The opposition of the salt trade to the introduction of new methods of manufacture is explained by the fact that the profits accruing from the old, clumsy, crude, and wasteful process were so large that the proprietors could see no possible reason for welcoming innovations. Moreover, the manufacture under established conditions was in the hands of a comparatively small number of makers, who could not adopt new measures without letting in more men, and the long tenure of their monopoly made the salt-men intolerant of a competitive system. Opposition was so abominable to them that, while they would combine as one man to keep out the daring intruder, or to crush such an one if he succeeded in getting in, they were not at all averse from employing similar tactics for the purpose of exterminating one another. Although it had cost them over a quarter of a million sterling to dispose of William Furnival, the game of price-cutting was not discontinued after 1833. In order to safeguard themselves against the periodical falls in prices, which, if persisted in, would mean wholesale ruin, all sorts of associations, syndicates, trusts, committees, and pools were formed for the regulation of stocks and prices, but each successive combination was successively abandoned, and was followed by another period of bitter jealousy and trading loss. Between 1846 and 1880, the trade was being continually reorganized for offensive and defensive commercial purposes, but, in 1881, it was admitted that, in spite of all attempts to encourage a better feeling among the leading manufacturers, “the spirit of envy, hate, malice, and all uncharitableness, which has so long been the bane of the salt trade, has again become rampant,” with the result that the price of common salt--4s., less the brokers’ discount of 5 per cent.--was the lowest that it had touched since the American Civil War. Two years later it was declared that the trade, instead of being ruled by common sense and business experience, was being ruined by personal animosities and trade jealousies.