ment forms the basis of a new and, generally speaking, less numerous group of persons. Every such group of higher and higher specialization is protected in its higher advantages by the principle of monopoly. When we try to stimulate our young men to work and study, and to the improvement of their youth, we declare to them that every attainment which they make will secure to them command over the ills and chances of life; but we have no guarantee for the truth of what we say except in the monopoly advantage which comes from superiority. The professions, in general, owe their superior advantage to the double fact that they are occupied with personal services in which machines cannot compete, and that the natural monopoly in them is hedged about by high acquirements which cost long effort and large expenditure of capital.
From these instances and those which I gave in a former place it is evident that "monopoly" is not what it is often called in current declamation. Monopoly is not an invention of man, least of all a modern invention; nor is it a product of "capitalistic society"; it is interwoven with the whole life of man on earth, in all its forms and from the earliest times. It is not now at one pole of society, with competition and liberty at the other; they meet and shade off into each other at a common boundary. It is not reasonable to denounce natural monopolies, because if they are founded in the order of nature no one is to blame for them, and nothing can modify them but such applications of intelligence as may change their form or combine their action with new forces. Neither are natural monopolies all or always mischievous; they have very great utility and advantage. It is therefore an abuse to use "monopoly" as a word of sweeping and self-evident condemnation.
