Competition in American business was insufficiently moderated either by
the state or by the prevailing temper of American life. No sensible and
resourceful man will submit to such a precarious existence without
making some attempt to escape from it; and if the means which Mr.
Rockefeller and others took to secure themselves served to make the
business lives of their competitors still more precarious, such a result
was only the expiation which American business men were obliged to pay
for their own excesses. The concentrated leadership, the partial
control, the thorough organization thereby effected, was not necessarily
a bad thing. It was in some respects a decidedly good thing, because
leadership of any kind has certain intrinsic advantages. The trusts have
certainly succeeded in reducing the amount of waste which was
necessitated by the earlier condition of wholly unregulated competition.
The competitive methods of nature have been, and still are, within
limits indispensable; but the whole effort of civilization has been to
reduce the area within which they are desirably effective; and it is
entirely possible that in the end the American system of industrial
organization will constitute a genuine advance in industrial economy.
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