The country was drained of its life
and force, to feed the centres of commerce and industry. The whole land
was bound together with a network of iron roads that linked the factories
and founderies to the fields and mines, and blasted the landscape with the
enterprise that spoiled the lives of men.
"Then, all at once, when its work seemed perfect and its dominion sure,
the Accumulation was stricken with consciousness of the lie always at its
heart. It had hitherto cried out for a free field and no favor, for
unrestricted competition; but, in truth, it had never prospered except as
a monopoly. Whenever and wherever competition had play there had been
nothing but disaster to the rival enterprises, till one rose over the
rest. Then there was prosperity for that one.
"The Accumulation began to act upon its new consciousness. The iron roads
united; the warring industries made peace, each kind under a single
leadership. Monopoly, not competition, was seen to be the beneficent means
of distributing the favors and blessings of the Accumulation to mankind.
But, as before, there was alternately a glut and dearth of things, and
it often happened that when starving men went ragged through the streets
the storehouses were piled full of rotting harvests that the farmers
toiled from dawn till dusk to grow, and the warehouses fed the moth with
the stuffs that the operative had woven his life into at his loom.
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