ncreased productive capacity conferred
on the industrial community by any conceivable advance in the industrial
arts. The outcome to be looked for should apparently be such an
effectual recourse to capitalistic sabotage as will neutralise any added
advantage that might otherwise accrue to the community from its
continued improvements in technology.

In spite of this singularly untoward conjuncture of circumstances to be
looked for, there need be no serious apprehension that capitalistic
sabotage, with a view to maintaining prices and the rate of profits,
will go all the way, to the result indicated, at least not on the
grounds so indicated alone. There is in the modern development of
technology, and confidently to be counted on, a continued flow of new
contrivances and expedients designed to supersede the old; and these are
in fact successful, in greater or less measure, in finding their way
into profitable use, on such terms as to displace older appliances,
underbid them in the market, and render them obsolete or subject to
recapitalisation on a lowered earning-capacity. So far as this
unremitting flow of innovations has its effect, that is to say so far as
it can not be hindered from having an effect, it acts to lower the
effectual cost of products to the consumer. This effect is but a partial
and somewhat uncertain one, but it is always to be counted in as a
persistent factor, of uncertain magnitude, that will affect the results
in the long run.

As has just been spoken of above, large coalitions of invested wealth
are more competent to maintain, or if need be to advance, prices than
smaller coalitions acting in severalty, or even when acting in
collusion. This state of the case has been well illustrated by the very
successful conduct of such large business organisations during the past
few decades; successful, that is, in earning large returns on the
investments engaged. Under the new dispensation, as has already been
remarked, coalitions should reasonably be expected to grow to a larger
size and achieve a greater efficiency for the same purpose.

The large gains of the large corporate coalitions are commonly ascribed
by their promoters, and by sympathetic theoreticians of the ancient
line, to economies of production made practicable by a larger scale of
production; an explanation which is disingenuous only so far as it needs
be. What is more visibly true on looking into the workings of these
coalitions in detail