ANCIENT MORTMAIN AND MODERN MONOPOLY Fifty years ago, when individual furnaces were turning out pig iron, which was either sold to some jobber in Pittsburg or Cleve land or elsewhere, or corded up beside the furnace, to await a favorable turn in the market, the investor relied upon the vicis situde of trade for the single profit which was his sole reward. The sailing vessel upon the Great Lakes, or the local railroad, carried his product to the distributing point, and in time, it percolated into the estab lishments where it became the material for plows, nails, wire, engines, and all the legion forms which modern life requires in the employment of metal. When trade was brisk, and the demand created good returns, numerous furnaces were "blown in," and their fires lighted the hilltops throughout the mining regions. Such an output quickly equaled, then sur passed the needs of the country, and with the first approach of depression, the weaker companies ceased work, and the larger and stronger heaped up a surplus of output which in turn had to be "carried," if it did not over-weigh and break down the owners before the advent of a renewed demand. Thus it was "feast or famine," and capi talists who were not adventurous were more attracted to safer if not saner, means of investment. To-day we have the modern corporation, with its ownership of a whole range of iron mines, with a further range preempted and held in reserve; a fleet of steamers solely engaged in carrying the ore to the receiving port, with colossal equipments at the ter mini for loading and unloading these crafts in a marvelously short period of time; rail roads to haul it to the vast plants, where it is not only turned into staple forms of pigs or ingots, but is transformed into wire, tubing, girders, rails, and many of the fin ished products which the builder or the railway requires. The output is adjusted to a nicety to the demands of the year or season, and the price, if not controlled, is at least regulated for its
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competitors as well as for itself, — to the general benefit of all who must figure upon an element of stability in prices, when computing the cost of structural iron or steel. It must be recognized, we believe, that in comparing the old system with the new, no element of rancor over changed condi tions has been permitted to enter into this brief epitome; and that full credit for the element of stability has been accredited to the latter phase of the subject. With no discount for the loss of individual effort — which certainly is an element in the up building of the American character — and with no antagonism against mere size, as such, it must be maintained that the result is in effect monopoly, and must be approached and treated of in that way, or the whole subject is seen in a partial and distorted light. The recent developments of an investi gation into certain of the railroads of the United States, have disclosed the owner ship by one system of the control or of a substantial interest, in supposedly competing lines extending from ocean to ocean, and from the wheat fields of the Canadian North west to the Gulf and the Mexican frontier. Like conditions prevail in mineral oil, in coal, in lumber, in flour, in the meat trade and even in such domestic mintitia as butter, poultry, and eggs, in connection with the cold storage establishments. To localize the view point, what is the situation in and about Greater New York, the metropolitan city of the New World? The means of transit, excepting in Brooklyn, is now so far united that whether the traveler takes his way from home to office by the elevated, surface, or subway routes, his fare is transferred into the same ultimate fund. Gas and electric companies are substan tially one; the telephone is unquestionably a field where competition is unknown; "in dependent" ice companies exist only in name. The river steamers and the coast
