sacrificed. Irresistible economic forces, it is said, are creating larger and larger units of business; friendly cooperation and unified action must take the place of competition in business.
The outcome must be monopoly in every important line of manufacturing industry and perhaps of commerce. In view of public opinion toward monopoly, its acceptance necessi tates its regulation. This argument is supported by appeal to the experience in the field of railroads and other local utili ties, where public opinion has, after long hesitation, recog nized competition to be impracticable and the acceptance of monopoly as inevitable. As extremes often meet, the view of the industrial trust as a natural evolution is most favored, on the one hand, by men of "big business," already interested financially in trusts, and, on the other hand, by the most radi cal communists (or socialists) whose ideal is the complete monopolization of industry under the government.
Now, when one examines the methods that the notable trusts actually did employ, and apparently had to employ, even when they were already powerful single enterprises, in order to destroy their competitors and to attain their monopo listic power, the word "natural" seems hardly to describe the process. The evidence is not a matter of hearsay, but is
embodied in a long line of judicial decisions, and in numerous special inquiries by governmental commissions and officials.
§ 15. Kinds of unfair practices. This evidence is a star tling array of "unfair practices" and "unfair" forms of competition, which, however novel in appearance, are essen tially of the kind that have been illegal under the common law for the past five hundred years. Many of these practices were baldly dishonest, many of them were contemptibly mean.
The manifold varieties of unfair competition may be roughly grouped under three headings, according as they are connected with (1) Mega,' favors received from public or quasi-public officials; (2) discrimination against, or control of, custom ers; (3) foul tactics against competitors.
(1) Among the practices in the first group are discrimina tory rates and rebates from railroads, favoritism in matters of taxation, undue influence in legislatures, special manipula tion of tariff rates through powerful lobbies or paid agents, undue influence in the courts through the employment of law yers of the highest talent, who often later became judges.
(2) Among the unfair practices toward customers are dis criminations among them by the various forms of price-cut ting, grants of credit, and kinds of service. The liberty of retail dealers is limited in a variety of ways, such as fixing resale prices, requirement of exclusive dealing, and full-line forcing.
(3) All the methods just mentioned as employed in deal ings with customers are likewise unfair toward competitors. Many other methods are used to the same end, such as: entic ing away their employees, or corrupting and bribing them to act as spies, paying secret commissions, false advertising, misrepresenting competitors, imitating their patterns in goods of defective workmanship, shutting off their credit or their supplies of materials, acquiring stock in competing compa nies, malicious suits, infringement of patents, intimidation by threats of business injury or of scandalous exposures, opera tion of bogus independent companies.