Every advantage of franchising seems susceptible to abuse of some sort. There being many advantages and many clever minds to seize opportunities for distorting them, the list of abuses can be long. But in prescribing remedies for the defects that exist, it is well to bear in mind the close relationship between legitimate objectives and the perversions they are subject to. The initial impetus in offering franchises has come from companies seeking normal economic benefits. Thus, automobile manufacturers franchised the middlemen who moved their cars to the consumer market. Oil companies franchised the service stations that kept the cars rolling. And the system worked well enough to make the automobile perhaps the most important single influence on our lives, while both producers and dealers reaped considerable rewards.
