These persons join together, and agree to pay certain prices for making the goods they deal in, and to ask a certain price for the article when they sell it again.
They put all their money together, and become one company. Each member of the Trust has to bind himself to do what the members think best, and though there may be several hundred factories in one Trust, all obey the one set of rules, just as if they were but one body.
In this way the Trust has a great deal of money at its command, and can buy the finest machinery to make its goods, and, because of the enormous quantities needed to supply all the members of the Trust, can obtain the material needed for the manufacture at the lowest possible price.
Through the means a Trust has for producing goods, it can make and manufacture at a much smaller cost than a single manufacturer, and can control the amount of the output of the goods, so that too great a supply shall not be made at one time, and the markets be so flooded that the price falls and it no longer pays to make them.
The idea of a number of persons clubbing together and helping each other with their money and brains, and working together to produce an article at the least possible cost, is of course a very excellent one.
It would seem as though these methods would help to make the articles that we daily need much cheaper to us, and that the cost of living would be less.
But unfortunately it is not always so.
While Trusts could and should work for the benefit of the people, they are too often used as a means to harm them.
When Trusts get so large that they include nearly all the manufacturers of a special article, they are not only able to produce the article at the least possible cost, but to say for how much it shall be sold.
A Trust is formed that the manufacturers may make a better article at a lower cost—at least, that is what the Trusts say; but the danger is that they may obtain entire control of the market, create a monopoly, and having the public at their mercy, make the prices as high as they please.