But in either event the constructive economic work of the past two generations will be in some measure undone; and the American economic advance will be to that extent retarded.

Such obnoxious regulation has been not unjustly compared to the attempt to discipline a somewhat too vivacious bull by the simple process of castration.

For it must be substituted an economic policy which will secure to the nation, and the individual the opportunities and the benefits of the existing organization, while at the same time seeking the diffusion of those benefits over a larger social area.
III THE FRUITS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION The only sound point of departure for a national economic policy is, as we have seen, the acceptance by the state of certain of the results of corporate industrial organization.

Such state recognition is equivalent to discrimination in their favor, because it leaves them in possession of those fundamental economic advantages, dependent on terminals, large capital, and natural resources, which place them beyond effective competition; and the state has good reason to suffer this discrimination, because a wise government can always make more social capital out of a cooeperative industrial organization than it can out of an extremely competitive one.
It is extremely improbable that, even when officially recognized in this way, the process of corporate combination would go beyond a certain point.

It might result in a condition similar to that which now prevails in the steel industry or that of sugar refining; but it should be added that in industries organized to that extent there is not very much competition in prices.