In other words, the evolution of capital, which tends ever to the establishment of competition between a smaller number of larger masses, has nowhere worked out the logical conclusion which means the condensation of the few large competing bodies into a single mass.
This final step, which presents a completely organized trade with the element of competition utterly eliminated under the control of a single body of mere joint-owners of the capital engaged, must be regarded as the goal, the ideal culmination of the concentrative movement of modern capital.

It is said that more than one-third of the business in the United States is already controlled by Trusts.

But most of them have only in part succeeded in their effort to escape from competition by integrating their personal interests into a single homogeneous mass.
Even in cases where they do rule the market untrammelled by the direct interference of any competitors, they are still deterred from a free use of their control over prices by the possibility of competition which any full use of this control might give rise to.

For it does not follow that even where a Trust holds an absolute monopoly of the market of a locality, that it will be able to maintain that monopoly were it to raise its prices beyond a certain point.

In proportion, however, as experience yields a greater skill in the management of Trusts, and their growing strength enables them to more successfully defy outside attempts at competition, their power to raise prices and increase their rates of profit would rise accordingly.
Regarding, then, the development of the capitalist system from the first establishment of the capitalist-employer as a distinct industrial class, we trace the massing of capital in larger and larger competing forms, the number of which represents a pyramid growing narrower as it ascends towards an ideal apex, represented by the absolute unity or identity of interests of the capital in a given trade.