It is thus evident that the waste due to the intense competition which the concentration of productive enterprise has brought about in modern times is a matter of startling proportions. We are wasting and destroying wealth all the time sufficient to go a long way towards abolishing all the poverty in our midst; and the blame for this state of affairs we are now able to place where it belongs.
Surely with a full appreciation of these evils, every honest and patriotic man must be willing to use every endeavor to strike at the root of the evil. The public indeed is, and has long been, a unit in its opposition to monopoly; but in endeavoring to defeat monopoly it has taken just the course which could give no permanent gain. Cities have beggared themselves to aid competing railway lines only to see them consolidated eventually with the monopoly which it was expected to defeat. The multitude regard Claus Spreckels as a benefactor—and will till he forces the Sugar Trust to divide their 25 per cent. profits with him in return for the control of his refinery.
It is no benefit to us if in steering away from the Scylla of monopoly, we be wrecked on the Charybdis of wasteful competition. We have been trying for a score of years now to defeat monopolies by creating competition; but in spite of a universal public sentiment in favor of the reform, and notwithstanding the millions of wealth which we have poured out like water to accomplish this object, monopolies to-day are far more numerous and powerful than ever before. The people who are groaning under their burden of oppression are anxious for relief. The remedy they have so long and faithfully tried to apply has but made a bad matter worse; and it is small wonder that, despairing of other relief, they are adopting false and injurious plans for bettering themselves which serve merely to extend the monopoly policy into all industrial affairs.
We are threatened with a state of society in which most of the principal industries will be wholly given over to monopoly. Those in each occupation will band together to secure the greatest returns for themselves at the expense of all other men; while the few occupations which cannot thus combine in a monopoly—farming, and the different sorts of unskilled labor—will be filled to overflowing with those crowded out of other callings. Those who follow them will do so only because the monopolized occupations are closed to them. Thus will our farming population degenerate into a peasantry more miserable than that of Europe, and our laborers be ground down to a level lower than they have yet known. Is there a probability that such a state of affairs will come to pass? There might be if the public were not keenly alive to the curse of monopoly. But as it is, the greater danger is that through ignorance a wrong course may be adopted for the cure of our present evils, which will aggravate instead of curing them.
XIII.
AMELIORATING INFLUENCES.
If pure selfishness were the only motive influencing the masses of mankind, the evils which we have considered in the preceding chapter would be wholly unbearable. All men would be waging an industrial warfare with each other in their greed for gain, just as the barons of feudal times fought to satisfy their thirst for power and possessions; and as motive is the great force which determines character, we would be, as far as moral excellence is concerned, in the same category as the uncivilized savages.
Fortunately for the happiness of the race, there are important influences at work counteracting, modifying and ameliorating the social evils that threaten us. These influences are not cures for these evils, though they are so considered by very many people. But they are very important palliatives. They are certainly of inestimable value in the lack of real remedies; but it is better to consider them as palliatives merely; for necessary, as they are and always will be, to soften and relieve the ruggedness of human laws and human administration of law, in the present condition of humanity they cannot effect a cure of the evils which burden us.
The first of these palliatives has a purely selfish origin. It arises from the desire of the managers of every monopoly to make the greatest possible profit from its operations. Let us take, for example, a street railway monopoly which is at liberty to charge such rates of fare as it chooses and which has no competitors. If it fixes its fare at 10 cents, very many people will prefer to walk or take some other mode of conveyance, who, if the fare was at 5 cents, would patronize the road. Thus it may very likely happen that 5-cent fares will yield it the greatest net income. It is often said that it is competition which has brought our rates of railroad transportation down to their present low point. While this is largely true, it is also true that the tendency to foster the growth of traffic by making a low tariff has been a large factor in bringing rates down to a reasonable point. Another example of this principle's operation is in the case of monopolies protected by the patent laws. In this case the collection of only a moderate royalty will generally result in greater profits to the inventor than he would secure by exacting a large fee, because of the greatly increased sales in the former case.