pitalists 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