i 3 8 CHARLES J. BULLOCK 



the first kind and 59 per cent for the second. At the same 

 time American prices rose from $10.00 to $25.00 per ton, an 

 increase of 150 per cent, so that the absence of foreign compe- 

 tition made the fluctuations more than twice as great as they 

 were in the English market. This, he adds, "is but an illustra- 

 tion of the simple principle that, the wider the range of the 

 sources of supply, the greater the steadiness of prices." When 

 Mr. Carnegie complains, therefore, of the alternating periods 

 of expansion and depression that beset the iron industry, he 

 merely emphasizes the connection between our protective 

 tariff and the intensification of the causes that are alleged to 

 produce trusts. Since the range of our protected industries 

 is so great, the importance of the considerations just pre- 

 sented can hardly be overestimated. Competition is re- 

 stricted by protective duties in most of the industries where 

 combinations are formed; these duties increase the severity, 

 and perhaps the frequency, of the fluctuations from which 

 business suffers; then trusts, a further restriction of freedom, 

 are advocated as a remedy for the ills caused by the initial 

 interference with individual enterprise; and, finally, in order 

 to regulate the trusts, an elaborate system of public super- 

 vision is proposed. Would it not be well to make a genuine 

 trial of competition before condemning it for producing evils 

 which are greatly increased by governmental interference 

 with industrial freedom? 



Competition cannot be proved a failure until it is given 

 a trial. The evils from which many economists would seek 

 refuge in industrial combination are greatly increased by un- 

 wise laws which have now outlived any usefulness that orig- 

 inally they may have possessed. If unhealthful conditions 

 produced by our own interference with the course of business 

 are ever removed, competition will probably develop no evils 

 which could not be borne, as vastly preferable to monopoly, 

 public or private. Indeed, even as things are, the short- 

 comings of the competitive system are exaggerated; and 

 attempted monopoly is more likely in the end to increase, 

 rather than mitigate, those periodic fluctuations from which 

 industry suffers. 



