Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/235

 ATTITUDE OF GOVERNMENT TOWARD TRUSTS 221

To summarize, then, as regards the attitude assumed toward combination by both state and national legislatures, it has been destructive with the exceptions of the federal act establishing the Department of Commerce and Labor, and the anti-rebate law. If the conclusion reached above as to the real nature of the problem is correct, then the entire legislation relative to industrial combinations, with the exceptions just enumerated, has been based upon a false principle. The futility in the accom- plishment of its aim seems to demonstrate this beyond a reason- able doubt.

If, then, improper action has been taken regarding this important problem, what stand shall we now take ? It is often popularly charged that one disapproving of the strictly "anti- trust" attitude, heretofore assumed, is in favor of trusts, in favor of monopoly, in favor of crushing out competition, and in favor of all the evils that may accompany the concentration of capital in the hands of single private industrial corporations. This is hardly fair. It may be that some do favor a strictly laissez-faire policy. The writer, however, believes that James B. Dill, the noted corporation lawyer of New York city, stated the proper doctrine in an address before the Seminary in Economics of Harvard University, March 10, 1903, when he said:

The safe principle, however, is found in the statement that the "trust problem" is not the problem of abolishing industrial combinations, but of properly applying the principles which they represent, recognizing that they are a power national in extent and a necessary subject of federal jurisdiction.

The basis of discussion as to the legal control of combinations must be not primarily utility, and secondarily control, but utilization and control stand- ing part passu.

Granting that some sort of control is necessary, one question of prime importance is whether that control should be exercised by the several states and federal government dually, or whether the entire responsibility should be assumed by the latter. To me the last plan is preferable. The trust of today is a force that exerts a national influence. The large corporations, creatures of the states, are not confined to state boundaries in their dealings, but, on the contrary, many of them operate in almost every state