854 
Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
June 25, 1921 
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A Primer of Economics 
By John J. Dillon 
Part XXX 
MATERIAL RICHES 
What are riches? 
“A man is rich or poor according to 
the degree in which he can afford to enjoy 
the necessaries, conveniences and amuse¬ 
ments of human life.”—Adam Smith. 
Some of the things that contribute to the 
enjoyment of necessities and luxuries have 
no value and no price. Among these arc 
the light and heat of the sun. air, water, 
atmospheric pressure, etc., but since these 
are the common inheritance of all the 
economist limits the agencies which con¬ 
tribute to the enjoyments of necessary 
and enjoyable needs of mankind to those 
commodities that we call wealth. Mate¬ 
rial enjoyments, depend, however, on the 
amount or abundance of wealth, and not 
on its value and not on its price. If all 
the commodities of the country, including 
money, were suddenly doubled the amount, 
of wealth in the country would be doubled. 
The comforts and enjoyments of life would 
be increased, but the wealth would not have 
increased in value or price. Tf one-half 
the riches or wealth of the country were 
destroyed values and prices would not in¬ 
crease, but the sum total of enjoyments, 
of necessities and luxuries would be re¬ 
duced one-half. Riches therefore, or the 
enjoyment of necessities and luxuries, de¬ 
pend on the volume of wealth, and not on 
its value or price. The volume, however, 
depends on the facility or difficulty of pro¬ 
duction, principally on the amount of 
labor necessary to produce it. But sav¬ 
ings. wealth used as capital in the form 
of machinery, increase the efficiency of 
labor and the volume of production ; 
hence those who save and use wealth for 
production benefit mankind. The public 
task is so to award the fruits of produc¬ 
tion to labor and to capital that each will 
contribute its share to the processes of 
production. 
MONOPOLIES 
What is a monopoly? 
A monopoly is an exclusive unity of 
control by one or more persons over a 
commodity or utility to manipulate the 
supply and to arbitrarily fix prices. 
To say the least there is no unity in 
the definitions of monopoly. There are 
as many different definitions for it as 
there are writers of them. From the fact 
that different people approach the subject 
from different angles, the definitions of 
monopoly, especially by economists and 
lawyers, differ almost to the degree of op¬ 
posites. In 1S93. the Attorney-General 
of the United States said there could be 
no monopoly unless a restriction was 
placed by law on all who proposed to 
compete. In other words, he held that 
there could be no monopoly unless it were 
specifically and specially created by law, 
and he quoted from the Federal Court at 
the time to sustain his position. About 
the same time, however, the New York 
State courts declared any combination to 
prevent competition in a broad and gen¬ 
eral sense, and to enhance prices, a 
monopoly. In his book. "Monopolies and 
Trusts.” Dr. R. T. Ely gives this defini¬ 
tion : 
"Monopoly means that substantial unity 
of action on the part of one or more per¬ 
sons engaged in some kind of business 
which gives exclusive control, more par¬ 
ticularly. although not solely with respect 
to price.” 
Early economic writers like John Stuart 
Mill considered laud a monopoly, and 
some of them seemed to imply that any 
advantage that one producer enjoys from 
natural resources over another, creating 
a surplus of the one over and above the 
product of the other, is a monopoly. This 
would make a monopoly of land, and the 
owner on the most fertile of two neigh¬ 
boring farms would, under this definition, 
be a monopolist. 
Many of these discussions by econo¬ 
mists are academic. Lawyers are influ¬ 
enced in their line of thought by the in¬ 
terest of their clients, and even judges 
carry unconsciously to the bench concepts 
that they developed in the interest of 
clients while in the practice of law. When 
the attorney of a monopoly becomes a 
judge it requires a radical change in his 
line of thought and study to put his mind 
in perfect equilibrium. Some insist there 
are no monopolies and no trusts. Others 
tell us that monopolies and trusts are 
numerous, and fix the price on many of 
the necessities and comforts of life. But 
when we get close to the disputants we 
find that they argue from entirely differ¬ 
ent premises. The sugar trust admits it 
has a monopoly. The packers deny that 
they have one. The milk dealers of New 
York indignantly resent the intimation 
that they enjoy a monopoly and operate 
as a trust. They are all probably right 
from the mental concept each, has of a 
monopoly. But they act as a unit. They 
control and manipulate supply. They 
arbitrarily fix prices, and so we say they 
have a monopoly and call them jointly a 
trust. It is convenient, at least, and after 
all "what's in a name?” 
For the purpose of analysis economists 
classify monopolies into different groups. 
For our purpose a simple classification 
will be sufficient. For the present pur¬ 
pose we use the following classification : 
1— Natural monopolies. 
2— Legal monopolies. 
3— Capitalistic monopolies. 
Natural monopolies are created by con¬ 
ditions peculiar to the business. They in¬ 
clude roads, bridges, canals, railroads, 
ferries, terminals, stockyards, express, 
telegraph, telephone, postoffice, gas works, 
water works, water powers, natural gas, 
localized coalfields and the like. 
Legal monopolies are those created by 
law. They are patents, copyrights, trade¬ 
marks, beneficiaries of tariff laws, etc. 
European countries often create legal 
monopolies. At some time in England, 
especially during the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth, monopolies were granted for 
the importation, manufacture and sale of 
many of the goods in common use. It 
was her method of rewarding favorites. 
Our own national banks have a monopoly 
in the issue of notes protected by a pro¬ 
hibitive tax on the issue of State banks. 
Capitalistic monopolies include the 
large corporations which have succeeded 
to the earlier and less formal trust organi¬ 
zations. These concerns do not depend 
alone on the mass of their capital for 
their monopolistic properties, though in 
many cases the volume of capital is a 
large factor in the advantage they enjoy. 
With the mass of capital they secure 
unity and control of supplies. To this 
end small concerns are driven opt of busi¬ 
ness through underselling them in their 
local territory. These once out. of the 
way. prices are advanced. Special con¬ 
cessions and favoritism from the rail¬ 
roads is a frequent and powerful factor 
in building of this class of monopolies. 
The favors are not only in special rates, 
but in the details of the service as well. 
The favorite shipper gets cars regularly 
and the deliveries are prompt. Others 
either want for ears or find them side¬ 
tracked en route. Farmers in the West¬ 
ern States have had sad experiences with 
the railroads in attempts to ship their own 
grain. Other farmers have had similar 
experiences in every section of the coun¬ 
try. A number of hay dealers in New 
York enjoy a monopoly of the hay trade 
through the favor of railroads in.furnish¬ 
ing cars for the dealers and refusing them 
to farmers who wish to ship direct. 
CONTENTS 
A- — ■ - 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, JUNE 25, 1921 
FARM TOPICS 
Oats and Peas for Green Manure. 
Hope Farm Notes. 
LIVE STOCK AND DAIRY 
851 
856 
Making Clean Milk. 
Hog-holder for Ringing Swine. 
Annual Meeting Holstein-Friesian Associa¬ 
tion of America... 
Han J ling Cream and Churning. 
Long-continued Milk Diet. 
More About Milk Diet. . 
850 
851 
859 
864 
864 
864 
THE HENYARD 
Curing Cannibal Chicks. 868 
Toe-picking Among Chicks. 868 
Raising Early Broilers... 868 
Inflammation of Chicks’ Eyelids. 868 
Those Favorite Red Pullets. 869 
WOMAN AND HOME 
Home Bureaus’ Influence. 853 
The Iceless Refrigerators. 855 
Boys and Girls.860, 861 
The Pastoral Parson. 862 
June-time .862, 868 
The Home Dressmaker. 863 
One Country Woman to Another. 863 
New Plumbing in the Farmhouse. 866 
MISCELLANEOUS 
Oil is Cheaper than Machinery.850, 851 
Hot Water System Without Pressure. 851 
Precautions against Lightning. 852 
Removing Stains from Granite. 852 
Artificial Cider . 852 
Formula for White Lead Paint. 852 
Wallpaper Cleaner . 852 
Writing on Zinc Labels. 852 
Editorial . 858 
Union Labor and the Farmers. 859 
A Study of the Co-operative Laws—Part II. .. 859 
Publisher’s Desk . 870 
