Cartels : challenge to a free world by Wendell Berge
"Cartels" by Wendell Berge is a nonfiction economic and legal treatise written in the mid-20th century. It argues that international cartels threaten free markets, technological progress, and democratic governance, drawing on U.S. antitrust investigations and wartime experience. Through cases spanning chemicals, metals, optics, and medicines, it shows how patent pooling, market division, and price-fixing distort trade, hobble innovation, and even abet totalitarian power, while advocating strong antitrust enforcement and public, not private,
oversight of any necessary international coordination. The opening of this treatise sets out the stakes: postwar prosperity and peace depend on defeating cartel power that throttles competition at home and abroad. The preface promises a document-based exposé drawn from Senate inquiries and antitrust cases, then Chapter 1 traces the shift from domestic trusts to international cartels, linking their price/output restraints and patent abuses to wartime shortages and to German militarism. Chapter 2 shows how secret private treaties undercut public foreign policy—citing the Dusseldorf accord between British and German industry—and urges vigorous Sherman Act enforcement and transparency, noting similar concerns rising in Britain and Canada. Chapter 3 argues that monopoly control of research cripples mobilization and progress, illustrating conflicts of loyalty (e.g., synthetic rubber and 100‑octane fuel), technology carve‑ups (Zeiss–Bausch & Lomb), and even quality degradation schemes (short‑life bulbs, proposals to adulterate plastics and pigments) while calling for public research access for smaller firms. Chapter 4 spotlights patents as the chief cartel weapon, from the glass-container licensing regime to tungsten-carbide price gouging and the suppression of fluorescent lighting. Chapter 5 turns to medicines, exposing insulin price-fixing and export carve‑ups that walled off Latin American markets, and Chapter 6 begins a case study of a synthetic‑hormone cartel (Schering, Ciba, Organon, Boehringer, Chimio) and its U.S. affiliates—already prosecuted—detailing research limits, blockade/blacklist evasion, propaganda‑minded labeling, and Schering’s global sales machinery, before the excerpt breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Berge, Wendell, 1903-1955 |
|---|---|
| Title | Cartels : challenge to a free world |
| Original Publication | Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1946. |
| Credits | Tim Lindell, Daniel Lowe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | HD: Social sciences: Economic history and conditions, Production |
| Subject | Trusts, Industrial |
| Subject | Monopolies |
| Subject | Restraint of trade |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78077 |
| Release Date | Mar 1, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5076 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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