process must accordingly fall in time to the level of its governing principle. Sooner or later a stage must be reached when it will become visible that the ultimate conditions are not those of a free rivalry of forces, but of approximate monopoly.

It may be noticed, accordingly, as the development of the phase of the competitive process between rival organisations in industry and trade has progressed, how strikingly its ruling principles resemble those of the phase already discussed. Here also, as in the relations of capital to labour, we see the advocates of uncontrolled competition emphatic at the beginning in the

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