“One night a young girl called at the entrance to the House of the Good Shepherd in New York City; she asked for food and a place to sleep. ’Twas a pitiful tale she told the matron in charge. She told of her parents having died and left her alone in the great dark city; she told of jobs she had secured but was discharged owing to her physical inability to keep pace with the machine, and as a last resort she appealed to this institution for succour and support. The matron in attendance, after having heard this terrible tale of woe and being thoroughly convinced as to the girl’s honesty and integrity, as well as to her virtue, informed her that she could not take her in there, as that institution was established for the reclamation of fallen women only. The poor girl went away, but on the following night she returned.... ‘You may take me now,’ she said, ‘you may take me now, for I am a fallen woman!’” CHAPTER V BUSINESS AND POLITICS In this discussion of the process of wealth-concentration, I have so far purposely omitted all mention of the most important aspect of the phenomenon—the seizing by the “constantly increasing mass of capital” of the powers of the State, and their use for purpose of intensifying exploitation. I have avoided that feature, partly because it is conspicuous enough to deserve a chapter to itself, but mainly in order to make clear my view-point, that the phenomenon, while important, is secondary—an effect rather than a cause. This is, of course, contrary to the view usually taken. In most discussions of the problems of the time, it is taken for granted that “government by special interests” is the source of all the evil. But while recognising how enormously the process of wealth concentration has been accelerated by the political alliance, it is my thesis that exactly the same conditions would have developed had economic forces been left to work out their own results. I maintain that economic competition is a self-destroying stage in social development; and that to regard it as permanent is simply not to realise what it is. For competition is a struggle, and the purpose of every struggle is a victory; to conceive of a struggle without the intention to end the struggle, is simply impossible in the nature of things. In the industrial combat the end is the victory of a class, and the reduction of all other classes to servitude—with the ultimate extinction of all individuals not needed by the victors.