The Age of Mergers 
109 
all these show the drift which has become a rush 
toward consolidation. 
These consolidations, existing and proposed, are 
to effect economies and to increase profits. The sub- 
sidiary companies of the old Standard Oil Company, 
which was dissolved in 1911 by decree of the Federal 
Supreme Court, have grown into a small group of 
billion-dollar companies. The New Jersey and Cali- 
fornia Standard Oil have each securities exceeding a 
billion in value, while those of the Indiana company 
are close to this sum, and the Standard of New York 
has risen to $660,000,000 in market value. The 
splitting up of the old company merely produced 
giant offspring, with dividends aggregating, during 
1928, nearly $220,000,000 for the thirty compo- 
nents. 
What will the governmental authorities do with 
all these lusty “bigger and better” mergers, which 
operate sometimes contrary to the spirit if not to the 
letter of the anti-trust laws? 
That depends largely on what they do with them- 
selves. No doubt holding companies are economi- 
cally valuable in simplifying the financial structures. 
They introduce the immensely valuable insurance fea- 
ture of diversification. The problem is: Can monop- 
olies and unreasonable restraints of trade be pre- 
vented while these modern aggregations of capital 
use their facilities to gather business statistics, guard 
against inflated inventories. standardize their prod- 
ucts, and arrive at price agreements that prevent 
losses formerly sustained by cutthroat competition ?