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28 fluence the national economic organisation." Such are electricity and aviation. "As a general rule, speculation becomes greatly developed during times of radical economic change."

Crises of every kind—economic crises most frequently, but not only these—in turn increase very considerably the tendency to concentration of capital and to the formation of monopolies. In this connection the following reflections are quite edifying. They are those of M. Jeidels on the crisis of 1900, which was, as we have already seen, the turning-point in the history of the monopolies:—

"The crisis of 1900 found, side by side with giant enterprises in the principal branches of production, also many enterprises with an organisation which was out of date, according to prevailing ideas: they were 'pure,' that is to say, not combined: enterprises that the wave of a favourable set of economic circumstances had brought to the surface. The fall in prices and the lessening of demand drove these uncombined enterprises into a precarious position which did not affect the big enterprises at all, or only affected them for a very short time. This is why the crisis of 1900 called, much more than that of 1873 had done, for the concentration of production. The crisis of 1873 also had operated as a kind of selection of the soundest enterprises; but, given the level of technical development at that time, this selection could not lead the firms which came out of the crisis victorious, into a position of monopoly. It is just such a lasting monopoly, and in a very high degree, which belongs to the gigantic enterprises in the iron and electrical industries to-day; and this is due to their extremely complicated technical