trade. This is the opinion of a number of the older bank directors, whilst most of the young men consider intervention in industry to be a necessity, as great as that which gave rise, simultaneously with big modern industry, to the big banks and modern industrial finance. The two parties in this discussion are only agreed on one point. They recognise that the new activity of the five banks has not got solid principles for a basis, and has not got a concrete objective in view."39
The old form of capitalism has had its day. The new represents a transition towards something or other. To find "solid principles and a concrete objective" to harmonise monopoly and free competition is obviously to seek for the solution of an insoluble problem. The confessions of the practical men impress us differently from the enthusiastic periods of the official apologists of "organised" capital, such as Schulze-Gaevernitz, Liefmann and similar theoreticians.
To what period is the "new activity" of the big banks to be definitely ascribed? Jeidels gives us a fairly exact answer to this important question:
"The bonds between the industrial enterprises with their new elements, their new forms and their new organs; more precisely, the great banks which are organised on both a centralised and a decentralised basis, do not become a characteristic economic phenomenon before 1890, and the following years; in one sense, indeed, this initial point may be advanced to the year 1897 with its huge amalgamations of businesses, which for the first time introduced a new form of decentralised organisation, corresponding to the economic policy of the banks. This commencing point may be put
