The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-02-01

LFrom the Pittsburg Dispatch
Three items in the current news of
the past few days contain no slight
significance to those DESTROYS of OBJ
tanning a just idea of the practical
workings of attempts to establish mo-
nOpolies or suppress competition. One
IS the statement that the Pittsburg
Wall Paper company, a competitor Of
the wall paper combination, has or
dered its plant at New Brighton to be
put on double turn and has received
orders for $1,000,O0O worth of goods
Another is the statement that the con-
troll Of the river coal combination of
the lower Mississippi market is to
meet the competition of an agency
which has made arrangements to bring
Alabama coal into that market. The
third is the cut of 5 per cent. in prices
of window glass, ordered by the COM
bination in that industry, in addition
to its previous reduction of 80 1-3 per
cent, for the purpose of disciplining
the independent and cooperative con-
Germs.
The first two items illustrate what
The Dispatch has frequently said of
the certainty that, in all cases where
a trust or combination puts up prices
above the competitive level, new capi-
tai will at once come in to share the
profits. This is nothing more nor less
than obedience to a dynamic law of
business. CAPITAL is constantly seek
ing employment; it is bound to tend
in the direction where the largest
profits are offered. The rise of new
competitors in such cases as these is
as inevitable as the flow of water
down hill-unless there is some ex-
ternal means of choking off the new
competition as Of damming the water
so that it viii flow in some other direc-
ton.
The third case shows the usual
means taken by the combination either
to punish the competitors who refuse
20 be bound by the combination or to
drive the new ones to their terms.
When the subject is before trust com
missions or economic debates these
cut-throat rates are held up as the
examples of ruinous competition; but
the current statements with regard to
these cuts make no bones of recOgniz-
ing that they are not true competition
at all, but the recognized means of en-
forcing the combination. It is true
that the published views of one ex-
pert, friendly to the combination
state that while the glass combina-
ton will not make much profit at the
there will be no loss" If there is no
loss after prices have been cut over
80 per cent. the inference as to the
prices which the combination was at
tempting to sustain is somewhat
strong.
The resort of driving competition
into the combination by making the
market Improbable for them while
they stay out has frequently made
a temporary success. But where it
does SO it only puts a premium on
the building up of new competitors,
and the repetition Of the process until
the combination also becomes so drop
steal that it can hardly stand by itself
But experience shows the way to make
that attempt futile, and If current re-
port IS correct the competing glass
concerns appear to have learned it.
That Is the simple measure of refusing
TO sell at a loss. When it is under
stood that the people who Introduce
the idea Of selling at less than cost
will have to bear all the loss them
selves the device viii be abandoned.
All these things demonstrate that