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These drifts or currents of opinion seem obvious enough. Butthey must not be dismissed because they are obvious. Much of ourconfusion in the understanding of national problems begins withour superior refusal to notice the obvious factors that lie at theirroots. It would not be true to say the people as a whole wantedthese things. Indeed it is entirely possible that as a whole they didnot want them. But powerful minorities wanted them, and thepeople accepted them because they were in the dark as to a bettercourse.Little by little another stream of thought began to insert itselfinto the general mind. This was a growing suspicion that there wassomething fundamentally wrong with the system of capitalism itself.Hitherto no one questioned its eternal continuance. Welfaremeasures, lower taxes, better land laws, wiser finance, more honestofficials—these would one day make it work better. As for poverty,that within reason was part of the order of nature. But graduallythe notion got about that the trouble lay nearer the roots of theeconomic system. Presently the idea began to take hold that thischallenge must be met with some kind of over-all regulation.One of the most baffling phenomena of fascism is the almost incrediblecollaboration between men of the extreme Right and theextreme Left in its creation. The explanation lies at this point. BothRight and Left joined in this urge for regulation. The motives, thearguments, and the forms of expression were different but alldrove in the same direction. And this was that the economic systemmust be controlled in its essential functions and this control mustbe exercised by the producing groups.The first steps in this direction were, of course, the trade-unionsand the trade associations. Manufacturers and merchants came tothe conclusion that their troubles grew out of overproduction andexcessive competition. They turned to various devices to controlprices, limit production, mitigate competition. The cartel came intouse. The cartel is an agreement among producers to set up centralcontrol of some factor in their common business—exchange orprices or output or territory or accounting practices or rawmaterialpurchases. At bottom each cartel is an attempt by businessmento subject a sector of the economic system to government by28