The sun., 1900-09-18
They Have Never Succeeded in Creating Monop-
oily Because There Never Can Be Monopoly
Of Brains Competition Always Open.
WHEN THEY Get GREEDY THEY BREAK THEIR OWN BACKS
AS They Transact Business Large Scale They Are Able
to Buy Cheaper and to Sell Cheaper TO All Consum-
ers-No Trust Can Hold Monopoly.

There was peace. There we're economies
that could be effected and that he was
fool not to effect. There was chance
to steady things and know whether he
had anything in the world or not. Pos
sibly there was a chance for profits again.
This was the chance for the promoter
and the underwriting banker, or what
ever you choose to call him, as well as
for the manufacturer. If the manufac-
turer hadn't been in the condition de-
scribed, the promoter and the banker
couldn't have done anything with him
Or for him. 1t required cash money, or
IFS 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 is
the underwriting banker?
Things have been going so well in the
last 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 while.
This isn't saying that trusts are not
now forming, and that many more Of
them. Il great many more, will not be
formed. They are forming, and they will
be formed; but they will only be organic
ed successfully where there is some econ
omic reason, some reason in good husi-
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 q
| million dollars are required to do some
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--especally since we are agreed
what trust really is--let me say that a
trust, in the right acceptance of the word,
is not monopoly. 1t can't be, or if it
thinks it can be, let it tryl Ten to one
| yes, thousand to one, it knows better
than to try. The Standard Oil Com
pany is not monopoly, and I'll wager
if the truth We're known, that it 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
pOration--which doesn't monopolize
the steel business as / notice, and proba-
bly, never will while Andrew Carnegie
and Il few other good scrappers are in the
field-says that well-organized and
well-managcd trust is all right up to the
point where it tries to monopolize it's pro-
duet. There it ovar-rcaches itself, it
gets into danger, it invites competition,
and this, mind you, is the competition of
giants and not of pigmies.
Mr.. +. o. Mathiessen, once the chair
man OF the manufacturing committee OF
the sugar trust (apd | don't know of "A
higher authority that could be cited), says
that the Glucose Trust, which, 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
w0rlu can corner IN thousand years.
could so 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 ten
per cent dividend out of the consumer jf
it thought it could succeed in doing so.
II can't succeed, and it knows it.
4 DRUMMER
ITO be continued.)