We will next consider the monopolies in trade, in manufacturing, and in the purchase and sale of labor, to see what steps should be taken to protect them from encroaching on the rights of the people. In exercising the right of the people at large to take control of these purely private industries from the hands of their owners, we are assuming a power which, like a strong medicine, may be as potent for evil as for good. Only extreme necessity should sanction its use, and its abuse must be carefully guarded against. It is not saying too much to assert that the abuse of this power has already become an evil. We have become so used to legislation for the benefit of special industries, that legislation for their injury does not seem to be regarded as the exercise of a dangerous prerogative. Thus we are threatened with a flood of laws to fix the prices in various industries now subject to monopoly, or to crush them out altogether by enacting some restrictive measure,—legislation which, by its directness, is apt to strike the average lawmaker very favorably, but which, it needs little wisdom to see, is the sure forerunner of abuses. The author trusts that nothing in this book may be construed as advocating or defending some of the crude and ill-considered attempts at anti-monopoly legislation already made, or that may be made in the future.
We have proven in the preceding chapters that, from the character of modern concentrated industry, a very large number of our manufactures must either exist as monopolies or else must engage in intense and wasteful competition. If the monopoly can be so managed that it shall carry on the industry economically, adopt improvements, keep up the character of its product, and keep the prices therefor so low as to make no more than ordinary profits, it would be for the public advantage that monopolies rather than competition should exist. Can we regulate monopolies to secure such results? If so, our problem will be solved.
The author has proposed for the first class of monopolies—those obtaining the benefit of natural agents and public franchises—government ownership of fixed capital and regulation of prices, with