It is equally true that combinations of capital are bound to continue and to grow, and this need not alarm even the most timid if the corporation, or the series of corporations, is properly conducted with due regard for the rights of others.  The day of individual competition in large affairs is past and gone—­you might just as well argue that we should go back to hand labour and throw away our efficient machines—­and the sober good sense of the people will accept this fact when they have studied and tried it out.  Just see how the list of stockholders in the great corporations is increasing by leaps and bounds.  This means that all these people are becoming partners in great businesses.  It is a good thing—­it will bring a feeling of increased responsibility to the managers of the corporations and will make the people who have their interests involved study the facts impartially before condemning or attacking them.

On this subject of industrial combinations I have often expressed my opinions; and, as I have not changed my mind, I am not averse to repeating them now, especially as the subject seems again to be so much in the public eye.

The chief advantages from industrial combinations are those which can be derived from a cooeperation of persons and aggregation of capital.  Much that one man cannot do alone two can do together, and once admit the fact that cooeperation, or, what is the same thing, combination, is necessary on a small scale, the limit depends solely upon the necessities of business.  Two persons in partnership may be a sufficiently large combination for a small business, but if the business grows or can be made to grow, more persons and more capital must be taken in.  The business may grow so large that a partnership ceases to be a proper instrumentality for its purposes, and then a corporation becomes a necessity.  In most countries, as in England, this form of industrial combination is sufficient for a business co-extensive with the parent country, but it is not so in America.  Our Federal form of government making every corporation created by a state foreign to every other state, renders it necessary for persons doing business through corporate agency to organize corporations in some or many of the different states in which their business is located.  Instead of doing business through the agency of one corporation they must do business through the agencies of several corporations.  If the business is extended to foreign countries, and Americans are not to-day satisfied with home markets alone, it will be found helpful and possibly necessary to organize corporations in such countries, for Europeans are prejudiced against foreign corporations, as are the people of many of our states.  These different corporations thus become cooeperating agencies in the same business and are held together by common ownership of their stocks.

It is too late to argue about advantages of industrial combinations.  They are a necessity.  And if Americans are to have the privilege of extending their business in all the states of the Union, and into foreign countries as well, they are a necessity on a large scale, and require the agency of more than one corporation.