As has been known for some time, concentrating ownership of
capital in the hands of a few people (capitalism) or the State (socialism)
necessarily means that most people will not own a significant capital stake —
or any at all, for that matter. The
modern ideal, as the solidarist economist Goetz Briefs (1889-1974) explained in The Proletariat (1911, German, 1937, English), is capital
ownership concentrated in the hands of a private sector or government elite,
with the great mass of people supported by State-subsidized wages, benefits,
and welfare.
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| Propertyless Workers |
This, as Briefs explained, is an unstable and inherently
dangerous situation. When workers (and,
by extension, everyone else) do not own capital, they are utterly at the mercy
of those who do, whether those who own are in the private sector or the
government. (Keep in mind that, as Louis
Kelso put it, “ownership” means control in all codes of law. You don’t have to have legal title if you can
take the income and control the disposition of what someone else has title to —
you, not the nominal title holder, are the real owner.)
This has had a horrifying effect on the modern family, which
is fragmenting under the pressure. As
the State more and more takes over the role of the family in providing income,
education, and even “moral” philosophy, the family as the family comes to mean
less and less, and becomes a redundant institution instead of the fundamental
unit of society. That is why we are
working on the “Five for the Family” campaign — to restore the family to its
proper place in society by bringing word of the Just Third Way to world leaders
with true vision.
That’s also why we need to understand that this is nothing
new — as Judge Grosscup’s speech on the dangers of concentrated ownership makes
clear:
Peter S. Grosscup
Judge U. S. Circuit Court, Chicago
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| Judge Grosscup (1894 photo) |
“The corporations of this country have grown up as
developments of our business life, without much reference to their relations to
the people as institutions of, and for, the people. It is time that they be
looked into as institutions of, and for, the people. The Sherman Act was passed
before the regulation of interstate carriers was seriously attempted or
foreseen. Now that ‘regulation’ has come it is time to inquire how far the old ‘prohibitions’
should remain. The whole matter — corporate reconstruction and a restudy of the
anti-trust act — should be gone over carefully with a view to bringing some
kind of order out of the disorder that now prevails!”
(New York National Civic Federation, Proceedings on the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations Under
the Auspices of the National Civic Federation, October 22-25, 1907. New
York: The McConnell Printing Company, 1908, p. 11.)
THE CHAIRMAN: It gives me pleasure now to present the Hon.
Peter S. Grosscup, of Chicago, who will speak on “Anti-Trust Laws.”
Hon. Peter S. Grosscup.
Mr. Chairman — We are now well into the eighteenth year
since the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and well into the seventh year
since Mr. Roosevelt’s administration began actively to enforce it.
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| Senator John Sherman |
Thus, so far as enactments make law, there has been a
prohibitory law against the so-called trusts or big corporations for nearly
five times the length of time it took to fight out the civil war; and so far as
a sincere and vigorous purpose to enforce law results in actual enforcement,
the battle line against the so-called trusts or big corporations has been in
action for nearly twice as long as it took to fight out the civil war.
In its means of enforcement, as well as in its purpose, the
Sherman act was as comprehensive as language could make it. It withheld no
power, civil or criminal, that the lawmakers thought would contribute to the
complete eradication of the supposed evil. It had been preceded in Texas,
Kansas, Michigan and Maine by State laws directed to the same end, and was
quickly followed by like laws in one-half of the other States, including New
York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and the West generally.
Our Ineffective Struggle Against Trusts
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| John D. Rockefeller, Founder of Standard Oil (1898 photo) |
Have the so-called trusts or big corporations been exterminated?
Have they been even diminished? Has the Sherman act brought about any decrease
in the cost of living or any increase in wages? Has the process of combining
ceased? Has any specific, practical purpose of the Sherman act, not present in
the law as it has existed for centuries, been fulfilled? On the contrary, were
I to call the roll of the so-called trusts or big corporations, organized since
the Sherman law went into effect, I would be naming the largest ones in America
today, an inspection made for me of a list of one hundred and twelve of the
leading so-called trusts or big corporations showing that all but thirteen have
been organized since the passage of that act. And if it be said that this is
because the Sherman act, until the past six years, was treated as a dead
statute, I ask. How many of the so-called trusts or big corporations have been
exterminated, or even diminished — what increase has there been in wages or decrease
in the cost of living — by what is admitted on all hands to have been a sincere
and vigorous attempt to enforce the law during the administration of President
Roosevelt? Injunctions have issued against the several packing houses that make
up the meat industry, and here in Indiana against certain concerns in the drug
business, and against certain other so-called trusts throughout the country;
but in no case have these so-called trusts or big corporations been
exterminated; in no case have wages or prices been affected; in no case, except
in minor detail, has anything been done that could not have been done as
effectually under the common law that was in existence before the Sherman act
went into effect — that could not be done against individuals as well as
against corporations; and though, in this respect, perhaps, the case of the
Northern Securities Company is an exception, even in that case the several
railroads that made up the Securities Company are managed now almost precisely
as they were before the order of dissolution was entered.
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| President Roosevelt (1906 photo) |
If, then, the enactment of the Sherman Anti-Trust act was
intended to exterminate the so-called trusts or big corporations, or to affect
wages or prices, manifestly the Sherman Act has failed. If the entrance of Mr.
Roosevelt’s administration upon a vigorous enforcement of that law was
intended, as some of his more radical followers constantly give out, to
exterminate the so-called trusts and big corporations, manifestly that feature
of Mr. Roosevelt’s administration has failed. The organization of industry into
corporate form does not cease. Neither wages nor prices change. That much, at
least, has been proven. And the reason that the organization of industry in
corporate form is not ceasing, is because, as an effective, industrial agency
to wield the energies of mankind, the corporate form, beyond any other form, is
the most effective yet discovered. What government is to mankind politically
organized, the corporation is to modern industry organized. It is on that
account that the corporation is here at all; and it is on that account that it
is here to stay. And not until men, in their general relations to each other,
can safely dispense with government, will come a time when men, in their
industrial relations, can safely dispense with industrial organization.
* * * *
On Monday we’ll post the next section of Judge Grosscup’s
talk on how the legislative principles involved were going at the problem in
the wrong way. The Sherman Act tried to
have the government control the concentrated ownership, rather than break up
the concentration of ownership and broadly diffuse power.