So, in the measureless and transforming effects of modern transportation, and the ends to which it resistlessly tends, I find the primary cause of the economic revolution upon which we have entered. The incoming of these new and unfettered forces not only changed the basic function of society, but disturbed its industrial order. In the effort to restore a working equilibrium the gravest difficulties are encountered, and we do not clearly see how they are to be overcome. Already we are compelled to doubt the infallibility of many inherited precepts and to reopen many controversies which our grandsires regarded as finally settled. The ponderous engine that moves twice-a-thousand tons across an empire of states, the ocean steamer that carries the population of a village on its decks and the products of a township in its hold, are indeed splendid evidences of constructive skill, but more than this they are economic problems as well which challenge and dismay the present generation. They force us to discredit the venerable maxim that “competition is the life of trade,” and warn us, I think, that the political economy of the future must be built on a nobler hypothesis. If it be true in the long run, as I believe experience teaches, that where combination is possible competition is impossible, is it not equally true that combination becomes possible just in proportion as transportation becomes ampler, speedier and cheaper? So the opportunity, if not the necessity, for combination has already come in many lines of activity and will certainly come in many more. The circumstance that permits competition, its _sine qua non_, is mainly difference of conditions. Practically speaking, this difference is chiefly found in the means of distribution. As that difference disappears, with the constantly diminishing time and cost of transport, the ability to combine will enlarge and the inducement to do so become overwhelming. That seems to me the obvious tendency of our industrial and social forces to-day, and that tendency, I predict, will be more and more marked as time goes on. In the unrest and discontent around us, deep-seated and alarming here and there, I read the desperate attempt to avoid the effects of industrial competition and a tremendous protest against its savage reprisals. Every trust and combination, whether organized by capitalists or by artisans, is a repudiation of its teachings and a denial of its pretensions. The competitive theory may have answered the age of mules and sail-boats and spinning-wheels, but it fails to satisfy the interlacing needs or to sustain the interdependent activities which are founded on modern methods of intercourse and distribution; it is a theory unsuited to the era of railways and wireless telegraphy, this era of ours, so restless in thought, so resistless in action.