66o 



The Review of Reviews. 



ARREST IN GERMAN 



SHIPBUILDING. 



Mr. Ellis Barker, in the Nineteenth Century, gives 

 the following statistics :— 



Between 1S90 and 1900 the German shipbuilding industry 

 expanded very greatly. Since igoo it has expanded very little, 

 and the shipbuilders are complaining loudly. If we now look 

 at Germany's Merchant Marine we find that it has progressed as 

 follows i — 



Tonnage <,/ German SUwinships. 



Tins Tons 



In 1895 . . . 879,939 In 1908 . . . 2,256,783 

 In 190S . . . 2,256, 7S3 In 191 1 . . . 2,396,733 



Increase for period 1,376.844 Increase for period 139,950 

 Increase per year 114,500 Increase per year 47,ooo 



Here we find again that the rapid progress of former years is 

 no longer maintained, but has been replaced by a state resembling 

 stagnation. 



TRUSTS NO NOVELTY. 



" The People and,the Trusts " is the title of a series 

 of articles besjinning in the June number of the American 

 Review nj Reviews. They were the absorbing interest 

 of Mr. Lanier during the last six months of his life. 

 " The keynote of the series is the demand for publicity 

 of the essential facts nl organisation and management 

 of combinations of capital." 



TRUSTS 'f FOLKS NOT FORCES." 



The first paper is by Mr. Holland Thompson. He 

 asks : — 



Why must calm discussion of monopoly, the most human of 

 forces, expressing as it dees one of the fundamental facts of our 

 natures, be dehumanised ? For that matter " trusts," that is to 

 say, the driving power bt-liind the combinations of capital, are 

 not forces. They are folks first and forces afterward. Will it 

 not throw light upon the whole matter to discuss these folks in 

 their relation to the other individuals concerned ? 



.So he deals with the individual citizen in his relation 

 to the managers of " big business." " Succeeding 

 articles will take up the borrower, the labouring man, 

 the investor, the middleman, and the captain of 

 industry." 



TRUSTS AND MONnPOLIES ONCE EVERYWHERE. 



Then he launches into history and asks : — 



Why not compare moni.p'ily with itself? Why not study the 

 trusts of to-d.ay in the liglu of the trusts of yesterday ? 



Step by step the probli-m will grow simpler. One by one 

 those features of trust pr. dice which we have thought so new 

 will be seen to be old, atui they will grow less important as we 

 see how our fathers met and dealt with them. A series of 

 interesting parallels will rv-ull. We shall find that competition 

 was the uncommon, and monop6ly the usual condition of busi- 

 ness in the past. 



Trusts will be found from Hudson Bay to the Bay of Ik-ngal, 

 from the Baltic to the Gulf of Mexico. One trust ruled India 

 and controlled the destinies of millions of people ; another made 

 the Baltic an inland sea, making treaties and dethroning 

 monarchs as need arose. Another financed the Crusaders who 

 captured Constantinople and set up a Latin kingdom there ; 

 another, the London branch of the Virginia Company, first 



planted permanent English settlements in the New World. 

 These were international monopolies. Of the lesser national or 

 sectional monopolies there were many. Every guild organised 

 in the Middle Ages included some features which we would call 

 monopolistic, while kings bestowed upon individuals the sole 

 right to sell various luxuries or necessities, which right w.as sold 

 or leased to the merchant or the producer. 



TWO HUGE TRUSTS. 



" The greatest trust in the world's history " is 

 declared to be the East India Company, chartered 1600, 

 dissolved 1874. Another huge trust was the Hanseatic 

 League : — 



At the height of its power it "had three good crowns at its 

 disposal-"; it set up a rival and successful king in Sweden ; it 

 twice captured Copenhagen and drove Waldemar III. of Den- 

 mark from his kingdom in 1368. Later, in 1523, it was instru- 

 mental in dethroning Christian II., it enabled Gustavus Vasa to 

 become ruler of Sweden, and once its armies ravaged the 

 English coast. The Baltic became a ILanseatic lake into which 

 no other flag might enter without the permission of the Hansa, 

 a permission rarely granted. Though never rebelling openly 

 against the Emperor, the League, treated his demands with cold 

 courtesy, and went its own way. 



First and last perhaps ninety cities belonged to the League, 

 though the exact number is uncertain, as the membership varied 

 at different times. . , , With the increasing growth of national 

 feeling in the States with which they dealt, their power to 

 monopolise grew less. Under Elizabeth they were expelled 

 from London in 1598. The pupils had learned how to trade 

 from their Gernian teachers, and then they dismissed the 

 teachers. The Thirty Years' War completed the destruction. 



Our judgment on the results of its work will be much the 

 same asj_on our present-day monop jlies. It was done selfishly, 

 and often roughly, but much of it was really constructive, _ 



ONLY ONE NEW FE.\TURE, 



So the writer sums up : — 



Everything which could be monopolised was monopolised at 

 some time or other in the world's history. 



We find then that practically every feature of the problem of 

 monopoly to-day has appeared before. There have been 

 monopolies of enormous size, proportionately larger than any- 

 thing we have to-day. Sinister alliance with, or influence upon, 

 government officials was comnu-n. The monopolists wilfully 

 limited the supply, behaved with brutality toward the producer 

 of goods and toward wouhl-be competitors, and officials took 

 advantage of their trusteeship for private gain. These are the 

 most common charges against modern trusts and their managers. 



But there is to-day a new feature — a new sin. That 

 new sin is " the suppression of information which the 

 people have the right to know." 



OBITUARY. 



May 2.— Sir T. W. Boord, 73 ; Sir John Inncs, 71. 



May 9. — .Sir Wm Ffolkes, 72 ; Lady Hamilton, 69. 



May 10. — Earl of Euston, 64 ; Lady Pcnrhyn, 94 ; Lady 

 Spencer Walpole, 70. 



May 12. — Lord St. John of Bletso ; Sir George White (M.P. 

 for N.-W. Norfolk); Lady Tupper (Canada) ; Mr. Archibald 

 Coats (Paisley). 



May 14. — August Strindberg (Swedish dramatist and novelist), 



63- 



May 15. — Hon. Sir T. C. Scanlen (South Africa) 77 ; Mr. 

 J. W. Harrison (King's printer), 82. 



.May 21. — Sir Julius Wernher, 62. 



May 24. — Sir lid ward S.assoon (Unionist M.P. for Hythe), 55 ; 

 Mrs. Lccky (widow of the historian). 



May 28. — Lady Byron (widow of the eighth Lord Byron), 



May 29. — Lady Northwick, 79. 



May 30. — Mr. Wilbur Wright (pioneer aviator, of D.ayton, 

 Ohio), 45- 



