Cost as Standard for Price

Abstract

An act of Congress is an invocation of the judiciary. It is alike an appeal to the courts to subdue a new process to law and order and a body of general directions which are to be hammered into standards and rules. It takes years, a procession of cases from out of life, and a succession of judgments to assimilate a statute within the august corpus of the law. The time was when a bargain was a bargain, and that was legally the end of the matter. The ordinary course of buying and selling, if untainted by fraud and untouched by collusion, was a private affair and no fit subject for judicial inquiry. But a growing complexity in the marketing process has made private bargains a matter of concern to the mercantile community. The older line of manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer has been twisted into an intricate diagram. The manufacturer may sell through his own retail outlets; the retailer may take over the work of wholesaler or even of manufacturer; in a trend towards celerity of movement functions may become confused. In the marketing struggle between types of organization the chains and mail-order houses have prospered and the wholesaler and independent store have declined.