make them successful, unless he retains some shares or other special continued interest in the fate of the company, which is sometimes the case if it really promises well. He certainly has not an interest in the health and success of all companies, as it is by the creation of fresh ones that in general he exists and flourishes.

It is satisfactory to know that the Lord Chancellor. has been deeply meditating how to "cabin, crib, and confine" the genius of the swindling company floater, as well as to exact guarantees of the bona fides of all the class. But he will have to bring his utmost resources, legal knowledge, and experience to bear, or he will prove unequal to the task, for the man is a genius in his way. Such are the exigent conditions of the problem, that it will task all the ingenuity of the legal profession to check this type, and yet checked he must be. "If Law cannot do it, of what use is Law?" people will be inclined to say. Certainly the Roman lawyers never had so difficult a problem, such complicated conditions, such peculiar or slippery types to deal with. And what makes the peculiar difficulty of the problem is, that it is nearly impossible to strike an effective blow against what may be called the Higher Swindling without impeding or preventing beneficial enterprises.

II.

BESIDES the company, bogus, bubble, or merely bad, in which the shareholders are fleeced and lose their capital, and where the promoter, directors, and managers-chiefly the former, who has a prior

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claim on the paid-up capital-have divided the spoil,there are all degrees of struggling companies, from those that pay zero dividends to those that pay from four to five per cent. Nay, there are companies, and especially some new syndicates, which promise dividends of from seven to twenty-five per cent., and some that actually pay them. How this is possible, and the nature of this latest development of the Company and of the monopolist spirit, for several reasons deserves attention.

These syndicates are phenomena of great interest and significance, both in themselves and in their relation to Socialism. The word may be merely another name for a large company, but is more usually applied to a union or amalgamation of companies in the same business, or perhaps merely to a union of firms under one management. It is always more or less of a monopoly. It aims at merging competition. But it presents some important advantages. In the first place it tends to eliminate unnecessary middlemen, because it frequently combines producer and distributor, e.g. a bread syndicate proposes to grind flour, to make it into loaves, and to distribute the bread through its own shops; thereby saving the profits of the wholesale flour merchant and of the retail shops. There is a further well-known economy coming from the large scale of production and distribution, the greater division of labour and employment of machinery, and from both economies they are enabled to give better wages to the workers than they enjoyed before. The price, owing to these sources of saving, need not even be raised on

the consumer, who would thus get superior articles. at the same price; and so every one-the whole closed circle of shareholders, workers, consumers, as well as promoters, managers, and directors-would appear to profit from the syndicate. Nevertheless, when it has an assured monopoly the syndicate will be much tempted to raise prices. It may then begin to seem less of a universal benefactor if it should try the monopolist's methods: the question for it, as for all monopolists, being, whether it is more profitable to produce (or to offer for sale) much and to offer it cheaper so as to get it all sold, or by limiting supply to cause a rise of price, which may enable the less supply to be sold for a greater amount; and this again depends partly on whether the commodity is a prime necessary of life, in which case it would be more profitable pecuniarily to limit supply, though otherwise a risky course for the syndicate to pursue. However, unless it had a tolerably complete monopoly, it would not be likely to try, and so long as the monopoly was not complete, the syndicate would be generally advantageous.

The tendency is to increase the number of these syndicates; then to unite them into larger ones in each field of production and distribution. Let us suppose the whole field of industry covered by syndicates. We should then have economical production, good wages, good and unadulterated products, the needless middlemen gone, and prices no higher on the consumer than before; no one apparently having been hurt but the dislodged middlemen and smaller traders, who moreover at least the

latter-have been handsomely compensated in the purchase of their business, and have most likely left part of the purchase-money invested in the improved concern. This is a great advance on the rude and brutal method of former times complained of by Louis Blanc-when the "great capitalist declared war on the little capitalist," and left him dead upon the field. The syndicate does not run a race of cheapness which ruins the small man, thereafter raising its prices. With far superior science and humanity it buys out handsomely the smaller man, who, with part of the proceeds, remains a grateful shareholder in a business he knows, and, if he is specially able, perhaps even a manager or director.

Competition complained of by the Socialists would be largely gone, being merged within the syndicate; useless middlemen displaced; the employing capitalist with his too high wages replaced by a manager : all steps towards the Socialist goal. What is wanting chiefly? There is still the deduction from wages of interest for shareholders, and the higher the interest the greater the deduction from wages. Even if the working classes were paid higher wages than before, still if good dividends are secured for the shareholders, it is evident that wages might be still higher, and the old quarrel between capital and labour would break out afresh from this side. The wage-earners want interest melted down into wages and divided amongst them, and so long as interest is paid the Socialist goal will not be reached.

This state of things, nevertheless, leans to a moderate Socialism, because wherever the syndicates

insisted on too high dividends at the cost either of the labouring classes by reduced wages, or of the consumer by raised prices, they would invite governmental occupation and management of the industry. And wherever the syndicates greatly abused their position as monopolists there would be a likelihood of State interference either to more strictly regulate or to supersede the abused private enterprise. Certainly the State could not permit what would be a virtual power of taxation, an imperium in imperio, if the syndicates were sufficiently extended to control the supply of a necessary of life. It could not allow to any combination the power of arbitrarily raising the price of bread, coal, fuel, house-rent, railway rates, and if the combinations are ever sufficiently extensive to be able to do so, and really exercise the power, State or municipal occupation of their enterprise would be absolutely necessary, and Socialism to that extent at hand.

All the arguments in favour of private enterprise would lose their force or be inapplicable in such a case, while the arguments against it would be great. It would be a case of a class or an interest having power to tax the necessaries of the poor, as the landlords had formerly such power through the Corn Laws, and it would be intolerable. The State would either have to fix prices according to the supply, as in the case of wheat for example, or make regulations forbidding artificial limitation of supply, as in the case of coal, or finally take over the production. It is, however, only to the case of a prime necessary controllable by a single combination that these con