ABSTRACT
In Great Britain the genius of the people has preferred, as we have seen, an intermediate system of control, in which some of the evils of private monopoly are retained along with some of the advantages of free competition. In general, we seem half unconsciously to have tried to hit, so far as these monopolistic services are concerned, a golden mean between Continental and American policy. According to the authors of Industrial Democracy the idea of monopoly only enters into the policy of English workmen when they are asserting their right by demarcation or regulation to exclude other workmen from a trade. For practical purposes under modern conditions of Free Trade and cheap transit a monopoly in the labour market can only be local and temporary, and has but little effect upon prices. Artificial monopolies have developed in two other directions, both of which may be regarded as legitimate extensions of patent law.
