The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-11-26
TRUSTS AND MoNoPoL1Es.
The Trust Itself Monopoly--It Works
to Suppress Competition.


A r bier of the Great Body of Consumers
Its Purposes and It's Operations
Akke Confirm the Charge.
From the Baltimore SUM-
NUMBER VII.
l endeavored to show in my. last
paper that the two grounds on which
trusts have been chiefly defended are
both untenable, and. furthermore, that
they are not the real objects aimed
at by these combinations.
Their primary object is not to pre-
vent adulteration or debasement in
the quality of the objects they produce,
nor, on the other hand, merely to
secure the benefits that flow from pro
duction on large scale. Experience
has abundantly shown that the public
can protect itself, and at the same
time the honest producer, from frauds
in the quality of commodities without
having recourse to the subtle and ex-
pensive machinery of the trust. Very
brief but very instructive experience
has also been sufficient to show that
whatever advantages for cheapening
cost have been secured by its produc-
tion on large scale have always been
appropriated by the combination itself
and never shared with the consumer
Moreover, when under the sugar
trust eleven refneries are made to
earn large dividends on the watered
stock of sixteen refneries, when under
| the whisky trust twelve distilleries
are in like manner made to earn lib
eral dividends on the watered stock
of eighty one distilleries, no amount
of special pleading or economic leger-
dematn can obscure the fact that the
public is compelled to pay excessive
prices for their products, and that
this result has been accomplished
through combination that has been
able to limit supply, and by such
limitation to run prices.
TRUE OBJECT OF TRUST
And, this control of supply is the
true ana final object of every trust.
| Oub InOAO OcbA 10 AO SuCA 1Auu1Ucs61O4
permanently and effectively accomp-
lished as long as there is either com
petition or the possibility Of compe-
tition in open market between indie
pendent produc 4rs of the same article.
Accordingly this competition must be
entirely or largely neutralized to clear
the ground for trust. The price of
a commodity is settled by what has
been called the 4" higgling of the mar
ket;" in other words it is the outcome
of the contest between sellers trying
to get the highest prices for their
wares and buyers trying to buy at the
lowest; and the law which controls
this higgling is the law of supply and
demand, which in the long run makes
the normal price of com modities. The
trust is scheme to limit supply by
lessening, and if possible eliminating,
the competition which has hitherto
compelled rival producers to seek
their profits not so much in high
prices as in large sales. It's avowed
object is to substitute combination for
competition, which is the very de6ni-
tion of monopoly-not the meaning
of that much abused word in the loose
and random defamation of the hust,
ings, but its definition by the most
exact thinkers and those who are
guarded and precise in their terms.
Wherever competition is not
monopoly is" said John Stuart Mill,
and so say all great writer's on the
history and laws of trade.
A SINISTER WORD.
There is scarcely word in our
vocabulary that conjures up ideas
more repungent to equality of citizen
ship and to free institutions or which
comes down from the past freighted
with more sinister import than the
word monopoly. It is associated with
all those wrongs and hoary abuses by
which, In the older nations of the
world, the great mass of the people
have at times been sunk in hopeless
poverty and toll that privilege might
roll in wealth and idleness. We are
bound, therefore, to inquire how far
inits observations the trust merits and
justifes the stigma that such a classi-
fcation would stamp upon it.
Each one of the combinations we
have examined aims to intervene be-
tween the producer of the raw ma
terial and the purchaser of the manu-
factured article, and, as far as possible,
to control the production of some
commodity of necessary or general
consumption.
PRODUCERS OF RAW MATERIAL.
Let US begin, therefore, by inquir-
ing what has been the effect of the
trust on the producer of its raw ma
terial
In order to measure this effect fully