ise prices; and that it is quite possible to
have combinations among buyers to restrict competition and keep prices
down. Of course, where the buyer is the final consumer, this is almost
impossible, for the great number of competitors forbids any permanent
combination. Also where the product concerned is a manufactured article
or a mineral product, the mining or manufacturing company or firm will
generally have capital enough and business ability enough to defeat any
attempt of the wholesale merchants to combine to reduce the prices paid
for their output. This he can easily do by selling to retail dealers
direct. But in the case of products gathered from the farmers the case
is different, and the producer can less easily protect himself against
combinations among buyers to fix the price he shall receive. The power
and extent of these monopolies varies with the distance of the farmer
from markets, and also, it must be said, with the intelligence and
shrewdness of the farmer. In districts remote from railways and markets
the farmers are often dependent on the travelling buyers for a chance to
sell their cattle or produce. In a thinly settled region there may be no
more than two or three times in a season when a farmer will have an
opportunity to dispose of his surplus products; and, realizing his
necessity, he is apt to be beaten down to a much lower price than the
buyer would have given if other buyers had been competing with him to
secure the goods. In the chief markets, too, there is often a
combination of buyers formed to keep down prices. The combine of
cattle-buyers in Kansas City and Chicago has just been noted. The New
York Legislative Committee discovered that a milk trust had control of
the supply of milk for New York City, fixing the price paid to the
farmer at three cents per quart, and the selling price at 7 or 8 cents
per quart. According to the suit brought by the Attorney-General of
Louisiana against the Cotton-Seed Oil Trust, that monopoly has reduced
the price paid to the planters for seed from $7 to $4 per ton. As the
total amount of cotton seed which it purchases is about 700,000 tons a
year, it is evident that this feature of the combination alone puts into
the pockets of the owners of the Trust over two million dollars per
annum, over and above the profits made through its control of the
cotton-seed oil market. Evidently the combinations which lower prices by
restricting competition among purchasers ar