made it necessary to try the experiment of pumping crude petroleum long distances from the region of its production to the seaboard. The reason for this enterprise was that no refiner, either in the interior or at tidewater, could compete against the discriminating rates of freight given by the railroads to the Standard Oil Company. The interior refineries were nearly all gone, and the business had left the region of crude production, to assume new forms five hundred miles away. Hence a number of experienced and energetic men laid the first line of pipe to a point near the sea, and there made an alliance with a railroad company excluded from the "Oil Pool" to carry it further, and eventually this line was extended to the harbor of New York. Did the Standard Oil Company originate this great enterprise or assist it? No; it laughed at it, discouraged it, fought it with its whole power and its peculiar weapons, and only after its success was established did the Trust imitate it.

It is said in the article under review that the tendencies of great combinations of capital organized to control commerce in a commodity of general use is to create competition between rival associations, even though they may have destroyed it between individuals. But how can this be? As an association must originate in individual effort, what are the inducements to men who can see no opportunities for gain in a certain business to combine themselves to carry it on? If they do so, we have the warring of lawless competition between two or more trusts, in place of the broad and diversified efforts of individual intelligence. Competition in skill, in excellence of quality, in processes of production, is as desirable as, yes, more desirable than, any other. But in practice all competition would soon cease, as may be seen by the constant recurrence of railroad freight pools, the only check upon which, as recently shown by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, is the dishonest violation of the pooling contracts by the railroad officials themselves. Long ago, when the first railway in England was taking its first steps, Stephenson laid down a rule which has survived the test of a half-century of experience, "that where combination is possible competition is impossible." As soon as one combination is able to compete successfully with another, the two form an alliance of some kind, so that competition will not diminish the gains of either.

The Standard Oil Trust has proved the truth of Stephenson's maxim, as it has demonstrated the verity of nearly all other arguments against such trade combinations. The Tidewater Pipe Com

pany, Limited, projected its line toward the seaboard in 1880. It was the first thing of the kind. It is a part of the current history of the period that a secret meeting of the Standard officials and certain railway managers was held on the Canada side at Niagara Falls, and ways and means devised to destroy the rival of the embryo Trust. Oil was soon after carried by the railways from the region of production to the seaboard for almost nothing-about five cents per barrel as nearly as can be ascertained. This "war of rates" was continued until some time in 1884, when the Tidewater Company made an alliance with the Standard Trust, and there have ever since been peace and money for the two, but no competition. The consumer pays the same price for his light whether sold by one company or the other. Mr. Dodd says the main purpose of his article is to show how one trust decreased prices to the consumer. This he attempts to do by comparing prices of illuminating oil as they were in 1872 with those of 1891. The difficulties in the way of accepting this argument lie in the errors in his fundamental premises. We are informed that the Trust was organized January 2, 1882. From 1872 to 1882 there were no trusts upon the plan of this particular combination. Prior to the last date, these associations for making money out of the public had taken the form of secret conspiracies by contract, and the nature of them can be ascertained by examination of the case of the Barclay Coal Company, in which a decision was made by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. During the whole ten-year period from 1872 to 1882, there was active individual competition in all branches of the petroleum business, and included in it was part of the season of excessive competition between the Tidewater Pipe Company and the Standard Oil Company, backed by the railroads. The decline in the price of refined oil during that period cannot therefore be credited to the Trust, but rather, in addition to the natural results from the development of a new business by individual skill and energy, to competition, hampered only by the injustice of railway discrimination.

During the period from 1862 to 1871, inclusive, the decline in the price of refined petroleum was from 36.38 cents per gallon to 24 24. or 12.14 cents. From 1872 to 1881, inclusive, the decline was from 23.59 cents to 8.01, or 15.58 cents per gallon. From 1882 to 1891, inclusive, the decline was from 7.39 cents to 7.30 per gallon, or nine-one-hundredths of a cent. The period from 1862 to 1871 was that of unrestricted trade and free competition in all branches of the business, except only as affected in the last three years of the period by the

then unperfected system of railroad freight discrimination, introduced, but not originated, by the projectors of the Trust. Examination of the statistics during these three successive decades will show that from 1862 to 1872, the period of free competition, but in a new and experimental industry, the decline in price was over 30 per cent; from 1872 to 1882, during which competition existed on a larger scale and the business became settled and better managed, the decline was over 60 per cent; during the reign of the Trust, from 1882 to 1892, the decline in price was but a trifle over 1 per cent, while to the American consumer it was practically nothing.'

In Mr. Dodd's article, as well as in this, the wholesale prices are given, and these are usually of export oil at the harbor of New York. But this is not the price to the consumer. During the period of the Trust, the American consumer of petroleum has paid a very much greater price than eight cents per gallon, except when it became necessary for the Standard Oil Trust to destroy a competitor by temporarily selling at a low price, sometimes below cost; and when competition was thus eliminated the price was raised. The prices paid by the consumer within and during the past ten years have been as high as thirty cents per gallon at non-competitive points. Prices have ranged from twenty-three cents per gallon to ten, and stood at many places at sixteen and eighteen. To-day, at non-competitive points, the price is often eight, ten, and twelve cents. These facts and figures speak for themselves. In this matter, as in all others, the Trust has demonstrated that the reduction of price to the consumer, even where it has been real, has been made "for the purpose of crushing competition," and as soon as the end was accomplished the consumer paid for this short-lived cheapness by an immediate increase of price.

Within the past three years the Standard Oil Trust has entered upon a new system by which it is attempting to seize the ownership of all or nearly all of the oil-producing territory of the country, and add to its gigantic monopoly the only remaining branch of the petroleum industry which it does not fully control. It has organized corporations for drilling wells, acquired by purchase mining rights in vast acreages of land in Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, paying prices before unknown to the operator and beyond his reach. It is pressing drilling operations with its enormous capital,

1 The figures for these computations are taken mainly from a schedule furnished through the Standard Oil Trust to the Congressional committee on commerce, during the investigation by it in the spring of 1888.

under conditions of a crude-oil market, of its own making, of about fifty-four cents per barrel, a price far below the cost of production. I say of its own making, because it is practically the only buyer from the well-owner. It is applying the power of money, acquired by the methods I have indicated, in unlawful and ruinous competition, for the purpose of driving out of the producing department of the business the experienced men who have made wealth for the country during more than a quarter of a century of their active lives. Under the system of individual activity barren spots have been made productive, cities have been built, railways constructed, homes established, and intelligent and prosperous communities have grown up.

If the trust plan of business is to prevail, it means that it is a good thing for combinations of capital to absorb one by one the industries into which men, in the pursuit of natural right, have deemed it best to enter to obtain a livelihood; that a man is worth more to himself and his country as the salaried employee of a great corporation or aggregation of corporations than in the independent exercise of his abilities as a producer of wealth. It means that this is a good thing in coal, iron, wheat, and all other products, as well as that it is good that nine men should control all the oil wells, refineries, pipe lines, all means of distribution, the newspapers which furnish the statistics of the business; that they should make their own acids, cans, barrels, paint, glue, tanks, pipes; that they should dictate the price for the light in the home and at which the producer sells his product; that in order that the Trust might make more money to add to its millions, by competing with Russian oil it may ruin the American oilproducer and force him to sell to the Trust or go out of business. Is it really true that the world has rolled backward to this desperate condition? Is it true that the force of money, moved by avaricious intelligence, has but taken the place of that physical force with which power, in earlier days, inflicted the wrongs against which all freemen successfully rebelled? Before we answer in the affirmative, let there be careful investigation of the facts, and let the spirit of manhood, moral sentiment, and religious conviction unite with the active business interests of the land in protest against the gospel of greed.

ROGER SHERMAN.

THE WASTE OF WOMEN'S INTELLECTUAL FORCE.

IN the May number of the FORUM, President Dwight says that the higher education is "for the purpose of developing and cultivating the thinking-power. It is to the end of making a knowing and thinking mind." And therefore it "should be given to the daughters and the sons alike. If education is for the growth of the human mind . . . the womanly mind is just as important. . . as is the manly mind."

Are there not certain reasons why-at all events in America-the higher education is even more imperatively needed by women than by men? I do not mean because it will fit them to share more largely in the work which men now perform, but because it will fit them for the better performance of work which must specially devolve upon them. In the first place, the higher education is "for the purpose of developing and cultivating the thinking-power." Nothing else can do this so thoroughly. But certain other experiences, to which women are not generally subjected, may partially take its place with men. In the active work of his life a man must learn to use his mind more or less well. But the active sphere of the woman is usually her home. Her active interests are all personal; she comes in vital contact with few human beings except her friends, and she can shift upon the men of her family many responsibilities which they must learn to deal with themselves. Life does not do for her what it does for the man, and of course it is not desirable that it should. If, therefore, her mind is not trained by the higher education, there is a great chance that it will not be trained at all to work intelligently even within a very narrow circle. While, however, the chief purpose of the higher education is to develop the individual as such, not to prepare brain and hand for any special kind of work, its value as a foundation for the activities of life cannot be left out of sight. And if this value is considered, it seems doubly true that women need it even more imperatively than men.

Usually, in those class s which can aspire to the higher education. at all, a woman marries and is not forced to support herself. What is her life's work? It is to retain her husband's affection and confidence by retaining his respect, interest, and admiration; often to counsel him,