Monopolies develop much more artificially; monopolies develop much more by force of the very circumstances that competition is supposed to provide. In a competitive society, we are told, the only guarantee of the common good being served is that, by the mere process of competition amongst themselves, the competing producers will have so to reduce prices, they would have so to bring down their costs or selling price, that the largest amount of profit can be gained if the monopolised commodity is consumed by the widest number of consumers. In actual fact, however, Sir, in every country that has got industrialised, and commercialised on a wide scale, you find that the competitors soon come to realise that competition is good for nobody. Hence by arrangement amongst themselves, by all sorts of devices, like Trusts, Syndicates, and Cartels, they try to make a virtual monopoly, which may seem in offensive on the face of it, which may even appear to be aimed at cutting out costs and reducing overheads, and thereby making the product more easily and more cheaply accessible; but which, in fact, really result in adding enormously to the increasing profit of the private proprietor.
