If you are willing to assume your responsibilities as an American
citizen you should study seriously the question of the trusts.
Already trust organization has assumed very real and very
threatening proportions.
Every family in the United States knows of the existence of the
Meat Trust, which cuts down the food supply of the people to add
to its bank account.
Every merchant feels keenly the existence of half a dozen trusts
on which he is absolutely dependent, and from which there is no
escape.
We all have seen the Coal Trust keeping ready armed men to shoot
working citizens whenever it should give the order. This Coal
Trust, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, boasted that it would, if
necessary, "call out the United States Government troops" to
shoot the miners. Here is one trust already talking as though it
controlled the army and all the other forces of Government. The
trusts believe themselves already in control, and their national
power is very great.
The crisis of trust development has not been reached. The
present power of concentrated, organized money is very great, but
it is nothing to the power which money will exert in the
future.
This future development of the trust force should be discussed
and studied calmly, rationally and dispassionately by all
Americans.
There is no use in denouncing or in hating the trusts. It is
true that they are entirely selfish; it is NOT true that they
represent evil, pure and simple.
The trust is a necessary development in humanity's journey toward
organization, concentration and the simplifying of industry.
The first locomotive ever built was a trust. It performed the
work of a thousand four-horse teams, deprived four thousand
horses and a thousand drivers of a livelihood.
The railroad trust is simply an extension of the concentration of
labor, the simplifying of industrial operation, represented in
the building of the first locomotive.