138 
as a reason for the general rise in the 
price level, however applicable they may 
be to the increase in the price of specific 
articles. What shall be said of the influ- 
ence of the so-called trusts on prices? It 
is clear that complete monopoly or pre- 
ponderant control of the market in the 
production or sale of any particular com- 
modity affords opportunity to increase its 
price. The same result is apparent when 
separate producers maintain an agreement 
or understanding as to prices. 
On the other hand, the superior econ- 
omy and efficiency of large scale opera- 
tions materially diminishes the cost of 
production and even more of distribution 
and should therefore tend to decrease 
prices. For this reason the concentration 
of industrial and commercial enterprise is 
a legitimate phase of business evolution. 
It must be said, however, with equal em- 
phasis that thus far the general public has 
not experienced in reduced prices the bene- 
fit to which it is entitled because of the 
increased economy and efficiency resulting 
from great combinations. If the people do 
not receive their proper share of the bene- 
fits, strict control beginning with greater 
publicity and ending perhaps with the 
regulation of prices is the inevitable out- 
come. Certain it is that large scale 
operations have come to stay. If they can 
not be successfully regulated, it is prob- 
able that state ownership will be adopted 
in preference to a return to the old régime 
of smaller competing units. 
In a majority of cases the statistics of 
prices do not bear out the assertion that 
the establishment of large corporations has 
always caused an exceptional increase in 
the cost to the consumer. In many in- 
stances, the higher prices are due in part 
at least to the greater expense of obtaining 
raw materials or to the increased labor and 
obsolescenee charges to which all concerns 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 891 
of whatever magnitude are alike subjected. 
In the table prepared by the statistician 
of the Department of Agriculture, to 
which reference has been made, it appears 
that among over eighty enumerated ar- 
ticles purchased by the farmer, there were 
only three, the cost of which diminished 
between the years 1899 and 1909. Two of 
these are comparatively unimportant, the 
third is coal oil, which fell off from 15.1 
cents per gallon in 1899 to 14.2 cents in 
1909. There were also substantial reduc- 
tions in the prices of various forms of iron 
and steel in the same period, while, as al- 
ready mentioned, those of practically all 
the agricultural products of the temperate 
zone increased. 
The rise in the price level can not be as- 
eribed to tariffs any more than to the 
trusts, though prices of particular articles 
may have been increased by them. In 
answer to those who maintain that the 
tariff is responsible for the high cost of 
living m the United States, attention may 
be called to the admitted fact that the rise 
in the price level has been universal under 
free trade, as well as under revenue and 
protective tariffs. In a single newspaper 
published at Paris last September, there 
were paragraphs giving accounts of meet- 
ings, some of which were attended by vio- 
lence, in Berlin, Switzerland, Bohemia, 
Silesia and Galicia to protest against high 
prices. In other issues at about the same 
time there were paragraphs giving ac- 
counts of bread riots in France and of loud 
complaints against the high cost of living 
in England and Belgium. 
It is a noticeable fact that many prices 
have risen in spite of reduced tariffs in our 
Own country, as in the case of hides and 
shoes. In the whole list of increases in 
prices from 1899 to March, 1910, there is 
no more notable illustration than that of 
crude rubber, on which there is no duty. 
