_A Prophecy. From the Introduction to Fourier's "Theory of Social Organization" translated by Albert Brisbane._
"Among the influences tending to restrict man's industrial rights, I will mention the formation of privileged corporations which, monopolizing a given branch of industry, arbitrarily close the doors of labor against whomsoever they please. These corporations will become dangerous, and lead to new convulsions on being extended to the whole industrial and commercial system. This event is not far distant and it will be brought about all the more easily as it is not apprehended. The greatest evils have often sprung from imperceptible germs, as for instance, Jacobism, and if our civilization has engendered this and so many other calamities, may it not engender others which we do not now foresee? The most imminent of these is the birth of a commercial feudalism or the monopoly of commerce and industry by joint-stock companies, leagued together for the purpose of usurping and controlling all branches of industrial organizations. Extremes meet, and the greater the extent to which anarchical competition is carried, the nearer is the approach to _universal monopoly_, which is the opposite excess. Circumstances are tending towards the organization of the commercial and industrial classes into federal companies or affiliated monopolies, which, operating in conjunction with the great landed interest, will reduce the middle and laboring classes to a state of commercial vassalage, and by the influence of combined action become the masters of the productive industry of entire nations. The small operators will be reduced to the position of mere agents working for the mercantile coalition. We shall then see the reappearance of feudalism in an inverse order, founded on mercantile leagues and answering to the baronial leagues of the middle ages.
"Everything is concurring to produce this result. The spirit of commercial speculation and financial monopoly has extended to all classes. Public opinion prostrates itself before the bankers and financiers who share authority with the governments and devise every day new means for the monopoly and control of industry.
"We are marching with rapid strides towards a commercial feudalism and to the fourth phase of our civilization. The economists accustomed to reverence everything which comes in the name and under the sanction of commerce, will see this new order spring up without alarm, and will consecrate their servile pens to the celebration of its praises. Its _debut_ will be one of brilliant promise, but the result will be an industrial inquisition, subordinating the whole people to the interests of the affiliated monopolists."