 was furious. Men believed that it threatened society with a form of
tyranny more abhorrent than it had ever endured. They believed that the great
corporations were preparing for them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever
been imposed on the race, servitude not to men but to soulless machines
incapable of any motive but insatiable greed. Looking back, we cannot wonder at
their desperation, for certainly humanity was never confronted with a fate more
sordid and hideous than would have been the era of corporate tyranny which they
anticipated.
    Meanwhile, without being in the smallest degree checked by the clamor
against it, the absorption of business by ever larger monopolies continued. In
the United States there was not, after the beginning of the last quarter of the
century, any opportunity whatever for individual enterprise in any important
field of industry, unless backed by a great capital. During the last decade of
the century, such small businesses as still remained were fast-failing survivals
of a past epoch, or mere parasites on the great corporations, or else existed in
fields too small to attract the great capitalists. Small businesses, as far as
they still remained, were reduced to the condition of rats and mice, living in
holes and corners, and counting on evading notice for the enjoyment of
existence. The railroads had gone on combining till a few great syndicates
controlled every rail in the land. In manufactories, every important staple was
controlled by a syndicate. These syndicates, pools, trusts, or whatever their
name, fixed prices and crushed all competition except when combinations as vast
as themselves arose. Then a struggle, resulting in a still greater
consolidation, ensued. The great city bazar crushed its country rivals with
branch stores, and in the city itself absorbed its smaller rivals till the
business of a whole quarter was concentrated under one roof, with a hundred
former proprietors of shops serving as clerks. Having no business of his own to
put his money in, the small capitalist, at the same time that he took service
under the corporation, found no other investment for his money but its stocks
and bonds, thus becoming doubly dependent upon it.
    The fact that the desperate popular opposition to the consolidation of
business in a few powerful hands had no effect to check it proves that there
must have been a strong economical reason for it. The small capitalists, with
their innumerable petty concerns, had in fact yielded the field to the great
aggregations of capital, because they belonged to a day of small things and were
totally incompetent to the demands of an age of steam and telegraphs and the
gigantic scale of its enterprises. To restore
