tion like other forms of liberty has limitations beyond which it degenerates into license, and unrestricted trade has brought about situations where the state has been compelled to intervene, in the public interest.

Tendency of Unrestricted Exercise of Power Shown.-Perhaps the simplest and most concrete example of the tendency of unrestricted competition to work out oppression is seen in the record of the relations of capital to labor.

With the abolition of slavery and serfdom in the first half of the nineteenth century, willing service remained as the only recognized method of employment throughout the civilized world. But with the removal of the various forms of enforced labor, no system of mutual moral obligation was substituted in their stead. Such an obligation on the part of the capitalist was habitually ignored or denied, and the laborer in his turn when so disposed by self interest entered upon each task intent upon reducing his output to prolong his work, or to minimize the fruits of a bargain he realized to be oppressive.

English Experience.-In England farm laborers breakfasting on thin broth and dining on bread and cheese, without meat more than once a week, worked from sunrise to sundown, while in the manufacturing centres the life and surroundings of workmen. were more burdensome than the conditions imposed on criminals engaged upon enforced labor in prisons. Women and little children dragged loaded coal trucks along dripping tunnels in mines ten to sixteen hours a day; one quarter of the population of London lived in poverty, and public or private charity was the precarious dependence of one thirty-fourth of the entire population of England and Wales. Education of the working class was neglected, and the natural results of such an unregulated condition of competition for employment were the twin burdens of society, -pestilence and crime.

In America Similar Causes Threaten Similar Results.-In the United States, a somewhat similar condition formerly existed, excepting that the pauperism of the American poor never took on the hopeless condition which prevails in an atmosphere where the good things of life are reserved for a favored few, and artificial barriers of birth and aristocracy make it difficult to rise to a higher stratum of human life and effort.

It is hard to realize that up to sixty years ago no effort to restrict child labor had been initiated in America, and that in Penn

sylvania lads of fourteen years worked for nine hours each day in air so polluted with coal-dust that nature could not remove these impurities from throat and lungs for twenty-four hours thereafter. In tenements of the great cities women trod sewing machines in "sweat-shops" ten to fifteen hours at a stretch, until the exhaustion of mind and body rendered motherhood impossible.

4. TO RETAIN RIGHTS, ASSISTANCE SOMETIMES REQUIRED.

Weaker Party Cannot Always Compete.-Of course it was theoretically possible for the employee to demand changed conditions and in default of such amelioration, to refuse to continue the engagement; but in the press of unrestricted competition, with other hands grasping for the means of subsistence, and with dependent families looking to the daily wage for their support, the workman had no actual choice but to remain at his task, trusting to the state to surround it with such conditions as would safeguard his health and prospects, in furtherance of the common good.

In Such Cases Government Must Intervene.-Modern legislation with what for lack of a better term we shall designate intelligent paternalism has obliterated or modified these hard conditions formerly prevailing between employer and cmployee; and competition in employment, to the permanent advantage of every interest, has now become competition as regulated and restricted by law.

Above Statement Illustrates Principle Involved.-While these remarks may be regarded by some as a digression, no apology is offered for their inclusion here. The same intrusion of social science into everyday affairs is seen in many quarters, as will abundantly hereafter appear.

5. GOVERNMENT ACCORDS AID TO PARTIES THUS SITUATED.

Government Intervenes against Restrictive Combinations.In the world of business, conditions similar to those existent in affairs of labor prevailed in America down to a comparatively recent period. It is true that in this couutry, in and since

3 An Industrial Revolution, by Lyman Abbott, May, 1915; The Outlook, Vol. 110, No. 4.

Colonial days, rigid laws have been in force against combinations and contracts in restraint of trade; but the equally deadly practices of intensive competition itself, viz: rebates, underhand methods of diverting a competitor's trade, "dumping," etc., were not within the purview of the restrictive statutes, and business became at length so honeycombed with special interests and acts of favoritism that the country rose in revolt, and the statutes creating the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Sherman Law were enacted in a determined effort to cope with this dangerous and growing evil.

These statutes have reduced to subjection to law many powerful interests and combinations which by hidden means and unfair methods were absorbing the trade of the country in their particular lines. The benefit has been apparent; but there remained a multitude of pernicious practices which the provisions for stateinstituted proceedings and the right to individuals to bring actions for three-fold damages did not and in the nature of things could not reach and obliterate.

6. NEW MEASURES AND METHODS REQUIRED.

Business Interests Demand That Destructive Competition Shall Also Be Restrained.-Thinking men, including our highest class of merchants and producers, have been devoting their careful attention to the situation before and about them, realizing that a contented and prosperous community can be created and maintained only upon a basis of plain dealing, and that the great body of citizens will welcome an adjustment of these problems along permanent lines. It was very natural that the study of conditions should lead them into a comparison of the situations before and after the institution of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and include a critical examination of the results which flow from competition when regulated by law.

In former times-as with labor-the railroads and other common-carriers were entirely free to compete where and when they chose, and rebates to large or favored patrons, cut-rates, free haulage at terminals, etc., were common practice. As in evolution, the survival of the fittest-and its equally inexorable counterpart, the elimination of the unfittest-led to the rapid absorption of the smaller enterprises as well as those without strategic position; and when that process had run its course, a "war of the

Titans" brought competitive rates to a point where as was disclosed in a public examination "the freight did not pay for the axlegrease." In brief, it transpired that whereas "competition is the life of trade,❞—that feature, in railroad circles as in the affairs of labor, demanded that the state, in the public interest, should intervene, and should lay down certain rules and regulations, and should in the exercise of its plenary authority under its general powers, interdict and declare illegal all competition which is destructive in its ultimate effect.

Demand Is General.-The study of conditions referred to above has progressed so rapidly and so far that the opinion has become quite general that the power to regulate competition between common carriers could and should be extended to trade and commerce in general and that an interstate board of control would create, in time, a code of business ethics that would crystallize about the restrictive statutes and in the end prevent in a large degree if not entirely the unfair methods of competition which have resulted (in the larger cases) in proceedings under the Sherman Law.

7. ADVANTAGES OF RAILROAD RATE REGULATION.

Benefits of Rate-Regulation Shown.-Under present conditions, the railroads extending to cite an instance-from Chicago to New York, New Orleans or San Francisco, must each compete under rates fixed by authority, upon a basis of the distance travelled and service performed; and rapidity and certainty of delivery and other relative advantages and conveniences to shippers are the deciding factors, in attracting business to particular lines. Here competition has a legitimate field, which in its turn, leads to improvements to retain and attract trade; and all at a rate which has been fixed at a figure intended to insure fair returns upon the investment involved, with the result that few if any railroad managers would return if they could, to the period when independent action and unrestricted competition was the prevailing rule.

8. SUPERVISion of general busiNESS DESIRED.

Evolution of Existing Sentiment.—It is true that those capitalists and persons in charge of large producing interests who are now advocating competition under provisions guaranteeing uni

form conditions for all concerned, have not arrived at their present view point without travelling other paths in search of an unrestricted outlet for their several products. Efforts to restrain trade and to control markets in the '70s and early '80s were evidenced by pools and "gentlemen's agreements"; later, the trust and then the holding company came into general use for this purpose, and with the adverse ruling in 1904 in the Northern Securities case came the era of creating vast combinations to hold the title to allied industries, at first hand. The last expedient had the advantage or disadvantage—of placing ownership where the responsible persons could be located and reached by the state in anti-trust litigations to remove restraints of trade; and weary of seeking to combat or circumvent the popular will, the flag of truce has been raised, and peace seems at last assured.

National Commercial Conference Convened.-President Taft, in response to the sentiment of the country and with prophetic vision, early in 1912 issued a call for a National Commercial Conference to be held in Washington; and in response there assembled a gathering of six hundred delegates representing commercial bodies in all but one State in the Union, and there were present also delegates from the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and from bodies of American merchants residing in foreign cities, as well.*

The key-note in the President's call is found in the words: "How can business and the National Government be brought together in a broad national co-operation that will aid both business and the Government?"

Investigation by Congress Begun.-Congress was also alert and active, and under the resolution of July 26, 1911, the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce was already holding that series of open hearings which continued from day to day until

4 Among the results of the Conference was the organization of The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America. This association represents numerous interests, and by valuable addresses and published articles has done much to direct public opinion. By affording Committees of Congress the benefit of expert advice by men of standing and experience, it has been instrumental in removing prejudices and in nullifying the practice of maintaining a paid lobby at the capitol.

For useful information on anti-trust legislation, see printed Report of Speeches delivered at its Second Annual Meeting February 12, 1914, issued by the association.