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my me my il mense without my

me ca pensilines via vach the purposes i de Some are denied, bur that nder easting writers is aberent av off ther beng hat der stud be so exercised. Fr Pr fessor Adams av i te merent recessior of the mregnated compete presss to reduce tself to te le fa vest raling factor meets them i every step. It is stringy Austrated a the wellknown maxim sf a such organisations, that they are

business smply to make the money they can That it should be otherwise is not only impracticable,

is in the end impossible. That such organisations of capital should not endeavour to extract the greatest proft out of the situation, that they should not endeavour to obtain the best prices possible for their wares, would be felt to be incongruous even by their critics. -The spectacle of a trust of shrewd American business men asking the benediction of its fellow

citizens upon its own philanthropy," says a recent writer sarcastically, nevertheless with just insight, "is, to say the least, a touching testimony to the credulity of those to whom the appeal is addressed."

As the concentration in a few hands of the 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 aggregate quoted might be more than twenty times as large.1 The inevitable and far-reaching 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 wellintentioned 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

1 Cf. The Lesson of Popular Government, by Gamaliel Bradford, vol. i. p. 509, q. fr. Hon. B. H. Butterfield of Ohio.

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As me kapis and bets of the early ra vien brought mier the fence d Constancy, Bented the wealth worch they had accured mder other standards to the framing of cources and the endowment of charities, so the pos

sessors of the colossal fortunes acquired under the conditions of the phase of the competitive process in which we are living, tend in some measure to endeavour to restore them to the public by the founding of libraries, the endowment of universities, and the initiation of large works of public philanthropy.

Yet the crudity and even barbarism of the principle that has projected itself into the modern economic process remains visible even in these circumstances. The deterioration likely to be produced by charity to the individual, even under the most carefully guarded conditions, is well known. There is no reason to expect that the same result could ultimately be avoided in the case of charity on a large scale to the public or the State. It is not necessary to agree with the statement recently made in a responsible manner,1 that the effect of capitalistic influences in American academic endowments will be marked for evil in the future political evolution of the United States, to see what is clearly in evidence in other respects in England, namely, that it is not a healthy social state in which enormous sums of wealth and capital are devoted to public purposes, under such conditions of private charity or munificence however well intentioned. It is easy to conceive to what a state of profound public and private demoralisation, and even degradation, such practices might lead if continued on a large scale through a few generations.

If we go now a step farther and lift the veil from the inner working of the prevailing phase of the competitive process as it is displayed in the general business life of the world, it may be distinguished how 1 F. C. S. Schiller, The Spectator, 16th March 1901.

the whole process falls grainy, as by an inherent law of gravity, in a particular directare. As the competitive process in modern business has grown slowly to its fill natural intensity, the effect has been more and more to eliminate all principles and considerations from the struggle but those contributing to finess therein. But as the process is essentially a free unregulated fight, of which all the meaning and principles are in the present, it has of necessity tended to ultimately regulate itself at the level simply of the qualities contributing to success and survival in a struggle of such a character.

When, therefore, attention is withdrawn from those superficial details of persons and causes which only maintain themselves in a more or less sheltered or artificial existence in the interstices of the business life of the time, and is concentrated on the governing realities of the commercial struggle of the modern world, we have a spectacle which is in all respects the supplement to that which we have just been considering. No student of social conditions, who looks beneath the surface of the business life of the present day in England, can doubt for a moment the existence of a deepening consciousness in the general mind of a wide interval between what may be termed the business and the private conscience of the individual in the current phase of the economic process. may be studied in documents like the annual reports made to Parliament under the Companies' Winding-up Act, or the report of the special committee appointed by the London Chamber of Commerce to inquire into secret commissions in trade. It is equally notorious in the United States. The profoundly felt sense of

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