It is thus plain that the action of the government in declaring the restriction of competition to be illegal is wholly ineffectual to check the growth of monopoly. And, further, the fact is that it is hardly possible for the government to take any more extreme stand in the matter. Let us suppose that it does declare, not only that these combinations are against public policy, but that they shall be punished. Then would it be a punishable offence for two country grocers who had been selling sugar below cost to agree that henceforth they would charge a uniform price and make an eighth of a cent per pound! It is to be remembered that _competition_ necessitates _action_. Can the government, therefore, _compel_ a man to compete, to cut prices below his neighbors, or to carry on his business at all, if he does not choose to do so? Such a law would establish the government's right to regulate the conduct of purely private business to a degree never before known. Such a law to protect the theory of individualism would be a most flagrant infringement of the rights of individuals. It is plain, then, that government cannot possibly keep up competition by direct action.
Whether it is possible to do so by indirect means is a much harder question. Monopoly results, as we have found, from the intensity of competition. If it is possible to modify the intensity, to keep the candle from burning itself out too quickly, so to speak, it is possible that competition may be kept alive by legislative enactment. So far, practically nothing has been done in this direction, and it remains yet to be seen what remedies of this sort may accomplish.
A pertinent example of an attempt by the government to keep competition alive is the Interstate Commerce law. Before its passage the railway companies had a patched-up and nominally illegal species of combination to restrict competition, known as pooling. As described by President Charles Francis Adams of the Union Pacific Railway, "it was merely a method through which the weaker corporations were kept alive." The Interstate law prohibited this restriction of competition, and also, by enactment of the long-and short-haul clause, made the competition more widespread and injurious to the railways. As a result an astonishing impetus has been given to the growth of the great systems and the consolidation of the minor competing roads. More than that, however, the great increase in the intensity of competition has done so much to drain the resources of the companies and injure their revenues, that some measure for uniting all the railroads of the country under one management is now being seriously planned by many men in railroad circles. Thus this result, which was probably inevitable, has doubtless been hastened many years by the action of the law. The means taken to intensify competition has operated, as might have been expected, to hasten the complete establishment of monopoly.