is a means towards the concentration of capital, with all that it implies. By combining the smaller capitals of the individual capitalists, and more particularly by turning over to the big capitalists the small capitals of the middle class and upper strata of the working class, either directly or indirectly, by means of banking and saving's institutions, such tremendous concentrations of capital and industrial undertakings are made possible which otherwise could not, or could only with great difficulty, take place. This places the whole industrial system on a higher plane of capitalization, and must necessarily force out a lot of small capitalists by making their capital inadequate for the undertakings in which they are engaged, and the return on their capital, owing to the increased falling of the rate of profits, insufficient to sustain them. Thus, while on the one hand this form permits these small people, or some of them, to combine their capitals and thereby gain a new lease of life, long or short as the case may be, it on the other hand gives additional impetus to the very forcing out process which makes their individual independent position untenable. While in one way it retards the shrinking process it, in another way, accelerates it.
Another point to be considered in this connection is the fact that the corporation is the chosen and well-adapted means of all forms of dishonest and speculative undertakings, by means of which the unscrupulous rich manage to relieve the confiding, because helpless, poorer strata of the capitalist class of whatever individual competition has left to them. In times of "prosperity" all sorts of industrial and commercial undertakings are organized which no one would dream of organizing if he had to do it with his own capital. But as the corporation form permits the "promotion" of these schemes at the expense of the public, there will always be found enough "promoters" who are willing to "take a chance" with and at the money of the "general public," which is composed of the lower strata of capitalism. This "public" not being in a position economically to com-
