Enemies of Free Enterprise

A few months ago a customer walked into Horace Mendelsohn's auto-accessories shop in Stockport, near Manchester, England and bought two motorcycle tires, paying seven shillings, sixpence ($1.05) below the list price. Three days later, Cut-rater Mendelsohn learned that his "customer" was a private investigator for the British Motor Trade Association. He got a summons to appear before the association's Price Protection Committee on a charge of price cutting. The committee, a private court staffed with lawyers paid by the association, weighed Mendelsohn's case carefully, penalized him by putting his shop on the "Stop List." Thenceforth, no wholesalers who belonged to the Association could sell to Mendelsohn. Unless he could find a bootleg supplier, he would have to shutter his shop.

Mendelsohn joined the growing number of retailers who had run afoul of one of Britain's thriving, all-powerful monopolistic "price rings." In East Devon, when one of 60 bakers refused to go along and raise his bread price by a halfpenny, the others ganged up, threatened to have him put out of business. To a Birmingham grocer who cut the margarine price for old age pensioners and another in Cheshire who did the same with tea, went letters from wholesalers warning them to stop, else they would get no more supplies.

It was entirely legal. Today over 30% of British consumer spending goes for goods whose prices are artificially rigged by trade associations. Virtually unchallenged and unregulated by the government, they have become almost a government unto themselves. By swearing their members to secrecy, running their own "police" force and courts and assessing their own penalties against anyone who dares violate their hard and fast rules, they have built a web of monopoly which daily grows stronger.

By last week the steady inroads of these price-fixing monopolists on Britain's pocketbook had turned free enterprise into a popular rallying cry. "Who are the greatest enemies of private enterprise?" thundered Lord Beaverbrook's powerful Sunday Express. "Not the Socialists. Not the Communists. The deadliest enemies of private enterprise are the foolish men who damage and undermine it from within. The worst harm of all is inflicted by the irresponsible recklessness of price fixers."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.