passed by the Diet of
Nuremberg. [Sidenote: 1522-33] Particularly noteworthy were the
number of agreements to create a monopoly price in metals. [Sidenote:
1524] Thus a ring of German mine-owners was formed artificially to
raise the price of silver, a measure defended publicly on the ground
that it enriched Germany at the expense of the foreigner. Another
example was the formation of a tinning company under the patronage of
Duke George of Saxony. [Sidenote: 1518] It proposed agreements with
its Bohemian rivals to fix the price of tin, [Sidenote: 1549] but these
usually failed even after a monopoly of Bohemian tin had been granted
by Ferdinand to Conrad Mayr of Augsburg.

[Sidenote: Corners]

The immense difficulty of cornering any of the larger articles of
commerce was not so well appreciated in the earlier time as it is now.
Nothing is more instructive than the history of the mercury "trusts" of
those years. [Sidenote: 1523] When the competing companies owning
mines at Idria in Carniola amalgamated for the purpose of {529}
enhancing the price of quicksilver, the attempt broke down by reason of
the Spanish mines. Accordingly, one Ambrose Hoechstetter of Augsburg
[Sidenote: 1528] conceived the ambitious project of cornering the whole
supply of the world. As has happened so often since, the higher price
brought forth a much larger quantity of the article than had been
reckoned with, the so-called "invisible supply"; the corner broke down
and Hoechstetter failed with enormous liabilities of 800,000 gulden, and
died in prison. The crash shook the financial world, but was
nevertheless followed by still better planned and better financed
efforts of the Fuggers to put the whole quicksilver product of the
world into an international trust. These final attempts were more or
less successful. Another ambitious scheme, which failed, was that of
Conrad Rott of Augsburg [Sidenote: 1570 ff.] to get a monopoly of
pepper. He agreed to buy six hundred tons of pepper from the king of
Portugal one year and one thousand tons the next, at the rate of 680
ducats the ton, but even this failed to give him the desired monopoly.

[Sidenote: Regulation of monopolies]

Just as in our own memory the trusts have aroused popular hatred and
have brought down on their heads many attempts, usually unsuccessful,
of governments to deal with them, so at the beginning of the
capitalistic era, intense unpopularity was the lot of the new
c