competition has often been shown, but it is not generally\ appreciated. The cost of competitive advertising, traveling salesmen, etc., is enormous. Not long ago four or five leading tobacco manufacturers, who have since formed a combination, found, I have been told, that they were expending annually some three millions of dollars in bidding against one another, two-thirds of which at least could be saved if they were to combine and divide the sales in a fair proportion. Such magazines as the Century get $250 a page for advertisements. When one considers that a prominent brand of soap has frequently taken the whole of the best page of about all of the leading periodicals in every civilized country, one may form some dim idea of the cost. Of course, most periodicals are less expensive than the Century. A leading spice company of New York gives to its customers in premiums at times more than the regular prices of both spices and premium combined. For $37.50 one receives spices to that value and a premium of a $40 clock. $31.25 brings that value in spices and a $40 safe. For $25, a $29 watch and $25 worth of spices; $35 worth of spices and a $35 refrigerator for $50, etc. Now the quality of the spices is guaranteed; and the premiums are all standard makes, so that no question as to their quality is possible. The prices asked for the spices by this company are a little higher-twenty per cent, perhaps - than that asked by some of its competitors who do not give these premiums, but not enough higher to raise the ordinary retail price at all. The other firms have expenses in other ways, so that the retail prices are high in any case. Now all this advertising does not increase to any material extent the total amount of spices or of soap used. It takes business from one firm to give it to another; but it keeps up the prices of goods to consumers. The same remark, of course, holds good with reference to the cost of commercial travelers, and sometimes as to show windows and such means of selling goods.

Besides this enormously expensive system of advertising and of selling, there are many other losses in competition.

Were all the leading manufacturers in almost any line united, the advantages that one has from excellent patents or improved processes of production would inure to the benefit of all. The cost of superintendence would be much reduced, and that of special expert knowledge could be diminished by from fifty to ninety per cent. The goods could be sent to customers from the nearest establishment, and thus a great cost of transportation could be saved. A large proportion of the capital employed in both plants and running expenses could be spared to other enterprises, as well as a goodly percentage of the labor. When the Whiskey Trust was organized, out of eighty distilleries that came into the organization only twelve were left running; yet these twelve during the first year had an output as great as the whole number the year before. Put the soap business or the spice business of the United States. into the hands of one organization, whose business it should be to serve customers rather than to attract them from others, and it is probably not too much to say that we could all use just as many of these articles as we now do, and take our choice of the brands, at one-half the present prices, and still leave to the manufacturer a profit as large as he now gets. In other lines the saving would not be so much, but in all lines it would be great.

Doubtless, if such a change should be made, some laborers would be thrown out of employment; but those remaining might well receive higher wages, and the former could in time get profitable work elsewhere. Of course, the politicians will ask But if all industries were thus monopolized, and men were everywhere thrown out of employment, where could they find work? And one is compelled to answer: I don't know. One knows, simply, that if prices drop materially, many products will be used in much greater quantities than at present, while many new comforts and luxuries will be found whose manufacture will call for capital and labor. If the product is cheaper, we shall have a wider market, and that without lowering wages. If it is asked: What new industries will start? the reply must be again I don't know. But everybody knows that his desires

for comforts and luxuries have always run far beyond his means of gratifying them, because the cost was so great. I believe that it is so with us all. Our demand will come at once for other things, if, by lower prices, some of our money now used in purchasing necessaries is set free. The importance of the workingmen, or the difficulty of finding employment, or the hardship of being out of work, is not underestimated. But the progress of civilization must come through improvements in methods of production, as well as through a better distribution and a wiser consumption, using those words in their older common sense; and we must not neglect any of these sources of saving.

TABLE I.

Average Annual Price in Cents of Refined and Crude Petroleum.

The fact that a monopoly saves much of the waste that of necessity takes place under free competition, shows what the real function of monopoly may be, either in the hands of the state or under the control of the state, or under any system so managed that its saving goes in the main to society instead of to the few monopolists. But, on the other hand, it must not be thought, because competition is wasteful and

monopolies can make lower prices, that they generally do The solicitor of the Standard Oil Company has shown a good many times in print that the price of oil is much less now than it was before that company became so powerful. He has also shown that the difference between the price of crude and that of refined oil is much less than it used to be; and then he argues that the monopoly-which he says is no monop

A Price of refined sugar (granulated). B Price of raw sugar (96° centrifugal). C= Difference between A and B =cost of refining plus profits.

oly

has been a positive benefit to consumers. The argument is certainly very plausible. Still, the facts that he gives are not enough to uphold his argument fully. It is the natural tendency for the cost of production in all industries to lessen with the progress of invention; and this is especially the case with industries that are entirely new, as was that of refining petroleum only a few years ago. It may be seen from the price lists that the rate of decline has been very much less since the formation of the powerful central organization than

it was before. Indeed, there has been no regular decline that is really noticeable for the last twelve years.

The late developments in the processes of manufacture appear largely in a great increase in the side products—an increase that might enable the producer to lower the price of the main product without any lessening of profit.

On the whole, so far as this industry is concerned, we can say

a. Organization of trust. b. Change of tariff. c. Union with competing

refineries.

no more than that the defense has not fully made out its case, the probability being that the monopolization of the industry checked slightly the natural fall in price. Whether the dissolution of the trust has contributed to bring about the decline of the last two years, is an interesting question, but there is no reason to think that it has. The former trustees still,

1 This diagram is constructed from a table of comparative quotations of raw and refined sugars, 1880-93, corrected by Willett & Gray, 91-93 Wall St., New York, and published in their Weekly Statistical Sugar Trade Journal, Feb. 8, 1894.