(in a narrower or wider sense) even as applied to a single enterprise that has grown to be monopolistic.  A “trust” in the legal sense of a form of organization, and “combinations” as above defined, might have no monopoly power whatever; whereas a monopoly may be possessed by an individual owner (e.g., of a patent right, railroad, waterworks plant), or by a single corporation that has simply grown monopolistic without the trust form of organization or without combination.

Now it is evident that the real problem is that of monopoly, however attained.  Monopoly may be defined as such a degree of control over the supply of goods in a given market that a net gain will result if a portion is withheld.[3] In accord with growing and now dominant usage it is well to observe the following meanings in our discussion. “Combination" is a term referring particularly to one method by which monopolies are formed. “Trust," in the now popular sense, is best limited to an industrial, primarily manufacturing, enterprise or group of enterprises, with some degree of monopoly power due not to a “special franchise” giving the use of streets and highways and the right of eminent domain, nor to a single patent, but to a group of favoring technical, financial, and economic conditions.  The trust may consist of a single establishment; or of a group of establishments separately operated but united in a “pool” to divide output, territory, or earnings; or of such a group held together by a holding company, or combined into one corporation.  Public utility is the name of special franchise enterprises of the kind just mentioned, including, in the broad sense, railroads and local utilities such as street railways, gas, water, and electric light-plants.

Sec. 5. #Industrial monopoly and fostering conditions.# The problem of monopoly is probably as old as markets.  From the first coming together of groups of men to trade there were doubtless efforts made by some individuals and groups of traders to manipulate conditions so as to get higher prices than they could get in a free and open market.[4] There are traces of these practices in ancient times, and the history of the Middle Ages is full of evidences both of monopolistic practices and of the efforts to prevent or control them.

If this fact is borne in mind it may help us to distinguish in thought four features of enterprise that are readily and constantly confused, viz:  large individual capital, large production, corporate organization, and monopoly.[5] Evidently any one of these features may appear without the other; e.g., a person of large aggregate capital may have his investments distributed among a large number of small enterprises, such as farms, without a trace of corporate organization or monopoly, and numerous examples could be given of large production, or of corporate organization, or of monopoly without one or more of the other features.