“If Congress had any genuine regard for the interests of the people, or if it were sincere of purpose respecting their common welfare, or in regard to the proper protection of labor, it would promptly transfer to the free list every product controlled by a conscienceless and predatory trust which reduces production, cuts off working people from work and wages, and increases prices to the tens of millions of consumers.” The correctness of this view was testified to, before the United States Industrial Commission, in June, 1899, by no less a personage than Henry O. Havemeyer, president of the sugar trust, who said:
“The existing [tariff] bill and the preceding one have been the occasion of the formation of all the large trusts with very few exceptions, inasmuch as they provide for an inordinate protection to all the interests of the country—sugar refining excepted. All this agitation against trusts is against merely the business machinery employed to take from the public what the government in its tariff laws says it is proper and suitable they should have. It is the government, through its tariff laws, which plunders the people, and the trusts, etc., are merely the machinery for doing it.”
The showing regarding trusts made in the “Commercial Year Book” for 1899 was startling. Its salient features may be thus tabulated:
| 1899 | 1898 | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of trusts | 353 | 200 |
| Stock | $5,118,494,181 | $3,283,521,452 |
| Bonded debt | 714,388,661 | 378,720,091 |
| Stock and bonds | 5,832,882,842 | 3,662,241,543 |
This shows an increase for the year of 76 per cent. in the number of institutions and of 60 per cent. in stock and bonded debt. But it shows more than this. According to the census of 1890 the entire capital employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries was $6,525,000,000. A comparison of this figure with the stock and bonds of trusts for 1899 shows that the capitalization of these gigantic combines was equal to 90 per cent. of the entire manufacturing investments of 1890.
It was such significant figures as these that woke the country to a realization of the imminence and great importance of the trust problem. It was felt that the most stupendous industrial revolution in the history of the world was on, because it was realized how closely our industrial system had approached to complete absorption under monopolistic control. Industry at large was becoming organized into a system of feudalized corporations. Each was stifling competition, discouraging enterprise, and padlocking the gates of opportunity. Together they were in absolute mastery of the industrial field.
The menacing danger of the situation was early realized, and the “anti-trust” movement progressed side by side with the opposition to imperialism. The fight was to be one of individualism against a gigantic and arrogant plutocracy, the forces of individualism contending for the doctrines of liberty and equal opportunity as against the reactionary tendencies of which trusts and imperialism were the supremest manifestations. In this Titanic struggle it was but fitting that the Jeffersonian hosts should be marshaled under the leadership of the brave, aggressive, eloquent, and inspired evangel of the doctrines of the Fathers—William J. Bryan.
DAVID B. HILL