President of the United
States summoned the governors of forty-six states to deliberate upon the
danger of the exhaustion of the natural resources of the nation.[279:1]

The pressure of population upon the food supply is already felt and we
are at the beginning only of this transformation. It is profoundly
significant that at the very time when American democracy is becoming
conscious that its pioneer basis of free land and sparse population is
giving way, it is also brought face to face with the startling outcome
of its old ideals of individualism and exploitation under competition
uncontrolled by government. Pioneer society itself was not sufficiently
sophisticated to work out to its logical result the conception of the
self-made man. But the captains of industry by applying squatter
doctrines to the evolution of American industrial society, have made the
process so clear that he who runs may read. Contests imply alliances as
well as rivalries. The increasing magnitude of the areas to be dealt
with and the occurrences of times of industrial stress furnished
occasion for such unions. The panic of 1873 was followed by an
unprecedented combination of individual businesses and partnerships into
corporations. The panic of 1893 marked the beginning of an extraordinary
development of corporate combinations into pools and trusts, agreements
and absorptions, until, by the time of the panic of 1907, it seemed not
impossible that the outcome of free competition under individualism was
to be monopoly of the most important natural resources and processes by
a limited group of men whose vast fortunes were so invested in allied
and dependent industries that they constituted the dominating force in
the industrial life of the nation. The development of large scale
factory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive
struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in securing
possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so great that vast
accumulations of capital became the normal agency of the industrial
world. In almost exact ratio to the diminution of the supply of
unpossessed resources, combinations of capital have increased in
magnitude and in efficiency of conquest. The solitary backwoodsman
wielding his ax at the edge of a measureless forest is replaced by
companies capitalized at millions, operating railroads, sawmills, and
all the enginery of modern machinery to harvest the remaining
trees.[280:1]

A