Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS In the year 1898 the new companies formed in the United States for purposes of industrial consolidation had an aggregate capital of over nine hundred million dollars. When this fact first transpired, it was regarded as surprising. Now it has become commonplace. For in the earlier half of 1899, according to the careful estimate of the Financial Chronicle, the capital of the new companies of this character was three thousand one hundred million dollars, or more than three tunes that of the whole year preceding.1 It is hard at once to appreciate the magnitude of these figures. No single event of a similar character, either in the American or in the English market, has involved such large and sudden transmutations of capital. It cannot be paralleled in the annals of railroad investment. Even in the year 1887, so conspicuous in our railroad history, the capital used in building thirteen thousand miles of new line can hardly have reached seven hundred million dollars. In the whole period of rapid expansion from 1879 to 1882, the volume of new railroad securities issued did not equal the industrial issues of this single half year alone. Under such circumstances the matter of industrial consolidation becomes one of pressingimportance. Is this a transient movement, or is it a manifestation of permanent tendencies ? How far is it likely to go? To what limits, commercial or legal, is it subject? How are its evils to be avoided? Is it, as the socialists claim, a stepping-stone toward a new organization of industry under government authority? These are the questions which must be asked and answered. 1 $1,981,000,000 common stock, $1,041,000,000 preferred stock, and 8120,000,000 bonds. It is safe to say at the outset that this movement is not...