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 govern- 
ment 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 Novem- 
ber 2, 1928, Mr. Hoover recounted at length how 
this method had worked out as between the Depart- 
ment 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 com- 
mittees 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 pub- 
lic 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.