Our Benevolent Feudalism. Ghent William James

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      The dreadful spectre of monopoly, however, arises to threaten these visions. Most of the orthodox economists acknowledge a possible danger from it, but the Single-Taxers and Jeffersonians are sure it is a real and growing menace. Says Professor Clark, “Between us and the régime of monopoly there ranges itself a whole series of possible measures stopping short of Socialism, and yet efficient enough to preserve our free economic system.” It is a “free economic system” which all these are bent on having, – the economists determined on preserving it, the others on establishing it; for the Single-Taxers, with their bête noir of private ownership of land, and the Jeffersonians, with their bêtes noirs of railroads and trusts, deny that our economic system is at present “free.” Doubtless they are both right; but if there be one fact in the realm of political economy fairly established, it is that the era of competition, whether free or unfree, is dead, and the means of its resurrection are unknown to political science. With old men the dream of its revival is warrantable, for it springs from that retrospective mood of age which gilds past times, and that attendant mood which recreates and projects them into some imagined future; but with the younger generation visions of free competition are but as children’s dreams of wild forests and shaggy animals – the atavistic reminders of experiences unknown to the individual, though knit into the fibre of the race. The subject is one far better suited to the domain of a psychologist like Dr. Stanley Hall than to the scope of this book.

      Finally, we have the Socialists, with their prophecy of the early establishment of a coöperative commonwealth. It is a noble picture, in its best expression based upon the extreme of faith in the coming generations of mankind, however its draughtsmen may criticise the wisdom and justice of the present. There is no doubt that now a ground-swell of Socialist conviction moves like a tide “of waters unwithstood”; everywhere one notes its influences. Even so conservative a scholar as Professor Henry Davies, lecturer on the history of philosophy in Yale University, can write, “There is no doubt that the next form of political activity to claim attention is the socialistic, as it is the most popular and serious of any now before the educated minds of this country.” Its propaganda is carried on untiringly, and that its results are feared is evident from the equal aggressiveness of a counter-propaganda maintained by the ingenious defenders of the present régime against the whole form and spirit of Socialism. But though socialist conviction spreads, the substance sought for seems as far away as ever. It would seem, for the most part, to be but a lukewarm conviction, much like that for which the Laodiceans were so widely famed. Present tendencies make for other forms of production, for a vastly different social régime.

      II

      The dominant tendencies will be clearly seen only by those who for the time detach themselves from their social ideals. What, then, in this republic of the United States, may Socialist, Individualist, and Conservative alike see, if only they will look with unclouded vision? In brief, an irresistible movement – now almost at its culmination – toward great combinations in specific trades; next toward coalescence of kindred industries, and thus toward the complete integration of capital. Consequent upon these changes, the group of captains and lieutenants of industry attains a daily increasing power, social, industrial, and political, and becomes the ranking order in a vast series of gradations. The State becomes stronger in its relation to the propertyless citizen, weaker in its relation to the man of capital. A growing subordination of classes, and a tremendous increase in the numbers of the lower orders, follow. Factory industry increases, and the petty industries, while still supporting a great number of workers, are in all respects relatively weaker than ever before; they suffer a progressive limitation of scope and function and a decrease of revenues. Defenceless labor – the labor of women and children – increases both absolutely and relatively. Men’s wages decline or remain stationary, while the value of the product and the cost of living advance by steady steps. Though land is generally held in somewhat smaller allotments, tenantry on the small holdings, and salaried management on the large, gradually replace the old system of independent farming; and the control of agriculture oscillates between the combinations that determine the prices of its products and the railroads that determine the rate for transportation to the markets.

      In a word, they who desire to live – whether farmers, workmen, middlemen, teachers, or ministers – must make their peace with those who have the disposition of the livings. The result is a renascent Feudalism, which, though it differs in many forms from that of the time of Edward I, is yet based upon the same status of lord, agent, and underling. It is a Feudalism somewhat graced by a sense of ethics and somewhat restrained by a fear of democracy. The new barons seek a public sanction through conspicuous giving, and they avoid a too obvious exercise of their power upon political institutions. Their beneficence, however, though large, is but rarely prodigal. It betokens, as in the case of the careful spouse of John Gilpin, a frugal mind. They demand the full terms nominated in the bond; they exact from the traffic all it will bear. Out of the tremendous revenues that flow to them some of them return a part in benefactions to the public; and these benefactions, whether or not primarily devoted to the easement of conscience, are always shrewdly disposed with an eye to the allayment of pain and the quieting of discontent. They are given to hospitals; to colleges and churches which teach reverence for the existing régime, and to libraries, wherein the enforced leisure of the unemployed may be whiled away in relative contentment. They are never given, even by accident, to any of the movements making for the correction of what reformers term injustice. But not to look too curiously into motives, our new Feudalism is at least considerate. It is a paternal, a Benevolent Feudalism.

      CHAPTER II

      Combination and Coalescence

      I

      We have, first, the enormous growth of industrial, commercial, and financial combinations. A crude idea of the extent to which concentration in manufactures had grown up to May 31, 1900, may be gained from Census Bulletin No. 122. In this report only those aggregations are considered which consisted of “a number of formerly independent mills which have been brought together into one company under a charter obtained for that purpose.” Several of the new security-holding stock companies are included, but “many large establishments comprising a number of mills which have grown up, not by combination with other mills, but by erection of new plants or the purchase of old ones,” are not considered, nor are gas and electric lighting plants, or pools, and “gentlemen’s agreements.”

      The list contains records of 183 corporations, with 2029 active and 174 idle plants, an average of 11 active plants each. The actual capital invested in these corporations, exclusive of that for 56 of the idle plants, was $1,458,522,573, and the authorized capitalization was $3,607,539,200. These combinations employed 24,585 salaried officers and clerks, and an average of 399,192 wage-earners. The 1047 officers received an average of $6,825.28 yearly and the wage-earners, $487.32. There were 40 combinations in iron and steel, with 447 plants; 28 in liquor and beverages, with 219 plants; 21 in food and allied products, with 273 plants; 15 in clay, glass, and stone products, with 180 plants, and 14 in chemicals, with 248 plants. The gross value of the manufactured product of these combinations, as given by the census, was $1,661,295,364. Excluding hand trades, government establishments, educational, eleemosynary, and penal workshops, and shops with a product of less than $500, this total represented 14 per cent of the value of the manufactured product for the whole country.

      The spring of 1900 was, however, but the mid-morning of the combination movement. Only 63 of these companies had been formed previous to 1897, while more than 50 per cent of them were formed during the eighteen months from January 1, 1899, to June 30, 1900. Since then the movement has swept forward like a great tide. The consolidations of manufacturing companies for the first five months of 1901 alone probably exceeded $2,000,000,000 in capitalization. The great steel “trust” (to use the popular term), an $88,000,000 tin-can trust, still other trusts in tobacco machinery, carpets, coal and coke, witch-hazel, glass lamps and electric glass fittings, ship-building, cotton duck, agricultural implements, and watches, had their birth during this period. More СКАЧАТЬ