So long as there was a direct connection between a worker and the product which he turned out, economic life was simple. When, however, the coal dug in eastern Pennsylvania was used to heat houses in Minneapolis, while wheat grown in Dakota was milled in Duluth, made into crackers in Boston and sold all over New England, there arose the problem of the relation between mining, wheat raising, transport, manufacturing, and merchandising. Thus far the banker has acted as the go-between in holding this machinery together, but he labors under two important disqualifications: first, he does not represent anyone except himself and his fellow owners and is therefore not socially responsible for what he does; in the second place, like every other business man, he is out to make a profit rather than to render the community a service. Hence the structure of industrial society rests in chaotic dependence upon the ambitions and foibles of self-selected financiers.
4. Attempts at government control of industry.
The irritated people, incensed by repeated acts of economic tyranny, have turned to the political state, which has been thought of as the guardian of popular rights in a democracy, and through regulatory legislation the appointment of commissions, and even through state competition they have sought to bring obstreperous business interests under the wing of state control. These efforts have generally failed: the business interests, through their control of the economic surplus, have dominated the commissions and have used the machinery of the political state as the instrument for further exploiting ventures; the police, the courts, the executive power, the military—all have been employed by the owners and exploiters against the workers. The issue between the empires of industry and the political state still remains one of the most vexing in the field of public life.
These problems of job control, of wealth and income distribution, of industrial inter-relations and of the relation between the state and industry are pressing for solution in every important centre of modern economic life. Each constitutes a disturbing element and contributes its mite to the aggregate of social instability and unrest that are racking the economic world.
Aside from these problems, localized in character, though world-wide in their distribution, there are a number of other problems of a world character which also are factors in the disorganization of economic life. One of these world problems is the competitive struggle between economic groups for trade, markets, resources and investment opportunities; another is, the excessive concentration of the world's wealth in a few centres.
4. Competition for Economic Advantage
The issue of non-redeemable promises to pay has crippled the world's credit machinery. The competition for economic advantage has played havoc with the world's social stability.
Theoretically the coffee grower of Brazil and the agricultural machine manufacturer of Illinois produce and exchange those things that they can turn out most advantageously. Practically the resources of the world are monopolized by powerful financial interests each striving to destroy its rivals, each seeking its own enrichment, and each busy reinvesting the surplus wealth which piles up as the result of exploitation at home and abroad.
Competition for economic advantage has followed the line of greatest profit. The present age inherited from the medieval economic world certain time-honored trade rivalries such as those which had existed between Rome, Carthage and Corinth in classic times, or between Holland, France and England in more modern days. These trade rivalries concern themselves with: