When monster-like corporations once start a competitive strife with each other, it is very fierce and very costly for themselves; and this affords an inducement for taking that final step in organization which brings competition to an end. That is organization of a different kind, and the effects of it are very unlike those of the cooerdinating process which goes on within the several establishments. In this, its final stage, the organizing tendency brings a whole subgroup into union, and undoes much of the good it accomplished in its earlier stage, when it was perfecting the individual establishments within the subgroup. While the earlier process makes the supply of goods of a certain kind larger and cheaper, the final one makes it smaller and dearer; and while the earlier process scatters benefits among consumers, the final one imposes a tax on consumers in the shape of higher prices for merchandise. Yet the union that is formed between the shops is, in a way, the natural sequel to the preliminary organization which took place within them and helped to make them few and large. Trusts are a product of economic dynamics, and we shall study them in due time. The organization we have here in view is the earlier one which takes place within the several establishments. It obeys a law of survival in which competition is the impelling force, though it leads to a condition in which an effort is made to bring competition to an end. This earlier organization is most beneficent in its general and permanent effects; and what has been said of the results of progress in the technique of production may, with a change of terms, be said again of progress in the art of cooerdinating the agents employed. It is a source of temporary gain for _entrepreneurs_ and of permanent gains for laborers and capitalists. It adds to the grand total of the social product and leaves this to be distributed in accordance with the principle which, in the absence of untoward influences, would treat the producers fairly--that which tends to give to each producer a share more or less equivalent to his contribution. In its nature and in its results it is the opposite of that other type of organization which seeks to bring competitive rivalry to an end, and in so far as it succeeds divorces men's contributions to the social product from the shares that they draw from it. CHAPTER XXII INFLUENCES WHICH PERVERT THE FORCES OF PROGRESS