THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF TRUSTS 135 



and other tactics, which violate every one's sense of fair 

 play although they may be difficult to suppress. If uniform 

 price lists could be made obligatory, then this power of intimi- 

 dating rivals would largely disappear; for, if a trust must give 

 its product away in all markets in order to ruin a competitor 

 who enters a portion of the field, then its losses would be 

 proportionate to the mass of capital, and the advantage over 

 the independent concern would disappear. Without doubt 

 the prevention of price discriminations would be a work of 

 great difficulty; but, if this must be done in order to prevent 

 the abuses of monopoly, then some way of accomplishing the 

 result can and will be foimd. Such a remedy will be less 

 difficult than the elaborate schemes which those who believe 

 in trusts advocate in order to remove admitted abuses in 

 other directions. The menace of mere mass of capital is at 

 the most a cause of temporary monopoly, and its potency 

 can be destroyed by depriving the trusts of their favorite 

 method of "sand-bagging" competitors. 



The final reason for the belief that combinations must 

 ultimately prevail is found in the character of modern com- 

 petition in those industries which require heavy investments 

 of fixed capital. Under such conditions the difficulty of with- 

 drawing specialized investments and the losses that are en- 

 tailed by a suspension of production, make competition so 

 intense that prices may be forced far below a profitable level 

 without decreasing the output; and industrial depression 

 inevitably follows. For such constant fluctuations in prices 

 combination is considered the natural and inevitable remedy. 

 Some writers allege, furthermore, that it "is not possible to 

 have competition without competitors, and, if there be com- 

 petitors, one must prevail," so that monopoly "is the inevi- 

 table fruit of competition." 



The socialist who reads some of these arguments must 

 feel that at last many of the criticisms which he has long 

 urged against competition have been accepted by econo- 

 mists of the orthodox type. Certainly, few stronger indict- 

 ments of the competitive regime have been formulated by 

 socialistic critics of the existing social order. Thus the be- 

 lievers in trusts tell us that "individualism and the competi- 



