112 The Stock Market Crash—And After
cutting. The Capper-Volstead Act empowers agricultural
 associations to fix prices, restrict output, and
limit trading territory. Leading court decisions indicate
 that, should Congress see fit to make reasonable
 price agreements legal, the courts would uphold
them.

Output Needs Controlling
In two basic industries, namely, coal and oil, the
need is acute for authority to form agreements in
order to control production and marketing and thus
prevent the enormous wastes due to overinvestment,
overproduction, collapse of prices followed by shutting
 down of plants, wage reductions, and severe
unemployment.
On the other hand, it is axiomatic that any modification
 of the anti-trust laws should provide for
public supervision and control to prevent great consolidated
 enterprises from setting unreasonable
monopoly prices. Reasonable economy requires that
the extraction of petroleum from the ground should
be carried on in each producing area by an absolute
monopoly instead of by competing companies as at
present. Whether petroleum extraction is carried on
as a government monopoly or a private monopoly
subject to public control, the consumer of gasoline,
and the hundreds of petroleum products must be
protected. Careful estimates must be made of reasonable
 requirements of consumers of these products
and only that quantity of crude petroleum should be
brought to the surface, which will meet those reason-