We are agreed, I take it,
that holding _companies_ should be prohibited, but what of the
controlling private ownership of individuals or actually cooeperative
groups of individuals? Shall the private owners of capital stock be
suffered to be themselves in effect holding companies? We do not wish, I
suppose, to forbid the purchase of stocks by any person who pleases to
buy them in such quantities as he can afford, or in any way arbitrarily
to limit the sale of stocks to bona fide purchasers. Shall we require
the owners of stock, when their voting power in several companies which
ought to be independent of one another would constitute actual control,
to make election in which of them they will exercise their right to
vote? This question I venture for your consideration.
There is another matter in which imperative considerations of justice
and fair play suggest thoughtful remedial action. Not only do many of
the combinations effected or sought to be effected in the industrial
world work an injustice upon the public in general; they also directly
and seriously injure the individuals who are put out of business in one
unfair way or another by the many dislodging and exterminating forces of
combination.
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