Vail’s dream of a perfected, centralized industry was predicated on another contemporary notion as well. It may sound strange to our ears, but Vail, a full-throated capitalist, rejected the whole idea of “competition.” He had professional experience of both monopoly and competition at different times, and he judged monopoly, when held in the right hands, to be the superior arrangement. “Competition,” Vail had written, “means strife, industrial warfare; it means contention; it oftentime means taking advantage of or resorting to any
