Much has been said, from time to time, about our age being one of combination, in the economic world at least, and of the decline of competition. It would be more exact to say that both combination and competition have been taking on new forms, but without any general change in the relation between them. What happens, for example, when a trust is formed to unite heretofore competing plants, is that unification takes place along a new line for the purpose of aiding certain interests in their conflict for aggrandizement. It is merely a new alignment of forces, and has no tendency toward a general decline of competition. Indeed every such trust not only fights outside competitors, but deliberately fosters manifold competition within its system, for the sake of exciting exertion and efficiency. The different plants are still played off one against the other, as are also the different departments, the different foremen in each department, and the different workmen. By an elaborate system of accounting, every man and every group is led to measure its work against that of other men and other groups, and to struggle for superiority. And the great combinations themselves have not been and will not be left at peace. If they absorb all their competitors they will have to deal with the state, which can never permit any form of power to go unchecked. It is evident that the vigor of the struggle is proportionate to the human energy that goes into it, and that we cannot expect tranquillity. It does not follow, however, that the amount of conflict is a measure of progress. The function of struggle is to work out new forms of co-operation, and if it does not achieve this but goes on in a blind and aimless way after the time for readjustment has arrived, it becomes mere waste. Synthesis also takes energy, and very commonly a higher or more rational form of energy than conflict. Critics of the present state of things are wrong when they condemn competition altogether, but they are right in condemning many present forms of it. Extravagant and fallacious advertising, price-cutting conflicts, the exploitation of children and squandering of natural resources, not to mention wars, indicate a failure of the higher constructive functions. Indeed the irrational continuance of such methods exhausts the energies that should put an end to them, just as dissipation exhausts a man’s power of resistance, so that the more he indulges himself the less able he is to stop.