Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/135

 work upon the barb device and gradually considerable wire with barbs attached came into use.

In 1875 about eight tons of barb wire were sold. Improvements were made from year to year and barbed fencing wire began to come into quite common use on the prairies remote from timber or pine lumber. When it was seen by shrewd observers that barbed wire was likely to be so improved and perfected as to become the popular fencing material of the country a “trust” was organized by Washburn & Moen of Massachusetts and J. M. Elwood of Illinois, for the purpose of buying up the best patents covering the most valuable inventions and thus control the manufacture of the entire product, close up all competing factories and fix the price of barbed wire for the whole United States. This is believed to have been one of the first of the “trusts” that have since grown into a power so strong and arbitrary as to threaten to put an end to free competition and close all small manufacturing concerns in the country. This Washburn syndicate succeeded in purchasing several patents on the various processes of barbing wire and also on various machines used in the different processes. Thus fortified it began suits in the United States Courts to prohibit other firms and individuals from manufacturing barbed wire. One of these suits was brought in the United States Circuit Court in Chicago where a decision was obtained which, the syndicate claimed, gave it the exclusive control of the manufacture of barbed fencing wire for the entire country. Acting upon this assumption the syndicate succeeded in organizing a “trust” consisting of forty factories in various portions of the United States which were bound together by a secret compact. Among the conditions of this compact were the following:

“First, plain wire to be purchased of Washburn & Moen and Elwood; second, all factories to pay a royalty to Washburn & Company on every pound of wire barbed and sold; third, no wire to be sold direct to farmers