with whom alone I could compare her. The evening
which followed was certainly unique in the history of social
intercourse.

When the ladies retired, Dr. Leete sounded me as to my disposition for
sleep, but gladly bore me company when I confessed I was afraid of it. I
was curious, too, as to the changes.

"To make a beginning somewhere," said I, "what solution, if any, have
you found for the labour question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the
nineteenth century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to
devour society because the answer was not forthcoming."

"The riddle may be said to have solved itself," replied Dr. Leete. "The
solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which
could not have terminated otherwise. The movement toward the conduct of
business by larger and larger aggregations of capital--the tendency
toward monopolies, which had been desperately and vainly resisted--was
recognised at last as a process to a golden future.

"Early in the last century the evolution was completed by the final
consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and
commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of
irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their
caprice and for their profit, were entrusted to a single syndicate
representing the people, to be conducted for the common profit. That is
to say, the nation organised itself as one great business corporation in
which all other corporations were absorbed. It became the one
capitalist, the sole employer, the final monopoly, in the profits and
economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts ended in the
Great Trust. In a word, the people of the United States concluded to
assume the conduct of their own business, just as a hundred odd years
earlier they had assumed the conduct of their own government. Strangely
late in the world's history, the obvious fact was perceived that no
business is so essentially the public business as the industry and
commerce on which the people's livelihood depends, and that to entrust
it to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly
similar in kind, though vastly greater in magnitude, to that of
surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles
to be conducted for their personal glorification."

"So stupendous a change," said I, "did not, of course, take place
without bloodshed and terrible convulsions?"

"On the