The new slavery

'!)

The New Slavery

By

H. PERCY SCOTT, M.A.

Author of

" Seeing Canada and the South "

T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE

First English Edition
Published in 1915

HD

FOREWORD

President Woodrow Wilson wrote '' The
New Freedom " in order to show the people of
the United States how to escape from intolerable
conditions.

I have written " The New Slavery " in order
to show the people of the Dominion of Canada
how we have got into intolerable conditions,
and also the way out.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 7

II. MAGAZINE WRITERS 42

III. CANADIAN TRUSTS ....... 65

IV. RISE OF THE COMBINES 83

V. THE BANKER'S VIEW ...... 106

VI. DEPOSIT BANKING Ill

VII. GRAPPLING WITH THE ENEMY .... 117 ,

VIII. THE PEOPLE'S CLUBS . . . . . .127

IX. THE NEW ERA . 132

X. FIRST CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE . . . 143

APPENDIX I. 167

APPENDIX II 185

INDEX 189

THE NEW SLAVERY.

CHAPTER I.

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS.

I HAVE been a good deal interested during the
last three or four years in this strange question
of the high cost of living.

Four years ago a laboring man came to me to
rent a house, referring me to a grocer for whom
the man had worked in the woods, where the
grocer carried on lumbering operations.

" What kind of a man is that?" I asked the
grocer.

" Oh, he's a steady man — not a bad sort of a
fellow," replied the grocer.

" Can he pay the rent of a house — six dollars
a month?"

" No."

" Why?"

" Because at the present price of food " — here
the grocer ran rapidly over the prices of pork,
flour and other commodities — " a working-man
can get only enough to eat — he can't pay rent !"

After two years' experience of the tenant I
have come to the conclusion that the grocer was

'

8 THE NEW SLAVERY

about right. But it struck me at the time that
at this period in the history of the Dominion of
Canada it was an odd thing that a steady, hard-
working man could earn only barely enough to
keep him alive.

If an inhabitant of another sphere, say the
planet Mars, were to visit the earth, and, coming
to Canada, observe conditions of life — an
immense area of cultivated soil and a compara-
tively small population of economical and
laborious habits with a high average of intelli-
gence and education — he would probably say,
" This country must be a very cheap land to live
in. The resources being so great, the public debt
small, no expensive army and navy to support
and no heavy pension burden, living must be
very easy for all classes." And he would be very
much surprised to learn that, instead of being
one of the cheapest, Canada is one of the dearest
countries in the world to live in. He would
doubtless conclude that there must be something
radically wrong here.

That there is something radically wrong is
proved by the number of communications by
correspondents, news items and editorial com-
ments which have been appearing during the
last winter in the press on this subject. I have
been amusing myself the last year culling out
of such journals as I take items bearing on this
question. If published together they would
make a large volume. Among the mass of such

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 9

I copy herewith a selection of the more pointed
and meaty.

From the \rio York Herald, November 3rd,
1912:

TARIFF A PARADOX.

To the Editor of the Herald:

Our protective tariff system gets my goat. It is as much
of a paradox as a little red wagon painted green. It stands
as a monument to the genius of the trust grafter, also of
the gullibility of our voters. This needs explanation,
which is easy. We are told the object of our high tariff
is protection of American industries and American labor.

We have never been told it protected consumers, but
here comes the joke. It does protect the consumer (in
Europe), as we give him our products at cheaper prices
than we Americans prefer to pay, so that he can have his
choice between his own cheap goods and our own. Here
at home, so as not to be cheap skates, we pay higher prices
for both foreign and domestic products. For foreign
because they pay big import tax, for our own stuff because
we protect it against foreign material. Who gets all this
protection? One man does for sure — that is to say, the
manufacturer here.

CONSUMER.

New York, October 26th, 1912.

From the Halifax Chronicle, November 29th,
1912:

WHY is FOOD DEAR?

(From the Toronto Star.)

Why should Canadian ham and bacon be ten or twelve
cents dearer here than in England?

10 THE NEW SLAVERY

There is no use of making the excuse that labor is better
paid in Canada than in England. The excuse is bad,
because the bacon is produced by Canadian labor. The
Englishman in England pays this cost of production, and
also the cost of transportation by rail and ocean.

Therefore we ought to get the bacon and ham for a good
deal less than is paid in England, instead of ten or twelve
cents a pound more.

Canada is a storehouse of food, producing more than it
can consume, and helping to feed the rest of the world.
Yet the price of food is far higher here than in England,
which does not produce nearly enough food for its own
needs.

The very best of our own products are carried past our
doors and sold in England for prices which would not
buy the most inferior food in Canada.

Why?

From Harper's Weekly, November 9th, 1912 :

THE TAX ON MEAT.

To the Editor of Harper's Weekly:

Sir, — The sessions of Congress which passed into history
only a few short weeks ago did not grant the people the
much-needed legislation with which to fight the extor-
tionate demands of the meat trust. This trust, commonly
known as the " Big Three " of Packingtown, has boosted
the price of meat away up so that the average wage-earner
is hard put to know what to do. Not alone do these packers
control the output of dressed meat, but also such other
necessities of life as butter, eggs, cheese, poultry, apples,
potatoes, etc., because of their unlimited facilities for
transporting and storing them.

This gouging of the people out of their very eye-teeth
has been going on for years, and will continue just as

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 11

long as there is a duty exacted on food-stuffs brought from
abroad. This is in face of the fact that all crops this year
will be enormous, and the farmer is feeding all the live-
stock he possibly can; yet the packers will keep right on
with their favorite game of bleeding the public.

There are two things that are responsible for this state
of affairs: the infamous Payne-Aldrich tariff and the enor-
mous~"exportation of meat products and breadstuffs to
other countries. It does appear paradoxical that after pay-
ing the ocean freight charges and the expense of refrigera-
tion for four thousand miles of sea voyage, American meat
sells for much less in and near London than at Chicago,
the point of origin.

Were it not for the unfortunate viewpoint on such mat-
ters of President Taft the price of meat and of other food
commodities would be away down to-day. Such is, how-
ever, not to be hoped for as long as there is a duty on food-
stuffs. It is a shameful state of affairs when the people
have to pay one-third more for meat here than in England.
Much of the meat eaten there comes from Chicago, Illinois,
United States of America. Within a radius of forty miles
of London American gravy beef, which is the round steaks,
sells for twelve cents, while here it sells at eighteen cents
a pound. For a fact, the American product is so poor that
the Englishman who can afford it will buy his native beef
and pay twenty-two cents in preference to buying the cheap
American meat.

Pork used to be the poor man's chief diet once upon a
time. I can well remember when salt pork sold at six cents
and ham at eight cents a pound. Where is the price of
pork to-day? At present prices the wage-earner has to
forego it entirely. It is a startling anomaly, but chicken
is cheaper even than pork.

I believe it is high time to place an export duty on all
foodstuffs, the same as England has had to do repeatedly.
Prance, Austria, and Germany prohibit the exportation of

12 THE NEW SLAVERY

foods when the internal needs of the country demand it. In
Prance it is a crime to gamble in foodstuffs.

I am, sir,

CHARLES P. GBINDELL.
Chicago, 111., September 15th, 1912.

From the New York Herald, December 29th,
1912:

DINNER FOR SEVEN PERSONS FOR TWENTY-FOUR CENTS.

With the general complaint of the high cost of living, the
Universal Cooking and Food Exhibition, which was recently
held in London, attracted more than usual attention.
Demonstrations were given each day by Continental experts
in foreign household cooking.

The London County Council is training a number of Eng-
lish boys just out of school to become chefs and waiters.
That the experiment is proving a success was shown by a
luncheon, attended by more than one hundred guests, which
was both cooked and served by boys who are being thus
trained.

The feature which distinguished the exhibition from all
those previously held was the effort to give a practical
demonstration of the low cost at which nutritious food, pro-
perly prepared, could be placed on the workingman's table.
It was shown, for example, that a good soup for fifty per-
sons could be obtained for fifty-eight cents, German pie for
fifty persons for $1.09, and many other nourishing dishes
were exhibited which were made from what in the ordinary
household is thrown away as scraps or waste through
ignorance of how it can be utilized.

Several examples were given of a dinner for seven per-
sons costing twenty-four to thirty-two cents. One of these
dinners consisted of savory baked batter, bread, haricot
beans and gravy, boiled rice and currants (cost about

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 13

twenty-four cents); another of baked lentil savory, green
peas and bean gravy, bread, milk pudding and stewed fruit
(cost about twenty-six cents) ; a third of baked cheese and
potato pie, bread, green peas and bean gravy, bread and
fruit pudding (cost about twenty-eight cents) ; while a
fourth consisted of meat and potato hash, bread, haricot
beans and gravy, milk pudding and stewed fruit (cost about
thirty-two cents).

During the exhibition public exhibitions were given by
cooks employed in the army, the navy and the mercantile
marine, and there were demonstrations of the cooking of
bananas in a variety of palatable ways.

From the Halifax Chronicle, January 7th,

1913:

FOOD TRUSTS ix CANADA.

The Grain Growers' Guide points out that one of the chief
factors in the increase in the cost of living, which most
consumers are finding hard to bear, is the monopoly in
canned goods. A few years ago the farmers in Ontario
founded and successfully operated several canning factories
along co-operative lines. None of these co-operative fac-
tories now remain in the hands of the farmers. The Can-
ners' Combine, which controls practically the whole Cana-
dian trade, forced them out of business. Just how this was
done is told in the latest issue of the Canadian Co-operator
in the following terms:

" Those co-operative farmers had sufficient capital at their
command to meet the legitimate needs of their respective
factories. They were in a position to supply from their
farms all the raw material necessary for the successful
operation of their undertakings. They had not, however,
the organized demand of the consumers, nor had they the
millions at their backs to maintain a price-cutting war for
supremacy if such were entered upon; a use of capital

14 THE NEW SLAVERY

which, while being immoral, is nevertheless tolerated by
the state.

" The result was that the farmers in many cases had to
sell their factories to the Canners' Combine, and the people
in consequence must pay whatever the trust dictates. What
those prices are to the Western farmers was given by a
Guide correspondent recently as twenty and twenty-five
cents per quart can of tomatoes and fifteen cents for a pint
can of peas or corn. The profits pouring into the pockets
of the combine magnates may be judged from the fact that
a bushel of good tomatoes will make from ten to twelve
cans, whereas the farmers who raise them are paid only
twenty-five cents per crate of sixty pounds, subject to being
docked on much the same principle as grain grading. This
means that the trust extorts from the consumer $1.50 or
more for goods which have cost them twenty cents or
thereabouts, which would seem to leave a snug margin
above the cost of canning.

" Yet," says the Guide, " when the Canners' Combine was
under investigation in the Dominion Parliament, there
were no fewer than three of the members directly inter-
ested in preserving intact the monopoly now enjoyed, and
any adverse action was effectively staved off. This is only
another instance to back home the truth that in order to
look after their own interests and offer any effectual oppo-
sition to the special interests in food combines as in other
enterprises, the farmers themselves must have their own
representatives on the floor of Parliament."

From the Manitoba Free Press:
Is THERE A MEAT TRUST?

Toronto is asking the Dominion Government to have a
searching inquiry made into the truth of the charge " that
the supply and distribution of meat, within the city of
Toronto, and throughout the Dominion of Canada, is regu-

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 15

lated and controlled by an agreement or understanding
among the various dealers therein, whereby the prices to
the consumer are unduly enhanced and sustained and kept
at excessive rates through illegal and improper methods
by such persons, and that such agreements and methods
constitute a menace to the health and prosperity of the
citizens of this city and of the Dominion." That there is
a meat trust which has the whole of Canada in its grip
as completely as the United States meat trust dominates
the markets across the line is universally believed by
Canadians. Let us have an investigation by all means.

From the Hants Journal, November 6th, 1912 :
NOTICE.

We, the undersigned milk dealers of the town of Wind-
sor, wish to inform the public that owing to the increase
in the production, milk will be seven cents per quart for
the winter months from the 1st of November until the 1st
of June.

E. C. MULLER,
R. W. MEABNS,
T. H. CURRY,
K. D. REDDEN.
Windsor, November 4th, 1912.-

From The Survey, New York, June 21st, 1913 :
THE COST OF MILK.

How much should milk cost is a question about which
farmers, reformers, legislators and hygienists dispute with-
out end. Even the economists have something to say on
the matter.

With the purpose of answering this embarrassing ques-
tion, the United States Department of Agriculture has pub-
lished data on the cost of milk production which it obtained

16 THE NEW SLAVERY

at the New Jersey experiment station in tests with thirty-
one head of milch cows. These cows were fed both home-
grown and purchased feeds, the calculations of cost of
production being based both on the actual cost of growing
the crops and on the market price of the products used.
The average cost of feed per cow per year (based on the
actual cost of producing the crops used) was $95.73, or
2.4 cents per quart of milk produced. Placing the market
valuation upon the home-grown products, the cost of feed
per cow per year was $121.60, or 3.04 cents per quart.
The estimated average cost of labor (but not supervision)
and incidental expenses was $70.22 per cow per year, or
1.76 cents per quart. The incidental expenses included
bedding, stabling (five dollars per cow), interest on the
investment in the animals, depreciation in the value of
cows, keep of bull, etc., but not interest on land, buildings
and dairy equipment.

Based on actual cost of growing and harvesting products
consumed and of labor, the total cost for feed, labor, etc.,
for the year was $165.95 per cow; based on market valua-
tion of feed consumed, $191.82. The yield of thirty-one
cows averaging 8,661 pounds of 3.96 per cent, milk, the
total cost per quart of milk will be in the first case 4.16
cents, in the second case 4.8 cents. No credit, however,
is given to the cow for the manure or calf, neither is the
farmer's time debited. Calculating that the manure is
worth twenty dollars per cow, and the grade calves six
dollars each at five days old, the cost of producing four
per cent, milk, even with the high yields reported and not
including cost of supervision, was approximately four cents
per quart.

From the Halifax Chronicle, November 19th,
1912:

PRICE OF MILK AT ST. JOHN ADVANCED.

St. John has had an advance in milk prices, too, but
even at the increased rate has Halifax beaten a cent a

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 17

quart. To-day the price of milk in that city advances to
eight cents. This action was decided on at a largely
attended meeting of the milk dealers of the city when
an organization was formed to be known as the St. John
Milk and Cream Dealers' Association. The milk dealers
claim they have been forced to advance the price of milk
in order to satisfy the demands of the farmers, who have
insisted on getting higher prices. They also say that the
expense of handling the milk has been increased, owing to
the necessity of providing better equipment to meet the
requirements of the Board of Health, the increase in rents,
and the .general increase in the cost of maintenance of
horses, carriages, offices.

The farmers have demanded more for their milk because
they claim that the increase in the cost of feed and labor
and other factors in production has made it impossible to
sell milk at the present prices and make a profit.

Milk has been retailed in St. John for seven cents for
about seven years.

From the Halifax Chronicle, December 6th,
1912:

REASON FOB THE HIGH COST OF LIVING — FARMER SAYS IT is
DUE TO MAINTENANCE OF PRIVATE YACHTS AND AUTOS
BY MEMBERS OF PRODUCE EXCHANGE.

New York, December 5. — " The reason for the high cost
of living to-day is the private yachts, autos and country
and city homes for members of the Produce Exchange, for
which the consumers and the producer pay," declared
H. B. Fullerton, a Long Island gardener, to a conference
of producers and consumers at the New York Board of
Trade and Transportation to-day. His hearers applauded
as he ascribed the troubles of both the city dweller and
farmer to the middleman.

The conference was called by John Dillon, Chairman of
2

18 THE NEW SLAVERY

the State Commission on Co-operation of the New York
State Agricultural Society.

"If we want to get a fair deal for the farmer and
another for the consumer," continued Mr. Fullerton, "we
must eliminate the system which now prevails of letting
a middleman skim all the cream off the product. Over on
Long Island this past season our boys got forty-five cents
a barrel for cauliflower. I followed that same cauliflower
right down to Washington market and saw them selling
it in the stalls there at twenty-five cents a head."

Another grower told of selling beans for thirty cents a
bushel and tracing them to a city market, where they
were sold at fifteen cents a quart, or at the rate of $4.80
a bushel.

From the Halifax Chronicle, December 14th,
1912:

OUR DAILY BREAD.

(From the Montreal Herald.}

An inquisitive person from a farming district near New
York followed a barrel of cauliflower from the farm of
original production, where the grower was paid forty-five
cents a barrel, and saw the same cauliflower sold to the
ultimate consumer in a Washington market for twenty-five
cents apiece.

Other curious persons in our own country are indulging
in a guessing competition as to how it is that apples which
are bought for seventy-five cents a barrel from the Ontario
farmer are sold for $5.50 a barrel in the Winnipeg shops.
Still other inquisitive persons are demanding to know why
it is that in a country like Canada, where organization of
the dairy industry has reached almost the highest perfec-
tion, people have to pay anywhere from thirty to fifty cents
a pound for butter. No doubt if there are enough inquisi-
tive persons some approach will be made towards getting
an answer to these questions; and it would only take a
small disturbance in the industrial organization to turn

CUKRENT NEWS ITEMS 19

this into a most serious political problem that the legis-
lators and others would have to face.

From the Halifax Chronicle, February 13th,
1913:

FISH RECEIPTS LIGHT AT HALIFAX — THE PEICE HAS BEEN
ADVANCED ON ALL KINDS or FISH.

Fish imports to Halifax since the first of February have
not been as heavy as usual. The North Atlantic Fisheries,
the largest importers of fish at this port, received only
47,532 pounds during the first week of February. This
scarcity of fish is bringing a higher return to the fisher-
man and a corresponding increase of price to the con-
sumer. The price advanced last week one cent a pound
all round on all kinds of fish and to both producer and
consumer.

The following vessels delivered fares at the North
Atlantic Fisheries last week: Pearl Beatrice, 6,550 Ibs.;
Tacoma, 2,010 Ibs.; Kathleen W., 1,885 Ibs.; Rosie L., 3,481
Ibs.; J. Slaughenwhite, 523 Ibs.; Una E. Hart, 1,700 Ibs.;
Gladys G. Hart, 1,000 Ibs.; Kathleen W., 785 Ibs.; 7. Won-
der Y., 3,455 Ibs.; M. O'Neill, 491 Ibs.; Ovilia, 4,367 Ibs,;
Vera May, 1,305 Ibs.; A. Hubley, 19,980 Ibs. The schooner
A. HuWey was the high liner of the fleet for that week.

The market has the advantageous feature of not being
overstocked, and the result has been a keener competition
in buying.

From the Halifax Chronicle, March 29th, 1913 :

COST OF LIVING — PROFESSOR SHORTT ADDRESSED MEETING OF
LOCAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.

An interesting address on "The High Cost of Living"
was delivered before the annual meeting of the Local
Council of Women in the Y.M.C.A. last night, by Dr. Adam
Shortt, Chairman of the Civil Service Commission. Doctor
Shortt went into his subject very extensively and discussed

20 THE NEW SLAVERY

the numerous phases entering into this problem, which he
said was one of the oldest under the sun. He had no
specific cause to which he attributed this phenomena, but
generally showed that it arose out of the difference
between consumption and production in the different ages.
The reason why Canada showed the highest cost of living
in the world was because so much work was at present
being carried on here which was unproductive now, and
not until this had ceased and the country was fully
equipped with transportation facilities, etc., which were
showing a return on the investment, would there be any
alteration in the general situation.

From the Halifax Chronicle, April 4th, 1913 :

PBOFESSOR SHORTT ON THE HIGH COST OF LIVING — MR. JUSTICE
RUSSELL DISCUSSES SOME OF THE UNDERLYING CAUSES
OF THE ALARMING ADVANCE IN THE PRICES OF ALL KINDS
OF ARTICLES.

To the Editor of The Chronicle:

Sir, — I have been a little surprised that almost no notice
was taken by the newspapers of the very suggestive and
in every way excellent address by Mr. Shortt the other
evening. His subject was one that appealed to every man
and woman in the community, and it was one that his
life-long studies in political science peculiarly qualified him
to discuss.

Professor Shortt said he was unable to accept any of
the theories put forward to account for the remarkable,
and to many of us very distressing, advances in the prices
of all kinds of articles,* and he declined to put forward
any theory of his own. But he did favor the audience with
a great deal of information on which they were at liberty
to construct their own theories. One of these pieces of
information was the fact that the advance in prices was
much less noticeable in the articles we import from abroad
than in the articles we manufacture for ourselves. The

* The italics are mine. — Author.

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 21

reasons given for this was that in this country our pro-
ducers, that is to say, the wage-earners, required better
remuneration than those of the countries from which we
were importing.

So far so good. I do not think that anybody, certainly
no reasonable person, would object to the higher price he
has to pay for what he buys, if it means that there is a
fairer distribution of wealth and the position of the wage-
earner is being improved. But it would be worth while to
enquire whether the position of the wage-earner is being
really improved or not. Mr. Shortt's exposition would have
been more satisfactory if he had been able to assure us that
the wage-earner is not losing more by the increased prices
he is paying for his goods than he is gaining by any
additions to his wages.

SELLING CHEAPER ABBOAD.

I have not the knowledge that would justify me in offer-
ing an opinion on this point. But what makes me suggest
there may be something in it, is the more important fact
brought out by Professor Shortt's discourse, the fact,
namely, that several articles which we were producing in
this country are being sold in England, with all expenses
of transportation added to their cost, at lower prices than
those at which they are being sold at the very place in
which they are being produced. " Why is this?" Is it
because the producer who sends his product abroad is
obliged to compete in an unprotected market with the pro-
ducts of the country in which he makes his sales, while
he is enabled by a protective tariff to add the amount of
the duty to the cost of production in the protected market
of his own country? If this is the case surely the matter
is worth looking into and every householder should belong
to a society for discovering whether we are not being
fleeced under the operation of our present fiscal system.
That system, let us assume, was designed by one party and
has been sustained by both parties for the purpose of
encouraging native industry, but if these guesses are cor-

22 THE NEW SLAVERY

rect the system has become oppressive to the great masses
of people, who are unable to derive any benefit from its
operation, and whose only share in its results is the privi-
lege of paying tribute to its beneficiaries.

Mr. Shortt made light of all the current solutions of
the problem, but some of them, I think, he unduly mini-
mized. There is one set of considerations which I think
may well have been dealt with. I refer to the almost uni-
versal popular misconception that confounds the increase
of money with the increase of wealth. If it could once
be got into the heads of people that money is a mere
measure of wealth and not wealth itself, everybody would
be easily made to understand that an increase of money
in the world no more indicates an increase of wealth than
an increase in the number of yardsticks implies an increase
in the supply of cloth. Of course, there would be a fallacy
in making this analogy run on all fours. The industry
that is employed in digging gold has a two-fold tendency
to increase the price of the goods that are really service-
able to humankind. In the first place, it is drawing away
from really productive pursuits the amount of labor that
is expended upon the production of that which can be
neither eaten nor drunk and can be worn only by the
wealthy and extravagant for the purpose of ornament. In
the second place it is diminishing the purchasing value of
the little bit of coin that the industry and the economy
of the thrifty and industrious have enabled them to accu-
mulate. All this would be very evident to us if we were
using sheep and cattle, as in Homeric days, as the measure
of value and the medium of exchange. To make the matter
plainer, let us imagine that all values were estimated in
terms of sheep and that sheep were used as the universal
or general medium of exchange. Is it not evident that
if the number of sheep in the community were very greatly
increased relatively to the increase in other kinds of pro-
perty, it would require many more sheep than before to
purchase a house, or a farm, or a barrel of flour?

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 23

EXTENSION OF CREDITS.

n

It is exactly the same with gold. The more gold is taken
out of the bowels of the earth, the less valuable, other
things being equal, becomes the stock of gold already in
the world, and the smaller becomes the purchasing power
of every sovereign that the thrifty citizen has saved. This
is the tendency. Of course, it does not operate to its full
extent. There is such a craving for ornaments of gold,
and there is such a demand as a medium of exchange that
there is really not too much gold available for the purpose
of the enormous and expanding commerce of modern
states. But there has been in recent years, on the strength
of the gold reserves of the civilized world, such an enor-
mous emission of credit money as no previous era in the
world's history has ever witnessed, and very high authori-
ties can be cited for the judgment that this is one of the
causes, if not the principal cause, of the increase in the
cost of living. The amount of gold reserves in the leading
banks of Europe and America at the end of 1899 was
£500,000,000. Eleven years later it was £850,000,000, an
increase of 70 per cent. During the same period the circu-
lation of bank notes increased in a little less than the
same proportion. It did not increase unduly, because it
is regulated by law. But during that period the amount of
loans and discounts increased from £2,000,000,000 to the
enormous figure of £4,000,000,000. Mr. Morton Frewen, a
high authority on such a subject, attributes to this cause
the alarming increase in the price of commodities and in
the consequent cost of living, and he fortifies his position
by another high authority to the same effect, Sir Edward
Holden.

I should like to have heard Mr. Shortt's opinion on this
point, for I think he did not give it the prominence in his
treatment of the question that it really deserved.

B. RUSSELL.

24 THE NEW SLAVERY

From The Maritime Apple, June 28th, 1913 :

TRUSTS AND COMBINES — DR. ADAM SHORTT SAYS THEY
PROVIDE BALANCE OF CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION.

Friends of trusts and combines are not numerous in
Canada, but according to the Ottawa correspondent of the
Toronto Globe they find a champion in Dr. Adam Shortt,
economist and Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Com-
mission. Testifying before a Parliamentary commission,
Dr. Shortt observed that a salient feature of modern eco-
nomic development is that in the last fifteen or twenty
years there have been no long periods of general industrial
depression such as occurred prior to the trust and com-
bine period. " The reason," said Dr. Shortt, " lies in the
concerted action of producers in getting together and regu-
lating their output so that they shall not overdo the thing,
so that they shall not starve each other out. That is the
beneficent feature, of course, of the combination, and it is
a feature to be considered in what I regard as the wild
and miscellaneous talk about those combines. They repre-
sent a real and thoroughly sound development in our
industry, but the power to regulate is also the power to
coerce, and no proper distinction is made between the
regulative power merely and the coercive power. The
trusts provide a better balance of production and con-
sumption, and that accounts for the absence in the last
twenty years of those periods of over-production, stagna-
tion, speculative booms, and all that kind of thing which
we had in the nineteenth century. Our financial crisis of
1907 would have precipitated stagnation in the nineteenth
century from which we should not have recovered for ten
or twelve years. It was got over in five or six months
because the forces that were there were more intelligent,
better organized, and were not frightened by it to the same
extent."

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 25

From the Literary Digest, March 22nd, 1913 :

MAKING COAL STRIKES PAY.

Making coal strikes pay has apparently been mastered
by the hard-coal operators, conclude several Eastern papers
in view of a report on coal prices and wages which was
sent in to Congress as one of Secretary Nagel's last official
acts. As the New York Tribune summarizes the figures
in the report, the advance of twenty-five cents a ton in the
retail price of coal was made ostensibly to compensate for
the advance in wages following last spring's strike. But,
we are informed, " the coal operators paid their miners
$4,000,000 additional during 1912 as a result of the increase
in wages and advanced the cost of coal to the public in
the same year $13,450,000. Thus they gained $9,450,000 in
one year as a consequence of the strike." In this way " the
miners, the operators, and the retailers all made easy
money by the strike and the wage agreement," observes
the Springfield Republican, "while the public alone has
lost money, through higher prices, without any compensa-
tion whatever." In New England, a region especially hard
hit by high coal prices, another daily, the Boston Christian
Science Monitor, is indignant at " the apparent deliberate-
ness with which the coal interests involved here set to
work with the purpose of trifling with the public. . . .
They entered upon this plan of extortion without compunc-
tion and without hesitation." And what makes the sin of
the operators more grievous, according to the New York
Tribune's way of thinking, is the fact that this sort of
thing has become customary with them:

"After the strikes of 1900 and 1902 they raised wages
thirty-two cents a ton and prices to the public one dollar
a ton. The Tribune last spring estimated their profit from
that transaction at more than $300,000,000 in a decade.
When there is so much money as that in strikes, will the
anthracite-coal industry ever be free from them?"

The report, which was prepared by investigators con-

26 THE NEW SLAVERY

nected with the Bureau of Labor in compliance with a
Congressional resolution, does not offer much hope for
relief next year. After giving various details regarding
the benefits accruing to the miners after the agreement
made last spring, and showing the different ways in which
the operators profited by the situation, it goes on as follows
to discuss underlying causes:

" Owing principally to marked differences in quality and
accessibility of the coal, the producing cost to the various
companies varies so widely that if the company having
the highest cost of production sells at a price high enough
to earn a fair profit, the more favorably situated coal
companies, selling at the same price, will reap enormous
profits.

" Furthermore, where there is a common control of coal
mines and railroads, the capital invested derives its
income from both the mining and transportation of coal,
and the failure to realize profits in mining may be, and
often is, compensated by profits in the operations of the
railroad on account of coal tonnage. In such a case it is
not a matter of importance to the controlling financial
interests whether the profits are derived from the mining
or from the transportation of coal.

" Under these conditions, the motives to increase the
efficiency and to decrease the cost of mining coal are much
weaker than in the case of a corporation dependent for
its profits entirely on the results of its mining."

So the New York Commercial concludes that these
uncomfortable conditions " will continue to exist as long
as the same ownership extends over coal-producing and
coal-transportation." " Is our Government as helpless as
the individual consumers appear to be to defend them-
selves against this extortion?" asks the Philadelphia Public
Ledger. Apparently it is, in the Boston Journal's opinion,
and —

" In the climax of hopelessness and the measure of
futility against the outrage, it writes down the plainest

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 27

demand for Government ownership of coal mines which
has been made. If the great coal interest is so entrenched
that it can violate with impunity a principle supposed to
be written into the Federal statutes, the need for Govern-
ment ownership becomes exigent and imperative."

It is for the new Administration " to act upon the proofs
the Taft Administration has made ready." So the Boston
Advertiser remarks, and the Springfield Republican is
moved to note "the new Attorney-General's special quali-
fications for prosecuting the coal-roads " :

"He has for years made a special study of the anthra-
cite industry, and he has had charge of the Government's
suits against the alleged combination since Attorney-Gen-
eral Bonaparte's day. . . . He will now have the best
of opportunities to go his own pace in proceedings against
what is, in effect, a coal monopoly — and one of the most
brazen in existence."

From the Literary Digest, January 18th, 1913 :

The New York Tribune calls attention to the fact that
not only has the nation had an available but unused
weapon against corners ever since the enactment of the
Anti-Trust Law, but that " likewise in nearly every State
of the Union the old common law prohibitions which in
ancient times would have stopped any attempt to corner
the food of an English village were still a part of the law."
And the New York American regards the Patten case as
" chiefly interesting as a demonstration of the inadequacy
of modern law in dealing with the ancient crime of fore-
stalling." It remarks somewhat cynically:

" If Patten had worked his corner like a lone bandit,
without a confidant or confederate, the Sherman Act —
which relates only to combinations in restraint of trade —
would, of course, be inapplicable.

28 THE NEW SLAVEKY

" In the Middle Ages nobody doubted that it was wrong
to buy and sell in the same market — with the single aim
of raising prices and making money on the rise. Nobody
doubted in those unenlightened times that making money
by creating an artificial scarcity was stealing."

From the Halifax Chronicle, June 7th, 1913 :

WANT TO MANAGE THEIR OWN AFFAIRS — SIR ROBERT PERKS
SAYS DOMINION SHOULD BE LEFT TO DEAL WITH INTERNAL
AFFAIRS IN OWN WAY.

London, June 6. — " The Canadian people want to be left
to deal with their own internal affairs in their own way,
and with a minimum of advice from Downing Street,"
said Sir Robert Perks, when interviewed on his recent
Canadian tour.

"What the attitude of Canadians would be were the
Japanese to appear at Vancouver is quite a different mat-
ter," was a remark that Sir Robert sandwiched in.

"How did you find the economic outlook?" he was asked.

"Well, it isn't all that could be desired," he replied.
"Notwithstanding the vast sums of money that Canada
has been able to secure from foreign investors, especially
Great Britain, there is undoubtedly a decided stringency
in the money market. The Canadian banks, in fact, can't
lend the money that the industries of the country require."

Sir Robert denies that the tariff has unduly raised the
cost of living in Canada, but it has undoubtedly had the
effect of raising wages, he said.

" The tariff has little to do with the question of living,"
was his opinion. "What the spending classes have most
to fear is rather the danger of trade combinations which
will raise prices to abnormal rates."

CUEKENT NEWS ITEMS 29

From the Montreal Weekly Witness, June
14th, 1913 :

DEAR MEAT.

The cost of living still keeps going up, according to the
statistics which the Department of Labor goes to so much
trouble and expense carefully to compile each month. The
Labor Gazette for April is just issued, and shows an
advance from 135.9 to 136.3. This means that the cost of
living is now 36.3 per cent, higher than it was for the
average of the ten years, 1890 to 1900. The cost of gro-
ceries, including vegetables and all kinds of manufactured
articles, has only risen about 17 or 18 per cent, over the
price of the period that is taken as a standard of compari-
son. By far the larger part of the increase in cost is due
to the great rise in the value of animal products. Meats
have advanced 86 per cent., leather products 60 per cent.,
and fish also 60 per cent. Animal farming would on this
showing be now nearly twice as profitable as it was fifteen
years ago were it not that the cost of labor has advanced
materially. In the case of poultry it would be two and
one-third times as profitable. Even if the farmers began
now to increase their live stock as rapidly as possible, meat
is likely to be still dearer before it becomes cheaper.
Indeed, the only way to increase the live stock output is
to hold a larger number out of the market for breeding, and
so still further shorten the supply. The results of these
high prices will certainly be to introduce mixed farming
on thousands of one-crop farms, as well as to greatly
increase the number of cattle kept, where but a few head
have usually been maintained. An incidental benefit will
be the betterment of the land itself. It will take some time
for a readjustment of the country's farming, such as will
equalize prices and provide for the inrush of immigrants
to take place. Its accomplishment will, however, work
good in many ways. Unfortunately the farmer does not
reap the whole profit of this large rise in the price of
meats. It is very largely absorbed by the monopolistic

30 THE NEW SLAVERY

work of the middlemen, who control the trade. In parts
of the country they are so despotic that they actually
refuse to buy from farmers who dare sell a single animal
to anyone else. Then, again, they refuse to sell meat to
any butcher who ever buys from anyone else, and as the
single farmer or the single butcher can make no arrange-
ment that will assure the supply or market for their
entire needs without the trust, so powerful has it become,
all are at its mercy, and the public suffers along with the
farmer and butcher in having to pay with them a common
toll to the organized middlemen.

From the Montreal Witness, December 14th,
1912:

COURT MAY BAR TRUSTS FROM LAW BENEFITS.

Washington, December 14. — Trusts will not be able to
collect through the courts a single penny of debts due
them if the Supreme Court upholds the contention made
in a case brought before it to-day.

The Corn Products Refining Company of New York sued
to recover $1,247 from the D. R. Wilder Manufacturing
Company, of Atlanta, Ga., for glucose and grape sugar sold
to the latter.

The Atlanta company pleaded that the Corn Products
Refining Company had monopolized the glucose and grape
sugar business and that it had entered into a rebate con-
tract in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law.

The " rebate contract " was a so-called profit-sharing plan
of the New York company, by which it agreed to return to
its patrons 10 per cent, of their purchases providing they
gave their trade exclusively to the Corn Products Refining
Company.

In the Continental Wall Paper case, the court refused
to lend itself to a collection of a debt because of an illegal
combination in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law.

Unless advanced, the case will not be considered by the
court for more than two years.

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 31

From Harpers Weekly, September 13th, 1913 :
Is THERE A LIMIT?

More than one hundred thousand pounds of meat and
eggs were condemned in Philadelphia recently by the
State Dairy and Food Commission, and warrants were
issued for the arrest of the dealers. The reason for this
punishment was that the goods had been in cold storage
since 1906 and had become unfit. Forty thousand pounds
of game were also called unfit, although they have been
in storage only two years. Pennsylvania has a statute,
which went into effect only last month, providing for a
penalty of five hundred dollars, or imprisonment, or both,
for storing beef more than four months; pork, sheep, and
lamb, six months; veal, three months; butter and fish,
nine months; fowls (drawn), five months; undrawn, ten
months. This is all very well, but ought there not to be a
statute of limitations? The principle of the statute of
limitations, well recognized, especially in saving criminals
from probable penal punishment, is that if you did a thing
long enough ago you are not punished for it. In real
estate, a similar principle is that if you occupy a certain
piece of land long enough without any right to it, you
thereby acquire a right. Would it not be reasonable, there-
fore, to provide that if food has been in storage, say,
twenty years, the statute of limitations should run and it
would be perfectly legal to sell it?

From the Halifax Herald, July 6th, 1913 :

THE MIDDLEMAN'S SHARE IN HIGH PRICES — A REPORT BASED
ON MISLEADING PERCENTAGE SYSTEM.

A bulletin on the " Cost of Living," lately issued by the
United States Department of Agriculture, is so framed on
a percentage system as to make it appear at first sight
that the middleman, who of late has been coming in for
a good deal of criticism and charges of extortion, is not

32 THE NEW SLAVERY

getting any larger rake-off in profit than he did fifteen or
more years ago.

The evidence thus tending to exonerate the middlemen
comes from the price averages for the ten years, 1903-12,
and the ten years, 1893-1902, and consists of these
statistics : —

Wheat (Chicago price) advanced 32 per cent.; the whole-
sale price of flour 29 per cent, and the retail price of flour

18 per cent.

Hogs advanced 33 per cent, the wholesale price of hams
24 per cent, the retail price of smoked hams 32 per cent.
Retail smoked bacon advanced 50 per cent., pork chops
41 per cent, the wholesale price of lard 31 per cent., and
retail price about 30 per cent

Steers (Chicago) advanced 24 per cent., the wholesale
price of beef 23 per cent, the retail price of sirloin steak

19 per cent., rib roast 23 per cent. Sheep advanced 19
per cent., and the wholesale price of mutton 36 per cent.

Potatoes (December average) advanced 26 per cent, at
the farm, and the retail price 29 per cent.

But, as the Toronto Mail very properly points out, a
percentage basis of reckoning may be quite misleading.

Potatoes, which sold on the farm in the first decade at
forty cents a bag, advanced both on the farm and in retail
price in the second decade by 25 per cent.

The middleman would, on the percentage theory, make
no gain, but the real facts are different

Twenty-five per cent, increase to the farmer would give
him fifty cents a bag.

But the retail price of the potatoes in the first decade
would probably be about eighty cents a bag, and 25 per
cent increase would make that one dollar.

Thus, whereas the gain to the grower is but ten cents
a bag, it is twenty cents a bag for the retailer.

B. P. Yoakum, President of the 'Frisco Railroad system,
lias calculated that the people of the United States pay
$13,000,000,000 for farm products, bringing the farmer
$6,000,000,000.

33

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS

Over 100 per cent, goes to the " in-between " interests,
such as the railways, storage houses, manufacturers, sel-
lers, distributors. Part of this is just, but is it not true
that while individually the " in-between " interests may
get no more for their work than is their due, there is an
enormous, costly, and superfluous multiplication of these
middlemen interests?

In these days there is combination among producers to
maintain and enhance their selling prices; there is also a
needlessly multitudinous army of distributors, who,
because of their vast numbers, have to boost retail prices
in order to maintain their separate establishments and
make a living.

It may be safely said that every town in America has
twice as many retail shops as are publicly useful.

One thing that is greatly needed in the public interest
is combination among distributors to reduce the neces-
sary cost of distribution.

The middleman is a necessary evil, to be eliminated as
far as possible.

The co-operative stores of Britain are a boon to the
public, but they are practically unknown on this continent.

From the Halifax Chronicle, September 3rd,
1913:

COMBINES FLOURISH UNDER TORY RULE — THE PRESENT
ADMINISTRATION ALLOWING LAW PASSED BY LIBERALS
TO REMAIN A DEAD LETTER — No ACTION TAKEN AGAINST
UNITED SHOE MACHINERY Co.

(Special to the Morning Chronicle.)
Ottawa, September 2. — In so far as the Minister of Labor,
Hon. T. W. Crothers, and the present Government, are
concerned the Combines Investigation Act passed in 1910
under the Laurier Administration is evidently to be a
dead letter. That legislation, at the time of its enactment,
attracted world-wide attention and was generally regarded
3

34 THE NEW SLAVERY

as providing the most advanced legislative machinery yet
devised for preventing undue enhancement of prices to the
general consumer by combines or monopolies.

It was first invoked under the Laurier Government in
November, 1910, in the case of the United Shoe Machinery
Company of Canada, the Canadian branch of one of the
strongest and most absolute monopolies in the United
States. It was charged that under the form of lease, which
the company required users of its patented machinery to
take out, competition was prevented, the cost of the fin-
ished product was unduly enhanced, and monopoly in
restraint of trade was operative. The Company fought
application of the Act by appeal to the courts, and every
legal device was employed to resist it.

COMBINE WAS PEOVED.

Finally, however, after over a year's delay, the way was
cleared for the appointment of a Board of Investigation
under the Act. This Board, consisting of Judge Lauren-
deau, J. C. Walsh and W. J. White of Montreal, brought
in its findings on October 18th, 1911. The majority report,
signed by Judge Laurendeau and Mr. Walsh, found that
the company was a combine and, by the operation of its
leases, restricted the use of its machines and unduly pre-
vented competition in the use and sale of shoe machinery
in Canada. It was a clear-cut finding. The report recom-
mended, however, that a stay of six months be granted in
view of all the conditions, to enable the company to comply
with the law and remove the illegal restrictions. This
six months' stay of proceedings was up on May 19th last.

Since then practically no action has been taken by the
Minister of Labor or by the Government. The penalties
under the Act for failure to comply with the Board's find-
ings provide either for removal of duty, cancellation of
patent rights, or a fine of $1,000 per day for each day
that the company failed to do as ordered. The onus for
enforcing the penalties lies with the Government.

CUKBENT NEWS ITEMS 35

Although the operation of the combine in question affects
every consumer in Canada and takes toll on every pair of
shoes manufactured, the Minister of Labor has taken prac-
tically no further move in the matter.

On August 13th last, nearly four months after the respite
of six months recommended by the Board of Investigation
had expired, a letter was written by the Department of
Labor to the company asking what steps had been taken
to comply with the recommendations made by the Board
on October 18th of last year. A reply from the company
has just been received. Just what it means is not clear,
and the Department does not venture any opinion as to
whether or not the company's concessions really mean any
redress for the complainants or will tend to remove the
illegal toll on the use of shoe machinery controlled by the
monopoly.

The company states that new forms of agreement had
been drafted, and that instead of requiring leases in some
instances the machines may be sold outright. In the state-
ment given the press by the Labor Department to-day there
is no attempt to specify in what manner any real relief has
been given by the company.

The fact remains that the Government has for months
past taken no step to ascertain whether or not the penal-
ties should be enforced.

From the Halifax Chronicle, August 26th.
1913:

MOST EXPENSIVE ix THE WORLD.

The report on the cost of living which has been issued
by the British Board of Trade brings the accuracy of
statistics to what has been a somewhat general conclusion.
The cost of living as measured by rent, fuel, food, and
clothing, has advanced by twelve per cent, in seven years,
although it is lower than it was a generation ago. There
is very little evidence that wages, except in certain special
industries, have gone up in the same proportion, so that

36 THE NEW SLAVERY

we may take it that the average worker is no better off
than he was. The Westminster Gazette takes the index
figures of a few lands which figure prominently in fiscal
discussions:

(The year 1900—100.)

1905. 1912.

United Kingdom 103 115

Germany 114 130

United States 113 139(1911)

Canada Ill 151

"According to these figures," says the Westminster
Gazette, " Canada is the most expensive country in which
to live in the whole world, and nearly all the tariff coun-
tries show a more rapid rise in cost than does the United
Kingdom."

From the Halifax Herald, September 23rd,
1913:

HIGH COST OF LIVING AND TARIFF PROTECTION: STATISTICS
CLEARLY ABSOLVE THE TARIFF.

A correspondent of the St. John Globe cites official
figures to show that the charge that "the high cost of
living " is due to the protective tariffs is not well founded.

The statistics he cites are from the report of exhaustive
investigations carried on by the Dominion Department of
Labor as to the increase in prices of various commodities
during past years.

In the reports on wholesale prices published by the
Labor Department, he says it is shown that between the
years 1890 and 1896, when the protective policy in Canada
was in full bloom, the index number of wholesale prices
declined twenty points, and that while the index has since
1896 been rising, with occasional slight recessions, the
prices of manufactured goods generally, supposed to be

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 37

most affected by the tariff, have not made any notable
advance. In fact there are quite a number of manufac-
tured articles whose prices have remained stationary or
declined.

In the report of the Department issued in 1910 it is
shown that by far the greatest advances took place in
connection with the crude products of the forest, farms
and fisheries — commodities that according to the reci-
procity advocates derived no benefit from a protective
tariff.

Of the great producing industries agriculture showed
the greatest advance in prices.

Crude farm products (grain, fodder, meat-producing
animals, milk, eggs, wool, fruit and vegetables) showed
an increase of thirty-seven per cent, over the average of
the base decade 1890-1899.

The products made therefrom (meat, brans, flour, hides,
leather, etc.) showed an increase of thirty-four per cent.;
that is, the manufacturers did not increase the prices to
correspond with the increase of their raw material.
Fish produce increased nearly as much as farm products.
Products of the mine in 1909 were slightly above the
level of the base decade, but, if coal is excluded, were below
the average of the base decade.

For Canadian manufactured products the general level •
of prices was about fourteen per cent above the level of
the base decade. Included in this estimate were various
grades of lumber, and lumber had on the average risen
in price fifty per cent, above the base decade. When lum-
ber was excluded the manufactured products of Canada,
according to the report issued in 1910, showed a gain of
less than ten per cent, compared with the base decade of
1890-1899.

Free traders have not contended that protection caused
high prices of farm, fish and forest products in Canada.
On the contrary it has been contended that Canada had
a surplus of these products, and that free access to the

38 THE NEW SLAVERY

United States market would tend to raise their prices.
How, then, can we account for the great increase in the
prices of the products of the forest, farms and fisheries, as
compared with the small increase in the prices of manu-
factured commodities which might be said to be due to
the increase in prices of raw materials as much as to the
tariff?

The conclusion of course is, as this correspondent, Mr.
Colin McKay, of St. John, says, that one must delve con-
siderably deeper than the tariff to find the cause or causes
of the prevailing high cost of living.

We have had no opportunity to verify Mr. McKay's
quotations, but presume they are accurate, and if so they
certainly support his conclusion.

It is also to be noted the increase in the cost of living
in recent years has not been confined to countries with
a protective tariff, but is just as much in evidence in Free
Trade Britain as elsewhere.

But after all the high cost of living is not a serious
matter to the public generally, but only to those of low
fixed salaries or a small fixed income.

It does not touch the producing farmers, and the indus-
trial workers of Canada are probably better off to-day than
they were in the days of low prices.

From the Montreal Weekly Witness, August
15th, 1913 :

Is CANNEBS Co. KILLING OFF COMPETITION? — SCALE OF PBICES
FOB NEW GOODS WOULD SUGGEST THIS — LOCAL TRADE
SLOW.

Dun's Bulletin of Saturday, August 2, says of Montreal
trade: "The heat spell has drawn further contingents to
the seaside and mountains, and city retail trade is on the
slow side. Wholesale business is of a rather more than
usually quiet midsummer character, and the tendency to
buy cautiously is strongly in evidence.

CURRENT NEWS ITEMS 39

" The iron market is very dull. Apart from the
moulders' strike there has been a curtailing of operations
in some large foundry and manufacturing establishments,
and sales of pig iron during the past month have been
light. Quotations show no marked change. No. 1 Scotch
iron is quoted at about $23.00, and No. 2 selected at $22.00.
There is no English iron here at present. Buffalo iron is
quoted at figures which would mean about $19.00 to $19.25
on spot, a price which producers of domestic iron could
hardly meet. Dry goods warehouses show a good deal of
activity in the shipping of fall goods on orders already
booked, but it is not expected much new business will be
done before September.

" Little improvement is yet noted in the demand for
leather.

" There is a fair distribution of groceries for the season.
Quotations just made for certain lines of the new pack of
canned goods by the Dominion Canners combination are
causing considerable comment. In spite of the generally
reported short crops, peas are quoted very much below
last year's figures; strawberries, which have been also
reported a specially short crop, are quoted at twenty cents
less than last' year, and there appears to be an impression
in some quarters that these prices indicate a desire to kill
off independent competition which has been developing the
past few years. Western collections are still much com-
plained of.

" The district failures list is a light one, only three small
insolvencies being reported for the week, with liabilities
of twenty thousand dollars."

From a press despatch to the Montreal Weekly
Witness, January 13th, 1914:

REFUSED TO JOTN COMBINE.

Toronto, January 8. — Because he refused to accede to the
requests of his fellow tradesmen and join an alleged com-

40 THE NEW SLAVERY

bine to raise the price of meat to eighteen cents a pound
and comply with other requests by which the control of
meat would be held by certain butchers in the " ward," and
other foreign sections of the city, a Jewish butcher named
Drooker, who has stores on Agnes Street and Augusta
Avenue, was assaulted Tuesday night at a meeting at 220
Simcoe Street.

The meeting had been called for the purpose of dis-
cussing the question of keeping up the price of meat.
Drooker appeared at the Crown Attorney's office yesterday
and his assailants may be forced to appear in the police
court.

A great many Jewish butchers attended a previous meet-
ing, and it is said that all present agreed to close their
stores at a certain hour and make the price of meat
eighteen cents a pound. Drooker was not present, and
shortly after the moving spirits of the alleged combine
called on him and asked him to join them.

Drooker refused, stating that he could make a profit by
selling his meat, generally speaking, at fifteen cents a
pound. He also refused to close his store at eight o'clock.

From the Montreal Weekly Witness, August
5th, 1913 :

OUTLOOK FOB MEAT EATERS NOT CHEERING — EXPERTS THINK
FLESH FOOD WILL SOON BE LUXURY OF THE VERY RICH.

New York, August 4. — Although local meat men are not
inclined to go as far as J. T. Russell, President of the
National Master Butchers' Association, who is quoted as
saying that he will hardly know the taste of meat ten
years from now, they do believe that the price is not
going to be any lower and that substitutes for the expen-
sive cuts will come into general use.

They point out that in the leading nations of the world,
especially in the United States, the demand is greatly in
excess of the supply and is likely to continue so.

NEWS ITEMS 41

George L. McCarthy, Secretary of the American Meat
Packers' Association, voiced the sentiment of the local
dealers yesterday. He does not foresee lower prices for
this or any other country during the next five years, and
believes that the whole question harks back to the law of
world supply and demand and that tariff or other man-
made laws will have very little to do with it.

" The meat supply in the United States is about thirty
per cent, below the actual demand," he said. " There were
fifty-seven million head of cattle in this country in 1906,
where there are but thirty-six million head now; and on
the basis of the census of 1910 there are twelve or four-
teen million more people in this country now than there
were seven years ago.

"Will there be a substitute for meat? Yes, there will
have to be. Many articles of food have come into promin-
ence during the last decade and meat does not occupy as
prominent a place.

"But I believe that the main substitute in this country
will be in the use of cheaper cuts of meat.

" The day of the sirloin is passing in this country except
for the rich. I believe in a decade from now we will eat
round, chuck, flank, sausage and stew instead of what are
now considered the choicest cuts.

" But I fear that most American housewives will have
to learn the art of cooking cheap grades of meat from their
German sisters. Some of these meats require one, two or
three days to prepare properly, and in the German family
nothing is thrown away but the bone."

What do all these articles point to?

1. Illicit combinations. 2. Widespread dis-
content. 3. Lawlessness.

CHAPTER II.

MAGAZINE WRITERS.

THE discussion, however, has not been con-
fined to the columns of the newspapers, with
their correspondents, anonymous or otherwise,
but has penetrated the cloisters of learning and
been investigated by scholastic minds.

Thus Mr. Irving Fisher, Professor of Political
Economy in Yale University, discusses the ques-
tion in the December, 1912, number of The
North American Review under the title " Is the
High Cost of Living Going Higher?" which
question you will notice he answers in the
affirmative.

Professor Fisher attributes the ever-mounting
cost of living in these times of ours to the over-
production of gold and the consequent dearness
of food. And he says that even if, as seems prob-
able, the present rapidity of production of gold
should cease, the cost of living would still keep
on increasing. The movement having once got
under way is uncheckable.

To this theory, which is not a new one, the one
sufficient answer is India. That country has
for more than two thousand years absorbed gold
with sponge-like swiftness and effectiveness.
Pliny, the celebrated Eoman author, writing

42

MAGAZINE WRITERS 43

about 70 A.D., said that India absorbed in his
time Roman gold to an amount equal yearly to
two and a half million dollars of our money.
This drain continued all through the Middle
Ages down to our own times, and is still in full
swing. It is calculated that India now takes as
much gold as the yearly output of the Transvaal
mines. And it never comes away from there.
It is converted into jewelry, polished bars,
temple adornments, and hoarded in the ground.
Being locked up, it is of little good to the Hin-
dustani, who are periodically scourged with
devastating famines. India well illustrates the
truth that to get any good from gold it must be
kept in circulation. Once it is withdrawn and
hoarded it becomes dead and might as well have
been left in the ground from which it was
wrested. At the same time the fact that it is
so withdrawn and hidden away keeps its equili-
brium as a medium of exchange unimpaired and
preserves its incomparable qualities as such.
Except as a medium of exchange it is of no more
value than any other metal. Any attempt at
standardizing the gold dollar, which is Profes-
sor Fisher's own pet theory, would, therefore, be
utterly futile.

Being curious to learn what became of all the
money, I read the explanation of where the gold
went to nearly twenty years ago in the former
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, under,
I think, the heading " Money." It is also stated
at length in the work entitled " Money and

44 THE NEW SLAVERY

Banking,"* by Charles A. Conant, and probably
in other standard works on the subject. Any-
one who has not access to those more or less
expensive works may see the facts plainly stated
in Munsey's Magazine for January, 1913, by
John Grant Dater, the financial editor of that
popular periodical, in an article entitled " The
Great Sink of Gold," meaning India.

Another professor, Dr. Andrew McPhail, of
McGill University, tackles the problem in the
December, 1912, number of The University
Magazine, the literary organ of four of our lead-
ing universities, in an article entitled " The Cost
of Living." Shrewd old Scotchman, or Irish-
man, or whatever he is, Doctor McPhail is not
to be fooled by any over-production of gold fal-
lacy. He says positively that the belief in it led
to a panic in the United States in the days of
Bryanism.f His idea is that we have been liv-

*So powerful is the influence of change in conditions of
credit in modifying the quantitative relations between gold
and goods as to abundantly justify the caution given by
Keynes ("Scope and Method in Political Economy," p. 216),
in regard to the quantity law of money:

"This is, in a sense, a hypothetical law; it does not enable
us to say that whenever there is an actual increase in the
quantity of money in circulation there will actually be a rise
in prices; nor does it even enable us to say that if we find
an increase in the amount of money in circulation taking place
concurrently with a general rise in prices, the latter phenom-
enon must of necessity be wholly due to the former. For the
cause in question is not the only one capable of affecting
general prices. Its effects may, therefore, be counteracted
by the concurrent operation of more powerful causes acting
in the opposite direction, or exaggerated by the concurrent
operation of causes acting in the same direction." — Conant,
Vol. 1, p. 196.

t " Another favorite explanation of the rise in prices is the
increased production of gold, and in 1896 a large part of the
people of the United States wrought themselves into a frenzy
because they believed this fallacy." — Dr. A. McPhail

MAGAZINE WRITERS 45

ing too fast and too wastefully, and that we have
laid too much stress on manufacturing, having
abandoned the farms and gone too much into
building up cities, which we now find to be
inconvenient, disagreeable and dirty; and he
looks forward cheerfully to the time when flour-
ishing towns like Halifax, St. John, Montreal,
Toronto and Winnipeg will be as silent and lone-
some as Tadmor in the desert. Exhaustion of
the soil by uneconomic methods he finds to be
the cause of the enhanced cost of farm products.
But modern science has overcome this difficulty.
Some of the oldest countries in Europe, such as
France and Germany, are still in the van of
production. And an old country like Denmark
showed within the last few years, and aston-
ished the world by the results of applying, up-to-
date methods in her dairying industry. To
come to this Dominion, the oldest settled parts,
such as Nova Scotia and Quebec, show after
three hundred years of cultivation no signs of
exhaustion. A good many of us can remember
the time when the Annapolis Valley turned out
only a few thousand barrels of apples where now
a million barrels are produced yearly, and ten
times that crop could be produced without any
difficulty. Walking along the streets of Bran-
don, Manitoba, eight years ago, I saw them
bringing up, in digging a sewer at a depth of
eighteen feet, the clear black lush of prairie soil,
and farther back, they told me, they had been
down to a depth of twenty-one feet. How many

46 THE NEW SLAVERY

years it will take to exhaust this prolific deposit,
with our knowledge of renewing the fertility of
soils, may be left to conjecture. There is very
little fear of old Mother Earth failing to supply
her inhabitants amply for many centuries yet to
come.

Dr. David Starr Jordan, President of the
Leland Stanford Junior University of Cali-
fornia, has an article in the January, 1913, num-
ber of The World's Work entitled " Taxing the
Cost of Living," wherein he says :

The primary factor in the rise of the cost of living the
world over is the fall in the value of gold due to excessive
and growing financial exactions. In other words, it is
produced by the steadily growing encroachment of Govern-
ment on the individual through the Indirect Tax and the
Deferred Payment, the two agencies of tyranny in the past,
now used for the self-oppression of democracy.

Dr. Jordan believes we are spending too much
for civic improvement and that we are paying
for the same in the enhanced cost of living. Yet
money spent in improving a town or city, if
economically laid out, is always a good invest-
ment. It makes the citizens proud of their city
and attracts strangers, thereby increasing trade.
Dwellers in Paris have long been aware of this
fact and have profited by it, whilst cities which
have more recently awakened to a realization
of its importance, such as London, Berlin and
Washington, are being well repaid for their
lavish though prudent outlay. So that we will
si ill have to look elsewhere for a solution of Hi is

MAGAZINE WRITERS 47

world-wide question of the cause of the high
cost of living. Sir Edmund Walker, President
of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, thinks he
has found it. In his annual address last year to
the directors and shareholders of the great bank
of which he is head, he gives what may be called
the banker's reason:

In common with the rest of the world we are living in
a time of high prices, and the incidence of these prices on
those who have fixed incomes or earnings is so heavy as
to constitute the greatest economic difficulty we have to
face. I shall not attempt to deal fully with a subject
which is being studied by Government commissions in
many leading countries and which will, let us hope, be
referred to an international commission. There are some
forces which affect the general trend of prices, others
which may cause any particular commodity to go above
or below the line of the general trend, and again others
which are local and produce such apparent anomalies as
higher prices for foodstuffs in cities nearer sources of
cheap production as compared with more remote centres
of consumption. Without, therefore, discussing the effect
of an enlarged and cheapened supply of gold, the enormous
increase of credit partly made possible thereby, and the
effect of many other forces causing a general upward trend
of prices, we may profitably consider some local causes
which put the people of Canada at an unnecessary dis-
advantage.

One of the most powerful and inexcusable local causes
for the high price of food is the condition of our country
roads. It must be clear that if a farmer has to travel ten
or twenty miles to a city to sell his produce, every hour
of delay to himself and his horses and wagon, every bushel
or pound less he is able to carry, every day lost in the
length of the life of his horses and wagon, cause just so

48 THE NEW SLAVERY

much increase in the cost of the article he has to sell. To
the extent that this needless and cruel loss might, if
avoided, partly add to the farmer's profits and partly
lessen the cost to the consumer, the state of our roads is
a little short of crime, if the bad roads around a city
cause the price of a food to be much higher than it need
be. One of the results is to enable producers hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of miles away to enter into competi-
tion with the farmer in his own country, because the cost
in transit over one mile of bad wagon road will cover the
cost over many miles of good railroad. This competition
may help the consumer by keeping prices from rising still
higher, but it will not bring the price below the point
fixed by the extra cost from the bad local roads. It will
not do any good for those of us who live in well-paved
cities to blame the farmers for bad roads. They cannot
be expected to build good roads entirely at their own
expense, and good roads will not come so long as we wait
for anything as unfair as this. It is not that we do not
know how to construct good roads. We know fairly well
what we should do, but we hesitate to do it. In the excel-
lent report on Highway Improvements in Ontario in 1911,
there is a sufficient abstract of the systems adopted by the
various countries of the world and by thirty-three states
in the United States. Of these, that in use in the State
of New York seems to be the most complete. Under this
system roads are classified as follows:

(1) State roads built at the entire cost of the state.

(2) Country roads to which the state contributes one-
half, the country thirty-five per cent., and the township
fifteen per cent. For maintenance the state collects from
the townships fifty dollars per mile per annum, the
remainder being contributed by the state.

(3) Can the people of Canada be made to realize that
every man, woman and child suffers from the evil of bad
roads, whether they use the roads directly or not? Have

MAGAZINE WRITERS 49

we not as much intelligence as the citizens of these thirty-
three neighboring states?

Another cause of high prices is the general inefficiency
of most kinds of labor. Employment is so easily obtained,
and the worker is so apt to be lacking in training for the
particular calling it falls to his lot to occupy, that for this
reason alone three men are often needed to do the work
of two. The necessity of buying food for three families
instead of two clearly raises the price of food, and every
non-producer of food in Canada therefore suffers from this
inefficiency of labor. Still another evil tending to high
prices and growing rapidly in these extravagant times is
the waste in the use of food. As seen in a modern hotel
or dining-car this shocks most of us, but in countless
families the waste is nearly as bad proportionately. If
three animals are bought where only two are really needed,
the price of meat is raised for everybody. I must apologize
for repeating facts which are so palpable, but in our desire
to blame someone else for the suffering caused by high
prices, we often refuse to see local causes which largely
contribute to it and which we could at least moderate if
we chose. We have often spoken of the tendencies of
modern life which increase the food consumers out of pro-
portion to the food producers, and it is pleasing to see
some slight evidence of a return to the land which may
help to correct this disproportion, but while the quantity
of fruit, vegetables and cereals grown may immediately
be increased so as to affect prices, the state of the cattle
industry of North America is so serious that some years
must pass before we may hope for a return of normal con-
ditions. It looks as if the United States would soon cease
to export beef, and unless we at once change our course
we may be in a similar condition. We must increase the
number of beef cattle, sheep and swine on the land very
largely if our annual consumption is to be supplied with-
out depleting the herds. We shall hope the commission
regarding our cattle ranges will produce good results, and
4

50 THE NEW SLAVERY

that the assurance of high prices for meat for some time
to come may induce mixed farming to a degree not yet
accomplished. Since 1908, while there has been a small
increase in the number of horses in Canada, there has been
a serious decline in the number of milch cows, beef cattle
and swine. There should have been a very large increase,
and unless every possible effort to arrest the decrease is
made this class of food will grow steadily dearer in price.
The falling off is most noticeable in Ontario, while the only
important gains are in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The foregoing includes nearly every cause but
the real one. It is a wonder that a gentleman of
such extensive information should not have
vouchsafed even a passing notice to the trusts
and combines. He states that in addition to the
over-production of gold and the extension of
credit affecting prices all over the world there
are three local causes peculiar to the Dominion
of Canada. These are the incompetence of work-
men, the bad state of the public highways and
the wastefulness of hotels, dining cars and the
public generally. He says that our workmen are
so incompetent that it frequently takes three of
them to do the work of two. If three families,
he argues, have to be maintained where two
would be sufficient, that must increase the cost
of living for everybody. Then the public roads
are in a shocking state and the expense of haul-
ing loads over them must increase the price of
the food so conveyed to market.

Regarding the first alleged cause, it must come
as a shock to a large part of the inhabitants of
this workaday Dominion that we have such an

MAGAZINE WRITERS 51

unworthy and reprehensible element in our
midst. If our workmen are so lazy, or ignorant,
or downright dishonest that three of them keep
hustling around where two of them could easily
do the work, then something ought to be done
about it. From one point of view this may throw
a flood of light on the Workmen's Compensation
Act. From their traditional posing as an
ill-used and down-trodden class, Sir Edmund
Walker's sweeping arraignment suddenly turns
the tables on them and puts them very much on
their defence.

" So ! ho I my men ! You're a lot of loafers and
scampers and scabs. What have you to say to
that?"

We have always been rather proud of our
workmen. They are, as a rule, intelligent and
resourceful, and have undoubtedly done an
immense amount of work of a permanent char-
acter. Considering the manner of the dissolu-
tion or winding-up of a good many banks, w^e
may have at times had our doubts about the
wisdom and efficiency of our bankers, but our
workmen have stood the test fairly well. Now,
however, it seems that they will have to look to
it. From a considerable experience of both
classes I believe that our workmen are just as
competent to do their work as our bankers, and
not half as arrogant.

But the bad roads come in for some share of
the blame. It is true that they might be better.
It is equally true that immense sums of monev

52 THE NEAV SLAVERY

have been spent upon them by the local govern-
ments and a huge deal of labor by the farmers.
The thing that no man seems to have yet devised
is some means of making them permanent. It
is doubtful whether the present agitation for
their betterment is inspired by anything more
than the determination of a wealthy class to
make themselves a more comfortable means of
transportation in their luxurious road cars.
These expensive new roads are probably to be
made more to enable Sir Gorgias Midas to roll
over them in his magnificent automobile than to
help our old friend Farmer Hodge, who will
bring his butter and eggs and greenstuff to town
in his old ramshackle wagon the same as he
always did.

Our hotelkeepers will henceforth, I suppose,
have to keep a strict account of the wastebasket
if they do not want to get into trouble with the
banks. As regards the dining-cars, from what
little experience I have had of them, I should say
that their chief virtue is economy. Concerning
the countless families spoken of by Sir Edmund,
it is difficult to see to which of the constituent
parts of our widely scattered population his
remark can apply. Hardly to the French, the
original settlers, whom their writers represent
to us as the most economical people on the earth.
When it comes to saving it is pretty hard to get
ahead of a Scotchman. Then we have the United
Empire Loyalist element, the descendants of a
people who, whatever their failings, have never

MAGAZINE WRITERS 53

been accused of wastefulness. The later importa-
tions, the Doukhobors, Galicians, Slavs, Italians
and others, are all adepts in economy, while the
Middle West immigrants from the United States
must have been at least thrifty to have wrested
from the soil the vast sums of money which they
are credited with having brought with them into
the North-West Provinces.

INCOMPETENT WORKMAN'S REPLY.

The workmen put up these costly banks. They
must have been inspected and passed before
being taken over. And we never heard of one
of them tumbling down. But see how many
banks have tumbled down in the last few years.
The Sovereign, Ontario, Farmers, Commercial
Bank of Windsor, Bank of Yarmouth, and the
Union Bank of Halifax have all had to close
their doors or become merged in other banks.
The bankers practically confessed that they were
incompetent or they would be doing business
to-day. Dr. Beat tie Nesbitt went to jail and
died there, but you never heard of a workman
having to die in jail through incompetence. But
what is there so difficult about banking, any-
way? Anyone who can shave a note can keep a
bank. Why do they put up these palatial struc-
tures if not to make a display of their wealth?
Is there no waste in that? And what about all
these big salaries and expensive establishments
of some bankers? Does not this look like waste,
or quite unnecessary expenditure at all events?

54 THE NEW SLAVERY

%

Incompetent and wasteful our workmen may be,
but it must be admitted that they have some
precedent for it. What about the score of banks
that have failed in the last thirty years or so?
Why, if there is not extraordinary incompe-
tence, is the percentage of successes so low?
Considering, too, the privileges and favors so
freely extended to the banks by the Government,
it is hard to see how they can justly claim the
right to criticize the workmen. The workmen
have never had much pap handed out to them
by the Government or any other power.

Those opinions of Professor Fisher, Doctor
McPhail, President Jordan and Sir Edmund
Walker were all as we say academic or doctrin-
aire, such as a man of fair knowledge and obser-
vation sitting in his easy-chair in his library
might evolve from his inner consciousness, but
without primarily any reference to ascertained
or ascertainable facts.

A floating newspaper sketch makes a navvy
who is reading from a newspaper ask his pal,
" What does he mean by saying a thing is < aca-
demic,7 Bill?" Bill, removing the pipe from his
mouth, replies, " He means that it doesn't
amount to shucks."

Still another professor, M. A. Mackenzie,
Associate Profe'ssor of Mathematics in the Uni-
versity of Toronto, essayed a solution of the
puzzling problem. Early in the winter of 1912-
1913 I noticed in a remote corner of the Montreal
Witness an item stating that Professor Macken-

MAGAZINE WRITERS 55

zie, with a committee of the Board of Trade of
Toronto, had made a report finding that certain
groups of men buying up and holding for higher
prices agricultural products were primarily
responsible for the high cost of living. The out-
side page was filled with lurid accounts of the
Turco-Bulgarian war, but this little, disregarded
item was really of more importance to the people
of Canada than the news that fifty thousand Bul-
garians had killed a hundred thousand Turks
and eaten them. Professor Mackenzie and the
Board of Trade went about their work in a busi-
ness-like way to get at the facts and base their
conclusions thereon, and if they had gone far-
ther they might have got more. As it is, we
should be grateful to them, for theirs is about
the first valuable contribution to the discussion.
In the article in the Canadian Magazine for
February, 1913, in which Professor Mackenzie
elaborated his views, he shows that while food
prices have risen since 1900 in England to 109
they have risen in Canada to 125 and meats as
high as 145. When Canadian bacon was sold in
England at from 13c. to 15c. per pound it was
sold in Toronto at 20c. and in Montreal at 22c.
Canadian cheese was selling in London at from
13c. to 14c. per pound when it was selling in
Montreal and Toronto at 22c. He says : " The
retail price of bread in London is 2%c. a pound,
as against 3%c. in Toronto, while milk is 8c.
a quart, as against 91/2C. here. He continues:

56 THE NEW SLAVERY

The most important cause operating in Canada as a
whole which permits the prices of foodstuffs to be higher
in Canada than in London is protection. Not only the
tax on manufactured goods, which raises the farmer's
cost of production, but also the tax levied on imports of
food from abroad and paid, of course, by the Canadian
consumer. This latter tax was intended to protect the
Canadian farmer in times of Canadian scarcity and to be
inoperative in times of Canadian plenty; but the develop-
ment of the packing and canning industries, coupled with
the growth of cold storage facilities, has made it possible
to-day for a group of men to control the prices at which
our farmers must sell certain products (nearly all the
possible buyers being in the group), and also to maintain
the prices at which the consumer must buy the same pro-
ducts up to the level of the foreign price plus freight and
plus duty. A gentleman who knows all about the Cana-
dian packers, and whose word is unimpeachable, has
assured the writer that, in spite of the possibility of the
thing, there is absolutely no combination among the
packers. One is glad to possess the assurance in this
particular case, but there are other cases, and the evidence
of the prices already quoted here will need a great deal
of explaining away.

On the other hand, the Montreal Weekly
Witness of January 27th says :

As far as regards the annual household bills, it is prob-
able that free food would bring a minimum of relief. Where
it might relieve Canadians a good deal would be where it
would destroy middlemen's monopolies. In doing that it
would be as great a boon to the farmer-producer as to
the consumer, seeing that the middleman dictates to both.
If, as Mr. White says, there is an under-production of
animal food, here is the cause. Mr. White himself repre-
sents a monstrous Toronto secession from the Liberal

MAGAZINE WRITERS 57

party to the Conservative when a meat combine in Ontario
was threatened by the late Government's reciprocity treaty.

So that, in spite of what Professor Mackenzie's
" unimpeachable " authority said, if the Mont-
real Witness is to be believed, there is a great
meat combine in Ontario strong enough to over-
turn a Government. There would be a good
chance for an industrious prosecuting officer in
Toronto to " get busy " and see whether section
498 of the Criminal Code could not be invoked
in order to put a stop to this sort of thing.

The press is worked to its full capacity to
make out things as good as can be for the manu-
facturer and the company promoter. The point
of view of the consumer is rarely presented. He
is the pigeon to be plucked alike by the banker,
manufacturer and wholesale grocer. A retiring
president of the Manufacturers Association in
his annual address for 1912 said that Canadians
should buy Canadian-made goods no matter how
high they cost. The cheap, home-made stuff is
good enough for the consumer, but the wealthy
manufacturer can afford to buy handsome and
durable imported furniture.

Increased prices have advanced step by step

ith increased production. Owing to improved
rocesses, more efficient machinery and a deeper
knowledge of farming, ten acres of land to-day
can be made to produce as much as twenty-five
acres would a few years ago. Population, at
least in the older Provinces, has not increased
much; but in spite of these two facts — enor-

:

pr<

58 THE NEW SLAVERY

mously increased production and comparatively
stationary or in some cases, as in Prince Edward
Island, a dwindling rate of population — prices
have gone up by leaps and bounds. It will need
some very plausible philosophers to persuade
the consumer that these prices have been caused
by over-production of gold, inefficient workmen,
bad roads and wasteful hotels and dining-cars.

Mr. L. G. Ohiozza Money, M.P., the well-
known English statistician, has an article in the
September Contemporary Review entitled " The
New Dearness." He treats the question from
the point of view of an English free-trader and
mostly with reference to England. He says :

Incidentally it may be noted that the New Dearness
has struck heavily at the practice of Protection. Pro-
tection in modern times has grown contemporaneously
with a fall in prices, and the protective duties which were
imposed on the continent of Europe and elsewhere were
mitigated for the poor by the free trade of the engineer.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, as fast as
Protectionist statesmen piled on import duties the engineer,
by opening up new lands with his railways, and by bring-
ing about a great fall in freights with his steamships,
fought Protection inch by inch.

In summing up he says :

While it is certain that prices expressed in gold must
have been affected to some immeasurable extent by the
increased gold output, it is clear that other and by far
greater influences upon price must have been also at work.
. . . What was the cause of the fall in prices of the
'eighties and 'nineties of last century shown in the table
already given? Broadly, the answer is that it was a period

MAGAZINE WRITERS 59

in which the resources of the world were laid under contri-
bution more rapidly than effective demand increased in
the white civilizations. We should not use the just word
if we said that the world's resources were rapidly har-
vested, for harvest implies a precedent seed-time. It would
more nearly express the truth to say that the best resources
of the world were rapidly exploited as though they were
unlimited in quantity, without regard to the fact that men
were reaping where they had not sown, and without regard
to the future. The large-scale scratch-farming, the cream-
ing of the world's richest mines, the hewing of the world's
best timber, were assisted by the invention of a host of
labor-saving appliances. The quickly and cheaply gath-
ered wealth was distributed to the world's markets with
the aid of improved ships, the freight charges of which
tumbled down in such fashion that whereas in the 'seven-
ties it cost seven or eight pence to take a bushel of wheat
from New York to Liverpool it came to cost no more than
one and one-quarter pence a bushel.

For a short period in modern times this new large-scale
world exploitation proceeded more rapidly than increase
of population, or the effective demand exercised by
increased population, but the continuous cheapening of
products by the opening up of new lands could not proceed
far without a check. The use of machinery and the
extended use of capital in large units raised the standard
of living of a considerable proportion of the world's white
peoples. Emigration took place on a large scale from
poor ancient lands with small natural resources to rich
new lands of promise; it is hardly realized upon what an
enormous scale the transplantation of white men on the
globe has been proceeding. Millions upon millions have
left countries in which they consumed the cheaper cereals,
scarcely any meat, and very little leather, or metals, or
other commodities, to establish themselves in new coun-
tries with high standards of living, where they made a new
and enlarged draft upon the world's wealth. Thus, what

60 THE NEW SLAVERY

between natural increase of population, a rising standard
of life all over the world, and a great emigration from low
wage to high wage countries, the time soon came when
world exploitation, although rapid and continuous, ceased
to keep pace with the world's demands for many important
commodities.

That is the explanation which seems to me to cover the
greater part of the ground. It is an explanation which,
if traced in detail in connection with each and every com-
modity named above, will, I think, be found to have a
reasonable relation to the facts of the case. If it is the
true explanation, as I am inclined to think it is, it is con-
sistent with the rise in price of many articles in which
supply could not keep pace with the demand, and the fall
in other articles where supply, owing to the nature of the
commodity and the circumstances of its production, was
equal, or more than equal, to the occasion. It is, for
example, consistent with the fact that wheat rose in price
while rice fell.

What of the future of prices? I think we may rely upon
scientific endeavor to be equal in the long run to the pro-
duction of an enduring cheapness. The weapons of science
have not yet been taken up in earnest by the nations of
men. It is no more than haphazard and careless effort
which has been applied to the world's resources. Men in
a hurry to get rich have despoiled territories and wasted
natural wealth in so far as the law of the conservation
of matter has permitted them to waste. There can be no
reasonable doubt, however, that the production of organic
commodities, whether foods or materials, will be so greatly
magnified by scientific method that the men of the future
will produce ample supplies of all necessary things of this
kind with little labor. As to inorganic supplies, we may
have faith that science will also show a way to the prac-
tical employment of low grades of ore which cannot now
be commercially employed. The economic employment and
perhaps the colonization of tropical lands may, it is quite

MAGAZINE WRITERS 61

probable, add enormously to the world's supply of con-
sumable goods. As to manufactured commodities, based
upon either organic or inorganic materials, the road to
cheapness is already quite plain, given the material sup-
plies. Thus, whatever the course of prices in the near
future, the end is not uncertain. The New Dearness will
pass and be succeeded sooner or later by an enduring
cheapness — by a scientific plentifulness which may or may
not be expressed in terms of gold.

This is all very interesting. The voice of the
optimist is always heard with acceptance. But
Mr. Money does not attempt to explain why it is
that in Canada and the United States, the coun-
tries where the supplies or commodities are pro-
duced, the prices should be so much higher
than in England, the country to which the
commodities are carried.

Samuel P. Orth has an interesting article in
The World's Work for April, 1913, entitled
" Germany, England, and the Trusts,'7 in which
he says :

The common law prohibits monopolies and combina-
tions in restraint of trade. But the English courts have
not interpreted these ancient legal maxims to mean that
all combinations are per se in restraint of trade, or mon-
opolistic. On the contrary, the policy of the English law
is to encourage competition. but it does not prohibit com-
bination. The leading and oft-quoted case is that of the
Mogul Steamship Co. vs. McGregor, Gow & Co., et al, which
found its way for final determination into the House of
Lords in 1891. The defendants were a " Conference," i.e.,
a combination of shipping companies, who, in their
endeavor to control the Hankow tea trade had tried to
exclude the plaintiffs from the trade by offering special

62 THE NEW SLAVERY

rebates to those shippers who patronized the " Conference "
lines exclusively. The plaintiffs claimed that the " Con-
ference " was in restraint of trade and, therefore, unlawful.
But the House of Lords were unanimously of the other
opinion and sustained the validity of this rebate-giving
shipping ring in a memorable decision which declared that
the defendants " have done nothing more against the
plaintiffs than pursue to the bitter end a war of competi-
tion waged in the interests of their trade, and competition,
however violent, is not contrary to public policy." Lord
Justice Frey said, " To draw a line between fair and
unfair competition, between what is reasonable and
unreasonable, passes the power of the courts." And Lord
Justice Bowen found comfort that such combinations, " in
a country of free trade," would not become monopolistic,
and he thought that it was not " the province of judges to
mould and stretch the law of conspiracy in order to keep
pace with the calculations of Political Economy. // peace-
able and honest combinations of capital for purposes of
trade competition are to be struck at, it must, I think,
be by legislation, for I do not see that they are under the
ban of the common law."

This is a very significant passage. It places the respon-
sibility for drastic anti-trust action on Parliament, not on
the courts.

And what has Parliament done?

It has passed a splendid Companies' Act, which enjoins
searching publicity on all corporate affairs, prohibits that
most vicious of all corporate evils, stock-watering, and pre-
vents fraudulent promoting and other crooked financial
dealings which taint the records of so many of our cor-
porations. This Act permits of holding companies, and its
provisions are often used for the purpose of consolidating
many separate concerns into one control. No attempt is
made at trust regulation.

Nor has the Government busied itself with all these
rings, pools and trusts. It has never made a general inves-

MAGAZINE WRITERS 63

tigation of them. In 1906 a Royal Commission looked into
the affairs of shipping rings, whose influence on an island
empire is naturally very great. The commission, after
several years of inquiry, merely suggested the establish-
ment of a method for settling disputes between shippers
and steamship lines by arbitration.

In 1908 Sir Gilbert Parker asked the Prime Minister the
following carefully worded question:

"I beg to ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware
of the existence in Great Britain of trusts, rings, cartells
and other combinations having for their object the mon-
opolization of trades and markets, by regulating the
output or by keeping up prices and stifling competition;
and seeing that such combinations are in restraint of
trade and are, therefore, inconsistent with the present free
trade policy of the country, whether he will take steps to
restrain the increasing monopolistic operations of foreign
trusts in the United Kingdom; and whether the Govern-
ment will grant a Royal Commission or a select committee
to inquire into the existence of railway conferences, ship-
ping rings, coal rings, industrial combinations of the iron
and steel trades, such as the rail-makers' syndicate, and
other organizations like the Imperial Tobacco Trust, the
Meat Trust, and the German Electrical Manufacturers'
Trust."

To this formidable question Mr. Asquith quietly replied:

" I am aware of the existence of trade combinations of
the kind referred to in the United Kingdom, and I agree
that in some cases the effects of these may be prejudicial
to the public interest. But the operations of such trusts
are necessarily more circumscribed and less mischievous
here than in other countries in which they are fostered by
a general customs tariff, and I doubt whether there would
at the present time be any advantage in such an inquiry
as the honorable member suggests."

So both the Government and the courts have full faith
in the efficiency of free trade in curbing the grosser evils

64 THE NEW SLAVERY

of trusts, and in the common law in preventing the
subtler evils of unlawful restraint, and in a sensible
corporation law in protecting the public against fraud
and malicious financial machinations. England's experi-
ence teaches us that in a land of traditional individual-
ists, where the channels of trade have been kept fairly
open, where the ancient customs of the people abhor
monopoly and trade restrictions, there is maintained a
considerable degree of competition whose wholesome
effect is not destroyed by the large business combines.
England challenges the competition of the world, and
believes that trusts which can thrive under the conditions
of this proud challenge are welcome to their prosperity.

Neither Germany nor England tries to regulate the
trusts as we do; neither tries to uproot them. The one
cherishes them, the other tolerates them. Both recognize
that Big Business has come to stay.

Germany's experience shows plainly that an alliance
between the Government and Big Business can produce an
upper crust of prosperity. How long it will last no one
can say. England's experience shows that the old common
law is not to be despised as a policeman, especially when
artificial barriers to trade are all taken down.

In this country, whilst suffering from all the
evils of the rule of the trusts, we have no counter-
vailing checks whatever.

CHAPTER III.

CANADIAN TRUSTS.

I WAS considerably amused just after the
General Election of 1911 at a little controversy
that took place in Harper's Weekly, the well-
known " Journal of Civilization " of New York.
The editor in a brief note said that he thought
he saw the hand of the trusts in the returns. A
correspondent in Saskatoon promptly wrote to
him that he was mistaken — that we have no
trusts in Canada like they have in the United
States.

The Dominion Parliament seems to have
thought differently, for in 1910 it enacted what
is known as the Combines Investigation Act,
" combine " including " trust," as will be seen
from the definition given at the beginning of the
act:

" Combine " means any contract, agreement, arrangement
or combination which has, or is designed to have, the effect
of increasing or fixing the price or rental of any article of
trade or commerce or the cost of the storage or transporta-
tion thereof, or of the restricting competition in or of con-
trolling the production, manufacture, transportation, stor-
age, sale or supply thereof, to the detriment of consumers
or producers of such article of trade or commerce, and
includes the acquisition, leasing or otherwise taking over,
5 65

66 THE NEW SLAVERY

or obtaining by any person to the end aforesaid, of any con-
trol over or interest in the business, or any portion of the
business, of any other person, and also includes what is
known as a trust, monopoly or merger.

I do not know whether the draftsman of the
act in drawing it up consulted the combines, but
they could not have made things much better for
themselves if he had done so. Under section 5,
where six or more persons, British subjects resi-
dent in Canada and of full age, are of opinion
that a combine exists, and that prices have been
enhanced or competition restricted by reason of
such combine, to the detriment of consumers or
producers, such persons may make an applica-
tion to a judge for an order directing an investi-
gation into such alleged combine. The act goes
on to say that such application shall be in writ-
ing addressed to the judge, and shall ask for an
order directing an investigation into the alleged
combine, and shall also ask the judge to fix a time
and place for the hearing of the applicants or
their representative.

But the act does not say what the judge would
ask the applicants. The first question the judge
would ask them would probably be, " Well,
who's appearing for you? Where's your lawyer?"
And the applicants would have to get a lawyer
and have to pay him also before they had gone
very far. And at every step they would be met
by half a dozen corporation lawyers armed to
the teeth.

CANADIAN TRUSTS 67

The act is a more or less ingenious attempt at
whittling away the force of the criminal law,
for the offence aimed at therein is the same as
that made punishable by section 498 of the
Criminal Code with two years' imprisonment.
Not six or more persons, but the Attorney-Gen-
eral of Canada, with all the resources of the
Department of Justice at his back, should be the
party to enforce it. The responsibility should not
be cast on any body of citizens chosen hap-
hazard, who would be as helpless as a lot of
lambs in a court of justice. This attempt to
make citizens do the work of those who are
trained and paid to enforce the provisions of the
criminal law is a novelty. The trusts would thus
be exempted from the rough and unpleasant
processes used in handling ordinary criminals.

Suppose, however, that " six or more .persons
being British subjects resident in Canada and
of full age " were of opinion that a combine
enhancing prices existed, the shortest and easiest
course for them to pursue would be to go before
the Attorney-General, or any prosecuting officer,
laying their suspicions and the grounds of them
before him, and ask him to work up the case and
bring it before the grand jury in the manner
with which he would be perfectly familiar. They
would thus have done their duty perfectly and
the public would be satisfied that the matter was
properly attended to. The man who enhanced
prices in order to rob the public, be he great or

68 THE NEW SLAVERY

small, would be apprehended and tried the same
as any other criminal, as he deserved to be.

Of course, the idea that the framers of that
act had was that there would be six or more
persons who would take the course prescribed
by the act and the country would be treated to
a repetition of the interminable litigation which
has resulted from the attempts to work the Sher-
man Act in the United States. Luckily there
have not been found in the Dominion of Canada
during the three years that the act has been in
operation six persons foolish enough to try to
put it in operation. Possibly the framers of the
act are disappointed and may get up a few bogus
cases under it just to hoodwink the public. It
would be an interesting spectacle to watch if
they attempted anything of the kind.

It is very doubtful whether the Combines
Investigation Act is valid or constitutional
because it gives to " six or more persons,"
unascertained and unnamed, duties to restrain
and prevent public wrongs which peculiarly
belong to the office of the Attorney-General.*
The most such persons should be allowed would
be the f>ower to make the relation mentioned
above. But to give them the power not only to

* " The authority of the Attorney-General at common law
to file an information in equity to restrain and prevent a
public wrong- is well established in England. It may be done
by him either ex-officio or upon the relation of persons who
have an interest in the subject-matter of the bill, and whose
private rights may be protected by the decree which is sought
mainly on the ground of a public injury." — Am. and Eng. Cyc.,
vol. 3, p. 476, note 5.

CANADIAN TRUSTS 69

make the relation but to proceed upon it is
simply absurd.

Doubtless everyone has seen the sketch of the
dog slaughter-house in Berlin which went the
rounds of the newspapers last winter. A man
is therein seen standing by the door of the
slaughter-house carrying the carcass of a dog in
a tray on his shoulder, while with his left hand
he holds two live dogs in leash. A little girl
approaches the doorway carrying a market-
basket, probably with an idea of purchasing
some dog-meat.

A despatch from Berlin early last winter
stated that the police had been sent out to gather
in all the stray dogs they could find in the
streets, to be killed and cut up for food. The
meat, we read, was eagerly bought. We hear a
good deal nowadays of the British Empire, its
vastness and its responsibilities and the respon-
sibilities of the constituent parts to the Mother
Country. Amid the discordant voices of the
controversy one fact, at all events, emerges
clearly, and that is that the British Empire was
never built up on horse-flesh or dog-flesh. The /
English, being an eminently shrewd and practi-
cal people, seem at an early period in their career
to have arrived at the conclusion that if they/0 j
were ever to amount to anything as a nation 4
they would have to have good food and lots of
it. Otherwise their national physique would be
impaired.

70 THE NEW SLAVERY

Napoleon Bonaparte said that an army
marches on its stomach. He might have gone
farther and said that the human race marches
on its stomach.

But there were not wanting even in those early
times those who sought to make the cost of living
higher in order to enrich themselves, and the
English dealt with these with characteristic
promptitude and decision. Thus there were the
perpetrators of the offence called forestalling
the market, defined by 5 and 6 Edw. VI, c. 14, to
be " the buying or contracting for any merchan-
dise or victual coming in the way to market; or
dissuading persons from bringing their goods
or provisions there; or persuading them to
enhance the price, when there; any of which
practices make the market dearer to the fair
trader." Such perpetrators were liable to fine
and imprisonment. " Eegrating " was the buy-
ing of corn or other dead victual in any market
and selling it again in the same market or within
four miles of the place. " Engrossing " was the
offence of buying up large quantities of a com-
modity with the intent of selling it again at an
enhanced price.

The substance of these old laws is contained in
section 498 of the Criminal Code, which is
merely declaratory of the common law. This
section reads as follows:

498. Everyone is guilty of an indictable offence and
liable to a penalty not exceeding four thousand dollars and

CANADIAN TRUSTS 71

not less than two hundred dollars, or to two years' impris-
onment, or, if a corporation, is liable to a penalty not
exceeding ten thousand dollars, and not less than one
thousand dollars, who conspires, combines, agrees or
arranges with any other person, or with any railway,
steamship, steamboat or transportation company, —

(a) To unduly limit the facilities for transporting, pro-
ducing, manufacturing, supplying, storing or dealing in
any article or commodity which may be a subject of trade
or commerce; or,

(Z>) To restrain or injure trade or commerce in relation
to any such article or commodity; or,

(c) To unduly prevent, limit or lessen the manufacture
or production of any such article or commodity, or to
unreasonably enhance the price thereof; or,

(d) To unduly prevent or lessen competition in the pro-
duction, manufacture, purchase, barter, sale, transporta-
tion or supply of any such article or commodity, or in the
price of insurance upon person or property.

2. Nothing in this section shall be construed to apply to
combinations of workmen or employees for their own
reasonable protection as such workmen or employees. —
63-64 V., c. 46, s. 3.

Under this section everyone who conspires
with others to limit transportation facilities,
restrain commerce, lessen manufacturing, or
unduly prevent or lessen competition in the pro-
duction, manufacture, purchase, barter, sale,
transportation or supply, or unreasonably
enhance the price of any article or commodity
which may be a subject of trade or commerce, is
liable to a penalty not exceeding four thousand
dollars and not less than two hundred dollars,
or to two years' imprisonment, or, if a corpora-
tion, not exceeding ten thousand dollars and not
less than one thousand dollars.

72 THE NEW SLAVERY

The section embodies the old historic prin-
ciples of the common law of England reinforced
by the provisions of Magna Charta regarding
restriction of trade and monopolies, and is the
birthright of every English-speaking person.
Where this law is enforced the question of the
high cost of living will never arise. It keeps
prices at the lowest reasonable figure.

This section, forming the great historic safe-
guard of the rights of the people, is to-day prac-
tically a dead letter. Whilst the people are con-
tinually suffering from fresh exactions sanc-
tioned by its disuse, we hear nothing of any
attempt at its enforcement. Our prosecuting
officers bring no cases under it before the grand
juries, and it is never mentioned in the judges'
charges to the same. The reason why prices
have been kept down in England is because there
the laws regarding food and restrictions of trade
have been rigidly enforced. Attempts to " jump
up " prices have been promptly inquired into
and suppressed. Thus it comes that Canadian
beef, pork, flour, cheese and many other neces-
saries of life can be bought to-day in England
cheaper than they can be purchased here, and it
is also the reason why England, long past the
period of self-support as regards foodstuffs, buys
her food in her own markets cheaper than it
can be bought thousands of miles away, in Can-
ada and the United States, where it was
grown. The enforcement of her food laws gives
England cheap food, whilst the neglect of them

CANADIAN TRUSTS 73

has brought her children in other English-speak-
ing countries to the verge of starvation. This
is a heavy price to pay for the possession of a
few score of millionaires and multimillionaires.

These learned men work hard to make the
cause of the high cost of living seem as mysteri-
ous as the nebular hypothesis. It is quite inter-
esting to study the ingenious arabesques which
they weave about their fanciful theories. It
would be amusing were it not a serious matter
for millions of their fellow countrymen. Xo
great banking authority has yet risen up to
point out that the great cause of the trouble is
the non-enforcement of section 498. Such a law
is a necessity in every civilized country, and it
must be enforced, too, otherwise the people will
surely be plundered by combines and trusts, as
the people of Canada and the United States are
being plundered at the present time. In Eng-
land and France, where the law is enforced,
food is good and cheap. In Germany, where it
is not enforced, the people are eating horse-flesh
and dog-flesh and are glad to get it. The same
will be said of Canada and the United States
before long unless the combines and trusts are
curbed.

Some layman, ingenuous and of a more or
less inquiring turn of mind, may ask : " But
how happens it, if the law is as you state it,
that none of the prosecuting officers, the men
who are sworn and paid to see that all of the
laws are administered fully and impartially,

74 THE NEW SLAVERY

have undertaken to see that section 498 was
enforced?"

The question opens up an interesting field of
speculation. Some may answer that it is because
the prosecuting officers do not know any law.
But this explanation is manifestly absurd.
While it is undoubtedly true that the learned
brethren of the law possess a knowledge of its
intricacies in varying degrees of completeness,
yet, in a general way, it is true also that they
know all the law. They habitually pass under
their observant faculties every page of the Crim-
inal Code, and many sections they must know
nearly by heart. Even if this particular section
was not ever present before their eyes, yet when
a few years ago the sharp rise in the price of
the necessaries of life began to be commonly
noted, one might have supposed that they would
have made a thorough study of this section in
order to find out whether it afforded any relief.
Then, again, there are the judges. While some
of them are content to take only such cases as
the prosecuting officer may bring to their notice,
there are others who bestir themselves diligently
to have any flagrant case, which may have been
for some reason overlooked, presented to the
grand jury. Thus a judge has been known in a
bank case involving the honor of the directors to
make searching inquiries about bringing them to
justice. And when, upon arriving at the county
town, a judge has found the prosecuting officer
recovering from a prolonged " howl " but still

CANADIAN TRUSTS 75

under the influence of liquor and totally inca-
pacitated from attending to his minutes of pre-
liminary examinations, subpO3nas, witnesses and
bills of indictment, His Lordship has taken the
matter into his own hands, drawn up the indict-
ments himself and had them presented to the
grand jury.

As will have been noted, one at least of our
most popular and broadminded judges has com-
mented feelingly on the distressing rise in the
cost of most things. Then there are retired
members of the bench who might have found
leisure to look into the matter and bring it to
the attention of the bar and other members of
the community. One can explain it only by the
paralysing power of routine. The legal frater-
nity has got into a rut. Certain crimes and mis-
demeanors are attended to because they have
always been dealt with. The legal mind will not
venture easily outside of its beaten round. Inno-
vations in procedure it regards with profound
distrust and will rather, with Hamlet, suffer its
present evils than fly to those it knows not of.
Nothing less than a thunder-clap will arouse the
besotted sleeper. The members of the outside
bar, with their varying amounts of practice, are
as torpid as those upon whom has been thrust
the administration of the criminal law.

Now, however, that the matter has been, how-
ever feebly and insufficiently, made plain to
them, we may look for a thorough transforma-
tion. The inferior officers of the law, compris*

76 THE NEW SLAVERY

ing constables, policemen and other peace offi-
cers, will be alert to detect and point out any
unreasonable rise in prices which they may
notice. Prosecuting officers will carefully study
section 498 in the light of English cases, and dili-
gently search out and bring before the grand
jury all cases that may have to be dealt with
under it. The judges on their part will be vigi-
lant in safeguarding the rights of the people
by insisting on the prosecuting officers bringing
every case of infraction of the law before them
" without fear, favor or affection, or reward or
the hope thereof/' as the grand jury are sworn
to do.

Some may say, however, that the indifference
of bench and bar are no more to be adversely
commented upon than the inexplicable uncon-
cern of our Parliamentary assemblies and other
representative bodies, such as town and county
councils and boards of control. All of these
powers are elected to look after the interests of
the people and should be vigilant in maintain-
ing their rights and defending them from oppres-
sion and extortion.

Suppose the Attorney-General should instruct
the prosecuting officers throughout the Province
that for one year there would be no prosecutions
for murder, burglary or arson, what would be
the result?

At first there would be no increase Of crime.
But gradually, as the secret began to leak out,
murders would occur. Persons who had a long-

CANADIAN TKUSTS 77

standing grudge against their neighbors would
indulge their temper. If someone then asked a
great banking authority the cause of this extra-
ordinary outbreak of crime, would the latter
reply, " Extension of credit, overproduction of
gold, incompetence of workmen, bad roads,
wasteful hotelkeepers, dining-car people and
others '•'? No ! He would say, " It's because the
law against murder is not being enforced this
year." And so of burglary and arson. But
when section 498, containing a basic principle
of English law, is never enforced and a man is
asked the cause of the enhanced price of food,
he replies, " Extension of credit, overproduction
of gold, incompetence of workmen, bad roads,
and wasteful hotelkeepers, dining-car people and
others " !

The people are being robbed with the tacit
acquiescence of Parliament and Parliamentary
leaders. The last time that Parliament touched
this subject was in 1910, and then it passed the
Combines Investigation Act, under which it was
never proposed to investigate anything.

In the Appendix may be seen the Sherman
and the Combines Investigation Acts. The effect
of these two measures was to rivet economic
shackles on the people of the United States and
Canada. Ex-Senator George F. Edmunds of
Vermont relates the history of the Sherman Act
in The North American Review for December,
1911. The act bears Senator John Sherman's
name, but he took no part in framing it. Sena-

78 THE NEW SLAVERY

tor Edmunds wrote practically the whole act
under the Judiciary Committee, composed of
himself and Senators Ingalls, Hoar, Wilson of
Iowa, Evarts, Coke, Vest, George, and Pugh,
comprising some of the ablest lawyers in the
United States. Anyone who takes the trouble to
read the two acts will see at once the difference
between the verbose and windy periods of the
two later acts and the concise, clear and effective
terms of section 498. Senator Edmunds says :

The principles of universal jurisprudence coming to us,
through increasing civilization, from the Roman Law to
the so-called Common Law of England . . . were assumed
to be within the judicial knowledge.

If, then, the authors of the act knew the pro-
visions of the Common Law, why did they not
copy the simple expressions contained in the
English or Canadian act? Had they done so
they would have saved to the people of their
country many millions spent in the courts use-
lessly in trying to work an unworkable act.
One has a right to look for more workmanlike
legislation from such practised legal experts as
those mentioned above. The authors of those
measures, the Sherman Act and the Combines
Investigation Act, tried to convert into a minor
offence that which is essentially and in fact a
crime.

The reason why we have a comparative
immunity from crime in other directions is
because the criminal law is strict Iv enforced.

CANADIAN TRUSTS 79

But suppose section 259, of murder, or section
511, of arson, or sections 446 and 457, of rob-
bery and burglary, were not enforced, that the
Attorney-General instructed the prosecuting offi-
cers to institute no prosecutions under those
sections for the period of one year, what would
be the result? Would there be no murders, no
house-burnings, no robberies, no burglaries dur-
ing that year? It is only because the sections of
the Code concerning those crimes are duly
enforced that we enjoy such immunity from
crime as we have. With a fair record of good
conduct we have not yet arrived at that millen-
nial epoch in this Dominion when we can safely
dispense with the punishments of the criminal
law. Not until the bankers cease from grasping
and the combinesters bleed no more.

THE WISE NEW ZEALANDERS.

In answer to a member for Waikato re the protection of
New Zealand producers against exploitation by the Ameri-
can Beef Trust, Mr. Massey, the Prime Minister, said:
" The position is being carefully watched, and any devel-
opment likely to prejudice the interests of New Zealand
will be promptly dealt with."

It 'is alleged that the American Meat Trust has estab-
lished itself in Queensland and, if successful there, will
assuredly make an effort to extend their operations to
New Zealand. Mr. Anderson (Mataura), with reference to
the subject, said, while speaking in the House, that its
plan of campaign was to secure the market by paying high
prices for stock, then buying out or making terms with
the freezing companies. Once a complete monopoly was

80 THE NEW SLAVERY

secured, it squeezed the graziers by paying low prices for
stock. " The trade in the Argentine was secured in two
years. Mr. Massey made it very clear that he and his Gov-
ernment would make it extremely difficult for such a trust
to successfully launch itself in the Dominion." — " New
Zealand Notes," The British Empire Review, November,
1912.

Our far-sighted Canadian legislators in 1910
waited until all the combines, trusts and mer-
gers had got nicely established, and then passed
the Combines Investigation Act, under which, as
I have already said, it never was proposed to
investigate anything.

NECESSITY OF A MEAT DIET.

The man who raises the price of meat raises
the price of everything else. We are a nation
of meat-eaters. The vegetarian idea has never
taken much hold of our population. While vege-
tables are wrholesome and perhaps not eaten as
much as they should be, still, for the strength of
the nation, for the workers and the fighters and,
to a very considerable extent, the thinkers, a cer-
tain quantity of meat for food is an absolute
necessity. They must have it in order to work
effectively. Therefore the man who unreason-
ably and merely to make money faster raises the
price of meat, strikes a deadly blow at the very
heart of the country. He is a worse enemy than
;my plague, or famine, or even an invading army.

CANADIAN TRUSTS 81

ENHANCING PRICE OF MEAT RAISES ALL OTHER
PRICES.

Many persons, especially those leading a
sedentary life, can do with little or no meat. A
largely vegetarian diet is the best for them. But
they do not thereby escape the effect of dear
meat. . In consequence of dear meat they have
to pay more for most of the goods they use or
consume and they have, besides, to pay workmen
increased wages. Thus they suffer indirectly
almost as much as meat-eaters. What they save
in meat they lose in the enhanced price of other
commodities and in wages. They suffer,
although they avoid the meat-shop.

AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY, WITH BRANCHES
ALL OVER THE WORLD.

The scope and operations of the Beef Trust
are world-wide. From their vantage-ground of
secrecy they survey the toiling millions like the
tireless workers in an ant-heap. If there is an
obstacle to be surmounted they form their plans
silently, yet unbrokenly, and carry them out
with ruthless determination. Nothing is allowed
to stand in their way. Rivals are bought out
or crushed, governments are conquered, peoples
become their unconscious slaves. They march
right on to their goal with the sureness and
inexorableness of Death — Pallida Mors. They
can be matched only with a similar organization.

82 THE NEW SLAVEEY

The organization must be as wide as the
Dominion. There would be no use in the
inhabitants of an isolated community, town or
city taking up this question alone. They might
possibly obtain some little redress in their own
locality, while conditions outside would be no
better and they themselves would in a little
while be brought back under the yoke. The
organization will have to embrace the whole
country, constant communication being kept up
among the various branches and the whole
organization being prompt to resist any attempt
against an individual branch. Vigilant watch
will need to be kept on the trusts, and represen-
tatives of the consumers will have to be main-
tained at the Provincial Legislatures, no less
than at the Parliament at Ottawa, to prevent
any further encroachments. Only in this way
can the rights of the great body of the people be
safeguarded.

CHAPTER IV.

RISE OF THE COMBINES.

THE first great movement of the corporations
towards combines began to be noticed in 1897.
There had been previous tentative schemes in
this direction, spying out the land as it were, but
the weapon wTas not completely forged until the
above year. Since then the mode of operation
has been perfected, and its extent is simply
world-wide, free-trade no less than protectionist
countries being subject to its exactions. On this
point Professor Fisher says:

In the last fifteen years prices have risen in all gold-
standard countries for which we have statistics. The
rise has generally averaged from thirty to fifty per cent.,
so far as the very meagre statistics available enable us
to judge.

This rise of prices does not represent a grow-
ing scarcity of food, the production of which is
constantly increasing by leaps and bounds,
owing to the growing perfection of mechanical
invention, the greater knowledge of the subject
of agriculture, and the augmented employment
of capital in transportation undertakings, but a

83

84 THE NEW SLAVERY

subtle change in the ownership of food. In spite
of the immense new masses of foodstuffs which
have been thrown on the market, prices have been
forced up and kept up by ascertained or easily
ascertainable agencies. The energies of these
agencies have been expended in keeping them-
selves, as far as possible, invisible.

The goods are purchased in large quantities
from the producer and sold at an arbitrary price
to the consumer. Thus pork, one of the com-
monest and most easily produced forms of food,
is made as expensive as chicken or even turkey.
The price to the consumer has been fixed arbi-
trarily. By arrangement with the transporta-
tion companies, the food that the hogs fatten
on is kept up so high that pork, ham or bacon is
easily maintained at the highest figure possible.
The consumer is not informed of all the agree-
ments and understandings between the men who
buy the food from the farmer and the transpor-
tation companies and retailers. All he knows is
that his pork, ham or bacon costs him about
twice what it did a few years ago. If he asks
the retailer he is told that the price has been
raised by persons to the retailer unknown. The
men Avho really raised the price in order to
enrich themselves he never sees nor has am
knowledge of. They manage to keep most effec-
tually in the background. If he asks a political
economist, college professor, or banker the cause
of the extraordinary rise in the price of pig pro-

RISE OF THE COMBINES 85

ducts he is vaguely told that it is caused by
something like the overproduction of gold, the
extension of credit, exhaustion of the soil, muni-
cipal loans, the inefficiency of most kinds of
labor, bad roads and waste about hotels, dining-
cars and countless families, but of the real cause,
not one word.

The growth of the few millionaires, coinci-
dentally with the impoverishment of the masses,
is a phenomenon that might well call for the
prolonged and thorough study of our political
economists, publicists and educated men of
leisure. We should not be satisfied with the
glib and shallow explanations of a few inter-
ested individuals. Now that we have all of these
blessings that people have been striving for in
the last forty years, the promised advantages
should naturally follow^. These ought to be the
good times.

If not, when are we to expect any improve-
ment? Are times to be getting worse instead of
better indefinitely? Are all the promises that
have been made to the community merely lies?
It may be said that an increase of thirty or
thirty-five per cent, in the cost of living is no
crying matter — that wages have increased some-
what and people must be able still to save, else
where would the deposits in the banks come
from? But this difference of thirty or thirty-
five per cent, means for countless families all
the difference between a comfortable living dur-

86 THE NEW SLAVERY

ing health and activity and a competency for
old age, and the bare necessaries of life during
the working period and destitution in old age.

If the average man has been subtly robbed of
all his interest during the last fifteen or sixteen
years, then he must be brought measurably
within reach of the poorhouse if he should
happen to arrive at old age.

Of course it is said, " This movement of prices
upward of which you complain is worldwide.
It is not confined to Canada, but obtains also in
the United States."

Granted — and in England, Germany and else-
where, because the scope of the combines and
mergers is universal. In New Zealand, however,
the Government took time by the forelock and
devised means to prevent the trusts from getting
the first foothold. It did not wait, as our Cana-
dian Solons did, until the combines had got
firmly established and then pass a Combines
Investigation Act, taking good care to draw the
teeth out of it. We have some consolation in
knowing that there is at least one Government
in the world which is a match for the trusts,
even if we have' to travel away out to the
Antipodes to find it.

The trusts act as they do only on the assump-
tion that the ox — that is, the public — does not
know its strength. Some day perhaps the pub-
lic will wake up and demand a readjustment of
accounts.

RISE OF THE COMBINES 87

COMPARATIVE COST OF LIVING.

Cost of Living in

Paris. Canada.*

1870 103

1880 110

1890 103 110

1900 100 108

1905 100.5 114

1906 99 120

1907 100 126

1908 102 121

1910 104 125

Percentage Changes in Average Retail Prices, Workmen.

London. Canada.

1890 102

1895 91 96

1900 96 108

1901 100 107

Percentage Varieties of Retail Prices.

London. Canada.

1895 93.2 96

1900 100.0 108

1905 103.7 114

1906 103.2 120

1907 105.8 126

1908 108.4 121

1909 108.2 122

1910 109.9 125

1911 109.3 127-128

The London and Paris prices are taken from an Ency-
clopaedia of Industrialism, page 104, Thos. Nelson & Sons.
The Canadian figures are from the Department of Labor
returns.

* Wholesale prices. No. of commodities, 235. Average
price, 1890-9=100. The increase in Canadian retail prices
would be considerably greater.

88 THE NEW SLAVERY

INCREASED COST IN ENGLAND IN SEVEN YEARS.

England was startled to-day by an alarming report from
the Board of Trade showing a large increase in the cost
of living in comparison with lagging wages. Workers have
to pay seven per cent, more now for the necessaries of life
than they did seven years ago, and there has been no
increase of income to offset the advance. There is an
increasing desire among workingmen to seek their for-
tunes in the Dominions. — Despatch to Montreal Telegraph
from London, August 13th, 1913.

In Canada during the same period the increase
has been upwards of thirty-one per cent.

PROFESSOR IRVING FISHER ON REDUCED INCOME.

In the article referred to in Chapter II, Pro-
fessor Fisher says:

A workingman who put one hundred dollars in the sav-
ings-bank fifteen years ago now finds that he has " accumu-
lated " one hundred and fifty dollars, the fifty dollars being
interest accrued. But this one hundred and fifty dollars,
instead of being a real increase of fifty per cent. — as he
has every right to expect and as would have been the case
had his dollar remained constant in purchasing power —
will now buy no more than the original hundred dollars.
In other words, the fall in the purchasing power of money
has in recent years subtly robbed all the savings-bank
depositors of practically all their interest. Similarly, sal-
aried men and wage-earners have been heavy losers. Losses
of an opposite kind are experienced during a period of
falling prices. Worst of all, great and general price
changes cause uncertainty. Business is always injured
by uncertainty, and uncertainty in the purchasing power
of the dollar is the worst of all business uncertainties,
though this is seldom appreciated.

RISE OF THE COMBINES 89

INTEREST EARNED BUT LOST.

Let us see how this works. Suppose that fif-
teen years ago YOU had put one hundred dollars
into one of these banks, which now you wanted
to draw. You would ask the teller for it, and he
would hand the passbook with the slip to the
ledger-keeper, and the ledger-keeper would pass
it to the accountant, who would make up your
balance, which the teller would hand to you —
one hundred dollars.

" But," you would ask, " where is the inter-
est?"

" There is no interest."

" What has become of it?"

Teller (folding his hands unctuously) :

" Overproduction of gold and extension of
credit, incompetent workmen, bad roads and
wasteful hotelkeepers, dining-car people and
others."

(Amazedly) : "Is that so?"

" That is so."

" Who told you that?"

" Oh ! I have it on the very highest authority."

But, being a prudent individual and on your
guard against keeping all of your eggs in one
basket, you may have put another hundred dol-
lars into another bank fifteen years ago. The
teller as before hands you out one hundred
dollars.

" But where's the interest?"

90 THE NEW SLAVERY

Now this teller happens to be a person who
reads the newspapers.

" You've been robbed of it."

" By whom?"

" Combinations which enhanced prices in
order to rob the consumer."

" Where did you read that?"

" In the Halifax Herald, the Montreal Wit-
ness and the Toronto Board of Trade Commit-
tee. Professor Irving Fisher says so, too."

Now you would think that a strange state of
affairs, but that is just what has happened. The
combines have insidiously robbed you of fifteen
years' interest. In other words, labor has been
backed against capital and brains, and as usual
capital and brains have won. That's all ! Laws
passed hundreds of years ago for the protection
of the consumer from the rapacity of the com-
binester and the merger-man are not enforced
because the men who should see that they are
carried out do not enforce them; and then Par-
liament passes a law which is such a complete
humbug that nobody would ever think of trying
to enforce it.

THE KULE OF THE TRUSTS.

When the Finance Minister and the Leader
of the Opposition in the last Parliament deter-
mined that the Leader of the Opposition should
have a salary as such out of the public chest,
they inaugurated, probably unconsciously, a

RISE OF THE COMBINES 91

complete overturn of party government. Events
have moved rapidly since then. The people have
been thrust to one side and the trusts have
leaped into the saddle.

We live in a different age, under totally dif-
ferent conditions from what we did twenty, or
even ten, years ago. Many still do not realize
this. While it is perhaps convenient to preserve
the old fiction of government by party with all
its paraphernalia of leaders and slogans and
conventions, we must prepare for a new method
of government. The leaders at Ottawa are
always crying out about a " mandate," as if they
derived their power from some appeal to the
people. Whatever force this may have had at
one time, it is a pure fiction now. The " man-
date " is what the trusts decree, altogether
independently of the people.

But the mandate is a most powerful weapon,
and, when the people have been thoroughly
organized, a most effective instrument for secur-
ing their welfare. The people can hold it over
whichever party the trusts for the time being
have endowed with power and make it subser-
vient thereto.

No doubt all of the suspected concerns will
deny that they are making any undue profits.
Well, if that is the case, they will easily prove it,
and additional information may reveal some
unsuspected source of the evil. There is one
thing certain, that all of the reasons for the

92 THE NEW SLAVERY

high cost of living which they and their friends
have put forward are easily proved to be ficti-
tious. On the other hand, everything points to
them as being the guilty parties. The rise in
prices was coincident with their establishment
and the fluctuations since have been connected
with their advance or temporary recession. As
Professor Mackenzie says, it will take a good
deal of proof on their part to convince the man
on the street that they are not the principal
cause of the trouble. Why all these turnings
and twistings, gentlemen's agreements, intimi-
dations, threats, fraudulent representations,
buying up of patent rights or of opposition
firms, special commissions to agents, cutting-
prices, bogus peddling outfits, yellow-dog com-
panies, secret control of supposed opposing com-
panies, rebates, the manipulation of commercial
agency rating lists, agreements of wholesale and
retail associations, the corrupting of railway
and transportation company employees, artifi-
cial depreciation of stock of opponents, and
other schemes and devices? These do not all
point to fair dealing with the consumer. But
they point to the exploiting of the consumer
until he will stand it no longer and rebels.

The Government of the United States, after
all the experience of trusts in that country, is
still far from the right solution of the question.
It proposes to lower the tariff and tax incomes.
But taxation of incomes, while directly contrary

RISE OF THE COMBINES 93

to the direction of the fathers of the republic, is
a doubtful remedy. Many incomes are derived
from funds which were not made by raising the
cost of living.

Take the Kussell Sage estate, for instance.
Mrs. Sage will have to pay a fabulous income
tax. But that estate was made principally by
economy of living and the accumulation of inter-
est on loans. And it is held by Mrs. Sage as a
charitable trust. Many of these parties prob-
ably never intend to put anything into perman-
ent income but spend as they go. Money derived
from taxing that estate would not lower the cost
of living appreciably. And there are hundreds,
nay thousands, of such cases in the United
States and Canada. It is doubtful whether the
taxation of any estate which has been made and
settled could help in this matter. The proper
course is to take the surplus from going concerns
which are caught red-handed with the goods.

Corporations which are making their money
directly out of increasing the cost of the neces-
saries of life are the ones that ought to be made
to pay, and the only ones. Anything that they
make beyond a reasonable profit may very justly
be seized by the Government, because the effect
of it is to increase poverty, drunkenness, prosti-
tution and crime.

94 THE NEW SLAVERY

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRIMINAL LAW AND
EQUITY OR COMMERCIAL LAW.

President Wilson is not a lawyer and does not
fully apprehend the essentials in which criminal
law differs from other kinds. Laws made for
the regulation of social and business relations
must necessarily be involved and prolix to a
great extent. The reasons therefor are mani-
fold. A man may do a great deal of mischief
innocently believing himself to be all right.
And laws must be framed so as not to be too
severe on those who with the best of intentions
go astray. But with crime it is different. A
criminal is one who deliberately plans villainy.
It is a question of fact mainly, to be determined
by judge and jury under all the circumstances
of the case. Therefore the actual words employed
to characterize the crime should be as brief and
weighty as possible. Criminal law is, therefore,
the most easily capable of being codified. The
fewer the words employed the more certain is it
that justice will be done. If the proof is clear
and complete, conviction follows — if not, acquit-
tal. A combine or a trust is not necessarily
criminal. But if its practices are criminal there
must necessarily be a criminal concealed some-
where in it. It may be a promoter, a manager
or other official. The thing is to ferret him out
and punish him. This can most readily be done
under our criminal procedure. We have all the
machinery that the wisdom of ages has devised,

RISE OF THE COMBINES 95

consisting of constables and peace officers,
magistrates, prosecuting officers, grand juries,
judges and petit juries, to sift the matter thor-
oughly. The people pay for it and have a right
to insist upon securing its services. In this way
and this way only can they get the service that
they pay for and that the law gives them.

THE GOVERNMENT MUST Fix THE PRICE.

Every year, or three years, or other period, the
corporation should submit its accounts to the
Government, which should hand them over to
its experts for examination. The Government
should allow the corporation enough of its earn-
ings to pay a good working dividend, say six or
eight per cent. Then all the surpluses of all the
corporations should be pooled and the price of
the commodity — coal, meat, sugar or what-not —
fixed for the consumer accordingly. It may be
said that this would be hard on weak or strug-
gling companies. But it would be as fair for
them as for the others. If their earnings fell
below the minimum they would have to account
for none. These concerns are entitled to a fair
rate of interest — six or seven per cent., or what-
ever may be adjudged to be a fair rate of interest
—on their paid-up capital. As they are worked
now they are a menace to the state. Controlling
large amounts of money, the stock being held no
one knows where, they are able to put up the
price to the limit of what the public will pay.

96 THE NEW SLAVERY

They may be controlled from the United States,
England, Germany, or elsewhere, for all the
public knows. This puts them outside the pro-
vince of ordinary investments. Holding these
powers, they are dangerous unless restricted by
law.

Those who would tax incomes will never
reduce the cost of living. To compass that mat-
ter you will have to go to the source, that is to
say, the concerns who fix the price of the neces-
saries of life. Until you have control of them
you will never manage the stream.

ARROGANCE.

These monopolists have got to such a pitch of
arrogance now that they say that in five years'
time we will only be able to smell meat — that
sirloins will be unpurchaseable except by the
very rich, and that the commonalty will have to
content themselves with rounds, shins and stews.
Then they give some dubious statistics showing
the falling off in the number of head of cattle
in the United States in the last few years. As
if the reduced herds could never be filled up and
man would have to go on a vegetarian diet for-
ever. Eaising beef and pork, according to them,
will be one of the lost arts and man will be seen
bewailing his lost beefsteaks like a child crying
for his toy balloon.

RISE OF THE COMBINES 97

THE CLAMOROUS CONSUMER.

It suits the humor of certain great financial
personages to have the question of Price held as
something sacred, something involved in mys-
tery far too profound to be scrutinized by any
mere member of the mob. The latter has been
spoken of by one of the governing class as
" clamorous," a clinging epithet, likening the
unfortunate creature to a big baby yelling for
he didn't know what.

Sir Edmund Walker pettishly complains of the
" desire " of the same irresponsible individual to
blame someone else for the suffering caused by
high prices, as if the poor fellow had not even
the right to cry out when he was hurt, but should
bear all his suffering with stoical indifference
and true Christian fortitude. Unfortunately,
some of us are not built that way, but have an
irrepressible trick of looking back from effects
to causes.

THE CANNERS' TRICKS.

In spite of the short crops, we are told, the
canners are not advancing the price of canned
goods. This is a trick of theirs, it appears, to
crowd some of their competitors out of the busi-
ness. When they have driven as many as they
can out of the business prices will be enhanced.
The beef trust worked this trick in Queensland
and the Argentine. They began operations by
paying high prices for stock, then buying out or

98 THE NEW SLAVERY

making terms with the freezing companies.
Once a complete monopoly was secured, they
squeezed the graziers by paying low prices for
stock.

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Generally in this world a habit of patiently
tracing back effects to their inevitable causes will
solve difficulties, for effects must result from
causes, and generally the cause of the most
apparently incomprehensible matter is found on
investigation to be very simple, insomuch that
when seen the cry is apt to be, " Oh, yes, I see
that. That's easy enough!" To which the
rejoinder is apt to be, " Yes, when you see it."
The disposition to give the conundrum up is
most deplorable, leading to eternal ignorance.

In this matter the cause is the invincible deter-
mination of certain conspirators in trade to get
exorbitant profits out of certain commodities,
and the result is the consequent depletion of the
incomes of the consumers. Just as when in walk-
ing along the street a man puts his hand into
your pocket — that is the cause; and you lose
your purse — that is the effect.

If it were only manufactured goods or even
food raised abroad that was so dear, one might
not be so much surprised at it. But the rise is
chiefly noticeable in foodstuffs raised at our
doors, such as meat, poultry, eggs, vegetables,
and the other products of the farm excepting
always apples. These it is impossible to corner,

RISE OF THE COMBINES 99

and consequently, all things, such as improved
variety and better packing, considered, prices
are as low as ever. But it is the meat, poultry
and other things that can be kept in cold storage
for indefinite periods of time that we have to pay
through the nose for. This is the phenomenon
that no defender of the higher prices can account
for — the unprecedented dearness of the agricul-
tural products of the Dominion. It is the cost
of these things to the consumer that has made
Canada to-day the dearest country in the world
to live in.

PROFESSOR MARSHALL'S PROPHECY.

Alfred Marshall, one of the foremost English
economists, foresaw the present crisis twenty-
five years ago. In his " Principles of Eco-
nomics,-' published in 1890, he says :

The influence which access to distant markets exerts
on the growth of the national dividend has been conspicu-
ous in the history of England also. Her present economic
condition is the direct result of those tendencies to pro-
duction on a large scale, and to wholesale dealings in
labor as well as in goods, which had long been slowly
growing, but which in the eighteenth century received a
twofold impetus from mechanical inventions and the
growth of consumers beyond the seas who imported large
quantities of goods of the same pattern. Then were the
first beginnings of that system of interchangeable parts
and the application of special machinery by which nearly
everything in common use is made. Then first was seen
the full force which the law of increasing returns gives in
a manufacturing country with localized industries and

100 THE NEW SLAVEEY

large capitals; particularly when many of the large stocks
of capital are combined together either into joint-stock or
regulated companies, or into modern trusts. And then
began that careful grading of goods for sale in distant
markets which has already led to national and even inter-
national speculative combinations in produce markets and
stock exchanges, and the future of which no less than
that of more lasting combinations among producers,
whether undertakers of industry or workingmen, is the
source of some of the gravest political problems with
which the coming generation will have to deal. . . .

The keynotes of the modern movement are the reduc-
tion of a great number of tasks to one pattern, the diminu-
tion of friction of every kind which might hinder powerful
agencies from combining their action and spreading their
influence over vast areas, and the development of transport
by new methods and new forces. (He here anticipates
motor vehicles and aeroplanes.) The macadamized roads
and the improved shipping of the eighteenth century broke
up local combinations and monopolies and offered facili-
ties for the growth of others extending over a wider area;
and in our own age the same double tendency is resulting
from every new extension and cheapening of communica-
tion by land and sea, by printing-press and telegraph.
(And now, he might add, by wireless.)

In these weighty passages Marshall antici-
pates the times which have now arrived and fore-
shadows the economic problems of to-day. The
worldwide scope of operations of the combines
has not been followed by the enactment of laws
to curb them. Legislators, instead of being
quick to perceive and determined to look out for
the interests of the public, have tamely acqui-
esced. The combines will never come out into
the light of day while they can hide themselves

RISE OF THE COMBINES 101

in some bank parlor or behind the walls of some
great corporation. They conceal their thieving
purposes behind the propaganda of some great
political party or invoke the protection of the
spirit of patriotism or philanthropy. They give
large sums to educational or religious institu-
tions, relying upon the simple-mindedness and
unworldliness of the managers or custodians of
those institutions not to inquire as to the means
by which they got those gifts or out of whose
pockets they were filched.

THE REAL CAUSES OF THE TROUBLE.

While certain factors such as waste, extrava-
gance, the upward tendency of prices, gradual
but inevitable through the centuries, may be
noted, the main causes of the present alarming
movement are the following:

1. The exactions of the trusts, mergers and
combines necessary to enable them to pay extra-
vagant salaries, to keep up costly plants and to
pay high dividends on largely watered stock.

2. The low rate of interest paid on deposits by
the Government and the chartered banks.

3. Destruction of property by cold storage
fires.

4. Waste of food by butchers and grocers
through keeping it at a high price until no
longer fit to be used for food.

5. Excessive, transportation and express
charges.

102 THE NEW SLAVERY

6. The mischievous activity of " groups of
men " in cornering foodstuffs on a large and also
a small scale. (This is partly included in the
first cause.)

THE EISE OF THE COMBINES.

In the Dominion Provinces the combines took
hold slowly, partly on account of the force of
public opinion in keeping down prices, the pro-
ducers as well as the consumers being in com-
paratively small numbers and the latter know-
ing pretty well the cost of production, and
partly through inherited fear of the law against
monopolies. If a man in such communities felt
that he was being overcharged for his meat, but-
ter, poultry, vegetables and other foodstuffs, he
could easily, where land was plentiful, turn his
attention to raising such things for himself. He
knew enough law also to tell his neighbors that
if they overcharged him too much or laid their
heads together to pinch him in a combine he
could lay an information against them and have
them up before the Supreme Court. But as
population increased and people, many of them
now working under the factory system, had less
leisure to attend to public affairs and became
more absorbed in their private business, and the
press and the politicians came more under the
control of the monied interests, prices began to
rise.

RISE OP THE COMBINES 103

In the United States the Common Law was
never so much in evidence as it was in the
British Provinces, the dislike of all things Brit-
ish affecting even the feeling of the public
towards British law. The Common Law, or
only such parts of it as were specifically enacted
by certain States, was adopted. In some States
its influence became negligible. This gave the
combines their opportunity. Having gradually
assumed control of business and forced up the
cost of living to unprecedented heights in the
United States, about the year 1897 they began
operations in Canada. The Sherman Act
secured, they lost their fears of the Common
Law, just as their confreres in Canada did when
they got the Combines Investigation Act passed.
Having removed their plants to or started
branches in Canada, they encouraged Canadian
manufacturers, packers and other combiners to
despise the Common Law, trusting to public
ignorance or preoccupation and their ability to
control the press, the politicians and the bar, to
hoodwink the public. And it must be admitted
that they have been singularly successful. In
the course of fifteen or sixteen years they have
so completely mastered the situation that Can-
ada is the dearest country in the world to live
in, and a great part of the population seem to
be in ignorance of the fact, or are humbugged
into tracing it to false and ridiculous causes.

The favorite cause with the Conservative
leaders is the relatively small amount of agri-

104 THE NEW SLAVERY

cultural production as compared with the popu-
lation of the cities, ignoring the fact that the
per capita production is probably the greatest
in the world.

On the other hand, the Liberal leaders blame
the protective tariff. They say that if the duties
on foodstuffs were removed the cost of living
would be greatly lowered. But the protective
policy was in full swing from 1878 till 1896, dur-
ing which prices rose very slowly ; whereas, since
1896, and under a somewhat reduced scale of
duties, prices have risen to their present height.
This shows conclusively that there must be some
more potent cause than the tariff alone. It is
significant that the leaders of neither of the
great parties ask for the enforcement of the law
against combines and monopolies. This proves
that they are afraid of them. Deprived thus of
the support that they have been taught and have
a right to expect from Government or parties,
the people will have to look out for themselves.

The Conservatives say : " Get out on to the
land and raise more cattle, grain and vegetables.
That will bring the prices down. But don't
take off the duties. ' That will hurt your
farmers."

The Liberals say : " Take off the duties— ten
millions or so — and you will save all that out
of your expenses."

When asked what about enforcing the law
against combines and monopolies, they are both
discreetly silent.

KISE OF THE COMBINES 105

If it were only a matter of the small combines
whose exactions the consumer directly feels, the
evil would be soon remedied, for the banks and
the big corporations would lose no time in hav-
ing them brought to justice. But the big con-
cerns are restrained from doing so by the fear
of having the law invoked against themselves.
So that the higher the milk, fish and other little
local combines raise prices the sooner will the
consumer gain relief from the oppression of the
big combines. As soon as the small dealers come
before the courts they will ask why the great
combines, who have forced them in self-defence
to raise prices, are not proceeded against. Then
will come the tug-of-war. The big combines will
be forced to throw off their disguises and come
out in the open to fight for their lives. The con-
sumer will then surely come into his own.

CHAPTER V.

THE BANKER'S VIEW.

THE pronouncement of the President of the
Canadian Bank of Commerce, already discussed
in Chapter II, since it has not, so far as I know,
been repudiated by any other banker, may be
called the bankers' view of the cause of the high
prices.

Regarding this Mr. James J. Harpell, who
three years ago published an interesting work
on the subject (The Macmillan Co. of Canada,
Limited), may be heard:

The whole of the Canadian banking business is con-
trolled by about one-half a dozen people, really by about
two.*

By the existing system the savings of the whole country
are drawn to two or three centres, where they are too fre-
quently used for stock gambling purposes, or from where
they are shipped out of the country to be loaned on foreign
stock exchanges. The foreign call loans of the Canadian
banks at the beginning of 1910 amounted to $138,505,379.
Lately these have been reduced, probably on account of
the approaching revision of the Bank Act. . . . Under
the present banking system it is comparatively easy to get
money and credit for the flotation of almost every kind
of enterprise, or alleged enterprise, but almost impossible

* On this point Mr. H. C. McLeod, formerly General Man-
ager of the Bank of Nova Scotia, says that one banker con-
trolled the whole bankers' association, " by influence."

106

THE BANKER'S VIEW 107

to get any for productive purposes in our elementary and
natural industries.

Again he says:

As already explained, the Canadian banking system is
such that all the savings of the country are controlled by
a few men. ... On these savings the depositors
receive three per cent, interest on time deposits and no
interest at all on current deposits. Deposits made in the
post-offices are also transferred to the banks, only the
credit slips being sent to Ottawa. In addition to the credit
supplied by the aggregate savings of the Canadian people,
for which, by the way, not a dollar of reserve is required
to be kept, the banks are permitted to issue bank notes,
also without having to put up or keep deposited in their
own vaults any gold reserve whatever. All these privileges
supply the few men who control the banking system of the
country with a credit that is limited only by the aggregate
savings of the people, plus the ability of the banks to
keep their notes in circulation. How has this credit been
used? Has it been used to the best advantage in building
up Canada, the country that produces it? Even a hurried
examination will convince anyone that it has not. It has
been used by those who control the banks for the enrich-
ment of themselves, irrespective of the effect which such
a course would have, or was having, upon the country.

By far the largest part of it has been used to promote
and finance combines. Fully nine-tenths of Canada's com-
bines have had their origin in the banks or their sub-
sidiary trust companies.

The writer has before him the last report of one of
Canada's largest cotton companies, which shows that the
bank loans which this company enjoyed on the 31st of
March, 1910, amounted to $2,959,783.14.

Another use to which the savings of the Canadian people
have been put is the promotion of large industrial con-
cerns in Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, the United States and other

108 THE NEW SLAVERY

foreign countries. A third use has been the making of
call loans on foreign stock exchanges, particularly those
of New York. Canadian bankers attempt to justify these
foreign call loans on the assumption that they take the
place of gold reserves. But the main value of gold reserves
lies in their availability during times of depression or
panic. During the last money stringency in Canada the
foreign call loans of Canadian banks were of no value
whatever. The banks were unable to recall them, and, in
order to relieve the shortage, the Minister of Finance was
forced to break the Currency Act and allow the banks to
issue more paper money.

No country outside of Canada permits call loans, either
domestic or foreign, to take the place of gold reserves.
There is no country outside of Canada that does not require
its banks to keep gold reserves against bank notes, and
many require also reserves against deposits. In Canada
the banks are not required to keep either. . . . Any
move that will reduce prices and the cost of living will
enable the country to do more building and make more
improvements with less outlay.

The banker holds that plentiful gold makes
high prices, yet the rate of discount at the banks
keeps steadily rising. If overproduction raised
the cost of living it ought to lower the rate of
interest, but the contrary is the case.*

Mr. Peter McArthur has an interesting article
in the July issue of The Forum, in which he says :

The Canadian banking system is particularly interesting
because the things that are said of it by its friends and
its critics are equally true. It deserves the highest praise
because its organization is so perfectly adapted to the

* See also the article by Albert S. Bolles, on " Gold and
Prices," in the North American Review, July, 1913.

THE BANKER'S VIEW 109

needs of the country in which it has been developed, and
the severest blame because the perfection of its organiza-
tion makes it so easy to subvert it for the enrichment of
favored financiers. It is an engine that when working as
represented by its friends serves the country admirably,
but when its gear is reversed it works with equal smooth-
ness against the people and for the benefit of those who
are in control. And the fact that it can be switched for or
against the people without a jar makes it the wonderful
engine it is while handled by astute men. It is so hard
to know in which way it is working at any particular
time that investigators are being constantly baffled. When
working as it should be it deserves all the praise that is
lavished on it, but that it frequently works with reversed
gear is shown by certain peculiarities of Canadian busi-
ness, if not by the banking returns that are made to the
Government. As it is absolutely free from outside inspec-
tion, this kind of manipulation is hard to detect; but the
all too frequent failures of weak banks have given the
public occasional glimpses of the more sinister workings
of the system.

Again he says :

That they are succeeding admirably in collecting the
money of the people is shown by the fact that they now
have over a billion dollars on deposit, or about ten times
the amount of their paid-up capital. As the Bank Act
makes it illegal for any but a chartered bank to use the
name "bank," private banks have been practically wiped
out of existence. The twenty-six chartered banks,* bound
together in a Bankers' Association, which to all intents
and purposes is a legalized money trust, have been given
a practical monopoly of the banking business of the coun-
try. In addition they are permitted to issue currency to
the extent of their paid-up capital at no greater cost than
that of the engraving and printing. This amounts to a
virtual gift from the Government of one hundred million
* Now twenty-four.

110 THE NEW SLAVERY

dollars. This currency is not subject to a tax of any kind,
as is the case in other countries, and instead of being
secured by gold or Government bonds it is secured by
being made the preferred creditor against the assets of
the bank. This makes the money of the depositors the
security for the note circulation of the country. In addi-
tion to this the banks have been allowed to operate entirely
free from Government inspection. In view of these con-
ditions it is not surprising that the more successful banks
have been able to accumulate reserves almost equal to
their paid-up capital, to provide themselves with magnifi-
cent office buildings, and to pay dividends ranging from
ten to eighteen per cent. It is surprising, however, that
under this system there have been so many failures. As
pointed out by Mr. McLeod, ex-Manager of the Bank of
Nova Scotia, the only banker who has advocated any meas-
ure of reform, twenty-five per cent, of the Canadian banks
have failed in the past twenty-six years. During the same
period only five per cent, of the national banks in the
United States have failed. The explanation seems to be
that under the Canadian system the tendency is all toward
the centralization of capital in the larger banks, while
the weaker banks are driven to the wall. During the past
couple of years several of the weaker banks have been
absorbed by stronger rivals, and the indications are that
the process will be kept up until all the resources of the
country are centralized in a few powerful banks.

By that time the consumer will be utterly at
the mercy of the trusts. The System will be
working to perfection.

CHAPTER VI.

DEPOSIT BANKING.

THE outstanding feature of the financial sys-
tem of these times is deposit banking. On this
point Seth Low, a former President of Columbia
University and Mayor of New York, says:

The nineteenth century was the century of the corpora-
tion and the labor union, which in the dominion of capital
and labor threaten to obliterate the individual. Even fifty
years ago the discussions of bankers turned mainly upon
circulation. At the present time our banks are compara-
tively indifferent to circulation, but they aim to secure as
large deposits as possible. Deposit banking keeps every
dollar of the country on a war-footing all the time. There
would not have been enough money at command at an
earlier period to have made the invention of the railroad
available. When the Legislature grants the impersonal
form for the conduct of business and grants, in addition,
a limited liability, there is no reason why it should not,
at the same time, demand that all the operations of this
artificial person — or perhaps I ought to say of this com-
bination of natural and artificial persons — should be mat-
ters of public record; no reason why the demand for pub-
licity in relation to the actions of corporations should not
be carried to any detail to which it may be necessary to
secure the result of absolute honesty as towards stock-
holders, creditors and the public.

The banks are reaching out for all the money
HUM r;m get at three per cent., while the munici-

lll

112 THE NEW SLAVERY

palities pay five per cent, and in some cases even
more for it. In the days of small banks the aim
was to secure the most good paper to discount;
now the effort is to secure the largest deposits.
This money, borrowed at three per cent., is
loaned somewhere or other so as to return from
ten to eighteen per cent, to the shareholders.
The small banks helped traders by letting them
have the money on easy terms of payment; the
big modern concerns make the struggling trader
put everything he can raise in the way of securi-
ties or credits into the bank on the monthly bal-
ance day, and keep the whip over his head all
the time. Anything said against the methods of
the banks is high treason.

Conant, in " The Principles of Money and
Banking," says:

These figures (bank returns from 1865 to 1905 showing
a growth from $183,479,636 to $3,612,499,598) indicate in
a striking manner how much more rapidly deposit cur-
rency has grown than either note circulation or capital
stock. As recently as in 1875 the ratio of deposits was only
about two-fifths larger than capital and twice the amount
of circulation; in 1905 it was five times the capital and
nearly nine times the circulation. Put in a more striking
form, loans and discounts were made in 1875 to the extent
of about eighty-five per cent, from capital and circulation;
in 1905 they were made only to the extent of about thirty
per cent, from capital and circulation, the remaining sev-
enty per cent, being made entirely from funds intrusted
to the banks by the public.

The large proportion of bank funds which are thus
derived from the deposits of individuals have materially

DEPOSIT BANKING 113

changed the character of banking. In 1875 a large pro-
portion of the capital could be employed in making loans,
because only a minor part was required as a reserve
against deposit and note obligations. In 1905, on the other
hand, the capital sank substantially to the position of a
guarantee fund against obligations more than five times
as great, because the great mass of credit intrusted to the
banks by the public was available for making loans. Even
these figures do not reveal the full scope of the change in
the character of banking in the United States. They relate
only to the national banks, while within a generation has
grown up a hierarchy of state and private banks and trust
companies, which have no power to issue notes, and there-
fore rely wholly upon capital and deposits for carrying on
their business.

In the banks of to-day we have something alto-
gether different from any other institution of
the kind that has ever existed. For instance, the
Canadian Bank of Commerce is no more like
the old Halifax Banking Company than the
Academy of Music is like the little Dutch
Church on Brunswick Street. The Halifax
Banking Company and the old Merchants' Bank
of Halifax were started by a few Halifax mer-
chants, who discounted notes, mostly for their
friends and acquaintances, and paying a few
small salaries and renting the most modest quar-
ters, did a snug little business, paid a fair rate
of interest and accumulated a little reserve. But
the Canadian Bank of Commerce a*nd the Royal
Bank are not merely Provincial, or even Domin-
ion, but great international concerns with
greedy arms stretching out into all lands where-
8

114 THE NEW SLAVERY

ever there is a dollar to be made. A few years
ago a block of Koyal Bank stock was sold to a
New York syndicate of capitalists. So much of
the Canadian Bank of Commerce stock is held in
the British Isles that they publish a separate
list of their stockholders across the water. The
men who drew up the Bank Act had no concep-
tion of the monsters that were to be spawned
under it in these latter days. They never dreamt
of a discounting machine with a monopolizing
attachment, of a great raker-in of the people's
savings, working almost automatically with a
combination of interests to raise the price of the
people's food.

The Bank Act has not a single provision
regarding the relations of a bank with its sub-
sidiary trusts. If the Bankers' Association
denies these things, let its members produce
their books and employees for the inspection of
the public and show how much money they make
and how they make the money. It will, of course,
deny that they make any of it through call loans
in the United States. Let it prove, then, how its
members manage to put up all of these palatial
banking houses and pay its highly-salaried staffs
out of discounts and ordinary investments in
municipal and other bonds. A public investiga-
tion once in ten years at least would do no harm.
There should certainly be one at all events
before a new act is put in force. The altered
times demand it. .

DEPOSIT BANKING 115

The act should define precisely the relations
between the bank and its subsidiary trusts. A
group of men get together in a bank and work
through trusts. These are probably the " groups
of men " of whom Professor Mackenzie speaks.
The same men figure in a number of banks, mer-
gers and other combinations. The act should
state plainly their duties no less than their limi-
tations in those capacities. If the Bank Act
cannot contain all this, then a special Merger
or Combine Act should be passed without delay.
Then the public would know with whom they
have to deal and how to deal with them. As it
is there is a delightful vagueness about it all,
like the reasons given by some of its supporters
or victims for the high price of food. They ought
to be known as Deposit Trust Banks and special
laws should be enacted for their regulation, even
if thev are not adjudged illegal outright. As it
is, they are sailing under false colors. Whilst
nominally banks they are really a sort of finan-
cial hybrid with all the mischievous qualities of
both parents.

One would not expect from a banker any very
feasible remedy for the high cost of living,
because the banks profit by it. This was shown
bv the year's business for 1913, when the banks
had an exceptionally good year. If the cost of
living croes up the banks charge higher rates of
;n tores t because money is scarce and in greater
They are able to put the screws more

116 THE NEW SLAVERY

tightly on the unfortunate consumer and to take
more out of his pockets. The consumer must
pay whether he likes it or not. Thus as the
times become worse the banks grow harder and
more arrogant. The consumer becomes gradu-
ally completely in their power. He must pay
the piper no matter how much he winces.

CHAPTER VII.

GRAPPLING WITH THE ENEMY.

IN Canada no organized effort has been made
to combat the monopolies masquerading under
the names of trusts, combines and mergers. In
the United States, on the other hand, there has
been waged a great opposition to their perni-
cious activities extending over a number of
years. These have chiefly been fought around
the Sherman Act. Great efforts have been made
to enforce this famous measure. Fortunes have
been spent by the Government and the combines
in attempts to interpret and apply it. The last
two Presidents were elected largely on their
pledges to enforce it, and there is little doubt
that their failure to effect anything to relieve the
burdens of the people was one of the main causes
of President Wilson's election.

After years of wordy, fruitless controversy
they got down to business and actually dissolved
great concerns like the Standard Oil Trust, the
Tobacco Trust and others, resolving them into
their constituent corporations. It was quite a
triumph for the Government in the courts, but
the consumer, that is to say the people, got no
relief. Prices remained as high as ever and no

117

118 THE NEW SLAVERY

one was really punished. In the action against
the Dayton Cash Register Company during the
last winter they went somewhat farther and
secured convictions against the president and
other officers. But the people were in no wise
helped by the result.

And so it will always be whilst action is con-
fined to the trust. Action should be taken where
the trust impinges on the consumer, that is to
say, where the price is actually raised. There
is no reason why a company, merely because it
is big, should be attacked and subjected to
inquisition and dissolution any more than a
small concern. The public audit from time to
time will effectually safeguard the rights of the
consumer. But it is the man who actually
raises the price to the consumer who should be
dealt with in the first instance, and this can be
most effectually done under section 498 of the
Code. As Hamlet says, " Where the offence is
there let the great axe fall."

The retailer in his defence, if he does not wish
to go to the penitentiary and pay a fine, must
show his contracts with the parties who made
him unduly enhance the price. A few might
prefer punishment to revealing secrets, but such
cases would probably be rare.

It might, perhaps, be thought that there would
be some difficulty in dealing with offenders
against the Code where they reside in different
Provinces, but the Attorneys-General of the Pro-

GRAPPLING WITH THE ENEMY 119

vinces, working together and utilizing the evi-
dence obtained in one case in prosecuting
another, would easily be able to overcome any
difficulties of this kind. They could break up
any conspiracy in restraint of trade or to
enhance prices unreasonably, in three months.
Once a right start was made there would be
little trouble in tracing back the crime to the
man who set the ball rolling. He is the man to
punish, no matter where he may seek to hide.
Not the retailer who tremblingly carries out the
behests of the combine, but the combinesters
themselves are the culprits on whom the " great
axe " should fall.

If they had gone about combating the evil in
the United States by utilizing the old common
law weapons and first taking the retailer or the
man who directly raised the price on the con-
sumer, they would have saved a great deal of
time and money and incidentally kept down the
cost of living to the old level. But by trying to
remedy the trouble by passing enactments lev-
elled directly at the trusts they only got them-
selves into a legal snarl, leaving the consumer as
badly off as ever. The trusts have all along been
successful in changing their shape whilst keep-
ing their powers intact. Dealing with a cor-
poration, as everyone knows, is a very different
matter from handling an individual. The trusts
have made the most of their advantages, as
might have been expected.

120 THE NEW SLAVERY

WASTE.

Among the principal causes of these conditions is the
fact that everybody is looking out for himself too much
and too ruthlessly, seeking with too much energy the
immediate " practical " advantage and ignoring the fact
that his own welfare is indissolubly bound up with the
welfare of his neighbor. A vicious circle is set up in that
the citizen lacks respect for the employer and the Govern-
ment and the Government is not primarily concerned with
the welfare of the citizen. Everyone is working at logger-
heads, and the result of this condition is seen in the estab-
lishment of trusts and their consequent train of evils
through the impossibility of the business man surviving
in the conditions of fierce competition which ordinarily
prevail. Had fair competition been assured by law, trusts
could never have overcome the independence of business
men and forced them into consolidation.

In considering the evils which affect the United States,
beginning with the most obvious, the defective political sys-
tem, and continuing through the long list, the one which
upon analysis appears to be the basic factor in present
conditions is the educational system. If that be remedied
the remedying of the others will follow in time. — New York
Sun, August, 1913.

MONOPOLY DISLOCATES TRADE.

By limiting the output the combines discour-
age farmers who would like to go into stock-rais-
ing. They find their markets interfered with and
are hampered as to their supplies of fodder, all of
which they cannot raise on their own farms. By
interfering with the bargains the retailers seek
to make the combines prevent the retailer from
dealing with the farmer on terms advantageous
to both. Here is where the law should be invoked

GRAPPLING WITH THE ENEMY 121

in the interests both of the latter and of the con-
sumer. By meddling, through using oppressive
threats, the combines dislocate and eventually
paralyze trade. The effect of their operations is
to make meat scarcer and dearer all the time.

THE MAN WITH THE AUTOMOBILE — AN
ALLEGORY.

I had a dream one night lately. Having
recently witnessed at the " movies " a marvel-
lous reproduction of the classic work of our old
friend, John Bunyan, " Pilgrim's Progress," I
suppose the allegorical framework had got
embedded in my mind. I seemed to have arrived
in a city new to me, and was out walking along
the streets, admiring stately dwellings, well-kept
lawns, magnificent churches, towering business
blocks, and immense factories in which the
machinery never rested. Everything I saw
betokened wealth, luxury, comfort and pros-
perity. But as I strolled along the hoarse roar
of an automobile startled me, and looking round
I saw the driver stop the machine, get out, and,
running into a house, immediately reappear with
his hands full of money. This he deposited in
his auto, and moving a little farther along the
pavement again dismounted and went into the
next house, again returning with his hands full
of money, which he placed in his box in the auto.
After noticing him doing this in some more cases,
my curiosity rising, I followed him into a house

122 THE KEW SLAVERY

and saw him with nay own eyes taking the money
out of a desk and carrying it to the street.
Amazed almost beyond expression, I said to the
inmates, who watched this performance with
apparent unconcern : " Why don't you have that
thief arrested?"

They stared straight in front of them with
fixed and glassy eyes, answering me never a
word. I rushed out into the street and shaking
my fist at the villain, who was pursuing with
unabated diligence his infamous work, I shouted :

" You infernal scoundrel ! I'll have you
arrested !"

" Do you see that fellow?" I yelled to a police-
man who was sunning himself on the nearby
corner. " He's robbing all the houses along this
street. I will swear to it. Stop him at once !"

The policeman yawned wearily and gave me,
as I thought, an almost imperceptible wink. He
never moved a foot.

Noticing a lawyer's sign on the nearest build-
ing, I went over to his office. This was the
inscription :

" THOMAS MUMM, K.C.,
" Barrister, Prosecuting Officer, etc."

"That's the man I want!" said I to myself,
walking in.

He was evidently a man in considerable prac-
tice. A stenographer was pounding the keys of
a typewriter, clerks were running in and out of

GRAPPLING WITH THE ENEMY 123

the suite of offices, clients were standing about,
and there were all the signs of a rushing law
business.

" Are you the prosecuting officer for this
county?" I enquired. He bent his head majes-
tically. " Well, there's a scoundrel out here
with an automobile going along robbing the
houses right and left. You might give me a
warrant to take to a magistrate for him."

Mr. Mumm stared right across at his book-
shelves, but never uttered a syllable.

" Well, hurry up !" exclaimed I, " or he'll rob
the whole town."

The " eminent counsel " indicated neither by
sign or word that he heard me.

" WTell," thought I, " this is a nice sort of a
town. Are the people all dead?" So going out
and continuing my walk I came presently to a
building which, from the character of the men
I saw standing about in knots or singly in front
of it, countrymen and laborers with policemen
and other officers of the law, I took to be the
courthouse. Upon entering it I found it was so.
The judge was seated on the bench; in front of
him the prothonotary, in the intervals of swear-
ing witnesses, chewing gum and spitting in the
judge's cuspidor. The sheriff sat gloomily in
his box, wondering, probably, when he would get
any money out of the lawyers. In the prisoners'
box sat a man who had run away with some
fellow-s horse and wagon, which he had driven

124 THE NEW SLAVERY

out some miles into the country, so I was told by
the crier, who said the prisoner would probably
get five or six years in the penitentiary for it,
being a very serious crime.

" Well," thought I, " if they give a man five or
six years for such a crime as that they will surely
give the man with the auto imprisonment for
life.'7 So I said to the judge:

" Your Lordship will kindly pardon me for
addressing the court, but there is a man outside
going through the town in an automobile rob-
bing everybody right and left. I have applied
to a policeman and a prosecuting officer for
relief, but I can get nothing out of them. They
appear to be deaf, dumb and blind. Will your
Lordship grant a bench warrant for the arrest
and imprisonment of the robber?"

His Lordship sat as if entranced, moving
neither hand nor foot and saying nothing. I
was beginning to lose my temper.

" What kind of a court is this, anyhow?"

" This is the Supreme Court," answered the
judge in hollow tones. " And if you utter
another syllable I will have you arrested and
jailed for contempt!"

" Then the sooner I get out of here the better,"
thought I.

Before going, however, I applied to the lawyers
engaged in the case for assistance, but I could
get no more out of them than I had got out of
Mr. Mumm.

GRAPPLING WITH THE ENEMY 125

So hurrying away, after awhile I came to a
high hill, on the top of which was seated a
stately pile of buildings. It was getting towards
evening now and the lights flashed out over every
part of the edifice, illuminating it like day.

" What is this building?" I asked a passer-by.

" Houses of Parliament,'7 replied he.

" How fortunate !" cried I. "I will apply for
relief to the High Court of Parliament."

So pushing in through the lobby, avoiding the
lobbyists and other hangers-on, I took a seat at
a desk and listened awhile to the debate in pro-
gress. An Opposition member was discussing
the tariff and laying about him in fine style. The
Government supporters, he said, were all thieves
and liars. They were there for nothing but to
loot the public treasury. Then a Government
supporter arose and hurled back all the charges
of the other in his teeth. What the Government
party had taken was only a small part of what
the Opposition had stolen when they were in
power :

" Wait till we get in again !" shouted his
opponent.

" Well, when you get there again there won't
be much left for you to steal!" retorted the
Government orator.

" Mr. Speaker !" cried I, during a lull in the
debate, " I crave your august attention for a few
moments while I state a hard case." And I told
him all that I had seen of the auto robber and

126 THE NEW SLAVERY

iny experiences since. He regarded me steadily
from behind his huge wig, but said nothing.
Then I was seized by some of the officials and
hustled out into the street.

The automobile passing by just then, I thought
I would have a look at it. Piles of the people's
money were heaped up in it level with the sides.
In front was engraved the word " Money," on
one side " Combine," and on the other " Trust."
The man was robed in a magnificent black fox-
skin overcoat, and under the cap grinned a
death's-head. His fleshless fingers clutched at
the gold.

" He works night and day," remarked an aged
senator who was watching him admiringly.

" This certainly is a most extraordinary
place!" exclaimed I as I awoke.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEOPLE'S CLUBS.

BRANCHES of the Consumers' Guild should be
established in every town in the Dominion, and
there should be frequent communication between
them so as to keep in touch and help one another.
Much may be done by co-operation among con-
sumers, of which there have been many success-
ful examples in the United States, to say nothing
of the immense societies which have been work-
ing with phenomenal results for many years in
Great Britain. These help the consumer with-
out hurting the producer. A very good account
of one of these is given in The World's Work for
February, 1913.

In 1910 the Hyde Park Housewives' Co-opera-
tive League was organized in a suburb of Cin-
cinnati. The purpose was the co-operative buy-
ing of household supplies. The officers of the
League dealt directly with the farmers and
bought apples by the barrel, and beef, poultry,
butter and eggs in similar wholesale quantities.
They bought carload lots of potatoes and dry
groceries. These supplies were all delivered to
a1 distributing centre, the cost of freight, etc.,
being pro-rated, and carried from that place to

127

128 THE NEW SLAVERY

the members' homes by the members. All trans-
actions were in cash. Typical savings are indi-
cated by these quotations from one report of the
League :

Retail Price League Price

per Pound. per Pound.

Sugar 6c. 5%c.

Pepper 80c. 39c.

Cocoa 50c. 42c.

Baking powder 50c. 30c.

Rice lOc. 6c.

Prunes 18c. 13%c.

Corn starch lOc. 7c.

A Local Director handles the goods in Hyde
Park just as a grocer does. Agents visit whole-
sale dealers and jobbers and get their prices on
foodstuffs, also getting in touch with producers
as far as possible and buying directly from them.
They buy in barrel and case lots and have the
goods shipped to the Local Director. Every
month the Director's accounts are audited by a
committee of three. Every member having a
part in any purchase shares, proportionately to
the amount taken, in the cost of freight and
express charges and pays cash for goods when
received. Goods for which cash is not paid are
sold by the Director to others in whatever way
seems best. Every local centre or branch is qu i 1 c
independent financially of the League.

Mm of first-rate quality and calibre are said
to be found managing various forms of co-opera-

THE PEOPLE'S CLUBS 129

tion in Europe. In France the Credit Agricole,
and in Germany the Schulze-Delitzsch banks, are
immense institutions. The latter total over
one thousand in number and are affiliated with
the General Union and Economic Co-operative
Societies. They are mainly supported by the
industrial population. The General Union
includes, besides the Schulze-Delitzsch banks,
some 290 consumers' societies or co-operative
stores. In Great Britain prominent institutions
are the Army and Navy Stores, the English
Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the Scottish
Co-operative Wholesale Society.

While these great concerns are very successful
in countries which are densely populated, it is
doubtful whether anything like them will be
operated with much success for many years in
the Dominion of Canada. The great obstacles
are shifting population and comparatively small
and scattered population. We have only three
or four cities with a population of over one hun-
dred thousand. Even the population that we
have is becoming more and more nomadic in its
habits with increased facilities of travel. The
settlement of the North- West has counteracted
the exodus to the United States, but it has also
increased the restlessness of our population. It
is almost impossible to keep families together
after the children are much more than half-
grown. Most farms in the older Provinces are
for sale.

130 THE NEW SLAVERY

All the more need is there for the enforcement
of the laws for the protection of the consumer.
England depends on the ancient customs of the
people, who abhor monopoly and trade restric-
tions. But here, where we have no settled body
of opinion, and where our financiers take their
working ideas from the successful combinesters
and merger-men in the United States, if the
people do not make up their minds to insist upon
the laws against the undue enhancement of
prices being strictly observed, they must
patiently submit to the exactions of the most
grasping lot of monopolists who ever held the
trade of a country in their clutches.

As the beef trust is worldwide in its opera-
tions, so the aims of the Consumers' Guild
should be of the broadest. There should be
agents in every village all over the world. Corre-
spondents should make weekly returns of prices
and all the facts of production and transporta-
tion. These should be printed in a weekly pub-
lication and circulated everywhere. Then, when
a certain lot of food was found to be obtainable
in a certain locality at an exceptionally low rato,
arrangements could be made for its purchase
and transportation to a point where it was sell-
ing at a higher price. Prices could be thus
largely equalized. Under our enlarged and per-
fected system of transportation those things are
possible nowadays. As it is at present, of ton

THE PEOPLE'S CLUBS 131

prices vary by from ten to thirty per cent, within
a radius of thirty or forty miles.

Agents should be employed to seek out and
supply new avenues of industry. As far as pos-
sible employment bureaus should be instituted,
agents appointed for every Parliamentary
assembly and statistics collected of all matters
bearing upon the question of food production
and transportation. When necessary the best
legal talent should be employed to attend to
drafting necessary legislation and to assist prose-
cuting officers in conducting prosecutions. A
system something like that of the S.P.C.A.
should be adopted in ferreting out and prosecut-
ing offenders against section 498.

CHAPTER IX.

THE NEW ERA.

THERE must be a regular system of correspond-
ence between the different branches of the Guild.
The combines might, in obedience to a powerful
organization in Halifax, lower prices there
whilst keeping them up in Windsor, Kentville,
Middleton or Yarmouth. By comparing prices
every week in these places the combines could
be defeated.

The consumers must be united in defence of
their interests the same as the bankers, the
manufacturers, the grocers, or any other com-
bination. Every sale should be criticized, whole-
sale prices in all commodities obtained, and any
attempt at artificial enhancing of prices any-
where should be followed by prosecution and
recourse to the grand jury. The bankers, manu-
facturers, grocers and other associations gain
their ends by rigid attention to the smallest
details; every cent, every lead-pencil and every
sheet of paper must be accounted for ; " tabs,"
as they say, are kept on everything ; and the con-
sumers must look after every item of their
expenditure just as sharply, for it is out of the
trifles that the great combines make their money,
although not all their money by any means.

132

THE NEW ERA 133

When they see a good chance to make big money
they calculate to rake in the whole bag. Look-
ing after the lead-pencils is all very well, but
when call loans are to be negotiated at from
twenty to fifty per cent., the opportunity must
not be allowed to slip by.

PROPORTIONAL PROFITS FOR CONSUMERS.

We have about 848 paid legislators in Canada,
to say nothing of town and municipal council-
lors, boards of control and aldermen. But nobody
ever heard of one of them bringing in an act for
the benefit of the consumer. There are whole
codes of law to safeguard the interests of
bankers, manufacturers and corporations of high
and low degree, but in the scramble for privilege
the consumer is overlooked and forgotten.

When the Nova Scotia coal legislation was
carried through in 1892 the Opposition fought
it mainly from a purely party standpoint. The
question was mainly, Can the Government be
made unpopular by this measure? The interests
of the man who has to buy his coal by the ton,
or, as in some of our cities, by the peck, were not
considered in the matter at all. But if he had
had some representative to look after his rights,
the coal company would have been made to fix
its profits at some reasonable rate, say six or
seven per cent,, after which the price of co?l per
ton, instead of going up as the coal people liked,
would come down automatically.

134 THE NEW SLAVERY

Similarly in every franchise granted to a cor-
poration there should be a provision for a regu-
lar periodical accounting in which prices should
be adjusted to profits. After making a fair and
reasonable profit the corporation should make a
proportional reduction in rates to the public. If
the Bank of Montreal or the Dominion Bank
makes twenty- three or eighteen per cent., the
rate of interest on deposits should be propor-
tionately increased. If the Dominion Express
Company makes more than six or seven per cent,
on its business, then express rates should be
correspondingly reduced. And so with railway
earnings and all the earnings of the combines
and mergers. The consumer should come into
the bargain with every one of them as an active
partner. In this way only will he ever get his
rights.

I have no objection to the great corporations
making money, but when they are able to
increase the cost of liVing to the whole popula-
tion thirty-five per cent, within fifteen years it
is high time that someone lifted up his voice for
the public. Otherwise starvation for the masses
is not so far off as some people may think.
Every one of these contracts regarding food and
the other necessaries of life that has been made
with a corporation in the last thirty years
should be revised in the interests of the con-
sumer. In this way only can he be safeguarded
in his inalienable rights as a citizen of a free
British-speaking country. As it is now he is

THE NEW ERA 135

beiug simply robbed of his birthright, to put the
matter plainly.

But, it may be said, " This is spoliation.
Would you confiscate the rewards of honest
enterprise?"

Twenty or thirty years ago the circumstances
were altogether different from what we find
them to-day. Then these great concerns were
puny things struggling for a bare existence.
Then, too, there was a fair measure of prosperity
among all classes. How do we find it to-day?
Vast and powerful corporations rolling in
wealth on the one hand and the masses fighting
for a hand-to-mouth existence on the other. Then
there was a fair chance of almost any prudent,
industrious person making a comfortable living
and laying up something for his old age. Now,
when the cost of living has increased faster than
in any other country in the world, a man cannot
earn enough to support a family.

The legislators of that day could not have
foreseen the history of the last twenty or thirty
years or they would have taken more thought for
posterity. The prospect looked fair enough to
them, but things have altogether changed since
their day. More changes have come about in the
first thirteen years of the present century than
happened in the last thirty years of the nine-
teenth century. Our industrial laws will have
to be rewritten largely in order to bring them
up-to-date.

136 THE NEW SLAVERY

The rights of the corporations will have to be
balanced with the rights of the public. Other-
wise the mass of the population will rapidly sink
into a state of pauperism and peonage. The
people who have or control the wealth will with
more or less open effrontery lord it over the des-
titute masses. In one way or another the people
will be reduced to a state of industrial slavery,
just as they are in the United States to-day. The
trouble in the United States was that there was
not a large enough independent body of opinion
to control the situation. The people had not time
or leisure enough to take up the matter of food.
They were worked too hard and were too busy
to organize for the defence of their rights, and
the big corporations were easily able to get the
upper hand. The people left it too much to the
politicians, who had their own footing to secure
and were financially not in a position to fight
the trust magnates and other bosses of the big
corporations. We have this advantage over
them, that we have a smaller and comparatively
more leisured and independent population. We
are not so hard- worked as yet that we have not
a considerable section who have time to attend
to politics. The politician is not so much in evi-
dence here as there. When a matter comes home
to people they can attend to it without getting
into a whirl of legal and legislative conflicting
decisions.

There they have state courts and state Legis-
latures competing with Federal courts and Con-

THE NEW ERA 137

gress. It needed three great Federal elections
to enable the people to get merely in reaching
distance of what they wanted, and then only a
most unexpected break in the ranks of the great
Republican party made it possible for them to
hope for some measure of relief. After all, tak-
ing a broad view of the matter, the great cor-
porations and the public are only members of a
loosely jointed partnership.

A generation ago or less most of these began
to do business with every advantage on the side
of the corporations. They have profited by these
so that to-day they are flourishing. With the
public, however, it is very different. They have
by degrees come to have the short end of the
bargain and are in difficulties. They find the
cost of living increased through no fault of
their own without a corresponding increase of
resources or income. Now it is the turn of the
corporations to fly to the relief of the public
and assist it out of their overflowing coffers.
No doubt they will be delighted to take this view
of the matter and will act most magnanimously
towards their former benefactors without whose
generous assistance their present prosperity
would have been impossible.

The principle of proportional returns to the
consumer is well illustrated in the succession
duties. There the law says : " The deceased has
profited by the support of the public in amass-
ing his wealth. It is only fair that a certain
percentage of his gains should be returned to

138 THE NEW SLAVERY

assist the State in supporting public charities
and other necessary institutions and public
burdens."

This principle is defended in every civilized
country to-day, and it is not carrying it much
farther to require flourishing financial, mercan-
tile, manufacturing and transportation corpora-
tions to conform to its reasonable requirements.
An annual or other periodical accounting would
establish the amount of reduction in charges to
be made to the public. As soon as the parties
had become used to the innovation it would be
found to work almost automatically, as in the
case of the succession duties.

It is only in this way that the public dissatis-
faction with the present state of affairs, daily
growing in virulence and magnitude, can be
allayed. It is hardly likely that an intelligent
and vigorous population will much longer
endure the burdens that are being continually
heaped upon it. After all the checks which legis-
lators have devised, the public is still the pre-
dominant partner in every business that it is
drawn into. The public has not forgotten its old
right of revolt under excessive exactions. The
lessons of the French Eevolution and of a good
many other revolutions before and since have
not been forgotten. A community will stand
just so much, and then if there is not a sudden
loosening of the bonds they are very apt to be
abruptly snapped asunder. It is the part of
wisdom to see the approaching storm and to take

THE NEW ERA 139

good care as far as possible to avoid its conse-
quences. When a people finds the cost of living
increased more than a quarter within sixteen
years it is very apt to get into an ugly inquiring
mood, and will not be put aside lightly with
shallow or puerile reasons. It will require con-
siderably more cogent reasons than inefficient
workmen, bad roads and wasteful hotelkeepers,
dining-car people and others to account for its
troubles.

ORGANIZATION.

The people have got to be united and organ-
ized the same as the bankers and the manufac-
turers, the wholesale grocers, the canners, and
the pork packers are united if they do not want
to be bled white. This appeal is to what may
be called the great middle class, all those depend-
ing upon fixed incomes or stipends — the clerks
and teachers, the clergymen and the lawyers and
doctors, annuitants and wage-earners, all those
who have never held an office and never expect
to hold one, and therefore look to no political
party for help.

Having hopelessly impoverished the working
classes, the next move is to be made upon this
middle class, as is clearly indicated by the
remarks of the writers for the trusts; and if
these people who are marked out for destruction
are not swift to defend themselves, they will
be mercilessly oppressed in a very short time.
These evils can be averted only by resolutely

140 THE NEW SLAVERY

co-operating to light the common enemy, which
is armed to the teeth. By insisting upon having
the law enforced, and having enacted other sup-
plementary laws made necessary by novel cir-
cumstances and conditions unforeseen, it is not
yet too late for the people to defend themselves
against their grasping though cowardly and
sneaking foes.

It is doubtful whether the ordinary party, with
an eye ever looking to the possibility of seizing
the reins of government, and hampered by all the
shackles that such a position inevitably entails,
is strong enough to handle the trusts. The
Asquith Government could cut the comb of the
House of Lords, force the landowners to submit
to the inquisitions of a new Domesday Book, and
perhaps impose a new form of Parliamentary
government upon the three kingdoms, but it
could not prevent the armor-plate trust and
many other trusts and combines from having
full swing. The Laurier Government succumbed
to the overpowering monster with hardly a
struggle and then crowned its stultification by
passing the Combines Investigation Act.

Combines and mergers flourish in Free Trade
no less than in Protectionist countries. The trade
theories of the English Liberals have been as
impotent to combat them as the Protectionist
principles of the Australians.

Some independent organization is required to
curb them, some party unhampered by conven-
tional party limitations. The members must be

THE NEW ERA 141

satisfied with doing just this one thing — con-
trolling them and bringing them under the
operation of the criminal law. Only in this
way can they be prevented from gradually
extending the field of their operations until they
have complete sway.

" The year 1911-12 was Canada's greatest
fishing year. Value produced, $34,667,892 ; 1910-
1911, $29,965,433 ; increase of $4,702,439, mostly
in British Columbia. Canada has the most
extensive and best stocked commercial fishing
waters in the world." — From " Five Thousand
Facts About Canada." And yet on Ash Wednes-
day the price of fish is raised a cent a pound. If
there was an organization in Halifax to inquire
into the reasons for this sudden rise, the parties
who engineered it would probably have been
more cautious about it. All of these things
should be taken up by consumers and every
price criticized.

Formerly a workingman could bring up a
family and save money. Those whose memories
go back as far as Confederation will remember
many families brought up and educated on small
incomes, often those of laboring men. It was
represented that when we obtained improved
transportation facilities, agricultural colleges
and manufacturing establishments the lot of the
masses would be made easier, when in fact the
present state of affairs is just the reverse of this.
Laboring men and men on small incomes can
hardly get enough food for their families, who

142 THE NEW SLAVERY

are forced to try to earn a little for themselves.
Saving or making any provision for old age is
out of the question.

But when we come to look at the growth of
great fortunes we have to do with a totally dif-
ferent kind of proposition. Here we see a
limited number of men piling up their millions
when a few years ago such a thing would have
been impossible. A number of names were
selected in the winter of 1913 of persons who
had a large slice of the wealth of the Dominion
among them. Their friends said in reply that
an equal number could be selected who had just
as much! As if this did not strengthen the
claim of those who made the former assertion.

CHAPTER X.

FIRST CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE.

WE have never had any missionaries in our
family. My great-grandfather, who came on
here from Boston, Mass., about one hundred and
fifty years ago, may have had an idea of convert-
ing the heathen, but, if he had any such ambi-
tion, he found so much to do in scratching
around the rest of his days to make a living that
he left the heathen to convert themselves. And
his descendants as a rule have not been able to
live in Altruria. I am the first of them who
could without a considerable latitude of expres-
sion be said to be a man of leisure. The mis-
sionary fever has never bitten me either to any
great extent. But from the time that I began
systematically and steadily looking into this
matter the missionary fever took hold of me.
It was Fate. I collected newspaper clippings,
made notes, wrrote a lecture, began to write a
book and planned a tour with all the parapher-
nalia of membership pledges, leaflet literature
and route maps. Halifax was to be the starting-
point and the Academy of Music the forum. On
the day before Easter I visited the city and
walked down Pleasant Street right past the
A ( -adom y without even venturing inside the door

143

144 THE NEW SLAVERY

to make arrangements. The idea was too hor-
rible. Again I essayed it in June. This time
the manager was away securing attractions in
Boston. The clerk said, however, that he would
do business only on a percentage basis. He
never rented the Academy. I left my card, tell-
ing him to write. When next I approached the
building " The Chocolate Soldier " was on, and
Manager O'Connell was busily preparing for the
Wednesday matinee. He told me he would not
rent the building for a lecture, the overhead
expenses being heavy, and I would have to
secure patronage. This was an unforeseen lion
in the way. Having to look around for some
society under whose auspices the lecture would
be held was decidedly unpleasant. However, it
was a necessity, and I thought of the W.C.T.U.,
who had brought Professor Shortt down. The
President held out no hopes. The Union were
to entertain the Manufacturers Association and
otherwise had their hands full. No more lec-
tures for them. So the Academy idea was given
up.

I had gradually arrived at the conclusion that
the Masonic Hall was the best place for a lec-
ture. So about the last of August I engaged
that popular room. The Grand Secretary was
quite sympathetic with the plan.

" We are going to have a lecture," he cheer-
fully announced to his assistant.

Having secured the hall, I wanted some music,
and we found out over the telephone that the

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 145

head of Barker's Orchestra was employed at the
Gun Wharf, at the foot of Granville Street. So
thither I took my way, and entering through the
little gate I was escorted by the sentinel to the
guardroom. Singular what queer adventures
you have when you start on a new line. In all
the years that I had been coming to Halifax I
had never been inside a guardroom. An officer
was seated at a table and a number of men were
standing around in the room. The officer for-
mally asked me my name and business there and
I dimly perceived that I was under arrest. I
had come dangerously near to the British lion.

"He was arrested and led into the guard-
room." That sounds like Tolstoi.

I told him I wanted to see Mr. Barker, a clerk
there.

" Is it business connected with this service?"
he demanded.

" No," I said ; " I wanted to engage an orches-
tra of which he was head."

" Then you can't see him here."

" Who is he?" the officer inquired. One of the
men said that he played the organ.

After a while they ascertained that he was
employed there, and I said I would be down to
see him when he left for the day at one o'clock.

" Suppose I had worked all my life on the Gun

Wharf," I thought as I went up and advertised

the lecture in The Chronicle and Herald. Well,

there was something doing at last, and, feeling

10

146 THE NEW SLAVERY

quite elated over ray success, I went up and
listened to the R.C.K. concert on the Parade
with the greatest pleasure. There I met a retired
business man, a friend of many years, and he
told me how he had to get up early next week
and go to a wedding, as if that was a matter of
great importance and difficulty. And he had
been all his active life in big business and
employed an army of clerks.

The concert was barely finished when I hur-
ried down again to the Gun Wharf, where Mr.
Barker came running up to the gate, bare-
headed, and laughingly apologizing for giving
me so much trouble. I told him I was going to
lecture and wanted some music to tune up the
audience.

" All right," he said.

" How much will it cost?" I inquired.

He said he would have to see the other mem-
bers, but would write and let me know.

Having decided to extend the tour to St. John,
I employed the morning and evening of Labor
Day in engaging halls in Truro, Amherst and
Moncton, or trying to do so. The Orpheum could
be engaged in Truro and the Parish House Hall
in Amherst, but I had some difficulty in getting
a suitable hall in Moncton, the long-distance
telephone finally bringing the question whether
I was the Mr. Scott who went to the North Pole!

Monday, September 8th, was set for the open-
ing of the campaign, and the fates seemed auspi-

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 147

dous. The Provincial Exhibition was now in
full swing and the city full of visitors from all
over the Province. But that afternoon it began to
rain about four o'clock, just after I went around
paying my printing bills and for the hall. The
Grand Secretary eyed me severely. His views
on the propriety of the lecture seemed to have
undergone a sea-change. He assured me I was
not going to have much of a house, and instead
of the fee being ten dollars he would charge me
only eight. He hoped I would get enough to pay
expenses. I don't know what he thought I would
get them out of, for the lecture was free. How-
ever, he saw I was down and wanted to help
me out.

The janitress, who was arranging the stage
for the evening, was the very reverse of unsym-
pathetic. She told me warmly that I ought to
have a large house. Things cost double what
they used to and she was glad that somebody
had taken the matter up.

When I got down to the hall in the evening
I asked the janitor at the door if there was any
audience.

" One gentleman," he replied.

I looked at this person with much interest.

" An anarchist, probably," I thought.

The anarchist, if such, was certainly a very
mild-mannered one. He sat with his head sunk
on his breast as if in silent prayer. He gave one
tin* impression of Buddha. After a while another

148 THE NEW SLAVERY

man canie in, and we discussed the chances of
a house. He suggested that I had not adver-
tised sufficiently, Monday being a bad night
anyhow.

The anarchist said they had told him at the
house that we were not to expect much of an
audience until half-past eight. I decided not to
wait so long under all the circumstances, and
shaking hands with my audience and thanking
them, I made into the Academy of Music, refuge
of weary souls. The rain had not interfered
with the attendance there. The foyer was
crowded with spectators. Manager O'Connell,
with his arms on the ticket-rail, was watching
the ticket-seller doing a heavy business, and I
was half afraid that I would not be able to
secure a seat. I was lucky, howrever. They gave
me a good one in the first balcony, and I watched
the first performance of " Officer 666," a most
diverting farce-comedy by Augustin MacHugh on
the expensive picture craze. It was certainly
very restful and enjoyable after the blank ness
and bareness of the Masonic Hall and the sus-
pense and anxiety leading up to it, to be sitting
there watching the drama, which was played
with great spirit throughout and listening
between acts to the lively and inspiring music
of the orchestra. I had spent many happy hours
in that resort of the muses, and none, perhaps,
with more enjoyment than on this occasion.
After the performance I returned to the King
Edward Hotel, which was full clear up to <hc

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 149

roof. However, about eleven o'clock the clerk
told me they had a cot ready for me, and I slept
in state in the Ladies' Reception Room.

Next morning I got my breakfast in time to
catch the eight-twenty train for Truro, but when
I had bought my ticket for St. John I found that
the eight o'clock train was just starting. So run-
ning along half a car-length, I jumped on to the
step and was helped aboard by a man who said,
reprovingly :

" There was no hurry. The next train will
leave in twenty minutes."

" I'd rather go by this one," said I. I was not
anxious to stay twenty minutes longer in
Halifax.

As we moved along swiftly and without any
jar on the rails my mind was full of my first
trip up the I.C.R, forty-one years ago. " Then,"
I mused, " I was a red-cheeked, hopeful school-
boy with the world all before me. Now I am
a grey-haired, way-worn man, unsuccessful and
about * all in.' The years have not done much
for me." I took a trip to St. John via Truro and
Clifton (Old Barns, as it was called) in 1872.
The ship Acadia, launched from James Crowe's
yard at the latter place, carried me across the
Bay. So that all, or nearly all, of the fine build-
ings, churches, business blocks and manufactur-
ing edifices in Truro have gone up within my
recollection — a very remarkable and gratifying
growth.

150 THE NEW SLAVERY

Some may have their doubts about the super-
natural part of the legend, but no one who has
ever embarked in a missionary undertaking can
have any doubt whatever of the literal accuracy
of the accounts of the wanderings of the Saviour,
Peter and Paul and the other Christian pioneers.
" Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often
would I have gathered thy children together,
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings, and ye would not." The words rush out-
like the blasting wind of an eternal Sahara.

" He wras despised and rejected of men." How
these words must have consoled weary temper-
ance workers and W.O.T.U. talkers and social,
religious and political pilgrims all down througli
the ages, putting a fresh tonic into their blood.

"And Paul shook off the dust of his feet
against them as he left the city." The words
fairly glow with unsuspected meaning. Con-
centrated execration!

As we strolled along Main Street I cast an
anxious eye at The Orpheum in order to see
whether any arrangements had been made for
my lecture, but the doorway was blocked up
with an advertisement of an operatic concert,
and there was no visible sign of it. It rained all
the afternoon, and we watched travellers getting
to and from the trains, from the big corner bay
window, not leaving the house. The trains
with the Aldershot men had gone during the
afternoon. In the evening I searched the

GUILD CRUSADE 151

columns of the .\>/r.s in vain for any notice of
the lecture. My agent had completely ignored
his instructions. 1 was very glad he did so as
I did not feel like lecturing that evening.

Our genial hostess with her own hands made
us a blazing wood fire in the magnificent fire-
place in the south parlor, and we sat in its cheer-
ful glow chatting with her until a late hour
about Truro people, among whom there have
been many sad changes in the last few years.
It was certainly nicer to be lounging in a capa-
cious easy-chair there than lecturing to an
incredulous and possibly hostile audience in the
Orpheum on the high cost of living.

The rain, which had begun Monday afternoon
and continued by spells all Tuesday, deepened
into a regular downpour on Wednesday, and we
climbed Cobequid Mountain and landed in
Amherst in pelting torrents. However, we did
the principal residence and business quarters
in spite of it.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about
Amherst is the lack of visible population. There
are whole streets lined with the most beautiful
houses with well-kept lawns. But you do not
see anyone about them, going in or coming out,
or even " the sweet face at the window," as in
the old song. There are magnificent stores, too,
but no apparent customers. , The Anglican
Thurch buildings, in their reposeful grandeur,
recall Matthew Arnold's famous phrase about

152 THE NEW SLAVERY

Oxford " waving back the last enchantments of
the Middle Ages." Next morning we went
around through the manufacturing district. The
great square buildings were enclosed by gates
forbidding near approach, with no life in sight.
From a prospectus I had recently received con-
cerning the piano factory I might have imagined
the most beautiful music issuing from it, but
there was not a single tinkle. We looked
through the courthouse, but there was nobody
visible. I suppose the people are all hidden
away in those big factories and machine shops,
working for dear life.

My address, by some mistake of my agent, had
been advertised a week ahead of time, and I
was much pleased to hear that about a dozen
people had turned out to hear it. There was
evidently some interest in the question of the
high cost of living in Amherst. The News in a
local stated that the Consumers' Guild were
going to have a lecture that evening. The con-
sumers, however, did not appear to be strong in
Amherst.

On arriving at the Parish House Hall that
evening I found some youths exercising in the
gymnasium, but after a short time a working-
man came in and I had some conversation with
him before and after the lecture. He said con-
ditions were very bad for the working-people and
there would be a large increase in the number
of suicides. They seemed apathetic, and it was
impossible to arouse them.

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 153

" It is the System you're fighting," said he,
going on to tell of some huge stock-watering
operation that had been carried through.

" The System,'7 as he considered it, was a vast,
remorseless body of capital lording it over Par-
liament, the laws and all the powers in the state.
It was worth going to Amherst to get this
opinion. If there is any such monster as he
described loose in the country, then every inde-
pendent man ought to get out his flintlock and
go gunning for it.

After a while half-a-dozen more young men
came in, also a woman and a young girl. When
I rose to go on the platform the woman
approached me, inquiring menacingly:

" Where are the people? Who brought you
here?"

Not deigning to make any reply I mounted the
platform and plunged into my address. They
listened quietly until I came to the part where
I describe the picture of the Dogs' Slaughter-
house in Berlin, which ran through the papers
a year ago, when she got up and, followed by the
girl, left the hall. However three more came in,
so that we actually finished stronger than when
we began. The only criticism of the lecture came
from the gentleman before mentioned, who said :

" It's the System. If any judge did what
you say there would never be another judge
appointed !"

About noon next day, after doing the rest of

154 THE NEW SLAVERY

Amherst, we got into the C.P.R. train for Monc-
ton, enjoying a look from the car-window at old
Fort Cumberland (Beausejour), erected in 1750
by La Corne and captured by the English under
Monckton in 1755. The fortress-like towers of
Dorchester Penitentiary, the distant roofs of
Sackville and the Bridge at the Memraincook
school engage the eye on this little trip. Monc-
ton enjoys the distinction of having the only
hotel in my experience in which you are not
required to lock your door. On remarking the
fact that there was not a key in the lock, the
clerk of the Brunswick smilingly assured me:
" You don't need one."

I had tried to secure the Oddfellows' Hall for
an address, but could not make connections. So
we strolled through the city, which claims from
fourteen to sixteen thousand of a population,
although the directory allows only twelve thou-
sand. It is very level, well-shaded and paved,
and has many nice stores and public buildings.
The Cathedral, St. Bernard's, has a grotto along-
side with the statue of a saint seated under ;i
canopy. There is a retreat of a sisterhood, where
music is taught, on the outskirts. With the
Petitcodiac River running right up in front of
it and a well-wooded country all around, it
possesses excellent manufacturing facilities.

One of the sights of the city is the bore on the
rising tide. " Wave rises at half -past five," was
printed on a placard hung up in the hotel hall,

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 155

but I did iiot appreciate its meaning until too
late. Visitors are said to travel long distances
in see the tidal phenomenon.

I had always thought of Moncton in connec-
tion with the McCarthy murder case. About
thirty-nine years ago a man named Osborne came
to his death in or near Tim McCarthy's place.
Murders were somewhat uncommon in those
days, and the trial filled a large space in the
newspapers throughout the Maritime Provinces.
The ablest lawyers in New Brunswick, including
the late Chief Justice Tuck, were engaged in the
trial. I had a chat with the sheriff about it.
He was in a coal mine at that time and I was
getting through college. We are about of the
same age. Strange by what diverse roads we
had arrived in Moncton to talk about a forgotten
murder case. The star witness on the trial
proved to be a girl who subsequently figured in
Halifax. There the Herald sent a reporter to
see her, and the interview was duly published in
its columns. This stroke of journalistic enter-
prise so enraged the Chronicle that on the next
one of their periodical rows it said it would
never call the Herald anything but the bawdy-
house organ, and kept it up for some time.

The run from Moncton to St. John through
the picturesque Sussex valley is delightful. The
rains of the past three days had been succeeded
by a lovely sunshiny afternoon. St. John
revisited for the first time in eight years shows
surprising improvements, such, in fact, as to

156 THE NEW SLAVERY

well-nigh make a new city of it. The C.P.R. has
erected an immense steel and concrete grain
elevator over in Carlton, while the Canadian
Northern Railroad is carrying on enormous
dredging operations incidental to building a
great breakwater back on Courtney Bay. B. F.
Keith had just finished a first-class vaudeville
house, the Imperial, on the east side of King
Square, whilst the square itself is illuminated
by night with rows of colored incandescent
globes strung along the walks that cross it diag-
onally, producing an effect such as I have seen
in no other city. Instead of the old suspension
bridge over the river there will be three, work
having been already begun on the footbridge.
Then the tramcars will run continuously
through to Carlton. Now you have to change
cars and walk across the bridge. A new feature
of St. John is the great number of restaurants
you notice, evidently supported by a consider-
able floating or lodging population.

Reid's Castle, a picturesque ruin on the high-
est point of land, has been sold, and one of a
number of cottages is being erected on the hill-
side. A visit to the Mission Church recalled the
old days when Father Davenport held his High
Church services there. But one missed the
cheery -bass voice of the late Dr. I. Allen Jack,
Recorder of the city, and now his cousin, D. Rus-
sell Jack, another old friend, has suddenly joined
the great lamented majority.

On December 8th, Hon. T. W. Crothers, Minis-

CONSUMERS' GUILD CEUSADE 157

ter of Labor, appeared in Halifax and addressed
;i meeting of the business men at a dinner at
the Queen Hotel, apparently as the spokesman
of the Dominion Government. Observing some
things which he appeared to have overlooked, on
the following day I addressed a letter to the
Halifax Chronicle and Herald, which was served
up by 'the latter to its readers in the following
fashion.

From the Halifax Evening Mail, December
15th, 1913 :

THE HIGH COST or LIVING is DUE TO COMBINE AND MONOPOLY
— H. P. SCOTT SEES SOMETHING ELSE THAN PRODUCTION
AND MERE SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR THE INCREASED COST
OF COMMODITIES.

To the Editor of The Mail:

Sir, — According to your report of his address, Hon. Mr.
Crothers, Minister of Labor, stated that "the high cost of
living is an indication of prosperity and expansion. . . .
It seemed to him the reason was that a smaller percentage
of people are engaged in tilling the soil. Especially is this
the case in Canada. Less people in the West are raising
ham, poultry and beef. These people are as if they were
living in cities. ... If you want cheap living, then
you can get it by a period of ' hard times,' with an increase
of production on our farms."

FEWER PEOPLE NEEDED ON THE FARM.

In making this assertion Hon. Mr. Crothers takes no
note of the fact that fewer people than ever before are
required to till the soil, the vast increase in the use of
agricultural machinery in the last few years having ren-
dered the labor of multitudes of farm laborers unneces-
sary. Formerly the farmer had to keep his hired man all
the year round. Now, except during a few summer months,

158 THE NEW SLAVERY

he can dispense with his services altogether, work such as
cutting wood about the house being done by machinery
or made easier by labor-saving devices. In the North-West
the Old Country man, having got his summer's pay, goes
home for his winter vacation, returning in the spring. A
friend of mine residing in western Ontario told me a few
years ago that the smaller towns in this Province are
holding their own a great deal better than where he lives.
There the farms are encroaching on the towns, the work
being done by machinery. A farmer nowadays equipped
with up-to-date machinery can do probably as much work
as a dozen could do a few years ago. To ask more people
to go to live on farms would be to ask the farmers to give
up their agricultural machinery.

THE INCREASE IN FOOD AND POPULATION.

As regards the increase of production on our farms, an
investigation lately completed by the Department of Agri-
culture in the United States proved that, leaving out China,
whilst the population of the earth increases at the rate
of a little over one per cent, per annum, the increase in
food production increases about two and a half per cent.
And this is what we might expect, considering the lessen-
ing birth-rate in most countries and the expansion of the
science of farming and fruit-growing everywhere.

THE REMEDY THAT IS PROPOSED.

" Well," it may be asked, " what is your opinion about
it?" After carefully considering all the reasons for this
extraordinary phenomenon that I have advanced during
the last two or three years I believe that, omitting certain
minor causes, the grand cause is the non-enforcement of
section 498 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

This section, containing the substance of laws of Eng-
land against combines and monopolies nearly a thousand
years old, prescribes certain penalties for unreasonably
enhancing the price of any article or commodity which
may be the subject of trade or commerce.

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 159

This section, one of the most important in the code,
designed (and still enforced in Great Britain) to protect
the rights of the consumer, has become practically a dead
letter- in Canada. This is true also of the United States,
where it obtains in substance as part of the common law.
In order to go round it in some way such unworkable
statutes as the Sherman Act in the United States and the
Combines Investigation Act in Canada have been enacted
ostensibly in the interests of the consumer, but really to
protect the combines against the common law penalties.

What looks very much like an attempt to " put over "
the same sort of thing in England was made in the British
Parliament in 1908, when Sir Gilbert Parker, in a care-
fully worded question, asked the Prime Minister, Mr.
Asquith, whether the Government intended to take any
action against the " trusts." Mr. Asquith shrewdly replied
in the negative, knowing very well that the enforcement
of the criminal law in England (except sometimes in poli-
tical matters) is so swift and terrible that the trusts are
fully aware that any attempt by them unreasonably to
raise the price of the necessaries of life would be speedily
followed by the rigid enforcement of the common law pro-
visions respecting such offences. Here, as I have said,
this law is practically a dead letter and every combine con-
trolling production is allowed to put any price as high as
it likes so long as it can get anyone to pay it.

Hon. Mr. Crothers is quite right in discussing the ques-
tion from a non-partisan standpoint. The question is
not yet in politics, and it would be a pity if it were
dragged into the political arena, because, in that event,
we should probably be treated to a Royal Commission, or
an amendment to the Combines Investigation Act.

ENFORCEMENT OB' THE LAW THE THING.

The consumers, meaning, of course, the great body of
the public, irrespective of political connections, should
insist on having section 498 enforced the same as the
other sections of the Criminal Code are enforced. If they

160 THE NEW SLAVERY

do so they will speedily find prices dropping to the old
level of 1897, or perhaps, even lower. If they leave the
matter as it is they may reasonably expect to see prices
going sky-high before many months.

The Attorney-General should direct the prosecuting offi-
cers throughout the Province to proceed to collect evidence
and conduct prosecutions for violation of section 498 just
as they do under other sections of the Code. " But," it
may be objected, " the great combines are located outside
of this Province. What has our Attorney-General to do
with them?"

In that case the Attorney-General of this Province should
endeavor to co-operate with the Attorney-Generals of the
other Provinces and the Attorney-General of the Dominion.
A few prosecutions under the above section conducted
simultaneously in the various Provinces would soon result
in disclosing the workings of the combines, big and little,
throughout the Dominion.

Consumers everywhere should insist on having this fun-
damental law enacted for their protection strictly and
swiftly enforced, unless they want to be bled white.

H. P. SCOTT.

Windsor, December 9th.

The Chronicle did not reprint it in its evening
edition, the Echo, and has never since directly
referred to it. Four days later the Herald pub-
lished the following characteristic leading-
article.

From the Halifax Herald, December 19th,
1913:

NOT A WORD FOR THE LAUBIER FAD, BUT KNOCKS FOR Horn

LAURIER AND FIELDING.

Readers of both the Halifax Herald and the Halifax
Morning Chronicle of a few days ago had an opportunity
of perusing a letter by Mr. H. P. Scott, of Windsor.

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 161

We have refrained from any comment thereon, in order
to give the Chronicle plenty of time to come to the defence
of the Laurier " free food " fad, which was treated by Mr.
Scott with such contempt as to be utterly ignored by him.

Mr. Scott's letter was on the cause of the great increase
in food prices.

Of course, Mr. Scott knew that Sir Wilfrid had charged
the whole trouble on the " food taxes," and had propounded
" free food " as a complete remedy.

But Mr. Scott treated that view of the case as not worth
a moment's consideration, and went on to set forth his
view that the cause of the high food prices is " combina-
tions in restraint of trade," and that the true remedy is
the enforcement of the Criminal Code against such illegal
combinations.

As we understand the letter, there is a further intima-
tion that the dealings of the late Government with the
matter of trade combines was rather in favor of trusts and
combines than against them.

So that even from this correspondent, who might be
expected to be friendly, there is nothing but knocks for
both Laurier and Fielding, and even the Laurier organ has
not a word to say in rebuttal or defence.

As to Mr. Scott's view of the case, we can quite agree
with him in considering that the " middlemen " have much
to do with the increased cost of foodstuffs, though we may
not be quite so sanguine that the criminal law could be so
enforced as to afford general practical relief.

We think, however, that Mr. Scott underestimates the
importance of the comparative shortage of production as
one of the main factors of the problem.

Statisticians, as well as Western farmers, are apt to
confine their attention far too much to " wheat," and we
are inclined to think that the United States statistics
which Mr. Scott cites have reference to wheat rather than
to foodstuffs generally.

It is true that in wheat mining and grain raising gener-

11

162 THE NEW SLAVERY

ally, machinery can be used to so large an extent that com-
paratively few men are required, and hence we have large
wheat production with a comparatively small agricultural
population.

But you cannot tend cattle by machinery, and in the
dairying, fruit-farming, and poultry industries there is
need of men rather than machines.

It is in the productions of these latter lines of industry
that all the great shortage and high prices appear; and
this shortage we think is mainly due to the lack of general
or " mixed " farming in our great West.

While there is much in Mr. Scott's letter to commend,
we cannot help thinking that he overlooked some things
regarding the comparative shortage of production at the
present time, and that the real and effective remedy for
existing unsatisfactory conditions is increased production
in animal industry.

Whilst entirely disavowing any intention of
" knocking " or hurting anybody, the Herald's
remark that : " We are inclined to think that the
United States statistics which Mr. Scott cites
have reference to wheat rather than to food-
stuffs generally," merits some attention. The
Herald has some doubt about the statement
regarding food-production outside of wheat. On
this point Mr. Avard Longley Bishop may b<*
heard. In an article in the Yale Review for July
on " The High Cost of Living," he says :

Let us consider, first of all, the claim that the high price
of food products is due to the increasing proportion of the
population which may be classed as city rather than coun-
try dwellers. Everyone knows that in the United States
and elsewhere the cities have been growing for decades at
the expense of the rural districts. And it has been assumed
that those who have remained on the farms have not pro-

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 163

duced a surplusage of the staple food products large
enough to meet the ever-increasing demands of the non-
producing urban population. Hence, there are those who
have concluded that it is in accordance with the law of
supply and demand that prices have advanced. But if we
accept the statement as set forth in a recent publication
of our Federal Department of Agriculture, we are forced
to the conclusion that the lure of the city has caused no
diminution in the world's annual output of food products.
On the contrary, in recent years when food prices have
been soaring the highest, the world's annual output has
actually increased faster than the yearly growth of popu-
lation. Leaving China out of account, the population of
the civilized world increases at the rate of a little over
one per cent, a year. But, since 1895, the average annual
increase of the world's cereals (including wheat, corn, oats,
rye and barley) has been about two and one-half per cent.
And what is true of the cereals applies equally well to
most other crops. The investigation just referred to cov-
ered eleven products which, in the United States, include
over three-quarters of the acreage and about seventy per
cent, of the value of all the farm crops. It was believed
that the list was sufficiently inclusive, and that the com-
modities mentioned therein showed such a uniform
increase in output as to warrant the conclusion that " agri-
cultural production, during recent years of enhancing
prices, has increased more rapidly than population " ; and
that " recent advances in the cost of living are not due to
the scarcity or lessening of agricultural products." An
examination of the data covering meat foods pointed to the
same general conclusion. It indicated that " the aggregate
supply of animal products, as in the case of crop produc-
tion, has kept pace with population during the past
decade." These results, however, represent a condition
applicable to the whole world, whereas with respect to any
particular country they would not necessarily hold true.*

* They must be true of Canada because the production of
food here is altogether out of proportion to the population.

164 THE NEW SLAVERY

For each political unit is not necessarily a self-supporting
economic area, and it might very well be that a demand
should exist for certain food products entirely beyond the
home supply. And it is quite within the bounds of possi-
bility to imagine that a protective tariff is instrumental in
keeping out the surplus from other countries of just such
foods as are in general demand. However, omitting these
questions as apart from the main point now under con-
sideration, the contention is made that to assume that
there must be a certain fixed ratio between the numbers
in the city and in the country to insure an abundant food
supply is an error. The development of machinery in
farming operations, the progress of scientific agriculture,
and other important factors have made it possible to dis-
pense with the services of numerous hand laborers whose
work, under an earlier method of farming, was essential.
Therefore, all things being considered, the claim that the
growth of the city population at the expense of the coun-
try is the cause of the high prices of food is not supported
by facts.

The results of the investigation must be true
of Canada because here we have in every Pro-
vince a food production altogether out of pro-
portion to the population. Outside of the Prairie
Provinces the population is not increasing very
rapidly, but everywhere the production of food
of all kinds is increasing by leaps and bounds.
That the newspapers are beginning to see the
point is shown by the following from the Toronto
Star:

In 1897 a provision against combines was made part of
the customs law of the Dominion. It ought to be enforced
in the same manner as offences against the other parts of
the customs law. If a merchant imports goods without
paying the proper duty, the slightest hint will set detec-

CONSUMERS' GUILD CRUSADE 165

lives and other Government officials on his track. The
complainant is put to no expense; his identity is con-
cealed; he is protected and assisted by the Government.
The procedure against combines ought to be of the same
prompt and speedy kind. Government officials ought to
be appointed to enforce the law. They should take the
initiative, and the whole procedure ought to be at the
public expense. Up to the present time very little use
has been -made of the law, because the risk, trouble and
expense fall upon the complainant. (The writer refers to
the Combines Investigation Act.)

That ought not to be. The man who discovers a com-
bine that is doing injury to the people is a public bene-
factor, and he ought to be thanked and protected by the
Government. He should not be required to prosecute the
case. He should be asked simply to lay before a Govern-
ment official such facts as he knows. The official should
then follow up the clue, make his own investigation, and
prosecute, if necessary.

The Victoria, B.C., Times is just as outspoken:

SMASH THE COMBINE.

We are told that the effect of duties upon the prices of
foodstuffs is so insignificant as not to be worth bothering
about. " No duties are imposed upon food by the Govern-
ment of Great Britain, and the British consumer buys flour
at half the price we pay for it in Victoria and bread at
less than half the price the people of Ottawa are com-
pelled to pay for theirs. Canadians are heavy exporters
of wheat and flour; Britons are heavy importers of wheat
and flour. Not only will the consumers of Britain never
consent to the imposition of duties upon foodstuffs, but the
authorities in Britain keep a watchful eye upon all trade
processes, and whenever they perceive anything that even
has the appearance of a combination they promptly smash
it.

166 THE NEW SLAVERY

In looking back over the pages of this review
certain conclusions are inevitable.

1. There can be no reasonable doubt that the
production of food in Canada and the United
States is ample to provide all of the inhabitants
with plenty at the lowest prices.

2. The causes commonly alleged for the pre-
vailing high prices will not bear the slightest
scrutiny.

3. The experience of England and France
proves that prices can be kept fairly stable
where laws against extortion through combines
and monopolies prevail.

4. In Canada, the United States and Germany,
where such laws are not enforced, great distress
results therefrom.

This is the greatest question of the day and
the one most vitally affecting the great body of
people that has come up since Confederation.
As we have seen, there have been many theories
regarding it propounded, and views of it have
been made from almost every conceivable point
of view. These pages will have been written not
in vain if they have demonstrated in any measure
the folly of neglecting or allowing to fall into
abeyance laws affecting the people's rights
which have stood the test of centuries.

APPENDIX I.

9-10 EDWARD VII.

CHAP. 9.

An Act to Provide for the Investigation of Combines,
Monopolies, Trusts and Mergers.

[Assented to 4th May, 1910.1

His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the
Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as
follows: —

1. This Act may be cited as The Combines Investigation
Act.

INTERPRETATION.

2. In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, —

(a) "Application" means an application to a judge for
an order directing an investigation under the provisions
of this Act;

(b) "Board" means a Board of Investigation estab-
lished under the provisions of this Act;

(c) " Combine " means any contract, agreement, arrange-
ment or combination which has, or is designed to have, the
effect of increasing or fixing the price or rental of any
article of trade or commerce or the cost of the storage or
transportation thereof, or of the restricting competition
in or of controlling the production, manufacture, transpor-
tation, storage, sale or supply thereof, to the detriment of
consumers or producers of such article of trade or com-
merce, and includes the acquisition, leasing or otherwise
taking over, or obtaining by any person to the end afore-
said, of any control over or interest in the business, or any
portion of the business, of any other person, and also
includes what is known as a trust, monopoly or merger;

167

168 APPENDIX I.

(#) "Department" means the Department of Labor;

(e) "Judge" means, in the Province of Ontario, any
judge of the High Court of Justice; in the Province of
Quebec, any judge of the Superior Court; in the Provinces
of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Prince
Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Alberta, any judge of
the Supreme Court; in the Province of Manitoba, any
judge of the Court of King's Bench, and in the Yukon
Territory, any judge of the Territorial Court;

(/) " Minister " means the Minister of Labor;

(g) " Order " means an order of a judge under the pro-
visions of this Act;

(7i) " Prescribed " means prescribed by this Act, or by
any rule or regulation made thereunder;

(1) " Registrar " means the Registrar of Boards of Inves-
tigation appointed under this Act.

ADMINISTRATION.

3. The Minister shall have the general administration of
this Act.

4. The Governor in Council shall appoint a Registrar of
Boards of Investigation, who shall have the powers and
perform the duties prescribed.

(2) The office of Registrar may be held either separately
or in conjunction with any other office in the public ser-
vice, and in the latter case the Registrar may, if the Gov-
ernor in Council thinks fit, be appointed by reference to
such other office, whereupon the person who for the time
being holds such office or performs its duties shall, by virtue
thereof and without thereby being entitled to any addi-
tional remuneration, be the Registrar.

i

ORDER FOR INVESTIGATION.

5. Where six or more persons, British subjects resident
in Canada and of full age, are of opinion that a combine

APPENDIX I. 169

exists, and that prices have been enhanced or competition
restricted by reason of such combine, to the detriment of
consumers or producers, such persons may make an appli-
cation to a judge for an order directing an investigation
into such alleged combine.

(2) Such application shall be in writing addressed to the
judge, and shall ask for an order directing an investigation
into the alleged combine, and shall also ask the judge to
fix a time and place for the hearing of the applicants or
their representative.

(3) The application shall be accompanied by a statement
setting forth, —

(a) The nature of the alleged combine and the persons
believed to be concerned therein;

(6) The manner in which the alleged combine affects
prices or restricts competition, and the extent to which
the alleged combine is believed to operate to the detriment
of consumers or producers;

(c) The names and addresses of the parties making the
application and the name and address of one of their
number or of some other person whom they authorize to
act as their representative for the purposes of this Act and
to receive communications and conduct negotiations on
their behalf.

4. The application shall also be accompanied by a
statutory declaration from each applicant declaring that
the alleged combine operates to the detriment of the declar-
ant as a consumer or producer, and that to the best of his
knowledge and belief the combine alleged in the state-
ment exists and that such combine is injurious to trade
or has operated to the detriment of consumers or pro-
ducers in the manner and to the extent described, and
that it is in the public interest that an investigation
should be had into such combine.

6. Within thirty days after the judge receives the appli-
cation he shall fix a time and place for hearing the appli-

170 APPENDIX I.

cants and shall send due notice, by registered letter, to the
representative authorized by the statement to receive com-
munications on behalf of the applicants. At such hearing
the applicants may appear in person or by their repre-
sentative or by counsel.

7. If upon such hearing the judge is satisfied that there
is reasonable ground for believing that a combine exists
which is injurious to trade or which has operated to the
detriment of consumers or producers, and that it is in the
public interest that an investigation should be held, the
judge shall direct an investigation under the provisions of
this Act; or if not so satisfied, and the judge is of opinion
that in the circumstances an adjournment should be
ordered, the judge may adjourn such hearing until fur-
ther evidence in support of the application is given, or he
may refuse to make an order for an investigation.

(2) The judge shall have all the powers vested in the
court of which he is a judge to summon before him and
enforce the attendance of witnesses, to administer oaths,
and to require witnesses to give evidence on oath or on
solemn affirmation (if they are persons entitled to affirm
in civil matters), and to produce such books, papers or
other documents or things as the judge deems requisite.

8. The order of the judge directing an investigation shall
be transmitted by him to the Registrar by registered let-
ter, and shall be accompanied by the application, the state-
ment, a certified copy of any evidence taken before the
judge, and the statutory declarations. The order shall
state the matters to be investigated, the names of the
persons alleged to be concerned in the combine, and the
names and addresses of one or more of their number with
whom, in the opinion of the judge, the Minister should
communicate in order to obtain the recommendation for
the appointment of a person as a member of the Board as
hereinafter provided.

APPENDIX I. 171

APPOINTMENT OF BOARDS.

9. Upon receipt by the Registrar of the order directing
an investigation the Minister shall forthwith proceed to
appoint a Board.

10. Every Board shall consist of three members, who
shall be appointed by the Minister under his hand and seal
of office.

11. Of the three members of the Board one shall be
appointed on the recommendation of the persons upon
whose application the order has been granted, one on the
recommendation of the persons named in the order as
being concerned in the alleged combine, and the third on
the recommendation of the two members so chosen.

12. The persons upon whose application the order has
been granted and the persons named in the order as being
concerned in the alleged combine, within seven days after
being requested so to do by the Registrar, may each respec-
tively recommend the name of a person who is willing and
ready to act as a member of the Board, and the Minister
shall appoint such persons members of the Board.

(2) For the purpose of obtaining the recommendations
referred to in subsection 1 of this section it shall be suffi-
cient, as respects the applicants, for the Registrar to com-
municate with the representative mentioned in the state-
ment as authorized to receive communications on their
behalf, and as respects the persons concerned in the
alleged combine it shall be sufficient for the Registrar to
communicate with the persons named in the order, as the
persons with whom the Minister should communicate for
this purpose.

(3) If the parties, or either of them, fail or neglect to
make any recommendation within the said period, or such
extension thereof as the Minister, on cause shown, grants,
the Minister shall, as soon thereafter as possible, select
and appoint a fit person or persons to be a member or
members of the Board.

172 APPENDIX I.

(4) The two members so appointed may, within seven
days after their appointment, recommend the name of a
judge of any court of record in Canada who is willing and
ready to act as a third member of the Board, and the
Minister shall appoint such judge as a member of the
Board, and if they fail or neglect to make a recommenda-
tion within the said period, or such extension thereof as
the Minister on cause shown grants, the Minister shall,
as soon thereafter as possible, select and appoint a judge
of any court of record in Canada to be the third member
of the Board.

(5) The third member of the Board shall be its chair-
man.

(6) A vacancy in the membership of a Board shall be
filled in the same manner as an original appointment is
made.

13. No person shall act as a member of the Board who
is one of the applicants for the Board or who has any
direct pecuniary interest in the alleged combine that is the
subject of investigation by such Board, or who is not a
British subject.

14. As soon as possible after all the members of the
Board have been appointed by the Minister, the Registrar
shall notify the parties of the names of the chairman and
other members of the Board.

15. Before entering upon the exercise of the functions
of their office the members of the Board shall take the
following oath: —

I, , do solemnly swear, —

That I will truly, faithfully and impartially perform my
duties as a member of the Board appointed to investi-
gate

That I am a British subject.

That I have no direct pecuniary interest in the alleged
combine that is to be the subject of investigation.

APPENDIX I. 173

That I have not received nor will I accept either directly
or indirectly any perquisite, gift, fee or gratuity from any
person in any way interested in any matter or thing to be
investigated by the Board.

That I am not immediately connected in business with
any of the parties applying for this investigation, and am
not acting in collusion with any person herein.

16. The Department may provide the Board with a steno-
grapher and such clerical and other assistance as to the
Minister appears necessary for the efficient carrying out of
the provisions of this Act. The Department shall also
repay any reasonable and proper disbursements made or
authorized and certified by the judge who grants the order
directing the investigation.

17. Upon the appointment of the Board the Registrar
shall forward to the chairman copies of the application,
statement, evidence, if any, taken before the judge, and
order for investigation, and the Board shall forthwith
proceed to deal with the matters referred to therein.

INQUIRY AND BEPORT.

18. The Board shall expeditiously, fully and carefully
inquire into the matters referred to it and all matters
affecting the merits thereof, including the question of
whether or not the price or rental of any article concerned
has been unreasonably enhanced, or competition in the
supply thereof unduly restricted, in consequence of a com-
bine, and shall make a full and detailed report thereon to
the Minister, which report shall set forth the various pro-
ceedings and steps taken by the Board for the purpose of
fully and carefully ascertaining all the facts and circum-
stances connected with the alleged combine, including
such findings and recommendations as, in the opinion of
the Board, are in accordance with the merits and require-
ments of the case.

174 APPENDIX I.

(2) In deciding any question that may affect the scope
or extent of the investigation, the Board shall consider
what is required to make the investigation as thorough
and complete as the public interest demands.

19. The Board's report shall be in writing, and shall be
signed by at least two of the members of the Board. The
report shall be transmitted by the chairman to the Regis-
trar, together with the evidence taken at such investiga-
tion certified by the chairman, and any documents and
papers remaining in the custody of the Board. A minority
report may be made and transmitted to the Registrar by
any dissenting member of the Board.

20. Upon receipt of the Board's report and of the min-
ority report, if any, a copy thereof shall be sent free of
charge to the parties and to the representative of any
newspaper in Canada who applies therefor, and the report
and minority report, if any, shall also be published with-
out delay in The Canada Gazette. The Minister may dis-
tribute copies of the report, and of any minority report,
in such manner as to him seems most desirable, as a means
of securing a compliance with the Board's recommenda-
tions. The Registrar shall, upon payment of such fees as
may be prescribed, supply a certified copy of any report
or minority report to any person applying for it.

21. Whenever, from or as a result of an investigation
under the provisions of this Act, or from or as a result of
a judgment of the Supreme Court or Exchequer Court of
Canada or of any superior court, or circuit, district or
county court in Canada, it appears to the satisfaction of
the Governor in Council that with regard to any article
there exists any combine to promote unduly the advantage
of the manufacturers or dealers at the expense of the con-
sumers, and if it appears to the Governor in Council that
such disadvantage to the consumer is facilitated by the
duties of customs imposed on the article, or on any like

APPENDIX I. 175

article, the Governor in Council may direct either that such
article be admitted into Canada free of duty or that the
duty thereon be reduced to such amount or rate as will, in
the opinion of the Governor in Council, give the public
the benefit of reasonable competition.

22. In case the owner or holder of any patent issued
under The Patent Act has made use of the exclusive rights
and privileges which, as such owner or holder, he controls,
so as unduly to limit the facilities for transporting, pro-
ducing, manufacturing, supplying, storing or dealing in
any article which may be a subject of trade or commerce,
or so as to restrain or injure trade or commerce in relation
to any such article, or unduly to prevent, limit or lessen
the manufacture or production of any article or unreason-
ably to enhance the price thereof, or unduly to prevent or
lessen competition in the production, manufacture, pur-
chase, barter, sale, transportation, storage or supply of
any article, such patent shall be liable to be revoked. And,
if a Board reports that a patent has been so made use of,
the Minister of Justice may exhibit an information in the
Exchequer Court of Canada praying for a judgment revok-
ing such patent, and the court shall thereupon have juris-
diction to hear and decide the matter and to give judgment
revoking the patent or otherwise as the evidence before the
court may require.

23. Any person reported by a Board to have been guilty
of unduly limiting the facilities for transporting, produc-
ing, manufacturing, supplying, storing or dealing in any
article which may be a subject of trade or commerce; or
of restraining or injuring trade or commerce in relation
to any such article; or of unduly preventing, limiting or
lessening the manufacture or production of any such
article; or of unreasonably enhancing the price thereof;
or of unduly preventing or lessening competition in the
production, manufacture, purchase, barter, sale, transpor-
tation, storage or supply of any such article, and who

176 APPENDIX I.

thereafter continues so to offend, is guilty of an indictable
offence and shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding one
thousand dollars and costs for each day after the expira-
tion of ten days, or such further extension of time as in
the opinion of the Board may be necessary, from the date
of the publication of the report of the Board in The Canada
Gazette during which such person so continues to offend.

SITTINGS OF BOARD.

24. The sittings of the Board shall be held at such times
and places as are fixed by the chairman, after consultation
with the other members of the Board, and the parties shall
be notified by the chairman as to the times and places at
which sittings are to be held: Provided that, so far as
practicable, the Board shall sit in the locality within which
the subject-matter of the proceedings before it arose.

25. The proceedings of the Board shall be conducted in
public, but the Board may order that any portion of the
proceedings shall be conducted in private.

26. The decision of any two of the members present at
a sitting of the Board shall be the decision of the Board.

27. The presence of the chairman and at least one other
member of the Board shall be necessary to constitute a
sitting of the Board.

28. Jn case of the absence of any one member from a
meeting of the Board the other two members shall not
proceed, unless it is shown that the absent member has
been notified of the meeting in ample time to admit of his
attendance.

29. Any party to an investigation may appear before the
Board in person or may be represented by any other person
or persons, or, with the consent of the Board, may be
represented by counsel.

APPENDIX I. 177

30. Whenever in the opinion of the Minister the public
interest so requires, the Minister may apply to the Minister
of Justice to instruct counsel to conduct the investigation
before a Board, and upon such application the Minister of
Justice may instruct counsel accordingly. The fees and
expenses allowed to such counsel by the Minister of Justice
shall be paid out of such appropriations as are made by
Parliament to provide for the cost of administering this
Act.

31. If, in any proceedings before the Board, any person
wilfully insults any member of the Board, or wilfully
interrupts the proceedings, or without good cause refuses
to give evidence, or is guilty in any other manner of any
wilful contempt in the face of the Board, any officer of
the Board or any constable may take the person offending
into custody and remove him from the precincts of the
Board, to be detained in custody until the conclusion of
that day's sitting of the Board, and the person so offend-
ing shall be liable, upon summary conviction, to a penalty
not exceeding one hundred dollars.

WITNESSES AND EVIDENCE.

32. For the purposes of an investigation the Board shall
have all powers which are vested in any court of record in
civil cases for the following purposes, namely: the sum-
moning of witnesses before it, and enforcing their attend-
ance from any part of Canada, of administering oaths, and
of requiring witnesses to give evidence on oath or on
solemn affirmation (if they are persons entitled to affirm
in civil matters) and to produce such books, papers or
other documents or things as the Board deems requisite
to the full investigation of the matters into which it is
inquiring.

(2) Any member of the Board may administer an oath.

(3) Summonses to witnesses and all other orders, pro-
cess and proceedings shall be signed by the chairman.

12

178 APPENDIX I.

33. All books, papers and other documents or things pro-
duced before the Board, whether voluntarily or in pursu-
ance of summons, may be inspected by the Board, and also
by such parties as the Board allows.

34. Any party to the proceedings shall be competent and
may be compelled to give evidence as a witness.

35. Every person who is summoned and duly attends as
a witness shall be entitled to an allowance for attendance
and travelling expenses according to the scale in force
with respect to witnesses in civil suits in the superior
courts of the Province in which the inquiry is being con-
ducted.

36. If any person who has been duly served with a sum-
mons and to whom at the time of service payment or ten-
der has been made of his reasonable travelling expenses
according to the aforesaid scale, fails to attend or to
produce any book, paper or other document or thing as
required by his summons, he shall, unless he shows that
there was good and sufficient cause for such failure, be
guilty of an offence and liable upon summary conviction
to a penalty not exceeding one hundred dollars.

37. The Board may, with the consent of the Minister,
employ competent experts to examine books or official
reports, and to advise it upon any technical or other mat-
ter material to the investigation, but the information
obtained therefrom shall not, except in so far as the Board
deems it expedient, be made public, and such parts of the
books, papers or other documents as in the opinion of the
Board are not material to the investigation may be sealed
up.

REMUNERATION AND EXPENSES OF BOARD.

38. The members of a Board shall be remunerated for
their services as follows: —

APPENDIX I. 179

(a) To the two members first appointed an allowance
of five dollars each per day for a time not exceed-
ing three days during which they may be actu-
ally engaged in selecting the third member of
the Board.

(&) To each member an allowance at the rate of
twenty dollars for each day's sitting of the
Board.

39. Each member of the Board shall be entitled to his
actual and necessary travelling expenses and an allowance
of ten dollars per day for each day that he is engaged in
travelling from or to his place of residence for the purpose
of attending or after having attended a meeting of the
Board.

40. No member of the Board shall accept in addition to
his travelling expenses and allowances as a member of the
Board any perquisite, gift, fee or gratuity of any kind from
any person in any way interested in any matter or thing
that is being investigated by the Board. The acceptance
of any such perquisite, gift, fee or gratuity by any member
of the Board shall be an offence, and shall render such
member liable upon summary conviction to a fine not
exceeding one thousand dollars, and he shall thereafter be
disqualified to act as a member of any Board.

41. All expenses of the Board, including expenses for
transportation incurred by the members thereof or by
persons under its order in making investigations under
this Act, salaries of employees and agents, and fees and
travelling expenses of witnesses, shall be allowed and paid
upon the presentation of itemized vouchers therefor,
approved and certified by the chairman of the Board, which
vouchers shall be forwarded by the chairman to the Regis-
trar. The chairman shall also forward to the Registrar a
certified and detailed statement of the sittings of the
Board, and of the members present at each of such sittings.

180 APPENDIX I.

MISCELLANEOUS.

42. No proceedings under this Act shall be deemed
invalid by reason of any defect of form or any technical
irregularity.

43. Evidence of a report of a Board may be given in any
court by the production of a copy of The Canada Gazette
purporting to contain a copy of such report, or by the pro-
duction of a copy of the report purporting to be certified
by the Registrar to be a true copy.

44. The Minister shall determine the allowance or
amounts to be paid to all persons, other than the members
of a Board, employed by the Government or any Board,
including the secretaries, clerks, experts, stenographers or
other persons performing any services under the provisions
of this Act.

45. The Governor in Council may make such regulations,
not inconsistent with this Act, as to him seem necessary
for carrying out the provisions of this Act and for the
efficient administration thereof.

(2) Such regulations shall be published in The Canada
Gazette, and upon being so published they shall have the
same force as if they formed part of this Act.

(3) The regulations shall be laid before both Houses of
Parliament within fifteen days after such publication if
Parliament is then sitting, and if Parliament is not then
sitting then within fifteen days after the opening of the
next session thereof.

46. The Minister shall lay before Parliament, within the
first fifteen days of the then next session, an annual report
of the proceedings under this Act.

47. Subsection 1 of section 12 of The Customs Tariff,
W01, is repealed.

APPENDIX I. 181

48. This Act shall not be construed to repeal, amend or
in any way affect The Trade Unions Act, chapter 125 of
the Revised Statutes, 1906.

SCHEDULE.

FORM 1.
APPLICATION FOB ORDEE DIRECTING AN INVESTIGATION.

" The Combines Investigation Act"
(Section 5.)

Dated at , this

day of , 19..

IN THE MATTER of an alleged combine [here state shortly
the nature of the combine].

To the Honorable [here insert the name of the judge],
a Judge [or, Chief Justice as the case may be] of the
[here insert the title of the court].

The undersigned are of opinion that a combine exists
[here state shortly the nature of the alleged combine] and
that prices have been enhanced [or, competition has been
restricted by such combine, as the case may be] to the
detriment of consumers [or, producers, as the case may be].

The undersigned therefore apply for an order under
"The Combines Investigation Act" directing an investi-
gation into such alleged combine.

[Here state —

(a) The nature of the alleged combine and the persons
believed to be concerned therein; and,

(Z>) The manner in which the alleged combine affects
prices or restricts competition, and the extent to which the
alleged combine is believed to operate to the detriment of
consumers or producers, as the case may be.]

182 APPENDIX I.

STATEMENT ACCOMPANYING APPLICATION FOE ORDER.

Dated at this

day of 19..

The undersigned hereby authorize

of [give name and place of residence]

to act as our representative for the purposes of " The Com-
bines Investigation Act," and to receive communications
and conduct negotiations on our behalf.

The names and addresses of the persons applying for the
aforesaid order are as follows: —

Names.

Addresses.

STATUTORY DECLARATION ACCOMPANYING APPLICATION FOR

ORDER.*
* A declaration as above must be made by each applicant.

CANADA: \

Province of , v

To Wit. J

I , of the of

in the of

do solemnly declare:—

1. That the alleged combine operates to my detriment as
a consumer [or, producer, as the case may 6e].

2. That to the best of my knowledge and belief the com-
bine alleged in the foregoing statement exists and that
such combine is injurious to trade [or, has operated to the
detriment of consumers, or, producers, as the case may &e]
in the manner and to the extent described.

APPENDIX I. 183

3. That it is in the public interest that an investigation
should be had into such combine.

And I make this solemn declaration conscientiously
believing it to be true, and knowing that it is of the same
force and effect as if made under oath, and by virtue of
The Canada Evidence Act.

Declared before me at in the county of

; this day of 19..

FORM 2.
ORDER DIRECTING INVESTIGATION.

" The Combines Investigation Act."
(Section 7.)

IN THE MATTER of the application of [here insert the

names of applicants], dated the day of 19. .

for an order directing an investigation under " The Com-
bines Investigation Act" into an alleged combine [here
state shortly the nature of the combine].

I, the Honorable ,

a Judge [or. Chief Justice, as the case may be] of [here
insert the name of court] after having read the applica-
tion of [names of applicants], dated the day

of 19 . . , the statement and statutory

declarations accompanying the same and the evidence pro-
duced by the said applicants, am satisfied that there is
reasonable ground for believing that a combine exists
[here describe nature of combine] which is injurious to
trade [or, which has operated to the detriment of con-
sumers, or, producers, as the case may be], and that it is
in the public interest that an investigation should be held,
and I do therefore direct that an investigation be held,

184 APPENDIX I.

under the provisions of the said Act into the following
matters, that is to say: [here set out the matters to be
investigated'].

The names of the persons alleged to be concerned in the
alleged combine are [here insert names and addresses} and
I am of opinion that the Minister of Labor should com-
municate with [here insert the name or names with, in
each case, the address] in order to obtain the recommenda-
tion for the appointment of a person as a member of the
Board of Investigation on behalf of those concerned in the
said alleged combine.

Dated at this day of 19..

APPENDIX II.

THE SHERMAN ACT.
(From The North American Review, December, 1911.)

An Act to protect Trade and Commerce against Unlawful
Restraints and Monopolies.*

" Be it enacted, etc. Sec. 1. Every contract, combina-
tion in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in
restraint of trade or commerce among the several States,
or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.

" Every person who shall make any such contract or
engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction
thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thou-
sand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year,
or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court."
— Edmunds, except the words "in the form of trust or
otherwise" which were interjected "by Senator Evarts.

11 Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt
to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other per-
son or persons to monopolize any part of the trade or com-
merce among the several States, or with foreign nations,
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on convic-
tion thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five
thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one
year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the
court." — Edmunds.

" Sec. 3. Every contract, combination in form of trust
or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or com-
merce in any Territory of the United States, or of the
District of Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce

* The names of the writers of the various sections, as
established in the Foreword, are appended by the Editor.

185

186 APPENDIX II. 1

between any such Territory and another, or between any
such Territory or Territories and any State or. States or
the District of Columbia, or with foreigner nations, or
between the District of Columbia and any State or States
or foreign nations, is hereby declared illegal.

" Every person who shall make any such contract or
engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction
thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thou-
sand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year,
or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the
court." — Edmunds.

" Sec. 4. The several circuit courts of the United States
are hereby invested with jurisdiction to prevent and
restrain violations of this Act; and it shall be the duty
of the several district attorneys of the United States, in
their respective districts, under the direction of the Attor-
ney-General, to institute proceedings in equity to prevent
and restrain such violations.

" Such proceedings may be by way of petition setting
forth the case and praying that such violation shall be
enjoined or otherwise prohibited. When the parties com-
plained of shall have been duly notified of such petition
the court shall proceed, as soon as may be, to the hearing
and determination of the case; and pending such petition
and before final decree, the court may at any time make
such temporary restraining order or prohibition as shall be
deemed just in the premises." — George, rewritten from
Senator Sherman's original draft.

" Sec. 5. Whenever it shall appear to the court before
which any proceeding under section four of this act may
be pending that the ends of justice require that other
parties should be brought before the court, the court may
cause them to be summoned, whether they reside in the
district in which the court is held or not; and subprenas to
that end may be served in any district by the marshal
thereof." — Edmunds.

APPENDIX II. 187

" Sec. 6. Any property owned under any contract or by
any combination, or pursuant to any conspiracy (and being
the subject thereof) mentioned in section one of this act,
and being in the course of transportation from one State
to another, or to a foreign country, shall be forfeited to
the United States, and may be seized and condemned by
like proceedings as those provided by law for their forfei-
ture, seizure, and condemnation of property imported into
the United States contrary to law." — Edmunds.

" Sec. 7. Any person who shall be injured in his busi-
ness or property by any other person or corporation by
reason of anything forbidden or declared to be unlawful
by this Act may sue therefor in any circuit court of the
United States in the district in which the defendant resides
or is found, without respect to the amount in controversy,
and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained,
and the costs of suit, including a reasonable attorney's
fee." — Hoar, rewritten from Senator Sherman's original
draft.

" Sec. 8. That the word ' person ' or ' persons,' wherever
used in this Act, shall be deemed to include corporations
and associations existing under or authorized by the laws
of either the United States, the laws of any of the Terri-
tories, the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign
country." — Ingalls.

THE END.

INDEX

PAGE

Amherst 151

Attorney-General, Duties of 67, 118

Automobile, The Man with the 121

Bank Act 114

Banker's view 47

Berlin 69

Bishop, A. L., Tale Review 162

Call loans 108

Coal strikes 25

Combines 65, 102

Combines Investigation Act 65, 86, Appendix

Common law 27, 72, 158

Conant, Charles A., " Money and Banking " 44, 112

Consumers 127, 130, 132, 139

Co-operative societies 33, 127

Criminal Code 67, 70

Dater, John Grant 44

Dayton Cash Register Co 118

Deposit banking 107, 111

Edmunds, Senator 77

Fisher, Professor Irving 42, 83

France, prices in 87, 166

Germany, trusts in 61

Gold, over-production theory 22, 42

Grand jury, functions of 95, 132

Guild, Consumers' 127, 143

Halifax 143

Harpell, James J 106

Industrialism, Encyclopaedia of 87

Investigation, prices 132

Jordan, David Starr 46

189

190 INDEX

PAGE

Law, enforcement of 74, 160

London, comparative prices in 87

Low, ,Seth Ill

Mandate, the 91

Mackenzie, Professor M. A 54, 92

Magna Charta 72

Marshall, Professor Alfred, Political Economy 99

McArthur, Peter, Forum article 108

McLeod, H. C 106, 110

McPhail, Dr. Andrew 44

Milk 15, 55

Meat prices prevail, trust 14, 63, 81, 79

Moncton 154

Money, L. G. Chiozza 58

Monopoly 104, 120

Napoleon Bonaparte quoted 70

New Zealand opinion of beef trust 79, 86

Organization 81, 127, 132, 139

Orth, Samuel P., World's Work article 61

Paris, comparative prices in 87

Pliny 42

Prosecuting officers 74, 160

Prices, comparative 36

Russell, Judge, letter of 20

Sherman Act 77, 117

Shortt, Professor Adam 19, 20

Sink of Gold 44

St. John 155

Supreme Court 102

System, the 110, 153

Truro 149

Trust, Beef 10, 14, 41, 79, 130

United States, law in 103

United Shoe Machinery Co 34

Walker, Sir Edmund, address 47, 97

Wilson, President 94, 117

Workmen 51

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