344 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



rise in prices. Some agricultural products, in the production and 

 marketing of which competition has had its freest action, have in- 

 creased more in price than lumber, even though, in the case of agri- 

 cultural products, there has been no prospect of the exhaustion of 

 supply." 



It appears thus that competitive forces would have been sufficient 

 to cause a very considerable rise in prices. Certain lines of general 

 reasoning likewise suggest that efforts of the lumbermen's associations 

 to maintain price lists could hardly have had any great influence on 

 prices. In the first place, there has been some difficulty in securing 

 accurate enough grading of some kinds of lumber to permit effective 

 price control. In the second place, plants are not large, compared 

 with plants in some other industries, are numerous, and widely scat- 

 tered. Mere physical isolation has been an impediment in the way of 

 effective combination. In the third place, many lumbermen have 

 always been so deeply in debt, so tied down by bond issues, that they 

 had to cut and sell their lumber almost regardless of price, in order 

 to meet interest charges. It is claimed that a few plants which refuse 

 to be bound by price agreements are enough to set low prices in times 

 of depression. Prices are of course set by those lumbermen who sell, 

 if there are enough of them, rather than by those who refuse to sell.^* 

 In the fourth place, it is clear that, since price-fixing activities have 

 almost always been carried on by the associations, there would usually 

 remain the competition between woods, even if the association mem- 

 bers were ever so loyal, and ever so strong financially. In the great 

 lumber markets of the country, like Chicago and New York, com- 

 petition between woods is very persistent.^^ 



Competition between woods is not always and everywhere strong 

 enough to insure purely competitive prices. In a certain region and 

 for certain purposes, white pine, for instance, has an element of 

 monopoly advantage over other woods, and might sell at a price 

 above that fixed by free competition, if the white pine producers 

 themselves were sufficiently well organized. This is also true of a 



13 Compton, opus cited, 105. 



1* Proceedings, Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the National Lumber Manuf acr 

 turers' Association, 95. 



15 Compton, opus cited, 41 et seq. 



