Principles of western civilisation

420 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

in industry and commerce in the United States to be drawn into the vortex of the same conditions, and of the unmistakable natural tendency of these conditions to become universal. Despite the temporary checks which are inevitable, the formation of trusts and combinations of capital in the United States has, on the whole, continued with rapidity during the period in question. It is in full progress in England,’ and is rapidly extending to the industries of the continent of Europe. The assertions that such combinations were likely to be ultimately successful only in respect of what have been termed natural monopolies; that they could not succeed in permanently raising prices; that they were in any case only the product of conditions of protection peculiar to the United States,—all seem on the way to be proved to be as devoid of any real foundation as have been the other assertions of a like nature made at an earlier stage by the advocates of uncontrolled competition. So far from being a product extraneous to the conditions of unrestricted competition, such combinations of capital are rather the characteristic products of those conditions. As Paul de Rousiers has shown, they are, in many respects, to be regarded as a direct consequence of the spirit prevailing in the English-speaking world, under the standards of /azssez-faire competition. Inthe United States they have been produced, as he points out, by the action of the very arrangements by which the State has endeavoured to keep companies dealing in large public utilities in competition with each

1 Compare various articles of Mr. Robert Donald on the development of the Trust System in Europe.