lp4guld

it was something more and also of more importance. There was a definiteconviction that the economic system needed control and directionand there was also the conviction, as there was in Europe, thatthat control and direction should be supplied by the producers. Andby producers was meant businessmen. The laws passed by the federalgovernment and the states—particularly the anti-trust laws—werenot intended to supply control and direction. They were designed toprevent the control and direction that businessmen attempted toimpose. They were laws not to interfere in business but to preventinterference in business by businessmen.What is more significant, however, is that despite the presenceon the statute books of the anti-trust laws the whole developmentof combinations through trusts, cartels, trade associations, had itshighest activity after the passage of these laws. Which is merelyone more illustration of the fact that there are always present inthe society certain powerful currents of opinion and desire againstwhich even highly organized government makes headway with difficulty.World War I had a profound effect upon this development. Immediatelypreceding it President Wilson had carried through themost determined assault upon the whole trend yet made. At the sametime, however, the movement took another turn. The operation ofan outright monopoly by a single great corporation had become difficultunder the laws. But by 1912 business gave the movement anotherdirection. The idea of self-rule, not by one great monopoly,but by great numbers of competitors in a given trade combiningto regulate the trade became the new order. This was just makingsome progress when Wilson leveled an attack upon it with theClayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission. But then came thewar, which suspended the attack and actually brought the verygovernment which had denounced self-rule and combination to thenecessity of bringing competitors together for the war effort. Thisexperience shook the whole system of free enterprise to its foundations,as it did in Germany under Walter Rathenau. When the warended, the new cry for self-rule in business became the central doctrineof organized business. A whole library of books, magazinearticles, and pamphlets blossomed into print setting out the neces-190