Monopoly is the second commercial temptation. Monopolies have been attempted ever since trading began, and they are more common to-day than ever before because more money can be made out of them. Many well-meaning business men permit themselves to be drawn into practises which are not only indefensible in the realm of conscience, but which violate the statutes. The officers of the law are constantly engaged in an effort to prevent the monopolizing of trade. It is strange that anyone should attempt to defend a private monopoly, for its plan and operation can be easily understood by any one who knows either human nature or history. No judge would be permitted to preside in his own case; no juror would be allowed to serve in a suit to which he was a party, and yet the head of a monopoly arbitrarily decides, every-day, questions where his interests are on one side and public interests on the other. Can he be trusted to decide impartially and to exact only a reasonable profit? It is absurd to expect him to do justice to those whith whom he deals. The student of history knows that the monopolist has always been an outlaw. Three centuries ago, under Queen Elizabeth, the House of Commons protested against the monopolies which she had authorized, and I found, when in the Holy Land, that a very complete monopoly existed there some seventeen hundred years ago. Josephus tells how John of Gishala secured a monopoly in olive oil and charged ten times as much for the oil as he paid for it. For the benefit of those who think that all monopolies are traceable to the rebate, I venture to suggest that the oil trust of Palestine was successfully operated before railroads existed. But even tho John had nothing better than a fast freight line of donkeys and distributed the oil in goat skins, he showed as correct an understanding of the possibilities of monopoly as any trust magnate has to-day, and I have wondered whether our John secured his idea of an oil trust from John of Gishala. We need laws making the private monopoly impossible, but we must have back of these laws a moral sentiment which will condemn the club wielded by the monopolist, as moral sentiment now condemns the highwayman's bludgeon.