It is the desire to escape from the heavy and harassing strain of trade competition, which practically drives small businesses to suspend their mutual hostilities, and to combine.

It is true that most of the large private businesses or joint stock companies are not formed by this direct process of pacification.

But for all that, their _raison d'etre_ is found in the desire to escape the friction and waste of competition which would take place if each shareholder set up business separately on his own account.

We shall not be surprised that the competition of small businesses has given way before co-operation, when we perceive the force and fierceness of the competition between the larger consolidated masses of capital.

With the development of the arts of advertising, touting, adulteration, political jobbery, and speculation, acting over an ever-widening area of competition, the fight between the large joint stock businesses grows always more cruel and complex.