ABSTRACT

There is another problem connected with the widening domination of monopolies which deserves increased attention and it is the "trade practices". Trade practices aim at building up or strengthening the position of industrial combination, especially large concerns or combines, by using "trade" as a new business element to be monopolized, and helping by such monopolization the power of monopolies in the producer's sphere. Sometimes traders were strong enough to assail attempts on the part of combines to establish exclusive trading, as in a case of an English dyers combine; but experience shows that industrial combinations may then find arrangements which are not quite the same as exclusive clauses but may lead to the same effect. In the USA it is a long established experience that "competition in terms" may have very monopolistic effects. Trade associations are so much the more easily formed if they are concerned with standardized articles.