Another trader purveys the same article, buying it from the same manufacturer, but owing to the possession of larger capital, better talent for organisation, and more enterprise, he sells, not one thousand, but one million per month. Instead of selling them at tenpence, however, he sells them at ninepence half-penny; thereby making his customers a present of one half-penny, taking to himself only one half of the sum to which they have already consented as a just charge for the services which he renders. Supposing that he pays the same price as the other trader for his goods (which, buying by the million, he would not do), he makes a profit of some £2083 a month, or £25,000 a year. Evidently he grows rich.
This is the rudimentary principle of modern business; but because one man becomes rich, though he gives the public the same service for less charge than honest men, Mr. Wells says that he cannot be honest.
If two men discover simultaneously gold mines of equal value, and one, being timid and conservative, puts twenty men to work while the other puts a thousand, and each makes a profit of one shilling a day on each man's labour, it is evident that while one enjoys an income of a pound a day for himself the other makes fifty times as much. It is not only obvious that the latter is just as honest as the former, but he can well afford to pay his men a shilling or two a week more in wages. He can afford to build them model homes and give them reading-rooms and recreation grounds, which the other cannot.
Others, besides Mr. Wells, lose their heads when they contemplate large fortunes made in business; but the elementary lesson to be learned is not merely that such large fortunes are likely to be as "honestly" acquired as the smaller ones, but also that the man who trades on the larger scale is—or has the potentiality of being—the greater benefactor to the community, not merely by being able to furnish the people with goods at a lower price but also by his ability to employ more labour and to surround his workmen with better material conditions.
The tendency of modern business industry to agglutinate into large units is, as has been said, inevitable; but, what is better worth noting, like all natural developments from healthy conditions, it is a thing inherently beneficent. That the larger power is capable of greater abuse than the smaller is also evident; and against that abuse it is that the American people is now struggling to safeguard itself. But to assail all trading on a scale which produces great wealth as "dishonest" is both impertinent (it is Mr. Wells's own word, applied to himself) and absurd.
The aggregate effect of the great consolidations in America and in England alike (of the "trusts" in fact) has so far been to cheapen immensely the price of most of the staples of life to the people; and that will always be the tendency of all consolidations which stop at any point short of monopoly. And that an artificial monopoly (not based on a natural monopoly) can ever be made effective in any staple for more than the briefest space of time has yet to be demonstrated.
The other consideration, of the destruction of the independence of the individual, remains; but that lies outside Mr. Wells' range.
FOOTNOTES:
[378:1] Preface to the Encyclopædia of Trade between the United States and France, prepared by the Société du Repertoire Général du Commerce.