he is apt to be beaten down to a much lower price than the buyer would have given if other buyers had been competing with him to secure the goods. In the chief markets, too, there is often a combination of buyers formed to keep down prices. The combine of cattle-buyers in Kansas City and Chicago has just been noted. The New York Legislative Committee discovered that a milk trust had control of the supply of milk for New York City, fixing the price paid to the farmer at three cents per quart, and the selling price at 7 or 8 cents per quart. According to the suit brought by the Attorney-General of Louisiana against the Cotton-Seed Oil Trust, that monopoly has reduced the price paid to the planters for seed from $7 to $4 per ton. As the total amount of cotton seed which it purchases is about 700,000 tons a year, it is evident that this feature of the combination alone puts into the pockets of the owners of the Trust over two million dollars per annum, over and above the profits made through its control of the cotton-seed oil market. Evidently the combinations which lower prices by restricting competition among purchasers are not to be overlooked because of unimportance.
In the chapter on monopolies of mineral wealth it was stated that the French copper syndicate is not a "trust," but a "corner." It has not been common to consider "corners" as a species of monopoly, except as they have, like the latter, acquired a bad reputation with the general public from their effect in raising the price of the necessaries of life. But if we look at the matter carefully, it becomes plain that the aim of the maker of corners is the same exactly as that of the organizer of trusts,—to kill competition. The difference lies in the fact that the "corner" is a temporary monopoly, while the trust is a permanent one. The man who forms a corner in, let us say, wheat, first purchases or secures the control of the whole available supply of wheat, or as near the whole supply as he can. In addition to this he purchases more than is really within reach of the market, by buying "futures," or making contracts with others who agree to deliver him wheat at some future time. Of course he aims to secure the greater part of his wheat quietly, at low figures; but after he