ABSTRACT
The salient feature of a successful combination in America is always a substantial rise of price in the article produced, or, what comes to the same thing, a retardation. The American public is often reminded of the benefits conferred by the Oil Trust; but if its operations are submitted to the suggested test, public gratitude would appear to be superfluous. In America it is the wail of the consumer whose prices are raised by monopoly; in England it is the wail of the producer whose prices are lowered by competition. Its enormous success helps to account for the popularity of the name and organisation with American investors until their eyes were opened by the disasters of 1903. In the autumn of 1903 a Director of the Steel Trust told a representative of the Philadelphia Ledger that trade was falling off, and anticipated that before long the American demand would be several million tons short of the American supply.
