any such enterprise. Then its employes, trained for its particular uses,
find themselves not only without employment, but unfitted to drop into
other niches of usefulness. The absolute routine of the great
establishment so fixes habits as to make very difficult a change of work
except in line of promotion in a similar organization. The dissatisfaction
and distress from such absence of employment is more apparent than in
ordinary poverty.

The strongest objections, however, to the great aggregations are found in
the possibility of oppression through a monopoly of business, and
therefore almost absolute control by a few persons of the interests not
only of a large body of employes, but of every competitor upon a smaller
scale. A large combination practically compels all to yield to its
methods. The certain economy of methods has led to the statement, "Where
combination is possible, competition ceases." The common saying,
"Competition is the life of trade," becomes untrue whenever that
competition implies a costly service. Competition is supposed to reduce
cost by stimulating energy and ingenuity. But when that ingenuity can be
better applied in combination, the result is the destruction of
competition. Competition may drive the milk wagon faster, but combination
will deliver more quarts of milk in the same time. The natural opposition
to combination rests upon the same ground as the opposition to improved
machinery. It certainly throws out of their ordinary employment a
considerable number of independent workers.

This power of the combination is a constant temptation to unscrupulous and
grasping managers to increase their advantage by vicious discrimination
and false competition, expecting the destruction of others' business to
increase their own. The largeness of the operation makes more plain the
injustice of the maxim, "All is fair in trade." The final dangers of
combination are thus likely to be overestimated. It is not true that any
larger proportion of false methods of business enters into the large
establishment than into the small, and the possibility of profit in a
great combination is quite as truly dependent upon the universal welfare
as anywhere. The same extremes of prices mark the range for these
establishments as for any others. The price cannot continue higher than
buyers will pay with an increasing disposition to buy more. It cannot
remain lower, of course, than will enable sellers to continue living as