With the steel trust, the Standard Oil trust, and other combinations before our eyes, it seems an absurdity to speak of monopolies as being in an incipient stage. Is it possible that anything whatever which these great combinations represent can be nipped in the bud? Are they not already in the fullest flower, and big and mature as they are ever likely to be? The companies themselves, with their vast material plants, certainly are so. What we are talking about, however, is not the mere size of the companies, but _the element of monopoly that is in them_. Have they such a power that they can safely charge anything they please for their products? Is it as though they were licensed by the Government to be the sole makers and vendors of their special wares? Business men know that this is not the case; and that something puts a check on their action. They can make their prices higher than they should be--higher than it is for the interest of the country to have them; but they cannot make them as high as they would be under a real and secure monopoly. The point I am making is that we can destroy such monopolistic power as they have. We can liberate competition, which has, in the main, afforded reasonable prices, and has also guaranteed that progress which is indispensable for maintaining a human life that is worth living. It is to-day the only means of insuring a constantly increasing power over nature--an ability to turn out, in greater and greater abundance, the things which make life comfortable. These combinations now possess a power which it is highly perilous to let them keep. They can disable their rivals by foul play, which would be impossible under proper rules of the ring. By securing control of raw materials, by selling goods below cost in the territory where a small rival is operating and keeping up the prices everywhere else, by forcing merchants to boycott independent manufacturers, by getting, in spite of laws and commissions, some advantages from railroads, and by other similar practices, they can drive competitors out of business. Yet every one of these practices can be defined and prohibited, and resorting to any of them can be, if not wholly prevented, at least made so perilous that the practices will become extinct.