i 4 o CHARLES J. BULLOCK 



effected by monopoly. Now it is evident that competition 

 can never, except for relatively short periods when the 

 market is overstocked, reduce the price below one dollar, 

 and that producers will never enter the field unless they 

 hope to be able to secure at least these figures. A monopoly, 

 therefore, can maintain the price at ninety nine and nine 

 tenths cents without inviting competition; and the public 

 cannot hope to secure more than the most insignificant 

 fraction of the savings due to consolidation. Competition, 

 manifestly, can do no more than prevent prices from rising 

 as high as one dollar. Competitors might, at the outset, 

 enter the industry under a misapprehension of the situa- 

 tion; but it would soon be demonstrated that a price just 

 under one dollar would make competition hopeless. If, 

 moreover, as is alleged, mere mass of capital tends to deter 

 competition until prices are raised somewhat above the com- 

 petitive point, this argument becomes still stronger; and it 

 would seem that the monopoly might charge even one dollar 

 without holding out sufficient inducements to possible rivals. 

 Thus the whole saving, and possibly something more, would 

 go to the combination. 



Secondly, even if competition could hold monopolistic 

 power in check, the remedy would be wasteful and uneco- 

 nomic, and would mark a return to the very evils which 

 combination is supposed to cure. The argument for monop- 

 oly is based upon the claim that competition is wasteful, 

 destructive, and productive of all the evils in the calendar. 

 To remedy the evils of competition, it is proposed to resort 

 to combination: then, to cure the wrongs of monopoly, it 

 is argued that we can return to competition. Indeed, the 

 evils of renewed competition after monopoly has once been 

 established are more intense, since the chances are that 

 the high profits of the combination will call too much capi- 

 tal into the field; so that the last state of the industry that 

 has been regulated " rationally" and "scientifically" by 

 a single company will be worse than the first. Moreover, 

 if combination possesses all the advantages that are claimed 

 for it, wise public policy would necessitate the adoption of 

 some method of preventing waste from the useless duplica- 



