Monopolies and the People | Page 8

not to adulterate his goods? For I must confess that there are a few men in our trade who are as tricky as horse jockeys.
Quite a number of improvements have been patented in linseed oil machinery in the past twenty years. Nothing wonderful, but things that effect little economies in the manufacture. We could have done without them; but when a few firms took them up, of course the rest had to follow suit, or fall behind in the race of competition. We have had to pay a heavy royalty on some of these machines, and it has been rather galling to count out our hard-earned dollars to the company which has bought up most of the patents, and is making 100 per cent. a year on what it paid for them, with no risk, and without doing a stroke of work. Now if we manufacturers could work in harmony, we could make this company come down from their high horse, and they would have to ask a reasonable price for their machines. But we could do more than this. It stands to reason that a good many improvements will be made in our machinery in the future. We don't object to paying a fair price to any inventor who will work out these new ideas for us; but it does seem unjust for him to go and sell them to some outside company for a song, and have that company bleed the users of the improvement for every ounce they will stand. Now, by working together, we can refuse to pay royalties on any thing new which comes up; but require, instead, that any new patent in our line be submitted to a committee, who will examine and test it; and if they find it to be of value, will purchase it for the use of all members of the association.
Some of the members thought this was as far as we ought to go. They were opposed to "trusts" on principle. But the great majority saw so clearly where we could continue to better ourselves that they became enthusiastic over it.
Some speculators, in years of short crops, have occasionally tried to "corner" flax-seed in a small way. We could refuse to buy except directly from the growers, and that branch of speculation would be a thing of the past. We have sent out some pretty sharp men as buyers, and sometimes they have bought flax-seed in some of the backwoods districts at very low rates. At other times, two buyers from rival firms have run counter to each other, and paid prices larger than their employers could really afford. But with our combination, we cannot only fix uniform prices for seed, but we can send out only enough buyers to cover the territory; and the work of buying is reduced to simply inspecting and weighing the seed.
Now another thing: Of course, not every manufacturer in the business owns his mills. It is a fact that since the close times of the past few years the majority of the firms are carrying mortgages on their mills; and some of them in the West are paying as high as eight or ten per cent. interest. But with the combined capital of all the firms in the trade at our back, we can change all that. Either by a guaranty, or by assuming the obligations, we can bring the interest charges on every mill in the association down to four or five per cent. at most.
We have been paying enormous rates to fire insurance companies. They are not as familiar with our business as we are ourselves, and they don't know just how much risk there really is; so they charge us a rate which they make sure is high enough. We can combine together and insure ourselves on the mutual plan; and by stipulating that each firm shall establish and keep up such precautions against fire as an expert may direct, we can not only reduce the cost of our insurance to that of our actual losses, but we can make these a very small amount.
It may be said that we might have done all these things without forming any trust to control prices. But the practical fact was that we could not. There was so much "bad blood" between some of the different firms in the business, from the rivalry and the sharp competition for trade, that as long as that was kept up it was impossible to get them to have any thing to do with each other in a business way. It was no small task to get these old feuds patched up; but some of the best and squarest men in the business went right into the work, and at meetings of the association, and privately, exerted