Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1890-07-23
TRUSTS AND MonopoLles.
What the Public Regulation of Combins
ttons Will Lead To,


An actual trust of a strong type has
the power to make outside rivalry
perilous. 1t may push prices beyond
the point where new establishments
would ordinarily be created, and to the
point where they are in danger of being
created in the face of the special risk.
When the profits of the combination
tempt men to take the chances of Hfe-
and-death battle with it, extortion
must STOP The interest Of the public,
and especially of the working class, de-
mands that it should stop far within
the limit thus set; yet there seems to
be no clearly defined economic infiu-
ence that can compel it to do so. In so
far as potential competition is con-
cerned, the public may suffer much
from the exactions of trusts, and the
workmen may experience more than
their due proportion of the evil. Is
there, then, further inf1u-
ence that can be depended
on to curtail extortion? Our brief ex-
perience answers the questions. The
attitude of the people toward trusts inn
poses check on their action that is
beginning to take definable shape. 1t
combinations care for the people in the
least; there is limit to the extent to
which they can afford to antagonize
them. Public action will take place
only when there is considerable rea-
son for it. and it is good policy to
avoid giving such a reason. The action
of the people, when it takes a positive
shape, is in the main through courts
and Legislatures But can not trust
own court and a Legislature? Possibly;
yet it may prove more difficult than 1t
has been for corporations to own them.
Back of the court and the Legislature, in
a contest with trusts, stand the people.
Labor organizations are, in this con-
| nection, a positive and welcome
| factor. They enable the general
opposition of the people of such
monopolieS as we are discussing
| to make itself felt in a way that
would otherwise be out of the question.
They control votes that Legislatures,
courts and, indirectly, trusts must
respect. We are entering an era of
public regulation of monopolies. We
are making our first experiments in ac-
quiring the art of such regulation. The
monopolies are here to stay; and while
they have, by reason of latent competi-
ton, far less power than careless
thought attributes to them, they have
power enough to make energetic public
action a moral certainty in the near
future. We shall not need to own these
monopolies if only we can wisely reg
ulate them. That, however, is the
nature of the alternative that is pre-
sented: Buy out monopolies or control
them," is the word. Possibly, in the
buying out of monopolies, some would
have us omit the formality of pay ing
| for them. Socialism everywhere looks
| for the absorption of trusts by the
state with or without confiscation
Sound thinking substitutes regula-
ton for ownership; and events are,
in a way, to decide between the
two in summary manner. A public
action that shall wisely and successful
| ly regulate trusts will make actual So
cialism very remote contingency. 1t
will be, in the end, welcome to the
trusts themselves. A moderate gain
that is lawful and safe will be more at
tractive to capital than a large one that
is irregular and perilous. The public
regulation of trusts is something that
casts its shadow before, and the
shadow is an ever widening one.
While decision of court
or legislative statute is imminent il
affects the action not only the trusts
that is directly touched by it, but Of all
others. Potential public action, like
potential competition, keeps extortion
within bounds. One actual decision.
one actual limiting statue, has the ef-
feet of holding a lash over all
organizations Of the kind that
it actually strikes. What we
now see is the beginnings
of the process-a few decisions,
many bills not yet passed, some tenta-
tive work with commissions But these
mere beginnings suffice TO throw some
restraint on the action of monopolies
The perfecting of the system of regula-
ton may involve a painful and costly
process; but it can only end by trans
lating us into a new economic era, one
in which the state, on the one hand,
and sn industrial society on the other,
will see what is their true relation to
each other, and will spontaneously as
sumo it. We may theorize as we will
about the limits of state action; studies
In this direction have a speculative in
terest Events are giving us a science
OF the relation of the state to industry
almost faster than we can make one in
the study. B. Clark, in New En-
glander and Yale Review.