ies and dollars of the masses as well as the thousands of the rich
and pouring them all into the channels of business and manufacturing.
In this growth of banking on a national scale, it was inevitable that a
few great centers, like Wall Street in New York or State Street in
Boston, should rise to a position of dominance both in concentrating the
savings and profits of the nation and in financing new as well as old
corporations.

=The Significance of the Corporation.=--The corporation, in fact, became
the striking feature of American business life, one of the most
marvelous institutions of all time, comparable in wealth and power and
the number of its servants with kingdoms and states of old. The effect
of its rise and growth cannot be summarily estimated; but some special
facts are obvious. It made possible gigantic enterprises once entirely
beyond the reach of any individual, no matter how rich. It eliminated
many of the futile and costly wastes of competition in connection with
manufacture, advertising, and selling. It studied the cheapest methods
of production and shut down mills that were poorly equipped or
disadvantageously located. It established laboratories for research in
industry, chemistry, and mechanical inventions. Through the sale of
stocks and bonds, it enabled tens of thousands of people to become
capitalists, if only in a small way. The corporation made it possible
for one person to own, for instance, a $50 share in a million dollar
business concern--a thing entirely impossible under a regime of
individual owners and partnerships.

There was, of course, another side to the picture. Many of the
corporations sought to become monopolies and to make profits, not by
economies and good management, but by extortion from purchasers.
Sometimes they mercilessly crushed small business men, their
competitors, bribed members of legislatures to secure favorable laws,
and contributed to the campaign funds of both leading parties. Wherever
a trust approached the position of a monopoly, it acquired a dominion
over the labor market which enabled it to break even the strongest trade
unions. In short, the power of the trust in finance, in manufacturing,
in politics, and in the field of labor control can hardly be measured.

=The Corporation and Labor.=--In the development of the corporation
there was to be observed a distinct severing of the old ties between
master and workmen, which existed in the days of small industr