In a word, they who desire to live--whether farmers, workmen, middlemen, teachers, or ministers--must make their peace with those who have the disposition of the livings. The result is a renascent Feudalism, which, though it differs in many forms from that of the time of Edward I, is yet based upon the same status of lord, agent, and underling. It is a Feudalism somewhat graced by a sense of ethics and somewhat restrained by a fear of democracy. The new barons seek a public sanction through conspicuous giving, and they avoid a too obvious exercise of their power upon political institutions. Their beneficence, however, though large, is but rarely prodigal. It betokens, as in the case of the careful spouse of John Gilpin, a frugal mind. They demand the full terms nominated in the bond; they exact from the traffic all it will bear. Out of the tremendous revenues that flow to them some of them return a part in benefactions to the public; and these benefactions, whether or not primarily devoted to the easement of conscience, are always shrewdly disposed with an eye to the allayment of pain and the quieting of discontent. They are given to hospitals; to colleges and churches which teach reverence for the existing régime, and to libraries, wherein the enforced leisure of the unemployed may be whiled away in relative contentment. They are never given, even by accident, to any of the movements making for the correction of what reformers term injustice. But not to look too curiously into motives, our new Feudalism is at least considerate. It is a paternal, a Benevolent Feudalism.
We have, first, the enormous growth of industrial, commercial, and financial combinations. A crude idea of the extent to which concentration in manufactures had grown up to May 31, 1900, may be gained from Census Bulletin No. 122. In this report only those aggregations are considered which consisted of “a number of formerly independent mills which have been brought together into one company under a charter obtained for that purpose.” Several of the new security-holding stock companies are included, but “many large establishments comprising a number of mills which have grown up, not by combination with other mills, but by erection of new plants or the purchase of old ones,” are not considered, nor are gas and electric lighting plants, or pools, and “gentlemen’s agreements.”