But now that business is gradually becoming politically as well as economically unified, government ownership and the other projects of "State Socialism" are no longer opposed on the ground that they must necessarily prove unprofitable to capital. If their introduction is delayed, it is at the bottom because they will require an enormous investment, and other employments of capital are still more immediately profitable. Machinery, land, and other material factors still demand enormous outlays and give _immediate_ returns, while investments in reforestation or in the improvement of laborers, for example, only bring their maximum returns after a full generation. But the semi-monopolistic capitalism of to-day is far richer than was its competitive predecessor. It can now afford to date a part of its expected returns many years ahead. Already railroads have done this in building some of their extensions. Nations have often done it, as in building a Panama Canal. And as capitalism becomes further organized and gives more attention to government, and the State takes up such functions as the capitalists direct, they will double and multiply many fold their long-term governmental investments--in the form of expenditures for industrial activities and social reforms. Already leading capitalists in this country as well as elsewhere welcome the extension of government into the business field. The control of the railroads by a special court over which the railroads have a large influence proves to be just what the railroads have wanted, while there is a growing belief among them, to which their directors and officers occasionally give expression, that the day may come, perhaps with the competition of the Panama Canal, when it will be profitable to sell out to the government--at a good, round figure, of course, such as was recently paid for railroads in France and Italy. Similarly the new wireless systems are leading to a capitalistic demand for government purchase of the old telegraph systems. Mr. George W. Perkins, recently partner of Mr. J. P. Morgan, foreshadows the new policy in another form when he advocates a Supreme Court of Business (as a preventive of Socialism):-- "Federal legislation is feasible, and if we unite the work for it now we may be able to secure it; whereas, if we continue to fight against it much longer, the incoming time may sweep the question along either to government ownership or to Socialism [Mr. Perkins recognizes that they are two different things].