12 Decr 1801

Maximum

Beginning

4

The effect of a combination is rather to fix prices, than to urge them on at an

indefinitely encreasing rate. In the case of a combination, it is but natural

that they should be /the rate /mark/ at which they are/ fixed by it, /should be/

at too high a rate /mark/: but at that too high rate /mark at any rate/ they are

fixed. It is by competition the very reverse of combination that prices are

spurred up to a continually encreasing height. While the price is as yet no

higher than a double price, dealers crowd in upon a farmer to buy it at that

double price cash apprehending that if he does not now submitt to get it at so

high a price, he will he knows not how soon not be able to get it at less than a

treble price. The farmer observing this eagerness, and inferring /looking to/ a

general and proportionally encreasing scarcity as the cause of it, rises

accordingly in his demand. Why should he not? if he foregoes his share in the

profit, he will but throw it entire into the hands of his {more prudent and

determined} neighbours. If combination were /had been/ the cause, there must

have been an uninterrupted chain of prices successively fixed by it, with a

convention of farmers or corndealers or farmers and corndealers continually

sitting and setting illegal assizes of corn with as much regularity as the legal

assizes are set in the case of

bread.