It is not necessary to cite further evidence to show that billions of dollars of fictitious values were saddled upon the country between the end of the Civil War and the close of the century. A considerable portion of the amount of stocks and bonds issued was doubtless based on the dividend-paying power of the concerns in question. In many instances the stock was not purchased in large quantities by the investing public, but was simply issued to promoters, and when values collapsed they only lost so much worthless paper. It is apparent, therefore, that all the stock watering is not of the same character or effect; but nevertheless it remains a fact that the buying public and the working class are paying millions in annual tribute to the holders of paper which represents no economic service whatever. If the water were all squeezed out of railway, franchise, and industrial stocks and bonds and the mineral and other resources which have been actually secured at a nominal value, or fraudulently were returned to the government, there would be a shrinkage in the necessary dividends paid out that would startle the world. * * * * * Those who followed the literature of political economy during this period of gigantic consolidation and high finance could not help discovering a decided change in the views of leading men about the nature of industrial evolution. The old practice of indiscriminate abuse of all trusts began to undergo a decided modification; only persons from the backward industrial regions of the West and South continued the inordinate clamor for the immediate and unconditional dissolution of all of them, on the theory that they were "artificial" products, brought forth and nourished by malicious men bent solely upon enhancing their personal fortunes. The socialist contention (set forth by Marx and Engels in 1848) that competition destroyed itself, and that the whole movement of industry was inevitably toward consolidation, began to receive attention, although the socialist solution of the problem was not accepted.