and nominally illegal species of combination
to restrict competition, known as pooling. As described by President
Charles Francis Adams of the Union Pacific Railway, "it was merely a
method through which the weaker corporations were kept alive." The
Interstate law prohibited this restriction of competition, and also, by
enactment of the long-and short-haul clause, made the competition more
widespread and injurious to the railways. As a result an astonishing
impetus has been given to the growth of the great systems and the
consolidation of the minor competing roads. More than that, however, the
great increase in the intensity of competition has done so much to drain
the resources of the companies and injure their revenues, that some
measure for uniting all the railroads of the country under one
management is now being seriously planned by many men in railroad
circles. Thus this result, which was probably inevitable, has doubtless
been hastened many years by the action of the law. The means taken to
intensify competition has operated, as might have been expected, to
hasten the complete establishment of monopoly.

We have now found that monopoly is the inevitable result of the
concentration of competition in any industry in a few hands, if events
are allowed to take their natural course; that the only agent which has
either the right or the power to interfere in the case is the
government,--National, State, or Municipal; that government cannot
punish directly those who form combinations to restrict competition,
without exercising to an unprecedented degree its right to interference
with private affairs; while its attempt to deter men from establishing
monopolies by refusing its protection to them in their contracts to
restrict competition has proved to be but a slight hindrance to the
growth of monopoly.

There are, then, but two ways of preventing monopoly from establishing
itself and laying such a tax upon the people at large for the supply of
the commodity which it controls as it chooses. The first is, action to
reduce the intensity of competition so that the weaker competitors may
maintain their independence and not be forced to consolidate with their
stronger rivals. The second is, action to permit or encourage the
establishment of monopoly, and regulate by some means other than
competition the prices which it shall charge for the products and the
quality of product which it shall supply. These two general classes of