110 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After

How to Make Mergers Safe?
President Hoover has provided a method for
making mergers safe, permitting gains to the public
and to investors while eliminating the abuses which
were prevalent in the first era of the trust. Briefly,
it is a method of trade conferences with the government
 which avail themselves of cobperation between
the agencies of the people and private concerns and
whole industries.
In his preélection speech at St. Louis, on November
 2, 1928, Mr. Hoover recounted at length how
this method had worked out as between the Department
 of Commerce and the various industries. He
recalled the agitation in Congress for laws to curb
the lumber industry, saying:
“In 1923, however, we created a series of committees
 among associations in the lumber industry,
at their request. In the course of a gradual extension
over five years we finally perfected a system for the
grading of lumber and for guaranteeing those grades
to the public, which is now carried out wholly by
the lumber industry itself. Consequently during the
last few years there has been no suggestion of such
legislation from Congress. The savings to the public
 in the elimination of waste and fraud have been
estimated by the industry as upwards of $250,000,
000 a year.
“This is a clear case where by coéperative methods
we have avoided the necessity of regulation, with
the bureaucracy and interferences that flow from it.