 of the popular mind.«
    »You have not yet told me what was the answer to the riddle which you
found,« I said. »I am impatient to know by what contradiction of natural
sequence the peace and prosperity which you now seem to enjoy could have been
the outcome of an era like my own.« »Excuse me,« replied my host, »but do you
    smoke?« It was not till our cigars were lighted and drawing well that he
resumed, »Since you are in the humour to talk rather than to sleep, as I
certainly am, perhaps I cannot do better than to try to give you enough idea of
our modern industrial system to dissipate at least the impression that there is
any mystery about the process of its evolution. The Bostonians of your day had
the reputation of being great askers of questions, and I am going to show my
descent by asking you one to begin with. What should you name as the most
prominent feature of the labor troubles of your day?«
    »Why, the strikes, of course,« I replied.
    »Exactly; but what made the strikes so formidable?«
    »The great labor organizations.«
    »And what was the motive of these great organizations?«
    »The workmen claimed they had to organize to get their rights from the big
corporations,« I replied.
    »That is just it,« said Dr. Leete; »the organization of labor and the
strikes were an effect, merely, of the concentration of capital in greater
masses than had ever been known before. Before this concentration began, while
as yet commerce and industry were conducted by innumerable petty concerns with
small capital, instead of a small number of great concerns with vast capital,
the individual workman was relatively important and independent in his relations
to the employer. Moreover, when a little capital or a new idea was enough to
start a man in business for himself, workingmen were constantly becoming
employers and there was no hard and fast line between the two classes. Labor
unions were needless then, and general strikes out of the question. But when the
era of small concerns with small capital was succeeded by that of the great
aggregations of capital, all this was changed. The individual laborer, who had
been relatively important to the small employer, was reduced to insignificance
and powerlessness over against the great corporation, while at the same time the
way upward to the grade of employer was closed to him. Self-defense drove him to
union with his fellows.
    The records of the period show that the outcry against the concentration of
capital
