with it.  A large oil-refining corporation that sells most of the product may by various methods succeed in driving out the competitors who would buy the crude oil.  It thus becomes practically the only outlet for the oil product, and the owners of the land thus must share their ownership with the buying monopoly by accepting, within certain limits, the price it fixes.  The Hudson Bay Company, dealing in furs, had practically this sort of power in North America.  Many instances can be found, yet, relatively to the selling monopolies, those of the buying kind are rare.

A producing monopoly is one controlling the manufacture or the source of supply of an article; a trading monopoly is one controlling the avenues of commerce between the source and the consumers.

Monopolies are lasting or temporary, according to the duration of control.  By far the larger number are of the temporary sort, because high prices strongly stimulate efforts to develop other sources of supply.  Yet the average profits of a monopoly may be large throughout a succession of periods of high and low prices.

Monopolies are general or local, according to the extent of territory where their power is felt.  At its maximum where transportation and other costs most effectually shut out competition, monopoly power shades off to zero on the border-line of competitive territory.  The frequent use of the adjectives partial, limited, and virtual are implied but usually superfluous recognitions of the relative character of monopoly.

Sec. 2. #Political sources of monopoly.# Monopoly gets its power from various sources.  A political monopoly derives its power of control from a special grant from the government, forbidding others to engage in that business.  The typical political monopoly is that conferred by a crown patent bestowing the exclusive right to carry on a certain business.  A second kind is that conferred by a patent for invention, or the copyright on books, the object of which is to stimulate invention, research, and writing by giving the full control and protection of the government to the inventor and the writer or their assignees.  In this case the privilege is socially earned by the monopolist; it is not gotten for nothing.  Moreover, the patent, being limited in time, expires and becomes a social possession.  A third kind is a governmental monopoly for purposes of revenue.  In France and Japan the governments control the tobacco trade, and the high price charged for tobacco makes this monopoly yield large revenues.  A fourth kind is that derived from franchises for public service corporations, such as those supplying electricity, gas and water.  These franchises are granted to private capitalists to induce them to invest capital in enterprises that are helpful to the community.