in any country with equal facility, it
is difficult to maintain a Trust, even though machinery is largely
used and the individual units of capital are big.

Each kind of commodity, as it passes through the many processes from
the earth to the consumer, may be looked upon as a stream whose
channel is broader at some points and narrower at others. Different
streams of commodities narrow at different places. Some are narrowest
and in fewest hands at the transport stage, when the raw material is
being concentrated for production, others in one of the processes of
manufacture, others in the hands of export merchants. Just as a number
of German barons planted their castles along the banks of the Rhine,
in order to tax the commerce between East and West which was obliged
to make use of this highway, so it is with these economic "narrows."
Wherever they are found, monopolies plant themselves in the shape of
"rings," "corners," "pools," "syndicates," or "trusts."

FOOTNOTES:

[124] There still survive in certain old-fashioned trades firms which
do business without formal written contracts, and which would be
ashamed to take a lower price than they had at first asked, or to seek
to beat down another's price.

[125] There need, of course, be no actual diversion of goods into the
possession of the Ring: the essence of the monopoly consists in the
control, not in the possession of goods.

[126] Baker, _Monopolies and the People_, p. 81.

[127] Cf. Miss Potter, _The Co-operative Movement_, p. 199.

[128] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, pp. 283-285.

[129] C.S.T. Dodd, "Ten Years of the Standard Oil Trust," _Forum_, May
1892.

[130] "The Standard Oil Trust," Roger Sherman, _Forum_, July 1892.

[131] Roger Sherman, "The Standard Oil Trust," _The Forum_, July 1892.

[132] Argument of Standard Oil Trust before the House Committee on
Manufactures, 1888 (quoted Baker, _Monopolies and the People_, p. 21).

[133] J.W. Jenks, _Economic Journal_, vol. ii. p. 73.

[134] _Report to the Commission of the Senate of New York State_, p.
440.

[135] _Economic Journal_, vol. ii. p. 83.

[136] "The Economic and Social Aspect of Trusts," _Political Science
Quarterly_, Sept. 1888.

[137] Baker, writing 1890, names fifty-nine articles which have at
various times formed the material of Trusts, ranging in importance
from sugar and iron rails to castor-oil, school slates, coffins, and
lead pencils.

CHAPTER VI.

ECONOMIC POWER