130 NINETEENTH REPORT. 



ment for further relief, wliile government continues to rely on the 

 efficiency of tlie competitive idea. Is it to become the function of govern- 

 ment to take a closer relation to production and distribution as a means 

 of protecting the public from the ravages of the private corporation? 

 Additional aid has been sought through the force of publicity brought to 

 bear upon objectionable conditions and finally by the Federal Trade 

 Commission as an administrative agency. 



There seems to be sufficient reason for contending that these means 

 have not satisfactorily suppressed the evils from which we suffer. In 

 fact it seems apparent that these practices, instead of being eliminated, 

 are characterized by more objectionable tendencies than at any previous 

 time. Profiting by the past efforts the control of products is achieved 

 in more elusive ways, and a seeming scantier regard for public opinion 

 and natural conditions of human interchange of commodities and services. 



This statement is made in full realization that the present is an 

 abnormal period, when excessive prices may be more easily exacted. No 

 less obvious also is the fact that under production is accountable for high 

 prices in some instances today as for example, potatoes and beans in 

 Michigan. 



However, eliminating from our consideration these two facts as ex- 

 planatory in some measure of the present high prices and scarcity of 

 products there remains indisputable evidence of high handed practices 

 in the involuntary confession of the paper trust and the unsavory 

 revelations of the governmental investigation of the coal situation. The 

 unblushing effrontery with which men have held up the public in both 

 of these instances, and extorted from a helpless public exorbitant 

 prices, in the one case driving individuals from the pursuit of business, 

 in the other causing immeasurable suffering (in the case of the coal com- 

 bine proposing to continue extortionate prices through the coming year), 

 is unmistakable evidence of the above contention that the practice of 

 control of industrial product is even more serious than heretofore. That 

 the control of wealth is a very present and serious feature in our civiliza- 

 tion. 



Such facts serve to make the ordinary citizen wonder to what extent 

 similar conditions are accountable for many other high priced products 

 and to what extent the business world is dominated by illegal combines. 

 Certain it is that such facts not only shake one's faith in human nature, 

 but also in the efficiency of all those working principles of business which 

 one has relied upon in the past to preserve justice among men. 



Certain it is that some adequate solution of this grave problem must 

 be found and applied, or emboldened by these uncurbed successes, future 

 corporations in increasing numbers will extort from an unprotected con- 



