The rapid and widespread extension of industrial and financial consolidations,
which has been a marked feature of economic development in the United States this year, is attracting greater attention, both from legislators and from the public. The chief question which arises is whether consolidations violate the Anti-Trust Laws, or escape other existing machinery for their public regulation. A number of investigations have been begun or are proposed with the object of ascertaining facts and gauging their significance. In New York a Commission, created by the State Legislature, has made investigations this week into the operation of the Public Service Law in relation to the public utility of industry. Advantage is being taken by one member of the Senate Finance Committee to elicit at the present tariff-hearings information as to the origin, purpose, and effect of several recent mergers, preliminary to a thoroughgoing Federal Inquiry, which a number of Senators are demanding. The fact is, to-day there is nothing resembling the public hostility to large industrial or business combinations, which thirty or forty years ago provoked the passage of the Anti-Trust Laws. Therefore, any revision of the regulating laws must, undoubtedly, be constructively tempered by recognition of the economies and other public benefits resulting from large- scale business operations.
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