successfully without establishing an International Department, societies of working men will be able to do it just as well, and even better, without nominating a Ministry of European railways.
Another objection is raised that is more serious at first sight. We may be told that the agreement we speak of is not perfectly free, that the large companies lay down the law to the small ones. They might, for example, quote a certain rich company compelling travellers who go from Berlin to Bale to pass via Cologne and Frankfort, instead of taking the Leipzig route; a second, carrying goods sixty or a hundred and thirty miles in a roundabout way (on long distances) to favour influential shareholders; a third, ruining secondary lines. In the United States travellers and goods are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into the pocket of a Vanderbilt.
Our answer will be the same: As long as Capital exists, the greater Capital will oppress the lesser. But oppression does not result from Capital only. It is also owing to the support given them by the State, to monopoly created by the State in their favour, that certain large companies oppress the little ones.
The early Socialists have shown how English legislation did all in its powers to ruin small industries, drive the peasant to poverty, and deliver over to wealthy industrial employers battalions of men, compelled to work for no matter what
