tion was organized, with plans to establish a minimum scale of prices for composition and press work, to promote knowledge of costs and a uniform system of estimating, and to deal with other business problems.

A committee of the new organization, appointed to investigate the reason for differences in bids, made a report on the actual cost of printing which was a surprise to members. In 1895 a set of minimum prices for various types of work was adopted and widely distributed, in the hope of stabilizing prices. But the depression continued. In the winter of 1894-95, to make matters worse, the newspapers changed from hand to machine composition, thus swelling the number of unemployed compositors. A new flock of little shops sprang up to increase jobwork competition. Control of the members of the association was impossible. Although the price lists may have had some influence, the agreements were violated and price-cutting continued. In 1896 printers took a melancholy pleasure in looking at the price lists that they had hopefully agreed to only the year before. Long before the depression lightened late in the nineties, the Master Printers' Association had disappeared, its efforts at price maintenance a failure. The Typothetae had managed to keep together only a small organization which was perpetually in debt and unable to do effective work.14

When business finally improved, times seemed propitious for the master printers to better their competitive position. As it proved impossible to secure an agreement on prices within the Typothetae, leaders looked for some other practicable plan. The Board of Trade plan, which was proving effective in reducing price-cutting among master printers in a number of cities, offered a solution of the problem. In modified form it was adopted in Chicago in 1899 by eighteen large plants, all but one of which were members of the Typothetae. Through the new organization, the Master Printers' Association, an agreement was made on rates for large commercial work, based on reports of costs, and on a uniform system of estimating. All estimates were checked by the secretary, a full-time, paid officer, to see that specifications "Inland Printer, May, 1894-September, 1896; Minutes, Chicago Typothetae, 1895-99.

were uniform and that the standard method of estimating and the agreed prices were used. When a price had been checked, it became a minimum which was protected from under bidding by any other member. On certain periodicals already under contract, which were listed with the secretary, members were protected from underbidding for at least a 5 per cent range in price. No penalties were provided, however. Violations occurred on occasion, but the plan had considerable influence toward stabilizing on a higher level the prices on large commercial work.

The Master Printers' Association later broadened its work to more general educational efforts. Bulletins sent to every book and job printer in the city discussed competitive conditions, reported on average hour costs, and urged the trade to adopt cost finding systems and to follow the prices agreed upon by the Association. As an organization for price maintenance, however, the Association could no longer be successful. By 1906 the number of big establishments which could offer serious competition had increased until it was impossible to exert the control over large contracts that had been feasible earlier. In addition, although there were no penalties for violations of the agreement, the legality of such arrangements began to be questioned. This small group of important competitors during a period of prosperity found considerable success in price maintenance efforts. But as conditions changed their movement was supplanted by a new movement that was to promote scientific methods of cost-finding and by its educational program lay a firmer foundation for general advance in the industry.15

Efforts of the employing printers during this period to stabilize the industry by price agreements had little success. A new element that developed during this time, however, the union wage contract, had considerable effect in this direction. Wage agreements by 1896 established a wage scale and the eight-hour day for all machine composition on the newspapers and in leading job houses in Chicago. In 1895 the edition bookbinders, at that time a group of highly skilled and well-organized hand-workers, American Printer, May, 1900, p. 148; Inland Printer, December, 1899, p. 401; March, 1900, p. 845; November, 1900, p. 324; January, 1904, p. 586; August, 1906, p. 662.

15

secured an agreement from the employing bookbinders, who welcomed a uniform wage scale in their efforts to reduce the pricecutting that was ravaging the industry. Whatever tended to make costs plain, they thought, would tend to reduce undercutting of prices.16 Until the coming in of machines in the edition shops weakened union control over the labor supply, this agreement and a similar one that followed it were helpful.

Another union controlled the supply of blankbook-binders with some effectiveness at this time, and was able to enforce a uniform wage scale. The Chicago Typothetae finally made a contract with this union, in 1903, and agreed to enforce the wage scale uniformly in the plants of all members. The immediate appointment of a committee to arrange a scale of prices for blankbooks indicates what was the chief interest of the employers in this agreement." From 1901 to 1904, in fact, the Chicago Typothetae made agreements with all the local printing trade unions. In this period of rising prices, wage increases were easily met, and uniform wage scales and arbitration agreements seemed advantageous to all as a stabilizing force. In the depression that followed, however, the system of agreements broke down under a series of labor difficulties, and the wage standards with their stabilizing influence were less generally upheld.

The early efforts to improve competitive conditions in the industry had been for the most part attempts to maintain prices by agreement. Such agreements had a limited success in the prosperous years after the Civil War, failed completely in the depression of the nineties when tried on a broad scale, and had some success again with a small group of competitors in 1899 and the favorable years that followed. But in an industry with so great a variety of unstandardized products and so many producers, price agreements proved of very limited utility. They could not withstand the strain of poor times when they were most needed, nor could they reach the mass of printers.

While experience was showing how narrow were the possibilities of price agreements, appreciation of the importance of

16 American Bookbinder, November, 1895, p. 101; January, 1896, p. 165.

17

Minutes, Chicago Typothetae, January 26, 1903; April 30, 1903.

1849, then rising in the fifties, but again falling to substantially the 1849 level in 1861. The third period (1860-1900) corresponds with the falling general price period extending from 1865 to 1897; and the fourth (1900-1920) corresponds with the upward trend of general wholesale prices from 1897 to 1920.

But there is no uniform correlation between the general price level and the purchasing power of farm products. In the first period, general prices rose, while the purchasing power of farm products showed no marked upward or downward trend. In the second period, the general price trend was downward, while the purchasing power trend of farm products was strongly upward. In the third period, the general-price trend was heavily downward, while the purchasing-power trend was slightly upward. In the last period, the trend in both series was markedly upward. Thus we have inverse correlation in the second and third periods and direct correlation in the last period.

The upward trend of the purchasing power of farm products for a hundred years is remarkable and indeed surprising. Without statistical evidence to the contrary, it would probably be assumed by most well-informed persons that the purchasing power of farm products declined from 1865 to 1890. This was the period in which the railroads were opening up enormous tracts of virgin land made free by the homestead law of 1862. But it was also the period which saw a development of the factory system on a stupendous scale. The flood of farm products was fully matched by an outpouring of manufactured goods. Had it not been for the expanding railroad net and the free land rapidly settled upon, this period would no doubt have witnessed an enormous increase in the purchasing power of farm products. Instead, the flood of free land counteracted the development of machine methods of manufacturing and kept the purchasing power of farm products nearly stationary. When the free land was gone, the continuous development of large-scale production and improved processes of manufacture brought about a rapid rise in the purchasing power of farm products.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, it is not surprising that the purchasing power of farm products was exceed