pay exclusive regard to the regulation and limitation of that output so as to maintain a price level which shall yield the largest aggregate profit. In many standard industries for the production of the necessaries and conventional comforts of life, it may pay the financiers and investors to market a limited quantity of goods at a higher price. Hence the tendency of the bankers and other organizers of finance to promote cartels, trusts and other amalgamations which shall enable them to control the aggregate output, closing down superfluous plant and reducing the volume of employment. Though America with her highly organized money-power and her protective system has taken the lead in this financial dominion, other capitalist countries, Germany and Britain in particular, have made considerable advances in the same direction. In Germany the banks have for a long time past devoted themselves to these profitable restrictions of industry, and more recently the textile, metal, mining, milling and other standard industries in Great Britain have been seeking similar organization for the profitable regulation of output.
This analysis of the various attempts to escape from the perils of excessive productivity shows that they fall under three heads. One consists in the policy of organized labour and the State, aiming to secure a more equal and equitable distribution of the money and real income of the community, by higher wages, shorter hours and other betterment of working and living conditions. The second consists in the business policy of restricted output just described, involving a close financial control of the major businesses in specified national or international industries, accompanied by a regulation of their markets and, when deemed desirable, by quotas and tariffs. The third method, and that most relevant to our present subject of Imperialism, is the combined or separate action of capital to obtain the help,
