DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42346#0046
34
THE NEW COMPETITION
The dealer and manufacturer is caught between the up-
per and nether millstones—he is obliged to pay prices fixed
by farmers’ organizations and wages fixed by labor unions,
but cannot—under the laws of most of the states—organize
with others for his own benefit.
This is a condition so manifestly unfair and illogical it
cannot exist for long, and while it does exist it engenders
mischief and class hatred.
The problem presented is by no means peculiar to this
country, for the nations of Europe are struggling with it,
but the condition is more acute here because we have forty-
eight states and a federal government passing laws on the
subject, and for nearly a generation passing laws—“anti-
trust laws”'—drawn in most drastic terms to suppress co-
operation and promote competition.
XI
The Sherman Act was passed 1890.
Since its enactment many suits have been begun to dis-
solve “trusts”—combinations of dealers and manufacturers.
Not a single suit has been begun to dissolve any one
of the large combinations of labor or of farmers, though
the existence of such combinations arbitrarily controlling
inter-state commerce is a matter of common knowledge.
See Chapter XIX.
What is the net result of the enforcement of that law?
A few “trusts” and a number of lesser combinations
have dissolved, but where one has been suppressed five
hundred have taken its place. No such era of combination
and cooperative organization has ever been known in the
history of the world as the period of twenty-odd years since
the passage of the Sherman act.
This movement has not been organized in “defiance” of
THE NEW COMPETITION
The dealer and manufacturer is caught between the up-
per and nether millstones—he is obliged to pay prices fixed
by farmers’ organizations and wages fixed by labor unions,
but cannot—under the laws of most of the states—organize
with others for his own benefit.
This is a condition so manifestly unfair and illogical it
cannot exist for long, and while it does exist it engenders
mischief and class hatred.
The problem presented is by no means peculiar to this
country, for the nations of Europe are struggling with it,
but the condition is more acute here because we have forty-
eight states and a federal government passing laws on the
subject, and for nearly a generation passing laws—“anti-
trust laws”'—drawn in most drastic terms to suppress co-
operation and promote competition.
XI
The Sherman Act was passed 1890.
Since its enactment many suits have been begun to dis-
solve “trusts”—combinations of dealers and manufacturers.
Not a single suit has been begun to dissolve any one
of the large combinations of labor or of farmers, though
the existence of such combinations arbitrarily controlling
inter-state commerce is a matter of common knowledge.
See Chapter XIX.
What is the net result of the enforcement of that law?
A few “trusts” and a number of lesser combinations
have dissolved, but where one has been suppressed five
hundred have taken its place. No such era of combination
and cooperative organization has ever been known in the
history of the world as the period of twenty-odd years since
the passage of the Sherman act.
This movement has not been organized in “defiance” of