Book Description

Excerpt from The Disintegration of Monopoly, and Other Articles The tariff and the trusts are vaguely associated in the public mind as having a causal relation. It is true they have a contemporary presence in our politics, and while both the tariff and the trusts affect commodity prices in our markets to the restriction of competition and enhancement of profits, yet it is not true that there is the direct relation between the tariff and the trusts which is generally assumed. Indeed it may be said that the most notable of our trusts, the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company, could in no wise have been affected by the let or hindrance of the tariff of duties on importations. The steel and iron industry has been stimulated and sustained by the tariff as advocated by the Pennsylvania school of protection, yet it must be said that the protective tariff has not been an important contributory factor in the organization of the steel trust or the United States Steel Corporation as it is properly designated. And it is right at this point that there must be a clarifying of ideas before progress can be made in the disintegration of monopolies as exemplified in the highly organized and integrated combinations of capital and control which have had such notable manifestation in recent American industrial enterprise. The preferential discrimination which the tariff gives to the home producer in the American market operates equally in favor of both small and large producers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.