Chester W. Wright

The Trust Problem: Prevention versus Alleviation

For something over two decades we have had on the statute books of this country a law which forbade all combinations in restraint of interstate commerce. During the greater portion of this period, too, most of the states have had laws which distinctly forbade the formation of trusts and monopolies. Taken together, this legislation, not to mention the common law, would appear to cover fairly well the possible field of trust activity. What has been the result ? Occasionally one of these combinations has been driven from a state or obliged to dissolve, but sooner or later there was usually discovered an organization which, however different in outward appearance, still behaved in a manner most suspiciously like the old banished trust. In fact, not only were the old trusts not effectually broken up after the passage of this legislation, but new trusts were formed more rapidly than ever before. Thus we may fairly say that, up to last year, the trusts, after twenty years of laws which were supposed to annihilate them, had become more numerous, stronger, and more firmly intrenched than ever before. Last year, among others, two of the most prominent of these trusts were declared illegal and they are now being broken up into parts. Yet there are many who, in view both of past experience, and of the apparent opinion of the business world so far as reflected in the stock market quotations for securities of these trusts, are pessimistic enough to assert that this time too we shall obtain only another change of form. Moreover, there are still others who declare that even if the purpose of the law be at last attained, nevertheless the whole policy of annihilation which underlies our laws is wrong and should be reversed. In view of these circumstances is it not time

The Nature and Objectives of Economic History

mT HE nature and objectives of economic history can best be made clear if we first describe its position among the other branches of the study of economics. The study of economics can be subdivided into (i) the science of economics, which is concerned with the formulation of economic laws or principles; (2) the techniques of (a) accounting, which deals exclusively with economic phenomena; and (b) statistics, which, though most extensively used and developed in dealing with economic data, is by no means confined to this use and may, perhaps, be more properly classified as a branch of logic; (3) the study of economic history in the broad sense, which covers all the facts of economic life and development of the past whether recent or remote. This field of facts, however, is commonly subdivided into (a) the more specialized studies of so-called applied economics and (b) economic history in the more customary sense of the term. Though no sharp differentiating line can be drawn, the practical diff erence between these two branches of history is that applied economics commonly studies a contemporary problem in a limited field of economic activity and is often specifically directed toward laying down some line of action for dealing with the problem. The economic historian, on the other hand, is expected to cover the whole range of economic life and development of a nation or group of nations and over a considerable period of time, though his monographic studies may be limited to a small sector of the field. Its all-inclusive scope and its primary concern with the evolutionary development of the whole economic order chiefly distinguish economic history from applied economics. To understand the objectives of economic history it is essential to make clear the underlying problem with which it is concerned.