Page images
PDF
EPUB

dust-swept drive (a Walk no longer!) into an imitation of the beautiful prospect with its incomparable vistas that in Paris extends from the Porte d'honneur of the whilom Tuileries across the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe are destined to fail, inasmuch as Birdcage Walk can never (thank goodness!) be got into line with Trafalgar Square, without tearing down some of the most valuable house property in London. As it stands, the Memorial has no commanding aspect if viewed from a distance. Seen from the further end of the Walk, it is merely a white splash on the face of Buckingham Palace, and destroys the uninteresting but by no means inharmonious lines of that Royal building. There is a certain charm about the much decried Buckingham Palace, a haunting suggestiveness of color, a mid-Victorian patine, that indescribable gift of Time, the priceless rien which makes the ugliest object precious; thus naturally the idea has been seriously and publicly mooted by admirers of the Memorial to whitewash the Palace, so that Palace and Memorial may be of the same color. As far as I know, and up till yesterday, this abominable act of Vandalism has not yet been perpetrated, but there is no guarantee that it may not be put into effect sooner or later. Quite as great a piece of Vandalism is the construction of the broad road across the Green Park to Piccadilly, intended to give a perspective to the Memorial, but in reality it has merely deprived the park of its rural and secluded note which was its chief charm, has driven the day-dreamers and the browsing sheep from their favorite haunts, and has made two favorite bas côtés, or side lawns, of what was once a rolling meadow.

All this, or at least some of it, might be forgiven unto the Memorial had it any real pretensions to artistic merit.

But that surely no one can seriously claim. Sir Thomas Brock may be a skilful stone-cutter, but a sculptor who presents himself to the public as an artist, a composer of frozen music, a creator in marble, should at least have a sense of balance. With the laudable intention of giving commanding proportions to his figure of the Queen, he has wrought it to the scale of a figure eighteen and a half feet tall. But the figures on a smaller scale which surround it, those of Justice, Truth, etc., are to all intents and purposes on the same plane. The result is that they are made to look disproportionately small by comparison with the Royal statue, and themselves tend to make the Queen's figure disproportionately big, a different thing of course from commanding. The incongruous effect is further added to by the figure of Victory on the summit of the monument being on another scale though in the same focus as the other figures. Thus we get three different scales all clashing with and destroying one another. The figure of Victory is, by the way, as ugly as her sister on the Siegesäule in Berlin, which is saying a good deal. At the risk of appearing ungracious, I must further add that she is standing upon the Globe as if she were performing a circus trick, and that her back view is unbalanced

and scraggy. In honor of the Navy only nautical devices and emblems have been furnished by the sculptor to explain his Victory, but surely it will not be thought invidious to remind Sir Thomas Brock that, splendid as our Navy is, it was the Army that won most of the great victories which lent glory to Queen Victoria's reign. Anomalies and incongruities one could multiply examples, for they make up the dominant note of the Memorial and its surroundings. Had good taste and a sense of humor, those fairy godmothers, been invited to the

baptism of the scheme no spell of ugliness and incongruity would have The Saturday Review.

been cast over it: this sad tale need not have been told.

Rowland Strong.

THE CONDEMNATION OF THE STANDARD OIL TRUST.

It is difficult to form any precise opinion as to the meaning and probable results of the condemnation of the Standard Oil Trust by the Supreme Court of the United States. This decision has been hailed in America as a victory of the Government against the Trusts. The people have conquered the monopolists-so it is said. On the other hand, it is noticeable that the quotations of the Standard Oil Trust have risen, and so also have the quotations of many other important Trusts. Evidently, therefore, the financiers do not take quite the same view of the effect of the judgment as is taken by the newspapers and the politicians. This is partly due to the terms of the judgment itself. The text of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890 provided that all combinations in restraint of trade were illegal, but in many Courts this provision has been construed as implying that the methods of the combination or Trust must be unreasonable in character, and the Supreme Court has now upheld this general contention, while at the same time specifically condemning the Standard Oil Trust. From this it seems to follow that the Standard Oil Trust, though now condemned as unreasonably acting in restraint of trade, can cease to come under the ban of the law by modifications of its procedure or organization, which conceivably may neither affect its profits nor the prices it charges to its customers.

If this is all the judgment means, something much more drastic will be needed to destroy the Trusts, but it is fairly certain that public opinion in

In

the United States, having been so greatly irritated by the predatory methods of the principal Trusts, will not allow the matter to rest at the doubtful point now reached. If it is found that in substance the Trusts still continue much as they were before, new legislation will be demanded, and fresh efforts will be made to escape from the real tyranny which these organizations impose upon the masses of the American people. saying this we do not for a moment wish to condemn the Trusts merely because they have created large amalgamations of capital. There is much to be said for big businesses as contrasted with little businesses. The latter are, from some points of view, more valuable on the human side, because they mean a number of independent units, whereas the big business means a number of dependent wage-earners. It certainly would be a bad thing for the future of a country if all except a minute fraction of its population consisted of wage-earners, and if there were no room for small independent capitalists.

The mere creation of big concerns does not, however, by itself necessarily involve this result. In London we can see under our own eyes the growth of various huge retail trading stores, and side by side with this growth the continued multiplication of small shops. To some extent the same phenomenon is visible in the United States. The well-known American economist, the late Mr. Edward Atkinson, used to be fond of asserting that the number of small businesses in

dard

The Condemnation of the Standard Oil Trust.

the United States was increasing rapidly in spite of the Trusts. At any rate, mere bigness is not an evil provided the big concern does not attempt to employ unjust methods of carrying on its business. The real evil of the American Trust system is that the Trusts, or many of them, adopt business methods which the vast majority of people regard as essentially unfair.

813

sources of supply. It also, since it was making enormous profits, easily obtained command of unlimited capital. It was thus able to develop the business-in particular by laying down pipe lines, and generally by improving methods of manufacture. The defenders of the Trust are fond of pointing to these improvements as a proof of the beneficial work that the Trust has accomplished. There is not the slightest evidence, however, that the same advance would not have been secured by ordinary methods of carrying on business. Invention is not slow in the United States, and most of the improvements introduced into the oil industry are the results of American inventiveness and not of Trust methods.

The whole purpose of the Standard Oil Trust, as of other Trusts in the United States, has been to acquire a monopoly, and it is this purpose which distinguishes a Trust from an ordinary big manufacturing concern. Why the Trust system as thus defined should have taken so much stronger root in the United States than in the United Kingdom is one of the most interesting of modern problems. The tariff undoubtedly accounts for part of the difference. It is clearly much more difficult to establish a Trust in a country subject to foreign competition than in a country from which foreign competition is excluded by means of a tariff.

The history of the Standard Oil Trust is a case in point. It had its origin more than forty years ago in an arrangement between a few company promoters and various railway companies. The company promoters acquired a controlling interest in certain oil wells and refineries, and, by methods which have never been disclosed, persuaded the railway companies to charge higher rates to their competitors than to themselves. Not only so, but the companies actually agreed that the excess rates which were charged upon the firms outside this combination were to be handed over to the combination. In other words, the incipient Standard Oil Trust grew rich by levying a railway toll upon its competitors. In 1881 an official of the Pennsylvania Railroad testified before the New York Legislative Committee that in eighteen months the Standard Oil Combination had received rebates from the railroads to the amount of $10,000,000. This proceeding alone is so palpably unfair that it is sufficient to condemn American Trust methods. Necessarily, however, the evil did not end with the toll thus levied. The competing concerns quickly found that it was quite impossible for them to carry on business in face of such a railway preference. They also found that no one was willing to buy their undertakings except the Standard Oil Trust, and consequently had to sell to the Trust on such terms as the Trust chose to impose. By this method the Trust obtained control of the principal

This consideration, however, does not apply to the Standard Oil Trust. That Trust depends upon the monopolization of the natural sources of supply, and is in no way shielded from external competition, for at the present time petroleum, both crude and refined, enters the United States free of duty. When, however, we note the part played by the railways in building up the monopoly of the Standard Oil Trust, it becomes clear that another factor in England's favor is the relative smallness of her area and the

1704 1915

30

length of her coast line. Railways in the United Kingdom cannot dominate the commercial life of the country as they can in the United States, for the simple reason that at most important industrial centers sea carriage has a controlling influence over the rates that can be charged for rail carriage. These two factors-the absence of tariffs and the presence of sea carriagemake it difficult for any body of capitalists, however enterprising and however unscrupulous, to establish Trusts in the United Kingdom on the American model. There is a further factor on which we insist with a little more hesitation, but to which we attach very great importance. This is the personal or moral factor. Broadly speaking, the Englishman in his business relations never forgets the good old English maxim of "Live and let live," and rarely drives a bargain to the extreme point which an American regards as justifiable. If one talks to an ordinary English business man, whethThe Spectator.

er engaged in commerce or in manufacturing or in agriculture, one finds that he is instinctively actuated by the feeling that a bargain, to be a good bargain, must be profitable to both sides. The Americans, unless their view of life is altogether misconstrued by those who have dealings with them, act on the strict interpretation of the hard legal doctrine, caveat emptor. In making this contrast we do not wish to impute any general sin to the American people, or any excess of virtue to our own countrymen. We merely wish to point out that there is a broad difference of outlook upon commercial transactions, and this difference is of a character to make public feeling in England instinctively revolt against anything in the nature of Trusts. In the long run this is probably our best safeguard against the American Trust system, and we may add it is also our best safeguard against the American tariff system.

RUSSIA AND ANGLO-SAXONDOM.

"Russia and Anglo-Saxondom"-the two together embrace about half the habitable surface of the globe! Measured in space it is the larger half: measured in importance one is tempted to say it represents more than threequarters of the interests of this planet. What an overwhelming power for good such a combination represents when bound together-as it bids fair to be in the not distant future-by ties of mutual understanding and friendship, ties more durable than the signed and sealed instruments of diplomacy.

It is to diplomacy however that we owe the beginning of these ties, for unhappily there is hardly a country on the globe of which the outer world has remained so ignorant as of Russia. For

a century the parent stock of the Anglo-Saxon race regarded Russia as the bugbear of the North, the foe to all for which that race stands in history. Little by little it came to be felt, as the world filled up and distance was annihilated, that among States as among individuals the great must stand together to maintain their greatness against the floodtide of smaller ambitions. The principle was formulated, in diplomatic language, as "making friends with the neighbors of your neighbors" -that is, instead of being on any warmer than merely correct and inoffensive bowing terms with "next door," whose contiguity provides many opportunities of petty annoyances, you make friends of "next door but one," who

will pretty certainly join you in putting pressure on "next door" to restrain those little exhibitions, known as "pinpricks" in diplomacy, which correspond to the crowing cocks, howling dogs and excessive and untimely playing of musical instruments on the other side of the domestic party wall. Russia, in the days of the autocracy, initiated this now universal policy by entering into an alliance with Republican France. To-day the world is girdled by a chain of understandings between those who live, geographically or historically, "next door but one," and so the peace of the world is preserved.

In all these combinations Russia is to-day the pivot as she was a century ago when the field of action was almost entirely confined to Europe, as now it is world-wide. Only those who are behind the scenes know how much of the coming history of our century is day by day passing through St. Petersburg in the preliminary forms which develop later into inexorable fact. We foresee the day fast approaching when the capital of Russia will be familiarly named, side by side with London and New York, as one of those few centres of gravity on which the minor worlds of finance, industry, commerce, art and culture, arms and diplomacy, etc., rest in making up the life of our planet. For the centre of gravity of the world of men is undoubtedly undergoing visible change before the eyes of the present generation, and Russia, that

Link to weld The West half-told and immemorial East,

now quickening into new life in every part of her enormous bulk, must be taken first and foremost into account in all the possible struggles of the future.

History has recorded the part that Russia played in the settlement of Europe a century ago. It needs no demonstration that she will play a no

less important part again if the peace of Europe be again disturbed by the overweening ambitions of a new Napoleon or the irrepressible needs of national expansion, and the growing importance of small States. Right across the world it is Russia again that will be called upon to hold the balance, if she take no active part, in the coming struggle for the mastery of the Pacific. Should the much-talked of "awakening of China," with its teeming millions, again in history threaten the white man's world, Russia again must bear the brunt of that problematical invasion and save Christendom in the twentieth as she saved it in the fourteenth century from the onset of Islam. Should India again, under whatever impulses from within or from without, attempt to overthrow the British Raj, as the enemies of Greater Britain so confidently predict, the attitude of Russia will become of supreme importance. Of Russia's part in the Middle and the Near East problems no man alive is ignorant to-day. There are other problems on the West and on the NorthWest that might be noted also. In a word, the world-policy of the twentieth century is pivoted on Russia, and for her part in the great game Russia is preparing with the slow persistence and steady forward pressure of the giant, conscious of possessing untouched resources of as yet incalculable strength and cautious as a giant in the use of them.

Russia made her choice at that critical time when England was deeply involved in the South African War. She was invited to draw the sword and take what the sword could offer. Russia refused, and not only kept up her own weapon, but forced less scrupulous swords to lie helpless in sheath. The policy was one that had been practised by the Emperor Alexander III, the "Peace-Keeper of the World," and was put forth boldly in the face of the

« PreviousContinue »