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industrial competition to do its full work. That the field be fair, cunning promotions, local price-cutting, personal and local rebates, factors' agreements, and the like must cease. That the field be open, anti-pooling clauses for railways and anti-monopoly clauses for industrials must go, too. In the fair field, no competitor's growth must be checked even though complete monopoly

come.

In the national field kept thus, both fair and open, full monopoly may not win out in many lines of industry. It may not win out in any line. If full monopoly does win out in any line, that will be proof that it is the sought-for cost-cheapening unit. Whenever and in whatever industry this may be proved, the public mind then and there may see that competition is dead and should be buried to the music of suitable praise for its past service to man. To fight monopoly, then, to try to quicken dead competition, then, would mean that democracy was listing itself with the weavers who vainly strove against the new loom, the stage drivers who threw themselves before the locomotive, and all others who have futilely sought to stop the march of cost-cheapeners. Honest cost-cheapeners come to stay. This is a lesson of economic history which democracy needs to know and to apply.

"Monopoly" and "monopolist" must not be allowed to frighten great, maturing democracy. Rather in the fair field, kept deliberately open, let the honest cost-cheapening monopoly be welcomed, if it come. It will be gigantic-nation wide in its power and in its service. Its public character will be beyond dispute. Control by the nation, therefore, will be as natural as

it will be necessary. Shall this be effective Federal control or outright government ownership? Evolution admits little doubt here effective control has first place.

Such social control in addition to insuring fair treatment of all competitors as the monopoly is developing, and fair opportunity always for new competitors to enter the field against the once attained monopoly, must go further. It must extend to workmen in these quasi-public businesses living chances now offered in full public enterprises-reasonable hours, living wages, safe and healthful factory conditions, accident compensations, and service pensions. It must protect buyers of the monopoly's stocks and bonds against gambling issues. It must safeguard buyers of the monopoly's goods against the natural bent of monopoly to set those prices which will yield it greatest pure profit.

Price control must be at once friendly to the business and just to the public. Friendly-in that it allows such gain as will spur the industrial captains to do their best; just to all-in that it sets a fair maximum margin above actual cost.

In summary, this program is that the nation shall keep a fair, open industrial field everywhere. No more than this is needed, unless, through fair contest, monopoly shall come. If and when it comes, the fact must be accepted. Knowing neither costly distrust nor foolish fear, the master nation may then write and enforce that law of control which will make huge monopoly its giant servant.

Our national Trust legislation to date has attempted to secure the fair field by law against unfair competitive methods. It has created a commission with wide powers

of investigation, publicity, and control-a commission whose powers could readily be widened to cover the whole needful field of social industrial control if national monopoly came and was acknowledged and accepted. The serious error in the national legislation, to date, if the economic program outlined above be sound, is due to traditional blind fear of monopoly. This has led to attempts to legislate out of existence and to prevent centralizations of industrial control where they even tend to monopoly or to restrain competition. The fair industrial field America's Trust legislation has sought to secure from the days of the Sherman Act and has fairly effectively insured through the acts of 1914; but the open industrial field is thus far bluntly opposed by this same series of national Trust laws. They are properly called anti-trust laws since the very essence of them is hostility to any growth or combination in the industrial world which even suggests possible monopoly. This persistent monopoly fear and attempt at monopoly prevention or destruction is the source of much of the difficulty in dealing with great industry. The normal development of much of manufacturing industry seems to be unmistakably in the direction of giant industry, if not of complete monopoly. To legislate in opposition to a normal tendency of industry is sure to make that legislation difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. If the nation would take the further step of creating an open field for full industrial development, as it has made ready to secure a fair field, if it would do this both as to railways and as to industrial Trusts, the whole great matters of control of the nation's mightier productive energies would be greatly simplified. The

Federal Trade Commission is seeking to help rather than to hinder, threaten, or punish business development, but it is hampered by the anti-monopoly mandates of the law. If these were elided from the law then lawmakers, courts, and administrative commissions at present engaged in the uninspiring and costly business of trying to thwart or defeat great industrial growth would all be thereby set free to do the stimulating, progressive work of guiding and directing the nation's great energies to their utmost achievements.

F

CHAPTER XV

TRUSTS AND THE FEDERAL COURTS

ROM October 13, 1890, when suit against the members of the Nashville Coal Exchange was

begun in the Circuit Court at Nashville, Tennessee, down to October 27, 1916, when indictment was returned in the Oregon District Court, charging certain officers and agents of nine cement companies with engaging in a combination to restrain and to monopolize trade and commerce in cement on the Pacific coast, one hundred and seventy-four suits have been filed in the Federal courts of the United States alleging violation of the anti-trust statutes. These cases were instituted under the respective presidential administrations as follows: During Harrison's four years, seven cases; during Cleveland's four years, eight; during McKinley's four and a half years, only three; during Roosevelt's seven and a half years, forty-four; during Taft's four years, eighty, and during the first three and two-thirds years of Wilson's first administration, thirtytwo. The subject matters of these suits cover a wide range and indicate both the reach of Trust development and the extension given to the anti-trust law. A score of the suits were against organized laborers. These labor suits begin with the notable injunction cases against the draymen of New Orleans in 1893 and against members of the American Railway Union during the

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