ates, home of laissez-faire, has over the years built up a complicated system of anti-monopoly legislation as it is felt that undue concentration of an industry is non-democratic and is bad for competition. At the present time the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice's anti-trust division under Asst, General, William Orrick, are paying particular interest to the oil industry, The Clayton Act opposes company growth by merger and favours growth by internal means as being more socially desirable. In accordance with this act the Humble Oil Co. has been forced to drop its acquisition of the Tidewater Oil company's refining operations,
Robert Bork, a professor at Yale Law school, specialising in anti-trust, recently wrote in the Oil & Gas Journal: “Obsessive concern with the small company is one of the most dangerous features of anti-trust today, end threatens to corrupt the entire body of anti-trust law. If anti-trust is to be concerned with smallness, it can't be concerned at the same time with allowing competition to create efficiency, This philosphy is violently at wer not only with consumer interest, but also with-the older body of anti-trust doctrine, such as results against price fixing and market division, These rules allow market-forces to work themselves out, and it is no defence to a price-fixing charge that higher prices help smaller competitors to survive,
"The Department of Justice is increasingly preserving the free market by keeping it from working, It moves from the objective of preserving the free market to the preservation of many small firms as being essential to competition. This lends to a policy of eliminating the free market from working when it threatens to eliminate some small firms. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that many economies and efficiendes can only be realised by firms of large size. Good sense dictates that we get those economies and efficiencies in the least expensive way, and that may be by merger in a large number of cases,
"We ought not to be so worried over the possibility of private collusion that we introduce governmental control of market behaviour. Private collusion is constantly broken down by the forces of competition. Government control, which all too often has the same adverse effect upon consumers as private collusion, is permanent and more effective. It is for this reason that ultimately the free market is in more danger from the Government than from private groups."
The intellectual gymnastics of _capitalism's apologists at least tend to reinforce the view that the market economy and "free" enterprise are both obsolescent. And if Professor Bork gets worried by the anti-democratic nature of faceless bureaucrats, lets nationalise under workers’ control, STOCK EXCHANGE PUBLISHES LIST OF 100 BIGGEST FIRMS: The financial Times, on June 23rd, published’ the London Stock Exchange list of the 100 largest U.K. firms based on merket value of equity capital. These had 2 market value of £13,364m. compared with a market value of £12,400m. for 1963's top 100. The next issue of the Week will list these firms together with a commentary.