ases, and it can
raise the price of what it sells without having in view any other
consideration than its own interest.

_The Possibility of the Form of Monopoly without the Power of It._--A
business, however, may have the form of a monopoly, but not its
genuine power. It may consolidate into one great corporation all the
producers of an article who send their goods into a general market,
and if no rivals of this corporation then appear, the public is forced
to buy from it whatever it needs of the particular kind of goods which
it makes. Consumers of _A'''_ of our table may find that they can get
none of it except from a single company. Yet the price may conceivably
be a normal one. It may stand not much above the cost of production to
the monopoly itself. If it does so, it is because a higher price would
invite competition. The great company prefers to sell all the goods
that are required at a moderate price rather than to invite rivals
into its territory. This is a monopoly in form but not in fact, for it
is shorn of its injurious power; and the thing that holds it firmly in
check is _potential competition_. The fact that a rival _can_ appear
and _will_ appear if the price goes above the reasonable level at
which it stands, induces the corporation to produce goods enough to
keep the price at that level. Under such a nearly ideal condition the
public would get the full benefit of the economy which very large
production gives, notwithstanding that no actual competition would go
on. Prices would still hover near the low level of cost. The most
economical state conceivable is one in which, in many lines of
business, a single great corporation should produce all the goods and
sell them at a price so slightly above their cost as to afford no
incentive to any other producer to come into the field. Since the
first trusts were formed the efficiency of potential competition has
been so constantly displayed that there is no danger that this
regulator of prices will ever be disregarded. Trusts have learned by
experience that too great an increase in the prices of their products
"builds mills." It causes new producers who were only potentially in
the field actually to come into it and to begin to make goods. To
forestall this, the trusts have learned to pursue a more conservative
policy and to content themselves with smaller additions to the prices
of their wares. If it were not for this regulative work of the
potential competito