Eddy, Arthur Jerome: The new competition: an examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world ; the change from a competitive to a cooperative basis (New York [u.a.], 1912)

THE NEW COMPETITION

198
ground that it was organized to restrain and monopolize
trade contrary to the Sherman law, one of the industries
being the tin plate.
In its various attitudes toward the industry the Gov-
ernment has “boxed the compass.”
Several millions of people were buying tin plate where
they could buy it cheapest—to wit, England.
The Government, at the urgent solicitation of interested
parties, makes a law to the effect that the people shall not
buy where they can buy the cheapest, but must buy where
tin plate is dearest—to wit, at home.
Then, when competition at home reduces prices to cost
and below, the manufacturers naturally combine to get
what the tariff promised them—profits; whereupon the Gov-
ernment steps in and asks that this combination be dis-
solved because it controls competition and restrains trade
—precisely the two objects Congress had in mind when it
passed the McKinley, the Dingley, and the Payne tariff
bills.
The apologist for the Government will urge that in
erecting a tariff wall against outside competition the least
protected manufacturers inside the arena can honorably do
is to slaughter one another by cut-throat competition—an
argument that does not appeal with irresistible force to the
fellow on the verge of bankruptcy.

IV
Whatever may be said for or against the policy, it is
undeniably true that the theory of protection is diametri-
cally opposed to the proposition that a man should buy
where he can buy the cheapest and sell where he can sell
the dearest.
It is based upon the fundamentally different proposi-