We cannot believe that their fears are well founded. We know that leaders both able and honest can be found among American workingmen, and we say that they should be found and trusted promptly. ——
For mark this:
THE TRUSTS WILL INEVITABLY COMPEL THE LABOR UNIONS TO BECOME POLITICAL UNIONS.
TRUSTS WILL MAKE IT CLEAR TO UNIONS THAT THEIR ONLY HOPE IS IN POLITICAL ACTION WHICH SHALL GIVE THEM THE POWER TO CONTROL LEGISLATION.
When individual firms are competing the injustice of one firm may be punished and controlled by a strike.
THE TRUST WILL RENDER THE STRIKE LAUGHABLE AND USELESS.
Suppose all the shops or manufactories of a certain kind to be under the control of one trust. What good will a strike do? The concern in which the strike occurs will simply stop work. Its business will go to other concerns in the trust; the firm in which the strike occurs will calmly draw its share of the trust profits and laugh at the strikers. The latter will lose their wages and time—no one else will lose anything.
What does one paper mill care for a strike if all the other mills in the Paper Trust are running, and making the money which it nominally loses? ——
Perhaps the workingmen think they can stop ALL the manufactures of a certain kind. In the first place they probably cannot—with trusts that reach across 3,000 miles of country.
And if they could, what about the TRUST OF TRUSTS?