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for it is a law in industrial combinations that prices shall be kept reasonably low in order to prevent competition, not only of small consumers, but of new combinations. High prices would provoke the competition they are created to destroy, while small establishments, under the restraints imposed by state law, with a small volume of business, would be compelled to get higher prices or go out of business.

The abundance of capital in the modern world, seeking investment, is such that while combinations may not fear the competition of small establishments, which are compelled to charge high prices to survive, they are constantly confronted with the danger of new combinations, with unlimited capital, entering the same field.

President Hadley states, in his Economics (Section 173): "The attempt to prohibit combination has proven futile, and has simply driven the competing concerns into closer consolidation. Had it been successful, it must either have retarded the development of modern business and the utilization of modern methods requiring concentrated management of capital, or it must have subjected all of our large industries to constant fluctuations in their scale of prices, which would have been hardly less disastrous to the consumer than to the industry."

The suggestion that there is danger that great combinations, organized for private gain, may obtain possession of all the industries producing the necessities of life, and oppress the people by exacting such prices as they choose, grows out of distrust of the social and economic laws which control human conduct. Trusts and combinations are not exempt from their control; they can only arise where there is an abundance of capital seeking investment. They do not destroy competition, but only transfer it to a larger field. They are continually confronted with the danger of new combinations, which can only be avoided by charging reasonable prices.

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Otherwise they provoke the very competition they are organized to prevent.

One of the most fair-minded observers and judicious writers on Economics, President Hadley (p. 161, par. 176), states:

"The maximum gross income is obtained by making rates low enough to develop a good volume of traffic, instead of by raising them so high as to reduce that traffic to a small amount. If a concern uses a large amount of fixed capital it will rarely happen that the most money can be made by a policy of high charges with small volume of business. Experience has shown that the opposite method is the one which has proven permanently profitable, even to the concerns whose monopoly seemed most assured. It pays, in the long run, to bring rates down very near to the limits of actual cost, if such reductions are followed by a large development of traffic."

(Page 164, par. 180): "Even the strongest of monopolies must make its price low enough to cause the public to buy its goods or services to a sufficient extent to utilize its capital, and this price will usually be found to be nearly the same as that which would have been fixed by free competition."

It is only in those kinds of industries where combinations are useful, and therefore profitable, to the whole community, that they will survive.

Speculative schemes based upon fictitious values work the same result in the long run, whether promoted by individuals, corporations or combinations.

The state must preserve peace and enforce order to protect the liberty of all, and to that end, and to provide for the general welfare, it may regulate the acts and contracts of all persons in its dominion, including combinations of capital and of labor within the limitations imposed by the organic law, but no regulations can be

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made which will destroy or impair the historic rights of liberty and property, upon which our present social order is based.

Our modern industrial system is so vast, so complicated, so sensitive, and it affects so deeply the interests of every part of the commonwealth in ways that it is impossible to foresee or predict that no man or body of men is wise enough to comprehend it in all its bearings and dictate the course of its future development.

There is no justification of democracy except the firm faith that the full play of social and economic laws, under such regulation as secures liberty to all, works for the welfare and advancement of the

race.

The President: The next in order is the report of the Committee on Membership. Is that committee ready to report?

George L. Reinhard: The committee is ready, and presents the following report:

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON MEMBERSHIP.

To the President and Members of the State Bar Association of Indiana:

Your Committee on the Admission of Members respectfully reports that, at a meeting thereof, in the city of Indianapolis, on the 18th day of April, 1899, to fill the vacancy in the chairmanship hereof, occasioned by the death of the late Charles B. Stuart, George L. Reinhard was duly elected chairman of the committee, to serve the remainder of the current year.

And your committee further reports that, of the applicants for membership in this Association whose applications were submitted to and passed upon by the committee, the following named persons were found to possess the qualifications requisite to such membership, to wit:

Joseph L. Custer, of Marion.

Morris M. Townley, of Indianapolis.

Charles P. Drummond, of Plymouth.

L. B. Nash, of Tipton.

Virgil S. Reiter, of Hammond.

Anthony Deahl, of Goshen.

Claude Thompson, of Crawfordsville.

Peter Maier, of Evansville.

W. E. Clapham, of Fort Wayne.
Samuel M. Hench, of Fort Wayne.
Hugh G. Keegan, of Fort Wayne.
Robert Dreibelbiss, of Fort Wayne.
Edward Gough, of Boonville.
John L. Bretz, of Jasper.

William A. Traylor, of Jasper.
James F. Morrison, of Kokomo.
William C. Purdum, of Kokomo.
W. C. Overton, of Kokomo.
Conrad Wolf, of Kokomo.
James S. Drake, of Goshen.
Elbert M. Swan, of Rockport.
C. M. McCabe, of Covington.
Samuel P. Baird, of Lafayette.
John B. Peterson, of Crown Point.
Andrew A. Adams, of Columbia City.
James D. Conner, Jr., of Wabash.
William B. Austin, of Rensselaer.
E. A. Ely, of Petersburg.

George E. Clark, of South Bend.
James E. Rose, of Auburn.
J. H. Rose, of Auburn.

William H. Martin, of Bedford.
Oscar M. Welborn, of Princeton.

Frank Foltz, of Rensselaer.
Daniel E. Kelly, of Valparaiso.
Thomas J. Cofer, of Danville.
Henry Colerick, of Fort Wayne.
Owen N. Heaton, of Fort Wayne.
William J. Vesey, of Fort Wayne.
Wilmer Leonard, of Fort Wayne.
Elmer Leonard, of Fort Wayne.
Rowland Evans, of Indianapolis.
Perry L. Turner, of Elkhart.
Emmet A. Bratton, of Angola.
N. L. Agnew, of Valparaiso.
C. B. McAdams, of Williamsport