Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/83

 THE TRUST PROBLEM RESTUDIED 71

does not abuse it, and deals fairly with the consumers, there was nothing illegitimate, nothing exceptional even, in his preliminary destruction of a competitor. If he does abuse his power, the offense lies in that abuse, not in the acts which have made the abuse possible.

At all events, theory aside, Professor Clark's remedy is prac- tically unavailable. The most astute lawyer will give up as hopeless the task of framing an act to suppress the local cutting of prices or the reduction of prices in certain varieties of mer- chandise. If nothing stood between society and socialism except Professor Clark's anti-discrimination policy, then social- ism would indeed be inevitable.

But Professor Clark, like Mr. Macrosty, assumes too much in saying that trusts are born of the necessity of eliminating waste and securing greater efficiency. This is one of the things to be demonstrated. Not all business-men are ready to credit trusts with the "economy" claimed by them. Mr. Carnegie, we saw, a captain of industry if ever there was one, does not allow the plea of economy. In fact, if economy and efficiency were the basis and justification of trusts, smaller and independent manu- facturers could not possibly compete with them. Even the steel combination has stimulated competition. The demand for com- modities has been extraordinary in the past few years, it will be said, and there has been work for all, great as well as small. A series of lean years may come must come, if we are to judge by the history of crises and industrial depressions. Which will go to the wall, the colossal trust or the small corporation? The answer is not at all certain. The talk regarding the efficiency and superiority of the trust is, as a rule, superficial, not to say ignorant. There can be no efficiency, no economy, no superi- ority, without conservatism in management, and this conserva- tism is a rare quality. The number of trusts overtaken by disaster or doomed to disaster furnishes an argument more weighty than the question-begging of the current catch phrases. The trust has not passed its experimental stage. We are too ready to assume, because of the truism that a large corporation is more economical than a small one, that a corporation of cor-