The Yale expositor., 1900-09-21
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
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 were economies
that could he effected and that he was
a fool not to effect. There was a chance
to steady things and know whether he
had anything in the world or not. Pos
sibly there was Il 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 manufae-
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
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 is
the underwriting banker?
Things have been going so we'll 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. lie 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 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 70
buy something once in a 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 viii
be formed but they will only be organic
cd successfully where there is some econ
omic reason, some reason in good bust
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
thousand men are required to do it,
whether a hundred thousand dollars or
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-cspecially since we are agreed
what a trust really is-let me say that
! 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, thousand TO one, it knows better
! than to try. The Standard Oil Com
| pauy is not monopoly, and I'll wager,
| if the truth were 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
corporation--which doesn't monopolize
the steel business as | notice, and proba-
! bly, never will while Andrew Carnegie
and few other good scrappers are in the
! ficld-says that well-organized and
wel-managed trust is all right up to the
| point where it tries to monopolize its pro-
| duet. There it Over-reachcs itself, it
gets into danger, it invites competition.
and this, mind you. is the competition OF
giants and not of pigmies.
Mr.. +. q. Mathiessen, once the chair
man of the manufacturing committee Of
the sugar trust land | don't know of IA
higher authority that could be cited) says
that 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 IL would be
| folly for them to try 20 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 n thousand years.
could go 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 if
il thought il could succeed in doing SO,
1t can't succeed, and it knows it.
A DRUMMER.
(To be continued)