The weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1891-1894, 1894-03-16
Natural

10 tnere Sucn a tnlng as q natural mo
nopoly2 Professor Richard T. Ely o
the Wisconsin university says there is
and he undertakes to tell us in Tn
North American Review what it is. Pro
fessor Ely's literary style is uncommon
ly clear and readable, a style so rar'
among economic and scientific writer
that we are disposed to thank the pro
fessor especially for giving us an ESSAY
we can understand without any trouble
Competitive industries Professor Ely
classes as agriculture, manufactures an(
commerce. But alongside these ha'
sprung up chiefly in the nineteenth cen
tury another class of industries that arr
noncompetitive. These are such as rail
ways, telegraphs, telephones, canals, ir
rigation works, harbors, street car lines
and gas works. He says there can be nc
competition in industries of this class,
and that everything resembling compe'
tition is an illusion and temporary. The
noncompetitive industries nov represent
at least one-fourth of the wealth of our
civilization. They are industries in
which the whole public is interested.
They are conducted usually by private
corporations for their own benefit, though
in a few cities there is municipal owner
ship of gas and electric light plants. The
policy of the government has been to
turn these industries over to private cor
porations and then attempt to encourage
competition, which in the nature of
things there cannot be.
The first result of this policy, Professor
Ely says, is wastefulness. He quotes a
railway manager as saying that if the
railways of the United States were under
one system of control $500, 900, 900 would
be saved every year. The waste in gas
works and telegraph management under
attempts at competition is in~calculable.
A second result of private ownership in
natural monopolies is the enormous
and unprecedented inequality of fortunes
in the United States" If the postoffice
business had not been taken possession
of early by the government, Professor
Ely says we would have had a still
larger number of multimillionaires who
had absorbed to themselves the revenues
OF the department. AS it is, whatever
surplus there is. or whatever improve
ment in the service, the people get the
benefit of it.
A third result of private ownership of
these natural monopolies Professor Ely
declares to be the growth of artificial
monopolies side by side with the first.
They become so through favoritism
shown by the first class of monopolists.
He illustrates this by saying that in Chi
cago it costs so cents to ride from one
railway station to another. Only one
omnibus line is permitted to get at the
passengers; otherwise the cost would be
10 cents. A fourth result of the natural
monopoly is that it forces all the COM
munity to be dependent on it. So long
as street car lines are in the hands of
private owners the inhabitants of the
cities must pay the fare and accept the
terms they demand. Residents of cities
frequently have to pay street car COM
panies to make extensions which would
be profitable to the street car companies
without any bonus"
The people of the United States were depend
ent upon railway managers for cheap fares to
the Worlds fair at Chicago, which cost so many