The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-08-30


lied for a fair wage upon competing jobs
and the employer for fair service upon
competition among workmen. 1t has
been competition all along the line Our
whole civilization is based upon it. Take
competition away and you destroy the
structure of that civilization, and must
substitute something equally effective in
its place. or the whole structure falls.
But competition is coming TO an end.
The cornerstone is crumbling and the
structure is In danger. Combination as
an economic force is fast becoming to
take the place of competition. The pro-
ducers are combining; transportation
companies are combining; tradesmen are
combining; workmen as we'll as employ
ers are combining; everything seems to
be coming into some form of combination
and everybody seems to be combner.
Tile competition that still remains is
fast disappearing. Workmen are refus-
ing to compete for jobs Labor unions
are charging the spheres of their acti-
witty and extending their operations
Instead of competing individually with
one another for the Job they both want.
they put themselves in the hands of their
unions, and the walking delegate repre-
sents them ALL The union of the EN-
ployers is still stronger and more far
reaching than the union of the work
men. Even where they do not actually
combine as among themselves and sink
their differences into one organization
they are wont to combine as against the
workman, so that wherever he turns he
finds the same wage scale offered him
and the same conditions of employment.
He is lucky if he escapes being blacklist
ed. so that he can find no work for his
hands to do anywhere.
We are now having combinations of
combinations The United States Steel
Corporation is combination of a dozen
heretofore competing producers who were
themselves combinations of still other
producers. and these in turn often COM
binations of still others. To trace them
back to their beginnings is like discover
ing all the multitude of sources that go
to make up the volume of the swollen
Mississippi. The property which the
Amalgamated Copper Company now con-
trolls was once. perhaps, thousand min
ing claims, each one very likely owned
in common by half a dozen miners. The
Department Store Trust has combined the
business of hundreds of merchants. some
portions of which they acquired by pur-
chase and others in some other way. It
Is estimated that the Standard Oil Com
pany has taken, by contract or by force,
the business of ten thousand corporations
and merchants in all parts of the Union.
The few present great railroad lines of
the country have been made up by the
combination of hundreds of smaller lines
some extensions of one another and 9TH
er competing lines. The ambition of the
Shipping Trust, perhaps the pet project
of the great American combine, has been
to control all the ships that sail the ocean.
A hundred years ago there were hardly
two ships owned by the same individual
corporation, and even fifty years ago
there was scarcely a ship owner, individu-
al or corporation, that owned half a
dozen ships.
The process of this combination of COM
biLations is still going on. No one can
tell where the end will be or when it
viii come. No one knows but that within
the next ten years a greater than J.
Pierpont Morgan will arise who will
combine into one organization I'll the in
dIstries of the land, so that the work
man who works for wages can find but
one possible employer and the purchaser
OF wares but one possible seller. The
steps toward the formation of one uni
versal industrial corporation which shall
crowd out all other corporations and as
sumo to itself all the industries of the
land, have been already more than half
taken. 1t is not so far to go from now
to that end as we had to 60 to reach
present industrial conditions
The most astounding revelation is that
all this proves to be economically righte'
Gus. Production is cheapened when car.
RED on on a large scale. A business is
more profitable when there is no cempe.
t;tion. A monopoly is economically desir-
able; that is. for the monopolist. The
United States Steel Corporation can pro-
duce, no matter what it sells them for,
it's goods cheaper than the elements out
of which the combination is composed
ever produced them. The Standard Oil
Company is economically holy, for it pays
fGrty per cent dividends. The Sugar
Trust is economically correct for where
as the individual sugar refincrs lost
money on small capitalizations, the Sugar
Trust pays big dividends on large CAPT
talization The railroad combinations are
IOI bI45y pay.
Ii Mr.. Morgans Shipping Trust and Mr..
Sckwabs Shipbuilding Trust are failures,
they are exceptions to the rule.
We cannot, therefore, rely upon natural
forces-upon the laws of supply and de-
mand or upon economic considerations
to limit the growth of modern combina-
tlons. If they are undesirable, if the
people of the American nation would be
better off without them or with lmita-
tions put upon them, they must put those
limitations on by the action of their leg
islatures. their Congress and their courts.
The American bar must act and the
American Bar Association must take the
lead.
Ii the Northern Securities had been al
lowed to go on, the next thing to follow
1t would naturally have been a United
States Securities Company, which would
hold the majority of the stock of every
railroad wherever the American flag flies.
The question involved in the Northern
Securities case is not, therefore, whether
the Northern Pacific and the Great
Northern should be allowed to pool their
issues In the way they have ATTEMPTED to
do, but whether all the railroads of the