ed, was recognized at last, in its true
significance, as a process which only needed to complete its logical
evolution to open a golden future to humanity.

"Early in the last century the evolution was completed by the final
consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and
commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of
irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their
caprice and for their profit, were intrusted to a single syndicate
representing the people, to be conducted in the common interest for the
common profit. The nation, that is to say, organized as the one great
business corporation in which all other corporations were absorbed; it
became the one capitalist in the place of all other capitalists, the
sole employer, the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser
monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the profits and economies
of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts had ended in The
Great Trust. In a word, the people of the United States concluded to
assume the conduct of their own business, just as one hundred odd years
before they had assumed the conduct of their own government, organizing
now for industrial purposes on precisely the same grounds that they had
then organized for political purposes. At last, strangely late in the
world's history, the obvious fact was perceived that no business is so
essentially the public business as the industry and commerce on which
the people's livelihood depends, and that to entrust it to private
persons to be managed for private profit is a folly similar in kind,
though vastly greater in magnitude, to that of surrendering the
functions of political government to kings and nobles to be conducted
for their personal glorification."

"Such a stupendous change as you describe," said I, "did not, of
course, take place without great bloodshed and terrible convulsions."

"On the contrary," replied Dr. Leete, "there was absolutely no
violence. The change had been long foreseen. Public opinion had become
fully ripe for it, and the whole mass of the people was behind it.
There was no more possibility of opposing it by force than by argument.
On the other hand the popular sentiment toward the great corporations
and those identified with them had ceased to be one of bitterness, as
they came to realize their necessity as a link, a transition phase, in
the evolution of the true industrial system. The most violent