tion; or, to express it in more common terms, from a time of disorderly and confused industrial action to one of harmonious orderly organization. The introduction of the new elements into the commercial world changed, as it were, the polarities of our industries. They are still adjusting themselves to the new basis, but the adjustment has now a much more regular and orderly manner than at first. Evidence of the steady progress toward harmonious organization is to be found in the decreasing violence of railroad traffic wars; in the greater caution of the speculating and investing publics; in the development of pools to regulate traffic and production in all industries; and in the slow but steady advance toward satisfactory relations between labor and capital.[1] All these are parts of a process which we may best call economic segregation, and, rightly conceived, they may give us at least a general idea of the course of our economic evolution.
To attempt particular description of the operation of a given force is hazardous, even in comparatively simple sciences. Much more so is it in sociology. Still, we are forced to look forward as well as backward, and must form some idea of the future operation of what we see working about us every day. In this place, several agencies tending to the diffusion of wealth, or rather its segregation into the hands of comparatively large bodies of men capable of handling it, may be noted. First, and most important, perhaps, come corporations. No one, so far as I am aware, has yet treated of them with any approach to adequacy. Objects of general dislike, they exist rather by their own inherent efficiency than because they are held in any proper estimation. We have, indeed, but to look around us and notice the gigantic increase in their number and power, and in the number interested in or employed by them to see their vast import. A dispassionate view of the subject will, in my opinion, convince a competent person that the general economic function of a corporation is to perform steadily, cheaply, and permanently, a service which an individual can only perform briefly, and with comparative inefficiency. Where corporations can not do this, they are unable to exist; and, in consequence of their permanence, they are able to give lasting employment, and, therefore, more than any other mode of industrial organization, they are apt to give the right man the right place; as we may see in the history of most of our prominent railroad men. . And when this process of segregation is complete, corporations will undoubtedly be made up of those who actually perform their service. The immense saving
- ↑ Recent strikes and riots are apt to blind us to the progress really made in this respect. The question is hardly in order here; but it may be pointed out (1) that strikes are accompanied with less violence than formerly, as in 1877, for example; (2) that organized bodies like the Knights of Labor are more responsible to public opinion than unorganized labor; and (3) that great advances have been made in particular cases.
