Suppose mail should be delivered in the unorganized, unmethodic manner that milk is delivered; it would require many times as many carriers to do it, and this additional work would be just as useless and wasteful to the world as if they were employed to dig holes in the earth only to fill them up again. If the milk business were to be organized similar to the letter-carrying business what an enormous amount of wasted energy and labor would be saved. What an immense amount of useful and wealth-creating work could those now useless extra milkmen perform in other callings.
THE FUTURE.
The question is asked: Will all of the milk dealers one day combine and form a Trust? And should they? My answer is, Yes. Competition will perhaps drive them to it; but if it does not, some day they will see the advantages and benefits of such a combination and they will wisely follow the example of the oil and steel magnates. If they never see it, then some of the larger and wiser milk dealers will, and they will perhaps enlist sufficient capital to control the market by buying up the milk supply at the farms, thus driving the smaller dealers out of the business or into the Trust.
What is true in the milk business is also true of nearly every other similar business, and that is the condition which this country has to face in the near future.
PARTNERSHIP.
A is engaged in the manufacture of shoes. B is a rival. They sell a certain shoe for $3. Each has a separate plant to maintain; a bookkeeper; a delivery wagon; and fuel, light, rent and advertising bills to pay. After a while A and B form a partnership under one roof, with only one delivery wagon, one bookkeeper, etc. With this great saving in expenses they find that they can produce as many shoes with the one enlarged plant as the two old plants produced and at much less cost. They can now pay a little higher wages, make a little more profit and still reduce the price of their shoes to, say, $2.90. C now comes to town and opens a rival establishment. He has difficulty in producing as good a shoe for $2.90 as does the firm of A & B, but he competes for a while until D comes to town and starts another shoe factory. Then C and D join their plants into one and the two firms go on competing, each spending large sums in advertising, etc. Finally they all get together and combine the several plants into one. They build an extension on A and B's building and move C and D's machinery therein. The new firm of A, B, C & D now have a large plant. Where formerly the individual manufacturers employed say six bookkeepers, they can now get along with but two. Where they once had ten delivery wagons they now require but two or three, because of the systemized routes mapped out. Instead of each manufacturer spending $10,000 a year for advertising, or $40,000 in all, the new firm now spends only say $15,000. The saving and economy is so great in nearly everything, that they can now pay still higher wages, make still greater profit and sell their shoes for perhaps $2.75—if they want to. Thus everybody is benefited by the enlarged partnership except those who have been thrown out of employment, and they shall presently be taken care of as we proceed.
Now, if four men by combining and forming a partnership can reduce the price of shoes from $3.00 to $2.75 and pay higher wages and make more profit than if they were operating separate plants, how great must be the advantages of 100 or 1,000 men and plants combining into a partnership. This would be a Trust. If two men can use the light of one lamp or the heat of one radiator without one depriving the other of any light and heat, so can 100 men do likewise, provided there is enough light and heat to go around, and on this simple principle is the great Trust founded. It economizes; it eliminates useless energy; it allays waste; it saves. Our letters are delivered by the Trust system; our milk is delivered by the old system of individual enterprise and is inconsistent with modern civilization.
ORGANIZATION.
If the industries were not organized, if Trusts and Combinations were unknown, if there were no corporations and no partnerships and everything was carried on by individual units, what would be our industrial condition? What an enormous amount of waste would there be and what a colossal volume of extra work would the human family have to perform to produce what we now have!
Organization is the key-note of the century. "Individual Enterprise" is a relic of past ages. A partnership of two or more is organization on a small scale. A corporation is practically a combination of two or more partnerships, or an enlarged legalized partnership. A Trust then is simply an organization of several smaller organizations. The greater and more perfect the organization, the greater the economy. The greater the economy the lower will be the cost of production, and the smaller will be the amount of work to be performed and, likewise, the cheaper will be the article—if! (See later).