COMPETITION THAT KILLS
Published in Harper's Weekly, November 15, 1913.
"I cannot believe," said Mr. Justice Holmes, "that in the long run the public will profit by this course, permitting knaves to cut reasonable prices for mere ulterior purposes of their own, and thus to impair, if not destroy, the production and the sale of articles which it is assumed to be desirable the people should be able to get."
Such was the dissent registered by this forward-looking judge when, two years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States declared invalid contracts by which a manufacturer of trade-marked goods sought to prevent retailers from cutting the price he had established. (Dr. Miles Medical Co. vs. Park & Sons Co., 220 U. S. 409. ) Shortly before, the court had held that mere possession of a copyright did not give the maker of an article power to fix by notice the price at which it should be sold to the consumer. (Bobbs-Merrill Co. vs. Straus, 210 U. S. 339.) And now the court, by a five-to-four decision, has applied the same rule to patented articles, thus dealing a third blow at the practice of retailing nationally advertised goods at a uniform price throughout the country. (Bauer vs. O'Donnell, 229 U.S. 1.)
Primitive barter was a contest of wits instead of an exchange of ascertained values. It was, indeed, an equation of two unknown quantities. Trading took its first great advance when money was adopted as the medium of exchange. That removed one-half of the uncertainty incident to a trade; but only one-half. The transaction of buying and selling remained still a contest of wits. The seller still gave as little in value and got as much in money as he could. And the law looked on at the contest, declaring solemnly and ominously: "Let the buyer beware." Within ample limits the seller might legally lie with impunity; and, almost without limits, he might legally deceive by silence. The law gave no redress because it deemed reliance upon sellers' talk unreasonable; and not to discover for one's self the defects in an article purchased was ordinarily proof of negligence. A good bargain meant a transaction in which one person got the better of another. Trading in the "good old days" imposed upon the seller no obligation either to tell the truth, or to give value or to treat all customers alike. But in the last generation trade morals have made great strides. New methods essential to doing business on a large scale were introduced. They are time-saving and labor-saving; and have proved also conscience-saving devices.
The greatest progress in this respect has been made in the retail trade; and the first important step was the introduction of the one-price store. That eliminated the constant haggling about prices, and the unjust discrimination among customers. But it did far more. It tended to secure fair prices; for it compelled the dealer to make, deliberately, prices by which he was prepared to stand or fall. It involved a publicity of prices which invited a comparison in detail with those of competitors; and it subjected all his prices to the criticism of all his customers. But while the one-price store marked a great advance, it did not bring the full assurance that the seller was giving value. The day's price of the article offered was fixed and every customer was treated alike; but there was still no adequate guarantee of value, both because there was ordinarily no recognized standard of quality for the particular article, and because there was no standard price even for the article of standard quality.
Under such conditions the purchaser had still to rely for protection on his own acumen, or on the character and judgment of the retailer; and the individual producer had little encouragement to establish or to maintain a reputation. The unscrupulous or unskilful dealer might be led to abandon his goods for cheaper and inferior substitutes. This ever-present danger led to an ever-widening use of trade-marks. Thereby the producer secured the reward for well-doing and the consumer the desired guarantee of quality. Later the sale of trade-marked goods at retail in original packages supplied a further assurance of quality, and also the assurance that the proper quantity was delivered. The enactment of the Federal Pure Food law and similar State legislation strengthened these guarantees.
But the standard of value in retail trade was not fully secured until a method was devised by which a uniform retail selling price was established for trade-marked articles sold in the original package. In that way, widely extended use of a trade-marked article fostered by national advertising could create both a reputation for the article and a common knowledge of its established selling price or value. With the introduction of that device the evolution of the modern purchase became complete. The ordinary retail sale—the transaction which had once been an equation of two unknown quantities—became an equation of two known quantities. Uncertainty in trade is eliminated by "A Dollar and the Ingersoll Watch," or "Five cents and the Uneeda Biscuits."
THE COURT'S PROHIBITION
Such is the one-price system to which the United States Supreme Court denied its sanction. The courts of Great Britain had recognized this method of marketing goods as legal. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts and that of California had approved it. The system was introduced into America many years ago, and has become widely extended. To abandon it now would disturb many lines of business and seriously impair the prosperity of many concerns.
When the United States Supreme Court denied to makers of copyrighted or patented goods the power to fix by notice the prices at which the goods should be retailed, the court merely interpreted the patent and copyright acts and declared that they do not confer any such special privilege. But when the court denied the validity of contracts for price-maintenance of trade-marked goods, it decided a very different matter. It did not rest its decision mainly upon the interpretation of a statute; for there is no statute which in terms prohibits price-maintenance, or, indeed, deals directly with the subject. It did not refuse to grant a special privilege to certain manufacturers; it denied a common right to all producers. Nor does the decision of the court proceed upon any fundamental or technical rule of law. The decision rests mainly upon general reasoning as to public policy; and that reasoning is largely from analogy.
THE DEMANDS OF PUBLIC POLICY
When a court decides a case upon grounds of public policy, the judges become, in effect, legislators. The question then involved is no longer one for lawyers only. It seems fitting, therefore, to inquire whether this judicial legislation is sound—whether the common trade practice of maintaining the price of trade-marked articles has been justly condemned. And when making that inquiry we may well bear in mind this admonition of Sir George Jessel, a very wise English judge:
"If there is one thing which more than any other public policy requires, it is that men of full age and competent understanding shall have the utmost liberty of contracting, and that their contracts, when entered into freely and voluntarily, shall be held sacred, and shall be enforced by courts of justice. Therefore, you have this paramount public policy to consider, that you are not lightly to interfere with this freedom of contract."
THE COURT’S OBJECTION
The Supreme Court says that a contract by which a producer binds a retailer to maintain the established selling price of his trade-marked product is void; because it prevents competition between retailers of the article and restrains trade.
Such a contract does, in a way, limit competition; but no man is bound to compete with himself. And when the same trade-marked article is sold in the same market by one dealer at a less price than by another, the producer, in effect, competes with himself. To avoid such competition, the producer of a trade-marked article often sells it to but a single dealer in a city or town; or he establishes an exclusive sales agency. No one has questioned the legal right of an independent producer to create such exclusive outlets for his product. But if exclusive selling agencies are legal, why should the individual manufacturer of a trade-marked article be prevented from establishing a marketing system under which his several agencies for distribution will sell at the same price? There is no difference, in substance, between an agent who retails the article and a dealer who retails it.
For many business concerns the policy of maintaining a standard price for a standard article is simple. The village baker readily maintained the quality and price of his product, by sale and delivery over his own counter. The great Standard Oil monopoly maintains quality and price (when it desires so to do) by selling throughout the world to the retailer or the consumer from its own tank-wagons. But for most producers the jobber and the retailer are the necessary means of distribution—as necessary as the railroad, the express or the parcel post. The Standard Oil Company can, without entering into contracts with dealers, maintain the price through its dominant power. Shall the law discriminate against the lesser concerns which have not that power, and deny them the legal right to contract with dealers to accomplish a like result? For in order to insure to the small producer the ability to maintain the price of his product, the law must afford him contract protection, when he deals through the middleman.
But the Supreme Court says that a contract which prevents a dealer of trade-marked articles from cutting the established selling price, restrains trade. In a sense every contract restrains trade; for after one has entered into a contract, he is not as free in trading as he was before he bound himself. But the right to bind one's self is essential to trade development. And it is not every contract in restraint of trade, but only contracts unreasonably in restraint of trade, which are invalid. Whether a contract does unreasonably restrain trade is not to be determined by abstract reasoning. Facts only can be safely relied upon to teach us whether a trade practice is consistent with the general welfare. And abundant experience establishes that the one-price system, which marks so important an advance in the ethics of trade, has also greatly increased the efficiency of merchandising, not only for the producer, but for the dealer and the consumer as well.
THE PRODUCER'S PLEA
If a dealer is selling unknown goods or goods under his own name, he alone should set the price; but when a dealer has to use somebody else's name or brand in order to sell goods, then the owner of that name or brand has an interest which should be respected. The transaction is essentially one between the two principals—the maker and the user. All others are middle-men or agents; for the product is not really sold until it has been bought by the consumer. Why should one middleman have the power to depreciate in the public mind the value of the maker's brand and render it unprofitable not only for the maker but for other middlemen? Why should one middleman be allowed to indulge in a practice of price-cutting, which tends to drive the maker's goods out of the market and in the end interferes with people getting the goods at all?
CUT PRICES A MISLEADER
When a trade-marked article is advertised to be sold at less than the standard price, it is generally done to attract persons to the particular store by the offer of an obviously extraordinary bargain. It is a bait—called by the dealers a "leader." But the cut-price article would more appropriately be termed a "mis-leader"; because ordinarily the very purpose of the cut-price is to create a false impression.
The dealer who sells the Dollar Ingersoll watch for sixty-seven cents necessarily loses money in that particular transaction. He has no desire to sell any article on which he must lose money. He advertises the sale partly to attract customers to his store; but mainly to create in the minds of those customers the false impression that other articles in which he deals and which are not of a standard or known value will be sold upon like favorable terms. The customer is expected to believe that if an Ingersoll watch is sold at thirty-three and one-third per cent less than others charge for it, a ready-to-wear suit or a gold ring will be sold as cheap. The more successful the individual producer of a trade-marked article has been in creating for it a recognized value as well as a wide sale, the greater is the temptation to the unscrupulous to cut the price. Indeed a cut-price article can ordinarily be effective as a "mis-leader" only when both the merits and the established selling price are widely known.
HOW CUT PRICES HURT
The evil results of price-cutting are far-reaching. It is sometimes urged that price-cutting of a trade-marked article injures no one; that the producer is not injured, since he received his full price in the original sale to jobber or retailer; and indeed may be benefited by increased sales, since lower prices ordinarily stimulate trade; that the retailer cannot be harmed, since he has cut the price voluntarily to advance his own interests; that the consumer is surely benefited because he gets the article cheaper. But this reasoning is most superficial and misleading.
To sell a Dollar Ingersoll watch for sixty-seven cents injures both the manufacturer and the regular dealer; because it tends to make the public believe that either the manufacturer's or the dealer's profits are ordinarily exorbitant; or, in other words, that the watch is not worth a dollar. Such a cut necessarily impairs the reputation of the article, and, by impairing reputation, lessens the demand. It may even destroy the manufacturer's market. A few conspicuous "cut-price sales" in any market will demoralize the trade of the regular dealers in that article. They cannot sell it at cut prices without losing money. They might be able to sell a few of the articles at the established price; but they would do so at the risk to their own reputations. The cut by others, if known, would create the impression on their own customers of having been overcharged. It is better policy for the regular dealer to drop the line altogether. On the other hand, the demand for the article from the irregular dealer who cuts the price is short-lived. The cut-price article cannot long remain his "leader." His use for it is sporadic and temporary. One "leader" is soon discarded for another. Then the cut-price outlet is closed to the producer; and, meanwhile, the regular trade has been lost. Thus a single prominent price-cutter can ruin a market for both the producer and the regular retailer. And the loss to the retailer is serious.
On the other hand, the consumer's gain from price-cutting is only sporadic and temporary. The few who buy a standard article for less than its value do benefit—unless they have, at the same time, been misled into buying some other article at more than its value. But the public generally is the loser; and the losses are often permanent. If the price-cutting is not stayed, and the manufacturer reduces the price to his regular customers in order to enable them to retain their market, he is tempted to deteriorate the article in order to preserve his own profits. If the manufacturer cannot or will not reduce his price to the dealer, and the regular retailers abandon the line, the consumer suffers at least the inconvenience of not being able to buy the article.
PRICE MAINTENANCE—NOT PRICE FIXING
The independent producer of an article which bears his name or trade-mark—be he manufacturer or grower—seeks no special privilege when he makes contracts to prevent retailers from cutting his established selling price. The producer says in effect: "That which I create, in which I embody my experience, to which I give my reputation, is my property. By my own effort I have created a product valuable not only to myself, but to the consumer; for I have endowed this specific article with qualities which the consumer desires, and which the consumer should be able to rely confidently upon receiving when he purchases my article in the original package. To be able to buy my article with the assurance that it possesses the desired qualities is quite as much of value to the consumer who purchases it as it is of value to the maker who is seeking to find customers for it. It is essential that the consumer should have confidence, not only in the quality of my product, but in the fairness of the price he pays. And to accomplish a proper and adequate distribution of product, guaranteed both as to quality and price, I must provide by contract against the retail price being cut."
The position of the independent producer who establishes the price at which his own trade-marked article shall be sold to the consumer must not be confused with that of a combination or trust which, controlling the market, fixes the price of a staple article. The independent producer is engaged in a business open to competition. He establishes his price at his peril—the peril that, if he sets it too high, either the consumer will not buy, or, if the article is nevertheless popular, the high profits will invite even more competition. The consumer who pays the price established by an independent producer in a competitive line of business does so voluntarily; he pays the price asked, because he deems the article worth that price as compared with the cost of other competing articles. But when a trust fixes, through its monopoly power, the price of a staple article in common use, the consumer does not pay the price voluntarily. He pays under compulsion. There being no competitor he must pay the price fixed by the trust, or be deprived of the use of the article.
PRICE-CUTTING THE ROAD TO MONOPOLY
Price-cutting has, naturally, played a prominent part in the history of nearly every American industrial monopoly.
Commissioner Herbert Knox Smith found, after the elaborate investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Corporations, that:
"One of the most effective means employed by the Standard Oil Company to secure and maintain the large degree of monopoly which it possesses, is the cut in prices to the particular customers, or in the particular markets of its competitors, while maintaining them at a higher level elsewhere."
And Chief Justice White, in delivering the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in the Tobacco Trust case, said:
"…the intention existed to use the power of the combination as a vantage ground to further monopolize the trade in tobacco by means of trade conflicts designed to injure others, either by driving competitors out of the business or compelling them to become parties to a combination—a purpose whose execution was illustrated by the plug war which ensued and its results, by the snuff war which followed and its results, and by the conflict which immediately followed the entry of the combination in England and the division of the world's business by the two foreign contracts which ensued."
Therefore recent legislative attempts to stay monopoly commonly include in some form prohibition against the making of cut-throat prices, with a view to suppressing competition. Such provisions will be found in the bills proposed by Senator La Follette, Congressman Stanley and Senator Cummins to supplement the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; and statutes dealing with the subject have been enacted in several States.
President Wilson urged most wisely that, instead of sanctioning and regulating private monopoly, we should regulate competition. Undoubtedly statutes must be enacted to secure adequate and effective regulation; but shall our courts prohibit voluntary regulation of competition by those engaged in business? And is not the one-price system for trade-marked articles a most desirable form of regulation?
MONOPOLY'S EASIEST WAY
The competition attained by prohibiting the producer of a trade-marked article from maintaining his established price offers nothing substantial. Such competition is superficial merely. It is sporadic, temporary, delusive. It fails to protect the public where protection is needed. It is powerless to prevent the trust from fixing extortionate prices for its product. The great corporation with ample capital, a perfected organization and a large volume of business can establish its own agencies or sell direct to the consumer, and is in no danger of having its business destroyed by price-cutting among retailers. But the prohibition of price-maintenance imposes upon the small and independent producers a serious handicap. Some avenue of escape must be sought by them; and it may be found in combination. Independent manufacturers without the capital or the volume of business requisite for engaging alone in the retail trade will be apt to combine with existing chains of stores, or to join with other manufacturers similarly situated in establishing new chains of retail stores through which to market their products direct to the consumer. The process of exterminating the small independent retailer already hard pressed by capitalistic combinations—the mail-order houses, existing chains of stores and the large department stores—would be greatly accelerated by such a movement. Already the displacement of the small independent business man by the huge corporation with its myriad of employees, its absentee ownership and its financier control presents a grave danger to our democracy. The social loss is great; and there is no economic gain. But the process of capitalizing free Americans is not an inevitable one. It is not even in accord with the natural law of business. It is largely the result of unwise, man-made, privilege-creating law, which has stimulated existing tendencies to inequality instead of discouraging them. Shall we, under the guise of protecting competition, further foster monopoly by creating immunity for the price-cutters?
Americans should be under no illusions as to the value or effect of price-cutting. It has been the most potent weapon of monopoly—a means of killing the small rival to which the great trusts have resorted most frequently. It is so simple, so effective. Far-seeing organized capital secures by this means the co-operation of the short-sighted unorganized consumer to his own undoing. Thoughtless or weak, he yields to the temptation of trifling immediate gain, and, selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, becomes himself an instrument of monopoly.
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