ll argue that
we should go back to hand labour and throw away our efficient
machines--and the sober good sense of the people will accept this fact
when they have studied and tried it out. Just see how the list of
stockholders in the great corporations is increasing by leaps and
bounds. This means that all these people are becoming partners in
great businesses. It is a good thing--it will bring a feeling of
increased responsibility to the managers of the corporations and will
make the people who have their interests involved study the facts
impartially before condemning or attacking them.

On this subject of industrial combinations I have often expressed my
opinions; and, as I have not changed my mind, I am not averse to
repeating them now, especially as the subject seems again to be so
much in the public eye.

The chief advantages from industrial combinations are those which can
be derived from a cooeperation of persons and aggregation of capital.
Much that one man cannot do alone two can do together, and once admit
the fact that cooeperation, or, what is the same thing, combination, is
necessary on a small scale, the limit depends solely upon the
necessities of business. Two persons in partnership may be a
sufficiently large combination for a small business, but if the
business grows or can be made to grow, more persons and more capital
must be taken in. The business may grow so large that a partnership
ceases to be a proper instrumentality for its purposes, and then a
corporation becomes a necessity. In most countries, as in England,
this form of industrial combination is sufficient for a business
co-extensive with the parent country, but it is not so in America. Our
Federal form of government making every corporation created by a state
foreign to every other state, renders it necessary for persons doing
business through corporate agency to organize corporations in some or
many of the different states in which their business is located.
Instead of doing business through the agency of one corporation they
must do business through the agencies of several corporations. If the
business is extended to foreign countries, and Americans are not
to-day satisfied with home markets alone, it will be found helpful and
possibly necessary to organize corporations in such countries, for
Europeans are prejudiced against foreign corporations, as are the
people of many of our states. These different corporations thus become
cooepera