Principles of western civilisation

424 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

gigantic resources and powers of such organisations of capital has continued, a distinctive feature has accordingly been their tendency to use this irresponsible strength in accordance with the inherent purpose of their existence. Beneath the surface of national and even of international affairs their influence has begun to make itself felt. “I see enough every day,” are the quoted words of a politician in the United States, with opportunities of judging of the tendencies of the movement in its early stages, “ to satisfy me that the petitions, prayers, protestations, and profanity of sixty millions of people are not as strong to control legislative action as the influence and effort of the head of a single combine with fifty millions of dollars at his back.” And already, in speaking of combinations of capital, the figures used might be more than twenty times as large.' The inevitable and farreaching tendencies of such a condition within the body politic may well be imagined. No description within the limits of a treatise of this sort could do justice to it. However well-intentioned the individual in the struggle, however high or exemplary his wishes, he is in the thrall of conditions which are inexorable. The law of the conflict before mentioned, that it must regulate itself at the level of its ruling factor, that the competitors who are destined to survive in it must survive in a struggle to make all the money they can in an irresponsible free fight for private profit, meets him at every step.

In the result we have the development of a vast

' Cf. The Lesson of Popular Government, by Gamaliel Bradford, vol. i. p- 509, y. /7. Hon. B. H. Butterfield of Ohio.

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