The early Socialist writers who predicted the trusts did not believe competition was the life of trade. They believed the inevitable tendency of competition was to kill itself. Their reasoning took this form: _Manufacturers engage in business, not because they want to supply goods to the public, but because they want to make profits for themselves._ _Inasmuch as the question of who shall make the profits depends upon who shall sell the goods, manufacturers will compete with each other to sell goods._ _Manufacturers will be able to compete and still make a profit so long as the demand for goods far exceeds the supply._ _But the demand for goods will not always far exceed the supply. The opportunity to make profits will tempt other capitalists to create manufacturing enterprises. The market will become glutted with goods, because more will have been produced than the people can pay for._ _Competition among manufacturers will then become so fierce that profits will first shrink and eventually disappear._ _Manufacturers, to regain their profits, will then cease to compete. The strongest will buy out or crush the weakest. Monopolies will be formed, primarily to end competition and save the competitors from themselves, but, having been formed, they will also be used to rob the people._ Mind you—this reasoning is not new. It is seventy years old. It sounds new only because it has so recently come true. Nobody whose eyes are open now believes that competition is the life of trade. The phrase has died upon the lips of the very men who used to speak it. The late Senator Hanna was one of the many who used to believe that good trade could not be where competition was not. But, when the great trust movement of 1898 was under way, Senator Hanna said: “It is not a question of whether business men do or do not believe in trusts. It is a question only of whether business men want to be killed by competition or saved by coöperation.” However, the existence of the trusts is ample verification of the Socialist prophecy that they would come. And the trusts came in the way that the early Socialists said they would come. We may now proceed to consider what those early Socialist writers thought of the trusts that they so accurately described before they came, what they believed would become of them and what they believed would supplant them.