The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1903-08-07
Competition and Monopoly.

Competition and Monopoly.
What is trust? What is monopoly ?
How does it arise? Do you think it is
something unnatural, foreign to the spirit
of the competitive system, produced by
the conspiracy of certain men to get
special privileges?
1t is nothing of the sort. The trust is
the normal outgrowth of the capitalist
system. Monopoly is the natural and
legitimate result of competition. Many
of the trusts have been fostered, stimu-
lated, fastened in their development by
special privileges-protective tariffs, land
grants, bonnties, subsidies, and the like.
But without such aid trusts develop in
free-trade England as we'll as in protec-
ZIONIST America. Special privilege is all
accessory to, but not the cause OF, the
development of monopoly. Many of the
tariff nursed trusts have now reached the
point where the repeal of all tariffs and
other favorable legislation not only would
not destroy them, but would not injure
them in the least.
Competition, in the very nature OF
things, destroys itself; running its normal
course it produces monopoly. The tre"r
and more vigorous the competition, the
sooner does monopoly ensue.
Look at the world of business. Each
competitor is trying to reduce his ex-
penses, to get trade away from the others,
in every way to extend his business.
Thev cannot all succeed. The very word
competition" indicates that they are
striving with each other, lighting each
other. The success of some means the
failure Of others.
In this strife the competitor with the
largest capital will have the advantage.
He can introduce the best machinery; he
can buy his materials in larger Quantities,
thus getting them cheaper; he can EN-
ploy more workers and so get larger
product from each through division OF
labor and systemization of work; he can
ill orders more promptly; he can take
better advantage of fluctuations in the
market; he can advertise more widely and
so secure more trade.
For further advantage SOME of the
larger competitors may agree to cease
competing, to unite their capital in a
partnership, then in stock company,
then in larger and larger companies. Nor
is it only the stronger competitors who do
this; for self-protection the weaker ones
are forced to do the same thing. The
man who obstinately holds out against
the tendency, who insists Oh running his
business independently on the small scale
which alone he can afford, is doomed to
fail. A conservative economist has form
ulated the rule: "Where combination is
possible, competition becomes impos-
sible.''
Concentration of the ownership of cap
ital and the control of industry, then, is
the goal toward which the laws of capt.
talism inevitably lead. The trust is not
an accident. 1t is not a blunder. 1t is
not crime. 1t is the final term of cap
italistic progress; it is the sure conclusion
of capitalistic logic.
To try to curb or to destroy the trust
while yet maintaining the capitalist sys'
tenn is to attempt to stop or to turn back
the hands of the clock of history. 1t is
to attempt what is probably impossible
and what is surely undesirable. The eyes
of wisdom and courage are turned ever
forward, in the direction of our present
progress and beyond its present stage,
never longingly back upon the path we
have traversed. We cannot go back; and
could we do so it would only be to lose
time, to begin again and retravel the
doubly weary road.
The great leaders of the old parties
know this. They have no intention Of
smashing the trusts. They have no in
tentiou of curbing them. They know
that to seriously attempt either course on
capitalistic lines would be to add the evils
of panic and depression to the normal
evils of capitalism.
Their guiding maxim is that of old
Louis XV-"After us, the deluge." They
will equivocate and temporize, make a
feint of bowling to the popular will when
the popular will is wrong and raise false
distinctions to obscure the real issue
when popular opinion begins to be right
all this they will do as long as they can
in the hope that, as that same foolish
Bourbon said: "The rickety old machine
will last out our time"
AS long as they can-but that will no
now be long. The deeds of the trust.
give clearer and more convincing lessons
in truth than the words of their politica
agents can give in error. And the PEG
pie are learning. They are learning tina
it is not the concentration of privat,
ownership, nor the trust alone, that j
bad, but capitalism that must be repu
diated.-Ihe W0ykey.