At the present day, on the other hand, Transport is so thoroughly organized and so complete, that Competition can never again be made the basis of any system of Political Economy. Never again will businesses of any kind be able to repose in security, so long as they are operated through small capitals in isolated hands; for the combinations of capital into great balls administered by a few hands will wear out, override, and finally extinguish all smaller isolated competitors, however great in the aggregate their dispersed capital may be; in the same way as cannon balls will overcome resistances which are proof against showers of rifle bullets of an equal aggregate weight of metal. Combination, in a word, having as its ultimate aim either limited or absolute monopoly over given fields and areas of industry, from now onwards must more and more become the watchword and order of the day in all business and industrial undertakings; while Competition and Laissez-faire, - the pillars on which, as presuppositions, the entire structure of the old orthodox political economy was reared, - must more and more decrease, until they become only a scramble for the leavings among the hangers-on and surplusage populations of the industrial world.

Legislation and detailed administration, therefore, and ever more of them, must for the future be the supreme concern of nations, if all this multitudinous mass of 'unearned increment,' coming from combination, from monopoly, from favoured situation, from the growth and distribution of population, is to be utilized for the greatest good of the nation as a whole. To wait for a return of the industrial cycle, when at some distant future time the principle of laissez-faire shall again be for the best interests of social and industrial progress, as it was during the last century; to wait to put down anomalies arising in the development of industry until you can get them all under some general law of treatment like this of laissez-faire, whose application would do no injustice to any, would be only to give the wolves a still longer lease of life, and to make the industrial world over to them as a perpetual spoil.

When Competition is accepted as the supreme rule in the game of industry, it works best when left alone and not interfered with; but when Combination, having monopoly as its end, displaces it, then combination must be watched at every point; with administrative justice standing over it to lop off that superflux of wealth which has accrued to these monopolies from the progress of Society itself, but which so far has only served to make industrial gods of those who happen to be in parchment possession of its favourite seats without special merit or work of their own. Otherwise you would have little knots of monster millionaires in each nation cropping the world of its finest fruit, like the early Roman Caears, and flinging the husks to the groundlings, laughing and jeering the while at the herds who turn themselves into industrial slaves to eke out a bare subsistence for themselves, or into rival gladiators to make a holiday for their masters.

But all this requires a Central Executive armed with power sufficient to carry it out; - and for that consummation, in a country depending on parliamentary majorities made up of conflicting interests, we shall have long to wait, I fear, as well as for an organization of Industry on laws at once National and Protective, and free alike from the weakness of Competition and of Free Trade.

End Of Book II.