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of these already large units of production. It is not within the scope of this thesis to enter into a detailed process of reasoning to show that even this recent trust movement is economic in its nature. We have, however, ample testimony to that effect from men most qualified to speak. Says John Bates Clark, the dean of American economists, in his Modern Distributive Process:* "Combinations have their root in the nature of social industry, and are normal in their origin, their development, and their practical working." Again in The Control of Trusts 2 he says: "American industry has gone through a rapid and startling evo- lution." Says John A. Hobson, the noted London economist, in The Evolution of Modern Capitalism:* "The trust is the logical culmination of the operation of economic forces." Judge Peter S. Grosscup, of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the seventh circuit, in an address before the University of Nebraska College of Law, last fall, after characterizing the move- ment as the "instinct of the times," asks: "Can a development so persistent be entirely unnatural? Can we successfully repeal what appears to be the fixed law of economics?" And President Roosevelt, in an address before the Merchants' and Manufac- turers' Association of Milwaukee, April 3 last, said: "We recog- nize them [the big corporations] as being in many cases efficient economic instruments, the result of an inevitable process of economic evolution." As to the speculative nature of the move- ment, J. W. Jenks, of Cornell University, says in The Trust Problem:* "The worst period of speculative organization has, in all probability, passed;" which conclusion is also reached by the United States Industrial Commission in its final report. 5 We may conclude, then, in the words of President Hadley, of Yale: "So far as the present tendency toward industrial combination is a financial movement for the sake of selling securities, it is likely to be short-lived. So far as it is an industrial movement to secure economy of operation and commercial policy, it is likely to be permanent." 6
'Edition 1888, p. II. * Edition 1903, p. 95.
"Edition 1901, p. I. sVol. XIX, p. 600.
3 Edition 1899, p. 126. ^Education of American Citizen, p. 50.
