PREFACE

THIS Volume is intended to be more than a mere collection

of economic reprints. Such compilations have often been made; as for example in Dunbar's "Laws relating to Currency, Finance and Banking"; Rand's "Economic History"; and in the Reports of the United States Industrial Commission. This collection is planned for use specifically as a text-book; not merely as a handy volume for reference, or as a collection of original documents. It is not intended, however, to supplant, but rather to supplement, the standard treatises on the trust problem; and may readily be used in connection with Jenks's "Trust Problem," Ely's "Monopolies and Trusts," or Meade's "Trust Finance." It denotes a deliberate attempt at the application to the teaching of economics of the case system, so long successful in our law schools. With this end in view, each chapter is intended to illustrate a single, definite, typical phase of the general subject. The primary motive is to further the interests of sound economic teaching, with especial reference to the study of concrete problems of great public and private interest. A difficulty in the substitution of present-day social and economic studies for the good, old-fashioned, linguistic ones, or for the modern sciences, a difficulty especially peculiar to descriptive economics as differentiated from economic theory, has always been to secure data sufficiently, concrete, definite and convenient to form a basis for analysis, discussion and criticism. The lecture system has its advantages in stimulating interest and it is to be hoped arousing enthusiasm among students. But lectures alone entirely fail