the great number of grocery stores and delicatessen stores are not cheapening food has been admitted by the demand for public markets, which by the way cannot be very successful unless they are wholesale markets, as experience in large cities of other countries has shown. Corporations like the Riker-Hegeman Stores and the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, with their numerous branches, are worthy of encouragement as being able to furnish reliable products at prices below those of the average drug store and grocery store.

There are a great many lines in which combination would do away with the enormous waste of competition. A good example seems to be the Diamond Match Company, which controls 85% of the American match industry and has factories in North and South America, Europe, and Africa. Yet it is not being accused of exploiting the consumer. In the case of public service corporations, supreme court decisions in various states have upheld monopoly by confirming decisions of public service commissions refusing to issue licenses to prospective competitors of public service corporations.

Sociologists tell us that the desire for recognition is the most fundamental social force. Could we not change our attitude towards business by recognizing as a great business man not the man who has amassed millions, but the man who is really a great captain of industry. Professor Ely has said that one of the most difficult ethical tasks which society has, is to deepen the feeling of ethical obligation, in their relations to the general public, on the part of those who control private corporations. In Germany the captains of industry seek recognition not by showing that they have amassed wealth, but by showing that their deeds have been considered worthy, by one of the German kings or grand dukes, of being rewarded with the title of commercial councillor, privy commercial councillor, or even by a peerage.

It is generally acknowledged in Germany that combina

tion has done away with a great deal of waste in competition. As Professor Seager points out in a recent issue of The Political Science Quarterly, we have satisfactory regulation of the business of interstate common carriers by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and of that of public service corporations by state public service commissions. In all probability it would also be possible to find some adequate method of government regulation for industrial corporations. Federal incorporation has been proposed. Instead of exacting a charter fee, it might be feasible to demand the transfer of a certain small percentage of the capital stock to the government, thus making the latter a shareholder in every corporation. Merely such shareholding, in connection with stipulations regarding the rights of minority stockholders, might turn out to be sufficient supervision, at least for a beginning. At any rate, a change in the government's trust policy, in the direction of relaxation of enforcement of free competition, and in the direction of greater regulation of industrial corporations, is bound to come. The Federal Trade Commission has discontinued the trust-busting business of its predecessor, the Bureau of Corporations; and the Commission's investigations and subsequent recommendations to Congress will be awaited with great interest.

"Good custom," it is true, may include things which we might consider as verging on the unfair, but the main difference between the status of combinations here and in Germany is that we consider monopoly as being against public policy, while in Germany the cartel, though it tends toward monopoly, is not generally looked upon in any unfavorable light. Furthermore, the right to freedom of contract (with the exception of cartel agreements regarding bids for contracts) is more jealously safeguarded in Germany than in this country, whereas the right to freedom of competition is more jealously protected in this country than in Germany.

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING ALONE

F"

IRST of all, let me say most emphatically that I am very fond of my friends, and that they are the finest, the most charming, the nearest unique in the world. I am never so much alone as when I am in their company. To distort Emerson, with perfect sweetness they allow me the independence of solitude. They are never hurt and dismayed if I go off into a "vacant" or a "pensive" mood. I rarely feel that I must escape from them. However, the real species of friend is decidedly limited in number, and its habitat, unfortunately, is widely scattered. All of us, alas, spend much of our time with people whom we struggle valiantly to meet on common ground. If the ground proves to be a quicksand of prejudices and misunderstandings, we pretend to ignore the fact for a while, but finally we are honest with ourselves, and scramble to our several shores, hoping that no one has noticed our ungainly gestures. The process is exhausting at least it is to me.

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Ever since I was a small child, I have at times found it necessary to retire from a noisy, talkative, vigorous world. I need to relax my soul, and then to give it exercises, to get it alive again. Don't laugh at me and say that everyone needs to do the same thing, because I know many people who do not.

There is Vera, for instance, who is always the engineer "off of" something or other, as Myra Kelly puts it. She gets breakfast, up at the lake, and pets the pumping engine at the same time; she combines a visit to the vegetable garden, from which she comes laden with enough produce for three days, with vulcanizing the cuts in the tires of her Ford; she cooks a country mid-day dinner and plays a set of tennis while she does it. She is quite capable of entertaining two or three people while she develops and

prints a roll of films. I have known her simultaneously to read Imagist verse and talk about recipes for making jelly. She does all things with an almost fatal facility, and enjoys the society of human beings while she does them. You might think it is because she never gets under people's skins, and therefore can endure them indefinitely. Not at all. It is merely that she accepts them as they are, and finds in her rich and varied personality some common trait. How else could she ever get along with me? In some strange way we are complementary. While I moon along with her on a country road, giving my passive attention to sky and earth, she plans campaigns against all the various complicated engines on her place, reserving just enough appreciation of out-of-doors to make her an ideal comrade for a walk. Best of all she knows how to keep her mouth closed.

There was a pest of a nice uncle of hers at the lake last year. He was so pleasant an old man that I was ashamed of myself when I found him getting on my nerves. He had an annoying habit of mumbling French into his beard in a very efficient way, and expecting me to understand him. Vera invited him to take hikes with us, and she was really and truly astounded that he balked at climbing over and under barbed wire to hunt mushrooms in a swampy pasture. One day I sneaked away from the garage, where he and Vera were vulcanizing tires, and went down to the lake. Around the steel launch had been built a narrow pier of thin planking, which on that particular morning seemed to me an ideal basking place. I lay upon it at full length, shading my eyes with my hands. Under me the water was "lapping on the crag" in true Tennysonian fashion, and above me was a sky that was the concentrated blue of all the fine paintings of heavens which I had ever seen. Snowy clouds were piling themselves cumbrously toward a large celestial island. Its color was that deeply tender blue that looks

moist. Behind me an orchard-oriole was whistling clearly, and once I caught a sight of his burning orange plumage as he made a short flight above my head. The sunshine was warming me to the bone. I was very happy.

Suddenly a newspaper rustled ominously. A voice from the arbor halfway up the bluff disengaged itself from an enveloping beard. As long as it spoke French I could pretend not to understand, but finally I had to recognize the fact that Uncle Pierre feared that I should tumble into three inches of water and perish. For ten weary minutes I assured that miserable man that I couldn't possibly fall into the lake, and that I couldn't drown if I did.

“But you may fall asleep, my dear young lady. I shall sit here, and if you doze, I shall consider it my duty to awaken you."

My charming solitude broken, I made a lame excuse, hunted for Vera, and having found her, pumped the mended tires. Soon after that, some neighbors decided to be very nice to us, and for three dreadful days solitude alone or with Vera was not to be thought of. She didn't mind the invasion at all, but I did, and it was with deep relief that I heard that the invaders had decided to go to town for a week. Joy in lonesomeness had a new edge, and when Vera asked me to superintend the burning of rubbish off in the oak grove, I accepted with pleasure. She had to direct the cutting of the lawn by two young boys who had driven over from a neighboring farm. The smoke from my fire floated off in "silvery wreaths." It walled me off from all that was bothersome and annoying. Suddenly I found myself singing the fire music. By turns I was Wotan, Brünnhilde and the orchestra. I, who never sing in public, or even in company, gave most of the last scene of Die Walküre, taking the parts separately, but usually trying to do all together. The heartbreaking music was making me feel deliciously sad.