When prices or charges are made high enough to provide returns on fictitious capital, the consumer is treated unjustly. As we have shown more than once, the consumer cannot rightfully be required to pay for the products of a monopoly at a greater rate than is necessary to provide the competitive rate of interest on capital in the average conditions of efficiency. If some concerns are able to sell at this price, and still obtain surplus gains, they have a right thereto on account of their exceptional productivity. But the capital upon which a monopolistic concern has a claim to the prevailing rate of interest, is genuine capital: that is, the actual investment as interpreted above, not an inflated capitalisation. The consumers may justly be required to pay for the use and benefit of actual productive goods; but it is not just that they should be compelled to pay for the supposed use of a capital that has no concrete reality. The stockholders of the monopolistic corporation which imposes upon the consumers exorbitant prices or charges through the instrumentality of inflated capitalisation, can become guilty of this injustice in two ways: by promoting the improper capitalisation; and by getting dividends on stock for which they have not given a fair equivalent. As a rule, the greater part of such guilt and responsibility rests upon certain special and powerful groups among the stockholders. For example; the J.P. Morgan syndicate which organised the United States Steel Corporation received for that service securities to the value of $63,500,000. "There can be no question," says the Commissioner of Corporations, "that this huge compensation to the syndicate was greatly in excess of a reasonable payment."[191] The syndicate was able to exact this stupendous sum mainly because some of its members were also in control of some of the companies that were brought into the combination. "In other words, as managers of the Steel Corporation these various interests virtually determined their compensation as underwriters."[192] In the opinion of the minority members of the Stanley congressional investigating committee, "such a sum bore no relation whatever to the service rendered, the risk run, and the capital advanced."[193] The majority of the committee characterised the transaction in even stronger language. It is clear, therefore, that the syndicate committed injustice toward the consumers both by organising a monopoly which afterward imposed unjust prices, and by taking millions of dollars in securities which its members did not earn, and on which they received interest through the exorbitant prices. While this transaction is exceptionally conspicuous, it is substantially typical of the methods by which many powerful monopolies have watered their stock to the detriment of the public, and the advantage of a small group of directors and financiers. _The "Innocent" Investor_