wholesale
Grocers' Guild of Canada, which includes 96 per cent. of the Dominion's
wholesale traders, entered into a compact with the Canadian sugar
refiners, who agreed that dealers outside of the guild should be charged
30 cents per 100 pounds more for sugar than those who were in the guild.
In November, 1887, fourteen members of the guild were expelled and were
compelled to pay the higher price. The executive committee of the guild
fixed the selling price for the retail dealers. The guild was so
successful with sugar that it extended its operations to starch, baking
powder, and tobacco, fixing prices for those goods as well. The
committee of the Dominion Parliament, appointed to investigate the
guild, reported that it was a combination obnoxious to public interest,
because it limited competition, advanced prices, and treated with gross
injustice those in the trade who were not its members. In New York State
there are two associations of wholesale grocers which are working to
prevent competition in the sugar trade. They have fixed a uniform price
for sugar, and have tried to make arrangements with the managers of the
sugar trust by which that organization shall discriminate against all
grocers who are not members of the association by refusing to sell them
sugar or charging them a higher price. In some other sections an attempt
has been, or is being, made by which the retail grocer sells only at
certain fixed prices determined by a committee of the wholesalers who
issue each week a card of rates. It is urged in defense of the movement
that sugar has been sold at an actual loss by both the wholesale and
retail trade for a very long time. The Grocers' Association, at its
first meeting, passed a resolution declaring that it was opposed to
combinations for the purpose of extorting unreasonable profits from the
public, and that all that was sought was to prevent the evil of handling
certain staples below the cost of doing the business. But if we inquire
why these staples have been handled at a loss, the answer is, because of
the strong competition which has prevailed. The organization, then, is a
combination to limit competition, to suppress it, in fact, and the
difference between its purpose and work and that of the Sugar Trust is a
difference of degree and not of kind. The reason for its moderate
demands may be because grocers are more liberal-hearted than refiners,
or because they understand that their power over the trad