CHAPTER XXXIX. 



MONOPOLIES AND SPECIAL PRIVILEGES. 



WHAT ARE MONOPOLIES? 



The granting of a charter or franchise of any kind creates 

 a monopoly. Patents are monopolies. A right to a ferry 

 across a river is a monopoly, usually more or less restricted. 

 A tariff which protects any given industry of the country 

 creates a monopoly. The right to do a banking or manufac 

 turing business in some degree constitutes a monopoly. The 

 same is true of railroads and telegraph lines. Even the 

 pioneers of a new country, in one respect, partake of the 

 character of monopolists; for the after-coming settler must 

 buy of them, or not at all. 



Monopolies, as these illustrations show, are not evils nec 

 essarily. It is an abuse of the powers granted that consti 

 tutes the evil. If Congress grant extraordinary privileges 

 to certain classes of manufacturers, in consequence of which 

 all who buy their wares are really obliged to pay a tax on 

 the value of the goods sold, this protection constitutes a 

 monopoly, not necessarily objectionable, howeve r; not at all 

 so, indeed, if the design be to build up that manufacture, 

 and the protection bestowed is not so large as to make the 

 tax unjust to the nation at large. But when the industry 

 becomes strong, and while exporting their wares to foreign 

 ports, and underselling- the markets there, and especially 

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