The Hope pioneer. [volume] (Hope, N.D.) 1882-1964, 1900-09-13

Ihere was peace. There were economies
that could be effected and that he was
q TOOL not to effect. There was a chance
10 steady things and know whether he
mad anything in the world or not. Pos
sloly there was a chance for profits again.
Inns was the chance for the promoter
ana the underwriting banker, or what
ever you choose to call him, as we'll as
Tor the manufacturer. If the manufac-
turer hadn't been in the condition de-
scrlned, the promoter and the banker
couldn't have done, anything with him
or Tor him. It required cash money, or
its equivalent, in guarantees, to buy, or
partly buy, one plant here and another
plant there. This the underwater could
furnish. 1t required the promoter to see
about it all. But the promoters employ
ment didn't last long. Where is the pro
moter now, by the way, and where il
the underwriting banker?
Things have been going SO well in the
!ast Two or three years that the manu-
facturer, the man who used to want to
combine, doesn't want to combine any
longer. he isn't tired, he has plenty Of
capital, his machinery is buzzing, he is
selling twice as much stuff as before.
probably just as much abroad as at home.
There is a chance for all. Competition
Is active, but buyers are not haggling
about the price quite so much, or at least
they have got some money with which to
buy something once in a while.
This isn't saying that trusts are not
now forming, and that many. more Of
them, a great many more, will not be
formed They are forming, and they will
be formed; but they will only be organic
ca successfully where there is some econ
omlc reason, some reason in good BUSH
ness economy and judgment. why two,
or twenty, or two hundred concerns
should pool their issues, cut expenses and
lop off the dead stuff and get there in
true business style, whether ten men or
a thousand men are required to do it,
whether a hundred thousand dollars or a
million dollars are required to do
thing in this, that or the other part of
the world, or in any old part of the world.
Now without going into definitions too
much-especially since. we are agreed
what a trust really is-let me say that a.
trust, in the right acceptance of the word,
is not a monopoly. 1t can't be, or If it
thinks it can be, let it try! Ten to one,
yes, a thousand to one, it knows better
than to try. The Standard Oil Com
pany is not n monopoly, and I'll wager,
II the truth were known, that 1t makes
money by its methods just as much as
it does by the volume Of its business.
Judge Gary of the Federal Steel Com
pany-a little two hundred million dollar
corporation-which doesn't monopolize
the steel business as T notice, and proba-
bly, never will while Andrew Carnegie
and a few other good scrappers are in the
feld-says that a well-organized and
well-managed trust is all right up to the
point where it tries to m%onopolize its pro-
duct. There 1t over-reaches itself, It
gets into danger, it invites competition,
and this, mind you, is the competition Of
giants and not Of pigmies.
Mr. +. y. Mathiessen, once the chair
man of the manufacturing committee Of
the sugar trust land I don't know of. a
higher authority that could be cited), says,
thai the Glucose Trust, which, l believe,
he organized and is at the head of, is in
the field for only about seven per cent
for its stockholders; that it would be
folly for them to try to squeeze more
out Of the consumer for their investing
capitalists: that plenty Of money and
plenty Of brains (for brains and money
are two commodities that nobody in the
world can corner in a thousand years)
could &C right into the field against them
and level them down to the seven per
cent basis as quickly as Brother Bryan
can turn a political handspring. The
Glucose Trust, you understand, might
not hesitate to squeeze an eight or a ten
per cent dividend out of the consumer il
it thought it could succeed in doing SO.
1t can't succeed, and it knows it.
A. DRUMMER.