State monopoly

“ A monopoly is defined "to be an institution or allowance from the sovereign power of the State by grant, commission, or otherwise, to any person or corporation, for the sole buying, selling, making, working, or using of anything, whereby any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, are sought to be restrained of any freedom or liberty they had before, or hindered in their lawful trade." ”

“ No usurping monopoly should be allowed to establish itself in any State across the national highway, and, like a baron of the Middle Ages perched in his rocky fastness, levy toll and tribute from the wayfarers of business, pleasure, or duty. The Usurpation should be overthrown. The nuisance should be abated. And, happily, the powers are ample under the National Constitution. Following unquestionable principles and authentic precedents, the Committee propose a remedy which I proceed to discuss. ”

“ The first combinations to be attacked were the railroads and telegraph lines, because these were more apparent than the capitalistic monopolies that were being formed. Railroad and telegraph companies were always corporations, and always acquired privileges under the public right of eminent domain. Trade combinations were frequently not corporations, and were so little the creatures of the state that the right of state interference was not so clearly perceived. There has never been any doubt as to the right of the state to keep corporations, which are its creatures, under strict surveillance. ”

“ When once the government steps in to do so radical a thing as to fix the price which a monopoly shall charge, it becomes in equity responsible to the owners of that monopoly for the maintenance of their incomes from their capital invested. If their profits have been so reduced by this action as to seriously injure the value of their property, they have a legal right to claim compensation from the state for the injury it has done them. ”

“ The power to grant to private parties a monopoly of any of the rights belonging to the whole people, or to confer upon these private parties such exclusive privileges as will infringe upon or take from the [Pg 257] public, the rights that naturally attach, or belong to, the whole people, was never conferred upon the legislature of the state or nation. ”

“ Moreover, it is further assumed that the very opposite principle is applicable, namely, that of monopoly; for the State must either not interfere at all, or it must assert absolute control, i.e., it must either leave the needs of the public to be provided for by free and unlimited competition, or it must make it unlawful for any one to supply such needs except with the permission and under the authority of the State. ”

“ Extremes meet, and the greater the extent to which anarchical competition is carried, the nearer is the approach to universal monopoly, which is the opposite excess. Circumstances are tending towards the organization of the commercial and industrial classes into federal companies or affiliated monopolies, which, operating in conjunction with the great landed interest, will reduce the middle and laboring classes to a state of commercial vassalage, and by the influence of combined action become the masters of the productive industry of entire nations. ”

“ Evidently this result can only be prevented by some interference outside the industry itself. If we allow it to take its own course, a monopoly is certain, sooner or later, to be formed. But the only agency which has the right and power to interfere is government. ”

“ But more than this, let the highest court of a nation, by a partisan decision, place the purse of the nation in the hands of a gigantic monopoly, banded together for the purpose of plundering the public, and what vestige of independence is left the people? Reader, look carefully at the almost unlimited power the corporations of the country have obtained over each department of the government; at the legal tender decision and its effect upon the people of the country, and then ask yourself if we, as a nation, are not nearing the point where we cease to be a republic, save in name. ”

“ The real evil is aptly described by the exact meaning of the word monopoly, that is, "to sell alone." That power gave a right of taxing and oppressing the whole nation, only limited by its means and necessities! Then why was not the meaning of the word just what it naturally meant? Why should it not be construed as prohibiting the power of "sole sale" or "sole purchase" in national commerce? Is it not an evil that a single person or combination can regulate every interstate transaction in a necessity of life, thus usurping the power of Congress in that respect totally and completely? ”

“ In this way, the Administrator thought the evil of pools and trust agreements could be eradicated, and a healthful competition, content with reasonable profits, established. If a single corporation, by its extreme efficiency, or from unusual conditions, should constitute a monopoly so that there was practically no competition, then it would be necessary, he thought, for the Government to fix a price reasonable to all interests involved. ”

“ Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, roughly, at greater cost, and with smaller yield than spontaneous organizations, but, again, through the legal monopoly which it deems its prerogative, or through its unfair competition, it kills and paralyzes these natural organizations or prevents their birth; and hence so many precious organs, which, absorbed, curbed or abandoned, are lost to the great social body.—And still worse, if this system lasts, and continues to crush them out, the human community loses the faculty of reproducing them; ”

“ It is thus plain that the action of the government in declaring the restriction of competition to be illegal is wholly ineffectual to check the growth of monopoly. And, further, the fact is that it is hardly possible for the government to take any more extreme stand in the matter. ”

“ If each received its bounty by separate laws, each law would create an unjustifiable monopoly say the Committee, because they would be uncombined by law, however they might be united by interest; but if all these factories are combined both by one law, and a common interest, then the combination changes the whole mass from a monopoly into a protector of national industry, and will not produce a privileged order of great capitalists. ”

“ A monopoly created by the servants of the people, and enriched with spoils taken from the people, in violation of every principle of right and justice, had been created by act of Congress, and to insure it the absolute control of the country, anything promising competition must be absorbed. ”

“ Some people protest against the corporations and monopolies in the United States at the present day, not one of which has the sanction or support of the government, but every one of which is under the ban of the law. But here was a monopoly of all the trade in a region a thousand times greater in size than the country whose king created the monopoly, to which was given the right over the lives and liberties of the natives and subordinates of the chartered corporation. ”

“ This vast sum, amounting to more than one-third in value of the entire taxable property of the nation, is concentrated in these corporations, whose interests are at war with the people's. Controlled as it is by a few leading men, who have their partners, agents, and servants everywhere, it is not strange that the champions of these monopolists should be found in congress. The power of this great monopoly is felt in the nomination and election of congressmen. ”

“ In prohibiting monopolies, and attempts at monopoly, Congress and the common law never intended or could have intended to prohibit necessary and useful things that in their nature had to be to some extent monopolies. ”

“ These are always, in a great degree, practical monopolies; and a government which concedes such monopoly unreservedly to a private company, does much the same thing as if it allowed an individual or an association to levy any tax they chose, for their own benefit, on all the malt produced in the country, or on all the cotton imported into it. ”

“ Out of these simple, and apparently harmless provisions, the court manufactures an authority to grant, to a few persons, a monopoly that is practically omnipotent over all the industry and traffic of the country; that is fatal to all other men's natural right to lend and hire capital for any or all their legitimate industries; and fatal absolutely to all their natural right to buy, sell, and exchange any, or all, the products of their labor at their true, just, and natural prices. ”

“ The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education. ”

“ That any corporations properly subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal government will attain to the condition of being a "natural" monopoly may be disputed; but according to the present outlook, if such is not the case, the only reason will be that the government by means of official and officious interference "regulates" them into inefficiency, and consequent inability to hold their own against smaller and less "regulated" competitors. ”

“ It can then protect the public, either by assuming itself the ownership and operation of the monopoly, or by taking the less radical step of placing the monopoly under official supervision and control while permitting its private ownership to continue. ”

“ Indeed, the enforcement of the right of the public to use a generic name, dedicated as the results of a monopoly, has always, where the facts of a monopoly, has always, where the necessary regulation to make it accord with the private property of others and the requirements of public policy. ”

“ This monopoly we have determined to be a serious infringement on the rights of the people, and we have found that the losses due to intense competition and the fruitless attempts to defeat monopoly by adding new competing units have wasted the wealth of the nation in uncounted millions. ”

“ How shall government exercise its control, so as to protect the people without infringing vested property rights and discouraging private enterprise? It may be objected, too, that, while our preceding discussion has fully proved the weakness of other methods of dealing with monopoly, compared with that by the direct action of government, it has not been shown that the latter is practicable, or that it would not be likely to result in more harm than good to the people at large. ”

“ But it is said, that if the doctrine contended for be not true, then every grant to a corporation becomes, ipso facto, a monopoly or exclusive privilege. The grant of a bank, or of an insurance company, or of a manufacturing company, becomes a monopoly, and excludes all injurious competition. ”

“ The dread of monopoly as an emanation of governmental power, while it passed at an early date out of mind in this country as a result of the structure of our Government, did not serve to assuage the fear as to the evil consequences which might arise from the acts of individuals producing or tending to produce the consequences of monopoly. ”

“ But another, weightier reason must now be added,—namely, our private monopolies with their influence and reactions on our whole community life. In the earlier and looser stages of development, when vast resources still remain unappropriated, private monopoly may aid a city or a nation. ”

“ It was to aid that company in its purposes and in carrying out its object that the contract in this case was made between those parties, and which we are now asked to ald in enforcing. Monopoly in trade, or in any kind of business in this country, is odious to our form of government. It is sometimes permitted to aid the government in carrying on a great public enterprise or public work under governmental control in the interest of the public. ”

“ Our cases determine that a party has monopoly power if it has, over 'any part of the trade or commerce among the several states', a power of controlling prices or unreasonably restricting competition. ”

“ Partial Monopolies now Common.—What we have is neither the complete monopoly nor the merely formal one, but one that has power enough to work injury and to be a menace to industry and politics. If it long perverts industry, it will be because it perverts politics—because it baffles the people in their effort to make and enforce laws which would keep the power of competition alive. ”

“ I take my stand absolutely, where every progressive ought to take his stand, on the proposition that private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. And there I will fight my battle. And I know how to fight it. Everybody who has even read the newspapers knows the means by which these men built up their power and created these monopolies. Any decently equipped lawyer can suggest to you statutes by which the whole business can be stopped. What these gentlemen do not want is this: they do not want to be compelled to meet all comers on equal terms. ”

“ The ultimate remedy for the evils of monopoly, therefore, lies with the people. When they will choose to control their affairs the men of greatest wisdom and honor; when each man will exercise the same care in choosing men to care for the public business that he [263] does in caring for his own private interests, then we can safely trust far greater responsibilities to our government than is now prudent.
There is no more important lesson to impress on the minds of the toiling millions who are growing restless under the burdens of monopoly than this: The only remedy for monopoly is control ”