-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Emergence of Oligopoly Alfred S. Eichner The John Hopkins Press�1968 Baltimore & London LCCN 74-7930 388 pps. � First Edition � Out-of-print also available; Greenwood Publishing Group(1978); ISBN: 0313205981 ----- 1:: THE LARGER FRAMEWORK BETWEEN 1895 and 1907 the American economy experienced a momentous organizational convulsion. It was not only that the pace of merger activity increased, that over this thirteen-year period an average of 266 firms a year were absorbed competitors.[1] Much more important was the fact that the surviving enterprises were of a radically different nature. Whereas, before, scores of firms had competed somewhat independently in these various industries, now in many cases a single firm controlled a major share of the market. In 60 per cent of the consolidations that took place between 1895 and 1904, a single large corporation gained control of at least 62.5 per cent of its industry's market as measured by capitalization. And in another 10 per cent of the consolidations it gained control of 42.5-62.5 per cent.[2] By 1904, it was estimated, 318 corporations owned 40 per cent of all manufacturing assets.[3] This Corporate Revolution, as it has been termed, marked the birth of what Adolph A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means later described as "the modem corporation."[4] From this period of consolidation came many of the large corporations that today play such an important role in the American economy. Of the 100 largest corporations in 1955, 20 were born in consolidation during this period; another 8 were the court-ordered offspring of the pre-1895 Standard Oil trust which had provided the model for the Corporate Revolution.[5] >From this Corporate Revolution have flowed many important political and social consequences, from the "trust busting" of the Progressive era to today's organization man. The economic consequences, though not always so clearly recognized, have been at least equally by important. In many an industry, including the most important ones, the Corporate Revolution spelled an end to competition, at least as economists have defined the term.[6] Instead were created first monopoly, and then, later and more enduringly, oligopoly. It is important to understand this history because it reveals how the industrial structure of the American economy has evolved in the past, posing a challenge to both the economic theorist and the national policy-maker. The large bureaucratic corporation, or "megacorp "[7] that emerged from the Corporate Revolution to dominate nearly every oligopolistic industry was a quite different social institution from its predecessor, Alfred Marshall's representative firm.[8] It was no longer subject to the same life-and-deatb cycle which had previously applied to business firms. A professional, self-perpetuating management and an almost impregnable market position assured the megacorp of virtually continual existence, and this in turn forced the megacorp's executive group to base its decisions increasingly on longer-run considerations. But it was not only along the time axis that the previous human limitations on a firm's growth were transcended. The reorganization of production and new management techniques made it possible for the megacorp to expand to any size it might wish without suffering diseconomies of scale, and this in turn reinforced the megacorp's already considerable market power. For the economic theorist the challenge posed was to adapt the traditional models of market bebavior to the new institutional form; to the national policy-maker it was to see that a satisfactory degree of social control was maintained. That neither has met the challenge with complete success may well reflect a failure to understand the process by which oligopoly emerged from the Corporate Revolution. While students of the 1895-1907 period do not deny that something approximating a Corporate Revolution did, in fact, occur, they are quite divided over its causes. The simplest explanation comes from those who wistfully look back to the days when competition was the general rule, even in key industries. "Few of our gigantic corporations," Henry Simons wrote, "can be defended on the ground that their present size is necessary to reasonably full exploitation of production economies; their existence is to be explained in terms of opportunities for promoter profits, personal ambitions of industrial and financial 'Napoleons,' and the advantages of monopoly power."[9] This view had earlier found support from a one-time Princeton University professor, who gave this explanation for the Corporate Revolution: "It is not competition that has done that; it is illicit competition." Added Woodrow Wilson, "It is competition of the kind that the law ought to stop, and can stop-this crushing of the little man."[10] The theory that the Corporate Revolution was caused by the machinations of evil, ambitious, and money-mad men suffers, however, from a major defect. Such men have never been in short supply throughout history. Why, in the years between 1895 and 1907, should they suddenly have been capable of transforming the structure of the American economy? The answer, in part, has been supplied by those who trace the Corporate Revolution to the growth and maturation of the American capital markets. "Our theory," George Stigler has written, ... is that mergers for monopoly are profitable under easy assumptions that were surely fulfilled in many industries well before the mergers occurred. The only persuasive reason I have found for their late occurrence is the development of the modem corporation and the modern capital market. In a regime of individual proprietorships and partnerships, the capital requirements were a major obstacle to buying up the firms in an industry.... I am inclined to place considerable weight upon one . . . advantage of merger: it permitted a capitalization of prospective monopoly profits and a distribution of a portion of these capitalized profits to a professional promoter. The merger enabled a Morgan or Moore to enter a new and lucrative industry: the production of monopolies.[11] At first glance, the empirical data seem to bear out this contention. By 1895, the New York Stock Exchange "had reached a sufficiently advanced stage of development to be capable of playing an important role in the [subsequent] merger movement. The quantitative and qualitative growth of the New York Stock Exchange from the early 1880's to the late 1890's was appreciable and was apparently based largely on factors other than the financing of mergers."[12] Moreover, a large proportion of the corporate consolidations later had stocks listed by an organized capital market. Of the various consolidations which took place between 1897 and 1902, 68.4 per cent were listed on the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Baltimore exchanges.[13] To connect the growth of the stock market with the Corporate Revolution, however, poses the nearly impossible task of separating cause and effect. One group of authors, for example, has attributed the growth of the stock market, or at least the market for industrial securities, to the consolidation movement .[14] Even if this view is not accepted, it may well be that the growth of the capital market was a necessary precondition for, but not necessarily the primary cause of, the Corporate Revolution. And since it is difficult to believe that the strong-willed, independent owners of the many businesses that were consolidated agreed to merge their firms simply to enable promoters to foist overvalued stock on the public, one is inclined to look for that primary cause elsewhere. One possibility frequently suggested is that economies of scale were growing more rapidly at this time than was the market, making economically feasible larger firms relative to the market. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., for example, has pointed out the advantages which new marketing arrangements and vertical integration, together with the possibility of large-scale production, offered certain firms. "These pioneers in high volume manufacturing and distribution of both perishable and relatively complex durable goods," be has written, "demonstrated the clear economies of scale. They provided obvious models for manufacturers who had until then found the existing wholesale network quite satisfactory."[15] While Chandler distinguishes the role played by economies of scale in the growth of large firms before 1895 from that which they played during the subsequent Great Merger Movement-economies of scale in his view being only a necessary precondition for, but not a sufficient cause of, the latter phenomenon-others, especially defenders of the giant enterprises thus created, have seen the need to exploit the advantages of greater size as creating the underlying pressure for consolidation throughout the entire period. As Nelson has noted, however, the data are inadequate to determine the precise role played by economies of scale.[16] What little evidence there is disputes the view that economies of scale were the precipitating factor in the Corporate Revolution, though they may, as Chandler suggests, have been a necessary precondition. Nelson himself cites the great diversity of industries involved in the Corporate Revolution. "It is hard to believe," he concludes, "that such a variety of technological developments as would be needed to bring production economies of scale to these diverse industries could have converged in the same short period of time."[17] And although Donald Dewey, in analyzing the data on average plant size from 1869 to 1909, found a significant increase during this period, he could find no evidence of an acceleration in the trend after 1895 or shortly before. As for the specific role played by new marketing arrangements and the other means of achieving economies of vertical integration, it would appear that in many cases, as Chandler himself indicates,[18] they came into being only after an industry had already been consolidated. To the extent that this was the case, the creation of new distribution networks was a result rather than a cause of the Corporate Revolution. Another version of the above argument cites the completion of the national railroad network at this time. This development, it is held by Jesse Markham, increased the market area of the typical firm and enabled it to take advantage of potential economies of scale previously unrealizable. ". . . It can be crudely estimated," he says, "that the area served by the average manufacturing establishment in 1900 was about 3.4 times as large as it was in 1882."[19] Joe S. Bain also links the Corporate Revolution to railroad development, but emphasizes a somewhat different effect. "Competition," he says, was intensified by the continuing growth of the railroad systems, which tended to bring all of the principal firms together in direct competition for a single national market. The economy was passing from a situation where a fairly large number of small manufacturers sold their products, each in a limited local market somewhat protected by high costs of transportation, to a situation where a few large firms vied among themselves for sales in a single market, in the new environment, price competition was potentially ruinous to all.[20] According to Nelson,[21] industries with high transport costs were, in fact, the ones mainly involved in mergers and consolidations. Moreover, the number of miles of railroad track in America increased substantially from 1882 to 1916, while the cost of rail transportation declined steadily. However, as Nelson also points out,[22] at the time of the Corporate Revolution there was no sharp acceleration in the trend toward increased railroad trackage and falling freight rates. More important, much of the increased railroad mileage represented not an extension of the railroad network but an intensification of it-the double-tracking, for example, of an already existing line. Except in the non-industrial Southwest and Northwest, the era of railroad pioneering had come to an end at least a decade before the Corporate Revolution. The Bain version of the railroad development hypothesis finds little support in the empirical data as well. For Nelson discovered that, in the case of many of the industries consolidated, plants were already concentrated within a narrow geographical area.[23] Therefore, the completion of the national railroad network could not have led to ruinous competition by bringing previously separated local markets together in one large national market, because the markets had not previously been separated by high transport costs. The Bain hypothesis does touch on another explanation of the Corporate Revolution, however, one that is frequently advanced by businessmen or the defenders of consolidation. "In the United States as elsewhere," say Seager and Gulick, the combination movement has resulted from the efforts of businessmen to throw off the restraints and avoid the wastes of unregulated competition. It is one of our conclusions that even after all of the economies of largescale production have been realized, there remain wastes and losses that can be avoided only through the exercise of sufficient control over output to secure the highest attainable regularity in the operation of plants. The combination movement is therefore a natural and indeed inevitable business development, which is not in and of itself opposed to the public business.[24] This argument, that businessmen agreed to consolidation in order to avoid ruinous competition, keep production levels steady, and maintain reasonable profit margins, has much in common with the explanation, rhetoric aside, that the consolidation movement was fostered by the desire for monopoly profits. Ignoring for the moment the question of whether or not monopoly results in certain economies, one should realize that the only difference between these two views is their difference of opinion as to what constitutes a "reasonable" profit. But whether the objective was, in fact, a "reasonable" or a "monopoly" profit, it was attained in much the same way-that is, by gaining control over an industry. The evidence to support this thesis, that the Corporate Revolution was caused primarily by the desire to avoid "ruinous" competition, is quite substantial, if only on the basis of the actual results. As already noted,[25] a substantial percentage of the consolidations, if market control was actually the motive behind them, achieved their objective. But this still does not solve the problem of timing. Like the evil-men explanation, which it closely resembles, the market-control hypothesis does not explain why businessmen should have become more highly motivated by this desire in 1895 than in previous times, or even why they should have been more successful in satisfying it. The ruinous-competition explanation for the Corporate Revolution has sometimes been linked to the decline-of-growth argument, namely, that the American economy at the end of the nineteenth century experienced a fall in its rate of growth and that the slackened demand led to ruinous competition among firms fighting for their former share in a reduced market. As Myron Watkins has explained: The opening of a new and wider market involves pioneering costs which call for the compact association of producers. But once a market has been opened by the joint action of the associated producers, its development attracts the ambition and varied talents of many producers, the prize for successful competition being high. The third and final phase is reached when the limit of the expansion of a given market has been touched, and the amount and character of its consumption have become settled and known. The gains from initiative and ingenuity are then no longer sufficient to bold producers upon an independent course, and they fall in together for their common enrichment at the expense of consumers .[26] Nelson's empirical study, however, throws great doubt on this explanation. Analyzing the data on production trends, Nelson found that the Corporate Revolution took place at a time of increasing growth rather than of decline. In fact, he discovered a high correlation between growth and merger, not only for the turn-of-tbe-century period, but also for subsequent periods of high merger activity. He also found that those industries which experienced consolidation or merger generally had higher growth rates than did the economy as a whole.[27] A final economic explanation for the Corporate Revolution points to the high American tariffs in effect at this time. From 1883 to 1897, Republican-controlled Congresses steadily revised American tariffs upward, and they remained at a high plateau until the Underwood Tariff of 1913. For many years the belief was widely held that "the tariff is the mother of trusts."[28] Nelson attempts to dispose of this explanation by citing a similar British merger movement, also at the turn of the century, which, since Great Britain at this time was still deeply committed to a policy of free trade, occurred without the protection of tariffs.[29] Even disregarding Nelson's argument,[30] the question of timing still remains. Why would high tariffs not have induced a wave of industrial consolidations before 1895? Two non-economic factors have also been cited as explanations for the Corporate Revolution. One of these was the change in corporate law which took place in the late 1880's. Before then, corporations were generally prohibited by common law from owning shares in other corporations, a prohibition which largely precluded the possibility of using the holding company as a means of effecting industrial consolidation. Then, in 1888, New Jersey enacted a new law permitting corporations chartered in that state to purchase stock in other corporations. Dewey, however, contends that this was no more than a contributing factor to the Corporate Revolution. Even before 1888, he says, other states conferred the same privilege on corporations or could do so by simple legislative enactment.[31] The second non-economic explanation for the Corporate Revolution points to the changing legal attitude toward cartels and other forms of industry price control. The Corporate Revolution erupted, it is held, when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1898 ruled in the Addyston Pipe & Steel case that cartel agreements were illegal under the Sherman Act. With this method of avoiding ruinous competition closed to them, businessmen were forced to turn to consolidation as the only alternative. "This contention has its grain of truth," notes Dewey. "The condemnation of a cartel in the Addyston Pipe case ... coincided with the start of the eighteen-month period that saw merger activity reach its peak, and at least two major consolidations�the mergers creating the United States Pipe and Foundry Company and the United Shoe Machinery Company-were precipitated by this decision, the promoters having previously inclined to some less irrevocable arrangement. "[32] But, as Nelson points out, the Corporate Revolution had already begun, even before the Addyston Pipe decision was announced. Moreover, in Great Britain, where a similar merger movement was occurring, British courts were simultaneously declaring that cartel agreements were not necessarily illegal, even if they were unenforceable in a court of law.[33] Thus, of the numerous explanations that have been offered for the great merger movement in American industry at the turn of the century, none seems wholly adequate.[34] The evidence in support of any one of the explanations is, at best, inconclusive. Clearly, there is need for a better understanding of what actually happened during this critical phase of American economic development. This monograph represents the beginning of an effort to provide that better understanding. It will attempt to place the events occurring between 1895 and 1907 in a larger historical context, that of the long-run evolution of the structure of American industry. It will do so by re-examining the historical evidence from the period as it pertains to a single industry, sugar refining, in light of present economic theory. Too often this evidence has been framed in moralistic terms, either decrying or defending the events reported. But the time has long since passed when such an approach serves any useful purpose. Like it or not, the Corporate Revolution is a fact of our historical experience, the precursor of today's economic world. The time has now come to try to understand that revolution with the aid of modem economic analysis. Recent developments in economic theory, especially in the field of industrial organization, provide the guide. The pre-conditions of competition, the behavior of cartels, the importance of barriers to entry, and other aspects of industrial organization are much better understood now than when the Corporate Revolution was actually taking place. The older historical evidence, meanwhile, stripped of its moralistic overtones, supplies the raw data. This evidence, much of which has been ignored previously, is to be found in business records, government documents, court papers, trade journals, newspaper accounts, and biographical materials. Together, these two elements�recent economic theory and the older historical evidence�make possible a comprehensive explanation of the Corporate Revolution, such as the one presented below. *** The changes that have occurred in the structure of the American economy over time, the most dramatic of which was the Corporate Revolution itself, can best be understood in terms of a four-stage model. Each of the last three stages, while evolving directly out of the previous stage, has nonetheless, like the first stage, been characterized by a unique market structure. The number of competing firms, the importance of barriers to entry, and the extent of product differentiation are the factors that have determined the nature of each typical market structure, and since these are the factors that determine which theoretical model of pricing behavior is applicable in any given situation, they also indicate the nature of the competitive processes that have been at work during each successive stage.[35] The exogenous force-that is, the engine of change throughout-has been technological progress, each stage representing the adaptive response of market structure to the evolving technical basis of economic activity. But technological progress as the engine of change should not be thought of as simply the effect of new production methods on an industry's cost structure. It must be viewed in the larger sense of being the factor which historically has made possible entirely new industries, rising output per worker, reduced transportation and communications barriers, and more complex social organization-these developments both influencing and in turn influenced by the nature of demand in a subtle interplay of forces.[36] It is only in this broader sense that technological progress may be said to be the independent variable in the four-stage process described below.[37] The first of the four stages was the initial Period of Imperfect Competition. This was essentially a preindustrial stage during which handicraft techniques largely prevailed in the manufacturing sector�insofar as there was a manufacturing sector. The stage lasted from the time of the first colonial settlements in this country until the triumph of the factory system sometime during the two decades preceding the Civil War. While the precise timing varied in each industry, a useful bench mark was that parallel technological achievement, the transportation revolution, which by creating a vast domestic market both was stimulated by and in turn stimulated large-scale manufacturing. The typical market structure during this initial Period of Imperfect Competition reflected the conditions that underlie the theory of monopolistic competition today. Production was generally carried out by firms which, if not individually owned proprietorships, were at most only two- or three-man partnerships. Entry into any particular field, moreover, was moderately easy, being limited primarily by the skill required to perform the various handicraft operations and secondarily by the working capital needed to keep the business solvent. The distinguishing characteristic of the period, however, was the lack of uniformity among the goods produced. Because of the handicraft techniques employed, the quality of the product varied both among firms and even within the same firm over time. This gave rise to a product differentiation not unlike that achieved in more recent times by advertising and other forms of sales promotion. Each firm became known for the particular quality of its own product and the extent to which that quality varied. This product differentiation, together with the regional segmentation of markets, in turn provided the firm with partial protection against the forces of competition, thereby assuring some degree of stability and security. The second stage in the development of industrial organization was the Golden Age of Competition, so called because of the tendency of so many persons in later years to look back on it with nostalgia. The first phase of this stage represented the culmination of a series of striking technological innovations, the effect of which was to make possible large-scale, low-cost production of manufactured goods. In addition, the new mechanical techniques, together with improved measuring devices, made it possible for the first time to turn out articles of uniform quality. The interaction of these developments with the transportation revolution and the creation of a vast domestic market has already been touched on. Together they led to an unprecedented expansion of manufacturing activity, variously timed in individual industries but most generally occurring in the years immediately after the return of prosperity in 1843.[38] Two groups of entrepreneurs rushed to take advantage of the resulting opportunities: those who among the older artisan group were able to adapt to the new mechanical techniques and those who among the commercial classes were willing to risk their capital in less liquid enterprises. The former brought with them a tradition of workmanship, the latter the habits of commodity dealing. The characteristic business spirit of the period derived from both sources, producing a condition similar to that underlying the model of perfect competition later developed by economists. The large number of separate enterprises created to take advantage of the rapidly expanding market meant that no one firm could hope to influence the market by its actions alone. Technological improvements meanwhile created a degree of product homogeneity dictating the same type of independent pricing which had long characterized commodity markets. Each firm was forced to take the industry price as given and to seek to maximize its net revenue by varying output-even if from time to time it might bring about a change in that very industry price through its testing.. of the market. The countervailing power exercised by brokers, commission merchants, and wholesale dealers served to keep the new manufacturing markets "honest," a true barometer of shortrun supply-and-demand forces. In the long-run the still-relative freedom of entry-absolute capital requirements had increased but the wealth of the country had increased even more-performed the same function. Finally, the drive on the part of at least some individuals to continually improve both the product and the way in which it was manufactured meant that those who failed to adopt the new techniques found themselves at an increasing disadvantage-even if this disadvantage was not always immediately apparent. The Golden Age of Competition, however, like many another heroic era, contained within it the elements of its own destruction. The same force of technology which so greatly reduced the costs of production and made it possible to turn out goods of uniform quality in large numbers also required a substantial investment in fixed assets, thereby making the capital-output ratio significantly high. This meant that whenever the demand for a firm's product fell, it was under considerable economic pressure to try to expand its sales by cutting its price and in this way spread its overhead costs over a larger volume. As long as the revenue received more than covered the variable or "out-of-pocket" costs, it was to the advantage of the individual firm to shade its price in this manner-even if, as a result, the industry price fell below long-run average total costs. In the long period of prosperity that lasted through the Civil War and on into the second term of the Grant administration, this proclivity toward price cutting posed no serious problem. The times of falling or stagnant demand, when they occurred, were relatively brief and soon forgotten in the subsequent further expansion of the economy. But in the years after the Panic of 1873�though here again the precise date varied for each industry-secular conditions changed. The times of falling or stagnant demand were now much more frequent .[39] Equally important, the forces of supply-that is, the ability of new or existing firms to increase production-proved more vigorous than those of demand. Manufacturing firms no longer found it unusual to be forced for considerable periods of time to sell their output at prices below their long-run average total costs. This was particularly true of the marginal firms, those enterprises which had been less willing to modernize their plants during the earlier period of prosperity. For these firms there ensued a desperate struggle for survival, and in the process of that struggle they significantly influenced industry price levels. Somehow a few of them managed to hang on, shutting down when the price fell below a certain point but starting up again whenever it rose sufficiently to cover their out-of-pocket expenses. The result was to keep the industry price from reaching much higher than the average variable costs of the marginal firms. While a few of the more efficient enterprises could nonetheless earn an adequate return, the majority of firms could not .[40] For the owner-entrepreneurs associated with these enterprises it was an entirely unsatisfactory state of affairs. In the long run, unable to cover their total costs, they faced probable economic extinction. The loss of both their capital and the social position which that capital afforded them was too great a blow to accept, and so these businessmen resolved to do something about their plight. The years from 1873 to 1895, the second phase of the Golden Age of Competition, thus constituted a period of transition presaging the Corporate Revolution as those who had invested their capital in manufacturing assets sought in various ways to mitigate the expropriating effects of competition. The period as a whole was one of instability, for the ad hoc solutions that businessmen devised to cope with the situation inevitably failed to solve the underlying problem of excess supply relative to the demand. In most cases the first response of the manufacturing firms was to agree among themselves not to sell below a certain price or produce in excess of a given quantity. But like all such agreements heretofore, they were soon violated, sometimes even before they could be put into effect.[41] The advantages of cutting the price were so great and the ability to police the agreements so limited that this result was all but inevitable-and the knowledge that the agreements would soon be violated was itself a factor contributing to their abrogation. While these cartel arrangements gradually grew more sophisticated with the creation of pools and common sales agencies, they nonetheless continued to suffer from a generally fatal defect: the agreements, obviously designed to suppress competition, were unenforceable in a court of law. Thwarted along these lines, businessmen turned to legal and extralegal alternatives. In some cases they simply sought additional tariff protection or even export subsidies. In others they tried to enlist the support of politicians and government officials for whatever scheme promised to bring relief from competition-and in the process helped set the tone for what has come to be known as the Gilded Age of Politics. Even so, in most cases the only real alternative was a more furious struggle for survival, the tactics employed becoming less restrained as the contest itself became more desperate.[42] While instability was the general rule, the period was also one during which the solution to the problem of how to mitigate the effects of competition was gradually being worked out as a result of the cumulative experience in a few key industries. Even before 1873 the firms active in anthracite coal mining learned that control over transportation could be used to obtain control over the entry of new firms into the industry and thus to provide a check on competition from without.[43] Earlier, Cornelius Vanderbilt and the organizers of the Western Union Company had demonstrated that the exchange of stock was an effective means of gaining control over the firms already in the industry and thus of assuring a check on competition from within.[44] The Standard Oil Company, under the direction of John D. Rockefeller, then combined both these lessons to achieve an unprecedented degree of control over prices in the petroleum industry. With low-cost methods of production and railroad rebates providing the Standard Oil Company with an unmatchable advantage, rival refiners were left with the choice of either selling out to the Rockefeller group-generally for stock but, if they insisted, for cashor facing competitive ruin.[45] The importance of the Standard Oil example was not only the success it achieved on so large a scale but, even more important, the new legal device it created for controlling the various properties acquired. That new legal device was the trust form of business organization. It consisted of a group of trustees, the functional equivalent of a board of directors, in whom the stock of different corporations could be vested, giving the trustees absolute control over the management of the properties. In return for handing over their stock to the trustees, the shareholders in the various companies received trust certificates, the functional equivalent of common shares. This arrangement, besides making it possible to get around the common law prohibition on holding companies, enabled the very existence of the trust to remain a secret, since, unlike a corporation, the trust did not have to obtain a state charter.[46] In the late 1880's, as knowledgeable businessmen gradually became aware of the Standard Oil trust's formation, a number of other industries were quick to follow petroleum's example. The certificates of these trusts, traded in the New York Stock Exchange's unlisted department, created the first significant market for industrial securities in this country.[47] --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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