Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1889-09-03
ReIations of trusts to Labor.
From the Baltimore sun.i

| tO-uaE OuH. OealS Win lne rel3Jl0nS
of trusts to labor, and with the se-
cret and terror-breeding methods
employed by trusts in effecting their
objects. The result of the forma-
tion of a trust, in anyindustry ,uponthe
workingmen engaged in that indus-
try, may be summoned up in one
word-disaster. The object OF
trusts being to raise prices by LESSEN
| ing production, their formation means
necessarily the discharge of a certain
number of men previously employed,
The whisky trust, for example, when
organized proceeded at once to close
60 of its distilleries, keeping but II
in operation. Evidently the men
employed in the 60 found their occu-
patton gone, and TO make living
had to crowd into other employments
at such wages as they could GET
Their pressing need caused them to
compete severely with their fellow
workmen in other employments, with
the result of promoting a general
tendency to lower wages. In the
old, entrusted order of things q
workman discharged from one estab-
lishment could go to another in the
same line of industry with the pros
pect of getting job there, but when
all the distilleries fall Under one man
agement, the discharge of workman
at the closing of distillerY involves
for him almost the total loss of his
trade. Where can he go? The trust
which declares his services not want
ed is everywhere, and beside it there
is NO employer of his particular kind
of labor. Mr.. Wilson compares this
exclusion of the Iaborcr from the ex-
ercise of his art with the sentence of
exile in the times of the early Roman
emperors, when to be excluded from
the empire meant exclusion from
everything that made life, for the
civilized man, worth living. But
what the whisky trust did the other
trusts have done. The sugar trust
cut down production and put up
prices only by closing number of
the trusted refneries. So of the
Standard Oil trust. "Where," Mr..
Wilson asks, care the laborers that
found employment in the refineries
whose ruins mark its triumphal pro-
gress?" In proportion rs these COM
binations narrow the field of employ
ment they undermine the personal
independence of the working man
and impair his chances in life. A
trust covering the whole industry he
! is engaged in can dictate, of course,
his rate of wages and fix his standard
of living. "Capital can wait for its
dividend" said Mr.. Butterworth, of
Ohio, very truly, in Congress, 6rgu-
ing for bad cause, "but labor can
not wait for its breakfast y Tt must
take what wage it can get when re-
duced to dependence upon trusted
industry. The trouble all comes of
the fact that the trusts look, not to
normal profits and widening mar
ket, but TO excessive profits upon 8
diminished production and cOnsump-
tion. The secrecy OF the operations
of trusts gives them great facilities
for expressing labor. The deed by
which the sugar trust was created had
for one of its specified objects "to
furnish protection against unlawful
combinations of labor" What the
lawyer of trust would deem an ''un-
lawful combination of labor it is
not very difficult to imagine. Any
combination looking to an increase
of wages beyond point fixed by the
trust would call, doubtless, for an
exemplification of the sententious OBJ
servation of the Ohio Congressman,
that "capital can wait for its break
fast. Mr.. Wilson devotes a con-
siderable part of his article to what
he terms the "sapping and mining"
operations of trusts, their subtle and
elusive means Of running not only ri
val producers, but even dealers who
undertake to sell the products of RI
val producers. Even great railroad
systems are included in the sphere of
the terror their secret and unscrupu-
lous methods inspire, being COM
PEELED to make rates to enrich the
trust and ruin its rivals. The expe-
rience of Blr. Rice, a competitor Of
the oil trust, was a warming to
others. The trust not only attacked
him directly by selling oil below
cost wherever Mr.. Rice offered
his oil for sale, but intimidated rail-
roads, car-construction companies
and dealers into refusing to touch
his product. Thus the liberty of the
citizen to buy, to sell and conduct
his business in a legal manner was
, entirely nulIified. To accomplish its
secret and nefarious objects the trust
assumes as many shapes as Proteus!
1t organizes subsidiary corporations,
for whose proceedings it cannot be
held responsible. OF its own pro-
ceedings it keeps no written record
or swears that it doesn't. OF the
] old-time corporations it has been
: said: ''They have no souls to save,
i no body to kick. The new are
+ even more intangible, as they even
disclaim having any existence. The
subsidiary and other corporations
I through which they act are in evil
= deDce, but the tie between them, the
n guiding power. is inyisibIe-it is
merely an understanding reached
in the course of a half hours chat
between the haIf-dozen trustees that
constitute the combination.
. Mac. g., r0;a