Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/537

Rh Europe, where many industries are already municipalized or nationalized, and in our middle western cities it looks as though the trolley companies would pay the same penalty for charging what the people consider high fares.

However we look at it, therefore, the existing system of coercion as applied by the present monopolizers of the social surplus sources appears to be confronted by opposing forces. When pushed too far coercion is met by cooperation and diminishing returns set in. Already cooperation is acting as a powerful check upon such coercion as exists, and as we advance a little further I expect to see the coercive system broken down bit by bit, first by the cooperation of capitalists and laborers in profit-sharing undertakings, and next, where necessary, by the socialization of such industries as prove recalcitrant under the new order of things. Or to put the thought theoretically, I think we may expect the present monopolization of the surplus sources to be extended gradually to admit laborers as well as capitalists, and finally, perhaps, some monopolies to be still further extended so as to admit consumers as well as producers.