ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: American big companies and the Federal Trade Commission
Author: Rosado Cubero Ana Isabel
The internalization of market transactions was the strategy of the majority of American companies at the end of the nineteenth century in order to increase the productivity and reduced the costs. Until 1880 the biggest American firms internalized suppliers of inputs and since 1890 included distribution of consumer goods in the United States, at the same time, the builders of the new retailing enterprises amassed impressive fortunes. As a result the problem of trust became a moral issue, supported by the fact that society wealth has been transferred from customers (middle class) to richest men around the country. In this paper we tried to shade light about the economic arguments in order to restrain the power of big American companies. The debate was focused on monopoly prevention versus monopoly control. These theoretical arguments could be considered as the prelude of American antitrust, in fact, Jenks and Clark mixed diverse economic conceptions as economies of scale, market power, abuse, control of raw materials, etc. with the intention to explain all companies’ behaviour under one analytical framework worthwhile for any kind of business, industries, distribution companies and so on. Ely's early and continued insistence upon the fact that mere size does not give sufficient advantage to be the basis of a lasting monopoly, and that where there is such monopoly there must be some definite source of monopoly power. Clark's thesis was the only power for evil possessed by most of the trusts was the power of predatory competition. Companies, never agreed with state control, counter-attacked using their own arguments; being George Gunton the most important economist on their side.
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