COMPETITION AND THE TRUSTS. 621 



accurately adjust supply to demand, and tlieir shelves were rarely 

 too heavily laden with wares. To-day, so rapidly have improve- 

 ments in steam-machinery multiplied the output of factories and 

 mills, that overproduction is their chronic case ; and this over- 

 production is in no slight measure due to a fallacy into which 

 sanguine men have been led by the rapid expansion of America's 

 railroad system. Beyond the increase of market due to new pop- 

 ulations attracted by this expansion, unwarranted expectations 

 have been entertained. The mere aggregation of the small dis- 

 tricts in which business was done in the past has been taken to 

 mean an immense enlargement of the whole national demand, as 

 if taking down fences were to augment the area of contiguous 

 farms. Railroad extension means new rivalry quite as often as 

 new customers. Woolens woven in Minnesota now compete in 

 Massachusetts and Connecticut with goods of home production. 

 Iron castings from Tennessee and Alabama are to-day entering 

 Northern markets by virtue of freight-tariffs nominal in compar- 

 ison with those of fifteen or twenty years ago. Now that the 

 whole Union is merged as a single market, calculations with re- 

 gard to competition are more difficult than ever before. A genera- 

 tion or two since under-supply was a common liability. To-day 

 the opposite embarrassment of overproduction is the business 

 man's problem as he surveys dislocations of industry as much 

 more severe than those of his grandfather's time as the waves of 

 the storm-beaten Atlantic exceed the ripples of a mill-pond. And 

 evil has bred after its kind. Prior to 1878 Canada had a low tar- 

 iff ; the protective duties enacted that year were imposed chiefly 

 because of overproduction in the United States. It was shown 

 that Canadian manufacturing interests were demoralized through 

 the Dominion being made a slaughter -market for the surplus 

 stocks of American factories and mills. 



Competition's systematic underselling is chargeable with the 

 enormous losses which arise from adulteration. Consumers are 

 usually poor judges of the purity or durability of what they buy, 

 and the appearance of cheapness easily deceives them. When 

 once adulteration has lowered a price, they resist the increase of 

 it necessary to restore a sound standard of quality. Yet, as a rule, 

 the great majority of those who practice adulteration are unwill- 

 ing parties thereto. If a grinder of paints begins mixing sulphate 

 of baryta with his white leads, his competitors must do the same. 

 If a dealer in sirup dilutes it with glucose, in self-defense others 

 in the trade must practice the same deception. The low prices 

 brought about by such methods mean dear buying. Especially is 

 this the case with textile fabrics. Cottons and woolens are not 

 seldom deteriorated in wearing quality one half by admixtures 

 which only reduce the cost of production one fifth ; and greed has 



