l franchise" giving the use of streets and highways and the
right of eminent domain, nor to a single patent, but to a group of
favoring technical, financial, and economic conditions. The trust may
consist of a single establishment; or of a group of establishments
separately operated but united in a "pool" to divide output,
territory, or earnings; or of such a group held together by a holding
company, or combined into one corporation. Public utility is the
name of special franchise enterprises of the kind just mentioned,
including, in the broad sense, railroads and local utilities such as
street railways, gas, water, and electric light-plants.

Sec. 5. #Industrial monopoly and fostering conditions.# The problem of
monopoly is probably as old as markets. From the first coming together
of groups of men to trade there were doubtless efforts made by some
individuals and groups of traders to manipulate conditions so as to
get higher prices than they could get in a free and open market.[4]
There are traces of these practices in ancient times, and the history
of the Middle Ages is full of evidences both of monopolistic practices
and of the efforts to prevent or control them.

If this fact is borne in mind it may help us to distinguish in thought
four features of enterprise that are readily and constantly
confused, viz: large individual capital, large production, corporate
organization, and monopoly.[5] Evidently any one of these features may
appear without the other; e.g., a person of large aggregate capital
may have his investments distributed among a large number of small
enterprises, such as farms, without a trace of corporate organization
or monopoly, and numerous examples could be given of large production,
or of corporate organization, or of monopoly without one or more of
the other features.

But the presence of any one of these features is a favoring condition
for the development of the others. Hence they are frequently found
together, and of late this occurs increasingly. It is difficult to say
in every, indeed in any, case which feature has been cause and which
effect in this development, but, on the whole, large production seems
to have been primary. Itself made possible by inventions, by better
transportation, and by the widening of markets, it in turn helped to
build up large individual fortunes, and then to create a need for the
corporate form of organization. And monopoly power no doubt is more
easily gained b