Monopolies and the People | Page 4

law, 255 Reductions in the tariff as a remedy for

trusts, 256 Plans for the control of labor monopolies, 257 Strikes an
injury to labor, 258 Removal of other monopolies as a cure, 258 What
shall fix the rate of wages? 259 Cooperative ownership, 260 Fraternal
benevolence most needed here, 261 A definite relation between
monopolies and the people, 262 Conclusion, 263.

MONOPOLIES AND THE PEOPLE

I.
THE PROBLEM PRESENTED.
The word "trust," standing for one of the noblest faculties of the heart,
has always held an honorable place in our language. It is one of the
strange occurrences by which languages become indelible records of
great facts in the history of the world, that this word has recently
acquired a new meaning, which, to the popular ear at least, is as hateful
as the old meaning is pleasant and gratifying.
Some future generation may yet be interested in searching out the fact
that back in the nineteenth century the word "trust" was used to signify
an obnoxious combination to restrict competition among those engaged
in the same business; and that it was so called because the various
members of the combination entrusted the control of their projects and
business to some of their number selected as trustees. We of the present
day, however, are vitally interested in a question far more important to
us than the examination of a curiosity of philology. We are all of us
directly affected to-day by the operation of trusts; in some cases so that
we feel the effect and rebel under it; in other cases, so that we are
unconscious of their influence and pay little heed to their working.
It is but a few months since public attention was directed to the subject
of trusts; but, thanks to the widespread educational influence of the
political campaign, at the present day the great proportion of the voters
of the country have at least heard of the existence of trusts, and have

probably some idea of their working and their effect upon the public at
large. They have been pointed out as a great and growing evil; and few
speakers or writers have ventured to defend them farther than to claim
that their evil effects were exaggerated, and predict their early
disappearance through natural causes; but while remedy after remedy
has been suggested for the evil so generally acknowledged, none seems
to have met with widespread and hearty approval, and practically the
only effect thus far of the popular agitation has been to warn the trust
makers and trust owners that the public is awakening to the results of
their work and is likely to call them to account.
The truth is, as we shall see later, that it is a difficult matter to apply an
effective remedy of any sort to the trusts by legislation, without running
counter to many established precedents of law and custom, and without
serious interference with what are generally regarded as inalienable
rights. Yet we are making the attempt. Already legislative and
congressional committees have made their tours of investigation, and
bills have been introduced in the legislatures of many of the States, and
in Congress, looking to the restriction or abolition of trust monopolies.
It is the wise surgeon, however, who, before he takes the knife to cut
out a troublesome growth, carefully diagnoses its origin and cause,
determines whether it is purely local, or whether it springs from the
general state of the whole body, and whether it is the herald of an
organic disease or merely the result of repressed energies or
wrongly-trained organs. So we, in our treatment of the body politic,
will do well to examine most carefully the actual nature of the diseases
which we seek to cure, and discern, if we can, the causes which have
brought them on and tend to perpetuate them. If we can discover these,
we shall, perhaps, be able to cure permanently by removing the
ultimate cause. At any rate, our remedies will be apt to reach the
disease far more effectually than if they were sought out in a haphazard
way.
The crudest thinker, at the first attempt to increase his knowledge of the
general nature of trusts, discovers that the problem has a close
connection with others which have long puzzled workers for the public

good. Trusts ally themselves at once in his mind with monopolies, in
whichever form he is most familiar with them, and are apt to be classed
at once, without further consideration, as simply a new device for the
oppression of the laborer by the capitalist. But the man of judicious and
candid mind is not content with any such conclusion; he finds at once,
indeed, that a trust is a combination to suppress competition among
producers of manufactured goods, and