New-York tribune., 1900-04-11
garten Association should appeal strongly 10
the philanthropic and public spirited citizens OF
New-York
TRUSTS" AND COMPETITION.

The thick volume of evidence about trusts
taken by the Industrial Commission contains
much that Is valuable because 1T Is known 10
everybody and yet constantly denied that
many people have come TO doubt what they
really know and to believe what everybody
says" The Commission itself exposes one OF the
most common false statements on this subject.
Practically all the testimony, 1t points out,
goes to prove that combination has been in
most cases the effect of competition pushed
so far as to destroy profits Even Mr.. Have
MEYER who asserted that the tariff was
the mother of trusts had to make 1t clear
that the intense competition caused by foster
ing home industry brought about those COM
binations as means of limiting it. Nobody
has ever pointed out any other mode IN which
the protective duties have caused industrial
combinations. Every fairly intelligent man who
reads daily paper has perceived that in the
many industries with which the tariff has moth
ing to do combinations are quite as numerous
and as powerful as In the branches of manu-
facture most dependent upon protective duties.
The iron industry itself furnishes instructive
examples. No combination has been formed in
plates, and 1t was in that branch more than
any other that prices In the time Of prostraton
were best supported by the Governments naval
demands and by other needs for transportation
by ocean and lake and by rail. But the tin plate
manufacture had been pushed so far under the
encouragement OF new duties that prices here
were really lower than In Europe and combina-
ton was started In that branch among the
earliest. The price of rails had been forced so
low by the competition which duties had en-
couraged that rails could be and were exported
to all lands and the duty was no longer of any
effect; but the personal compact between makers
was formed for their self-preservaton, even
while in other lines they fighting each
other most fercely. Prices of bars had been
better sustained than those of almost any other
iron and steel product, In part because of rela-
lively high wages secured by pudders. In con-
sequence no attempt to establish any consolda-,
ton Of bar producers has been effected, and
even the combinations embracing limited dis
tricts have been unable to control prices SO
bars are still imported-37 100000 pounds in the
last eight months. Cut nails We're relatively
high, and wire nails depressed to the lowest
point by competition the wire nail makers
combined but no consolidation controls the
makers of cut nails.
To escape competition men combine. But
then they have to choose whether they will
escape it wholly or will only create more COM
petition. If they put up prices far enough to do
injury to customers hostile competition starts up
certainly capital seeks the largest profits
obtainable. Since prices of iron products culmi-
mated last year some of the new corporations
have been maintaining high figures and others
have not tried or have failed. full column of
this page would be required to enumerate the
new concerns which have started competing
works, some already completed and others near
completion, in the manufacture of tin plates
hoops wire and nails, and in hundreds of other
branches which combinations have been
able to control and have not controlled wisely.
Capital knows perfectly we'll its enormous adj
vantage in attacking with new competition
big overcapitaliZed corporation rather than fifty
independent makers, each accustomed to fight
the others to the utmost. The corporation can
not afford to see its credit broken by depression
of its stock 1t Is generally forced to buy up the
competing concern, as the Sugar and other old
corporations have bought up many. But that
does not stop the starting of others, nor ex-
trpate the race Of Arbuckles and Doschers.
Thus it has come TO pass In the many years
of struggle between combination and cOmpet-
ton that scarcely any combination or trust can
be said to have survived which has not kept
prices of products so low as to deter new COM
petition. The long road is paved with the whit
ened bones of corporations which have fallen
in the effort TO get through In some other way.
If some of them still live it is because they
have paid several times the entire value, of
their plants In buying up competitors. The
country gains all the time by this struggle. and
the new competitors generally draw out more
than they put in and the only loss falls upon
those who seek to abuse their opportunity and
plunder the public. Mutitudes fail to see how
new competition springs up perpetually In the
path of monopoly. But it remains the fact that
natural laws give better defence by far to the
public interest than can be given by any statu-
tory law man has the wit TO devise.