Q. "That is not an answer to my question. My question is the limit. What restraint would you put upon yourselves? What would be your restraint?"—A. "I call that restraint business consideration."
Q. "Would it not be the utmost limit that the consumer would bear?"—A. "Until we had competition we should be in that position, but whether or not we would exercise it, is quite another matter."
The very effort of Mr. Havemeyer to disown the "policy of crushing out competition" followed immediately by his admission that a trust is a "press" built for that purpose, is indicative of the capitalist's mind on the subject: At one moment he naïvely admits what a moment before he emphatically denied. The trust, then, is the organization of an industry by one or a few men strong enough to suppress competition and bleed the consumer.
The tyranny of the market has been suppressed only to substitute therefor the tyranny of the trust. And this new tyranny has for effect to enrich the trust magnate at the expense of the whole nation.
The course of industrial events beginning with the creation of guilds to suppress the anarchy of the Middle Ages; the tyranny of the guilds; the revolt against the guild; its suppression; the substitution therefor of so-called freedom of industry, of contract, of trade; the disorder or anarchy that ensued; the despotism of the market; the gradual suppression of all three freedoms in order to escape from the despotism of the market; and this suppression only preparing the way for the tyranny of the trust, is not accidental. It is a cycle through which industry had to pass till mankind found its way of escaping from the whirlpool.
We find the same cycle in the political world. The anarchy of the horde paving the way to the despotism of the tyrant; the despotism of the tyrant creating a revolt resulting in a new anarchy leading to another despotism as bad as the last, until staggering between anarchy and despotism, men slowly evolved a system of popular government. We shall see later that popular government can never remain popular under a system of industrial anarchy or industrial despotism, and that our industrial organization must adopt a system of popular control, if popular government is ever to become in fact as well as in name, popular.
Suffice it to point out that our industrial development following a law of necessity has so far staggered like a drunken man from anarchy to despotism and from despotism to anarchy—and that we are not likely to attain order from despotism until we recognize that the competitive system, such as we now have, can never attain it; and that it can be attained only by a deliberate substitution of coöperation for competition to the extent necessary.
(c) Tyranny of the Union
Let us now consider another part of the industrial field which seems destined to be the arena of the next great development—the field of labor.
The consumer is not organized as yet; he has not waked up to the extent to which he is fleeced by the trust. But labor is organized, driven to organization by the terrible consequences of the freedom of contract[73] for which he clamored so loud in the Revolutionary period. A workingman alone, ignorant of the profits earned by the manufacturer, ignorant of the number of workingmen applying for work, himself hungry, and with a hungry family to support, is no match for an employer with sufficient capital at his disposal, a considerable knowledge of the labor market where he can find men to replace such as ask for a higher wage than he is willing to pay, and with practically no reason to fear hunger or even discomfort for himself or for those who are dear to him.