ABSTRACT
John D. Rockefeller's near monopoly had brought "order" into the oil business. Andrew Carnegie controlled two thirds of America's steel production. These two men seemed to be leaders of a trend. Newspaper editors began to use words like consolidation and amalgamation in discussing commercial affairs. Tobacco companies were merging. The same was true of sugar, of meat, flour, and much else, including street railways. There was nothing moral or immoral about it; it was an immutable law. There was no escape from it; poverty was the reward of the incapable and the imprudent. The reward of the idle was starvation. There were of course few intellectuals among American captains of business and industry, but they did begin to hear mention of Spencer and his remarks about survival in the jungle of life. The idea is apparently the product of envy. Its fallacy has been exploded countless times and through generations of families of merchant princes.
