Trusts

TRUSTS.

And now comes ex-Secretary J. Sterling Morton, of Nebraska, and climbs into the wagon with Senator McMillan declaring that trusts are good for the people. While many citizens are crushed by them, be says, the great multitude receive a great advantage. He illustrates his assertion with his experience as a corn planter in Nebraska 45 years ago. There were no trusts then and corn had to be dropped by hand and covered with a hoe. Now there are 10,000,000 acres of corn in the state. If, he says, the man with the hoe who dropped the corn with his fingers, had never been supplemented by the double rowed, two horse corn planter such a breadth of corn would have been impossible. But the man with the hoe and the blacksmith who made the hoe have been crushed out by the cruel combination of capital.

Now while there is some point in the ex-secretary’s illustrative argument, it does not go to the root of the evils growing out of the great combinations of the present day known as trusts. It is true undoubtedly that every industrial advance works injury to some one for the time being, but these are slight indeed compared with the evil possibilities of the trusts. The evils resulting from the combinations of capital referred to by Secretary Morton were vastly over balanced by the almost immediate advantages. But it does not appear as yet at least that is is true of the trusts. The former combinations of capital were not sufficiently strong to influence and profit by political action. They did not depend upon the control of city councils, legislatures and congress for their profits. They were legitimate business organizations depending upon the legitimate gains of business for their profits. But this is not the case with the trusts. They are sufficiently powerful to corruptly control legislative action for gain and they do so control it. Thus the government instead of protecting the people from the extortions of these immense combines of capital, aids and abets them in their wrong doing, Then with these purchased advantages and immunities they demand and obtain unjust and even illegal profits for their products. With these ill gotten gains they buy up at much more than cost prices the plants of other concerns in the same line of business and corner the market if possible on that product. They then fix prices to suit their own pleasure and the people are obliged to pay them, for there is no relief. These prices are kept as high as it is possible to keep them without engendering competition. And if competition does arise it is crushed with a merciless hand if possible. These combinations are absolutely un-amenable to moral influences, they are soulless, and, exerting and controlling political power in proportion to their economy power, they trample upon the rights of the people. Controlling the product in their line, they not only fix the price of that product but control wages just absolutely .

It is reasonable to believe that the cost of production of their product is cheapened by these combinations of producing agencies. The fact that the trusts throw many people out of employment , indicates that the demand for their products is being met at a less cost, but the evidence is wanting to prove that there is any advantage to the people in this lessened cost of production. The trust controls and keeps up the price. But it is certainly tine , that the purchasing power of the pie is diminished by so many being thrown out of employment and they must therefore be detrimental to the masses. The fact is, as everyone knows, the trusts have as the principal object of their being increased profits. It matters little to them where these profits come from, if they are only forth coming.

That the trust is economy in character and a saving in human effort is undoubtedly true. That they assist materially in extending foreign trade is probably equally true. In time of panic they may tend, as their friends claim, to steady industrial matters. but their evil results, when allowed to run in the practically unrestricted manner they now are, over balance all these. If their good qualities can be retained and their evil ones avoided they might work much good. At any rate about all that is left for the people to do is to find some means of controlling these agencies in the public interest. There appears no way of rooting them out. They have apparently evaded or met all possible legal difficulties or prohibitions. But the people retain the right to control them and they will eventually be controlled in the interest of the public instead of against that interest as now.