IS COMBINATION CRIME? 



51 



ter of Ms trade and as a member of his guild) witli the modem 

 " knight of labor/' who will not that any should toil for bread 

 who has not first paid a tax to his " lodge " or " headquarters " or 

 camp — is to insult the guild of the middle ages and its master. 

 But, for all that, the guild and the trades-union are nearer in 

 theory and in practice than the guild and the modern business 

 corporation as chartered in any known quarter of the civilized 

 world to-day. One thing, however, there was in those middle 

 ages, of which, happily for Mr. Hudson and his kind, no analogy 

 has survived — namely, statutes against heresy and seditious 

 utterances, and capital punishments, such as disemboweling, 

 the axe, fagot, etc., for the stirrer-up of discord and unreason- 

 able public discontent. So much for feudalism and the guilds. 



Mr. Hudson's next sentence is a long one, and it reads hero- 

 ically : " It is the almost universal plea, in mitigation for this in- 

 fraction of economic law, that the capital engaged in combina- 

 tion can not earn fair profits if competition is allowed free play. 

 But what constitutes the just measure of reward for capital ? 

 What are the fair profits for capital seeking investment in 

 bonds, mortgages, or loans on commercial paper ? The rate of 

 interest that is fixed by free competition. What is the just 

 measure of returns on capital invested in houses, stores, farms, 

 small manufactures, or a thousand other forms of ordinary en- 

 terprise ? Free competition. What, indeed, is the force which 

 fixes the rate of wages, despite efforts of labor organizations to 

 oppose combination to the action of that force, and notwith- 

 standing the violence provoked where these organizations are 

 brought into conflict with the great combinations of capital ? 

 The competition of labor for wages. But the result of combina- 

 tion is to establish, for a favored class of capital, by means of 

 the control of the highways of commerce, an exemption from 

 the force which fixes the just reward of all other "human effort, 

 so that excessive profits can be exacted from the masses, to be 

 counted by the tens of millions annually ; and if the ideal of 

 railway pooling could be attained, this policy would impose 

 upon the nation a burden of fictitious capital three times the 

 amount of the national debt ! " 



The term " free competition " in the above, as we have shown, 

 means "forced competition'' (at least it means that if the re- 

 mainder of Mr. Hudson's paper means anything). A and B must 

 compete, whether they will or no : the moment they combine and 

 become A & B, or A, B & Co., or The A and B Manufactur- 

 ing Company, they are a public calamity and a standing threat 

 to our free institutions ! The reader will notice also that labor 

 organizations are law-abiding, peaceful, and highly creditable 

 organizations, unless unhappily " brought into conflict with the 



