The various
companies which entered into this union, comprising nearly all the chief
oil-mills, submitted their businesses to valuation, and placed
themselves in the hands of a board of trustees, with an absolute power
to regulate the quantity of production, and if necessary to close mills,
to raise and lower prices, and to work the whole number as a joint
concern. Each company gave up its shares to the Trust, receiving notes
of acknowledgment for the worth of the shares, and the total profits
were to be divided as dividend each half-year. This Trust has continued
to exist, and has now a practical monopoly of the oil trade in America,
controlling, it is reckoned, more than 90 per cent. of the whole market,
and regulating production and prices.
Everywhere this process is at work. Competing firms are in every trade,
where their small numbers permit, striving to come to closer terms than
formerly, and either secretly or openly joining forces so as to get full
control over the production or distribution of some product, in order to
manipulate prices for their own profit. From railways and corn-stores
down to slate-pencils, coffins, and sticking-plaster, everything is
tending to fall under the power of a Trust. Many of these Trusts fail to
secure the union of a sufficient proportion of the large competitors, or
quarrels spring up among the combining firms, or some new firms enter
into competition too strong to be fought or bought over.
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