The Forrest City times., 1891-08-07
THEIR GAME BAULKED.
OUR QUlNINE MANUFACTURE
 AND THEIR COMBINE.

They Wanted to Form . Worlds Quinins
 Trust-An Agent Sent to London-Fail-
 ure of the schemc-A Worlds Trust Inn
 possible.
 The protectionists are not willing to confess that the tariff tends to encourage trusts and combinations to control prices Nothing, however, can be clearer than that the smaller a market the more easily it can be controlled. Prices can easily be manipulated in single market where all producers have excellent means for finding out whether their riv- als are living up to their "gentlemen's agreement" In such narrow market meetings of manufacturers can be fre- Quently held, and the offenders who sell below the combinations prices can be diciplined.
 But when wide oceans separate manu lecturers it becomes almost impossible to maintain prices through combination. An international trust is next to an i'm possibility, The most remarkable vent ures of the kind, the two French syndi- cates to corner the market for copper and tin, ended most disastrously to those concerns
 A most interesting illustration of the principles here set forth is furnished in the case of OUT quinine manufacturers. Everybody remembers how the price of Quinine has gone down since the duty was taken of in 1s79 This was partly due to the abolition of the duty, but still more to the fact that the cinchona tree, from the bark of which quinine is made, is now cultivated largely in the British and Dutch East Indies.
 The low price of quinine, brought al hxt tup hoe ham . pleasant thing to our manufacturers; and when everybody was rushing to Congress last year to get higher duties in order to charge higher prices the Quinine manufacturers--we have only three-put in an appearance to ask for . duty on Quinine. One frank German among them, when asked by MT. Carlisle whether a duty would not increase the price of Qutnine, bluntly and innocently replied, I've hope it would"
 But the quinine men failed to get their duty, and so they cast about for other means to raise prices. A recent num- Der of the London Chemist and Drug- 0Jst reports that near the end of last year the Quinine manufacturers contem- plated forming a syndicate to corner the market and raise prices. "The first suggestion of these negotiations" says this paper, proceeded from that great prolific race of bosses begotten by greed out of monopoly"
 The Chemist and Druggist goes on to speak of ~an importantlooking trans atlantic visitor,s who "haunted the druggists headquarters in London for several days, the expositor of 8 scheme for setting at naught the laws of sup ply and demand" A representative of the paper quoted made efforts "to ex- tract some drops of information from this grave seignior, but found the source of his knowedge dramatically sealed"
 But this attempt to form an interna- tional quinine trust fell through, and the grave seignior," it is reported, "re- crossed the Atlantic an altogether un- successful negotiator.
 Does anybody believe that our three quinine manufacturers would have cared 8 snap about this international trust if they had succeeded in getting duty on Quinine? They would have had the home market so completely under their thumbs that they would never have dreamed of sending this grave seignior" to London to negotiate world wide quinine trust.
 But world trust is an impossibility; and our people will continue to buy cheap, untaxed quinine; for If our three manufacturers put up prices to an un- reasonable point foreign quinine will at once come in and bring them to their senses.
 Foreign free goods mean death to home market trusts.