In these ways a
large number of the Trusts have hitherto broken down, and will doubtless
continue to break down. In England, this step in capitalist evolution is
only beginning to be taken. In glass, paper, salt, coal, and a few other
commodities, combinations more permanent than the mere Ring or Corner,
and closer than the ordinary masters' unions, have been formed. But Free
Trade, which leaves us open to the less calculable and controllable
element of foreign competition, and the fact that the earlier stages of
concentration of capital are not yet completed here in most trades, have
hitherto retarded the growth of the successful Trust in England. Even in
America there is no case where the monopoly of a Trust reigns absolute
through the whole country, though many of them enjoy a local control of
production and prices which is practically unrestricted. Excepting in
the case of the Standard Oil Trust, and a few less important bodies
which enjoy the control of some local monopoly, such as anthracite coal,
the supremacy of the leading Trust or Syndicate is brought in certain
places into direct conflict with other more or less independent
competing bodies. In other words, the evolution of capital, which tends
ever to the establishment of competition between a smaller number of
larger masses, has nowhere worked out the logical conclusion which means
the condensation of the few large competing bodies into a single mass.
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