GOOD QUALITIES OF THE TRUST.
1. It eliminates useless labor and energy.
2. It allays waste.
3. It economizes and reduces to the minimum the cost of production.
4. It reduces the world's work.
5. It tends to lessen the hours of labor.
6. It makes it possible to raise wages.
7. It makes it possible to lower the prices of commodities, and thus reduce the cost of living.
8. It operates in harmony with the law of natural selection.
9. It destroys wasteful competition, and economizes by eliminating the useless and the unfit.
10. It includes all of the advantages of co-operation without altogether destroying the advantages arising out of the natural instincts of rivalry, contest and emulation.
EVIL QUALITIES OF THE TRUST.
1. It throws large numbers out of employment.
2. It destroys many small dealers, jobbers and middlemen.
3. It tends to create monopoly in private hands.
4. It creates power in private hands arbitrarily to fix exorbitant prices, to lower wages and to control the market.
5. It tends to create great wealth for the few at the expense of the many, widens the chasm between the rich and the poor, and causes concentration of wealth.
BALANCING ACCOUNTS.
We have, then, in the Trust, an immense commercial giant which is both good and bad at the same time. If one had a fine thoroughbred horse which balked, or shied, or kicked, should we destroy it because of these evil qualities, forgetting that it also has an equal percentage of good qualities? Or, should we try to cure it of its faults by training it to do our bidding? We do not condemn and destroy a great machine because it has a defective part, but we rather seek to remedy the defect.
The Trust is doing a wonderful work for the world. Like improved machinery, it is lightening and lessening the toil of the human family, and at the same time it is working a great injury. Labor-saving machinery is also working injury, in that it is making large numbers of men idle, but this is not sufficient reason to destroy it. Machinery and Trusts are brothers. To be consistent, if we destroy the one we must destroy the other. Before contemplating destruction of the Trust, let us see if we cannot find some way to train and to harness it, like the horse, so that it will be useful and beneficial. Let us try to devise a method whereby the good qualities of the Trust can be preserved and the evil qualities eliminated.
PART III.
FALLACY OF THE GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP IDEA.