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.