Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently. The price which society pays for the law, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great, but the advantages of this law are also greater than its cost--for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we cannot evade it; of the effect of any new substitutes for it proposed we can not be sure; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment; the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few; and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential to the future progress of the race.