The Theory of Social Revolutions | Page 7

the political domination in England,
towards 1840, of the Manchester school of political economy.
About forty years since, in America at least, the tide would appear once
more to have turned. I fix the moment of flux, as I am apt to do, by a
lawsuit. This suit was the Morris Run Coal Company v. Barclay Coal
Company,[5] which is the first modern anti-monopoly litigation that I
have met with in the United States. It was decided in Pennsylvania in
1871; and since 1871, while the area within which competition is
possible has been kept constant by the tariff, capital has accumulated
and has been concentrated and volatilized until, within this republic,
substantially all prices are fixed by a vast moneyed mass. This mass,
obeying what amounts to being a single volition, has its heart in Wall
Street, and pervades every corner of the Union. No matter what price is
in question, whether it be the price of meat, or coal, or cotton cloth, or
of railway transportation, or of insurance, or of discounts, the inquirer
will find the price to be, in essence, a monopoly or fixed price; and if
he will follow his investigation to the end, he will also find that the first
cause in the complex chain of cause and effect which created the
monopoly in that mysterious energy which is enthroned on the Hudson.
The presence of monopolistic prices in trade is not always a result of
conscious agreement; more frequently, perhaps, it is automatic, and is
an effect of the concentration of capital in a point where competition
ceases, as when all the capital engaged in a trade belongs to a single
owner. Supposing ownership to be enough restricted, combination is
easier and more profitable than competition; therefore combination,
conscious or unconscious, supplants competition. The inference from
the evidence is that, in the United States, capital has reached, or is
rapidly reaching, this point of concentration; and if this be true,
competition cannot be enforced by legislation. But, assuming that

competition could still be enforced by law, the only effect would be to
make the mass of capital more homogeneous by eliminating still further
such of the weaker capitalists as have survived. Ultimately, unless
indeed society is to dissolve and capital migrate elsewhere, all the
present phenomena would be intensified. Nor would free trade,
probably, have more than a very transitory effect. In no department of
trade is competition freer than in the Atlantic passenger service, and yet
in no trade is there a stricter monopoly price.
The same acceleration of the social movement which has caused this
centralization of capital has caused the centralization of another form of
human energy, which is its negative: labor unions organize labor as a
monopoly. Labor protests against the irresponsible sovereignty of
capital, as men have always protested against irresponsible sovereignty,
declaring that the capitalistic social system, as it now exists, is a form
of slavery. Very logically, therefore, the abler and bolder labor agitators
proclaim that labor levies actual war against society, and that in that
war there can be no truce until irresponsible capital has capitulated.
Also, in labor's methods of warfare the same phenomena appear as in
the autocracy of capital. Labor attacks capitalistic society by methods
beyond the purview of the law, and may, at any moment, shatter the
social system; while, under our laws and institutions, society is
helpless.
Few persons, I should imagine, who reflect on these phenomena, fail to
admit to themselves, whatever they may say publicly, that present
social conditions are unsatisfactory, and I take the cause of the stress to
be that which I have stated. We have extended the range of applied
science until we daily use infinite forces, and those forces must,
apparently, disrupt our society, unless we can raise the laws and
institutions which hold society together to an energy and efficiency
commensurate to them. How much vigor and ability would be required
to accomplish such a work may be measured by the experience of
Washington, who barely prevailed in his relatively simple task,
surrounded by a generation of extraordinary men, and with the
capitalistic class of America behind him. Without the capitalistic class
he must have failed. Therefore one most momentous problem of the

future is the attitude which capital can or will assume in this
emergency.
That some of the more sagacious of the capitalistic class have preserved
that instinct of self-preservation which was so conspicuous among men
of the type of Washington, is apparent from the position taken by the
management of the United States Steel Company, and by the
Republican minority of the Congressional Committee which recently
investigated the Steel Company; but whether such men very strongly
influence the genus to which they belong is not clear. If they do not,
much improvement