Clearly no monopoly exists nor can be made to exist in the retail trade. Agreements may be made, but they will be broken; and the fact that they can be broken by isolated individuals who can thus separate themselves from the combination, and by their separation cause it to dissolve, is proof that the monopoly element does not exist. For the monopoly element in the possession of the great trusts is the potent weapon with which the combinations can compel the recalcitrant member to return, or beat him into starvation. From mere agreements in the retail trade, such as Professor Jenks instances, the primary element of monopoly being absent, desertions are fatal, and for this reason such combinations are never effective as means for extortion, though they do often arrest the sacrifices of keenly competing retailers. And the illicit intrusion of such examples is a favorite trick of the trust apologist, who, when the evils of the trust are pointed out, grows righteously indignant over the right of men to combine—which nobody seriously disputes—or points out with superfluous wealth of illustration how combination effects the cheapening of production—which nobody ever really denies. For the same reason labor unions cannot be considered as effective monopolies—though the trust apologist does not forget them in his special pleas—for the reason that they possess no effective legal privilege. But to avoid a possible misunderstanding let us now answer a query which may have risen in the mind of the reader. Is competition or combination the beneficent law of industry? Both; for one is the complement of the other. They exist together, and together they effect the industrial progress of the world. But monopoly is the negation of both, since further combination or co-operation is no longer possible where monopoly is complete. And where there is competition there will be combination, healthy, rational, continuous, and competition will determine its development and direction. The defense of the trust based upon the economic benefits resulting from the elimination of the unskilled is a defense of the principle of combination present under free competition, and is in no sense a defense of monopoly of which what we know as the “trust” is the manifestation. Such discussion, together with much talk of the wastes of competition, which helps to swell so many pretentious works on the trust problem, is so much irrelevant “padding.”