The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1889-09-07

The Relation Of Trusts to Labor.

/
to-day deals with the relations Of
trusts to labor, and with the secret
and error-breeding methods en-
ployed by trusts in effecting theiI
objects. The result of the forma-
ton of trust, in any industry, upon
the workmen engaged in that indus.
try, may be summed up in one word
disaster. The object of trusts be
ing to raise prices by lessening pro-
duction, their formation means nee
essarily the discharge of a certain
number of men previously employed
The whisky trust, for example, when
organized, proceeded at once to close
SO of its distilleries, keeping but II
in operation. Evidently the men
employed in the SO found their oc-
cupation gone, and to make living
had to crowd into other employments
at such wages as they could get
Their pressing need caus ed them te
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 8
workman discharged from one es
tablishment could 90 to another in
the same line of industry with the
prospect of getting job there, but
when all the distilleries fall under
one management, the discharge of a
workman at the closing of a distil.
lery involves for him almost the to.
tai loss of his trade. Where can he
go? The trust which declares his
services not wanted is everywhere
and beside it there is no employer Of
his particular kind of labor. Mr.
Wilson compares this exclusion OF
the laborer from the exercise of his
art with the sentence of exile in the
times of the early Roman emperors
when to be excluded from the en-
pire meant exclusion from every.
thing that made life, for the civil
zed man, worth living. But what
the whisky trust did the other trust
have done. The sugar trust cut
down production and put up prices
only by closing number of the
trusted refineries. So of the Stand
ard oil trust. "Where," Mr.. Wilson
asks, fare the laborers that found
employment in the refneries whose
ruins mark its triumphal progress?''
In proportion as these combinations
narrow the field of employment they
undermine the personal indepen
dence of the working man and i'm
pair his chances in life. A trust
covering the whole industry he is
engaged in can debate, of course
bis rate of wages and fix his stand
ard Of living 'Capital can wait fol
its dividend" said Mr.. Butterworth
Of Ohio, very truly, in Congress
arguing for bad cause, "but labor
cannot wait fol it's breakfast" II
must take what wages it can get,
when reduced to dependence upon 6
trusted industry. The trouble all
comes of the fact that the trust:
look, not to normal profits and {
widening market, but to excessiv,
profits upon a diminished produc
ton and consumption. The secrecy
of the operations of Trusts gives
them great facilities for depressing
labor. The deed by which the su
gar trust was created had for one O
its specified objects "to furnish pro
lection against unlawful combina
tions of labor" What the lawyer
of a trust would deem an "unlawful'
combination of labor it is not very
difficult to imagine. Any combina
ton looking to an increase of wages
beyond a point fixed by the trus
would call, doubtless, for an exem
plification of the sententious obser
walton of the Ohio Congressman
that capital can wait for its div
idend, but labor cannot wait for it,
breakfast Mr.. Wilson devotes
considerable part of his article t,
what he terms the "sapping an(
, mining" operations of trusts, thei
subtle and elusive means of running
not only rival producers, but evel
, dealers who undertake to sell tn
! products of rival producers. Evel
great railroad systems are included
in the sphere of the terror thei
! secret and unscrupuleus method
inspire, being compelled to max
rates to enrich the trust and ruiz
} its rivals. The experience of Nj
Rice, a competitor of the oil trust
was warning to others. The trus
, not only attacked him directly b
f selling oil below cost wherever Nj
e Rice offered his oil for sale, but in
i, Inundated railroads, car-constructio
companies and dealers into refusin
q to touch his product Thus til
liberty Of the citizen to buy, to sci
and conduct his business in lega
manner was entirely nullified. L
Y accomplish its secret and nefariou
objects the trust assumes as man
$ shapes as Proteus. 1t organize
! subsidiary corporations, for who's
proceedings it cannot be held II
: sponsible. Of it's own proceeding
: it keeps no written recorder swear
that it doesn't. OF the old time COZ
t porations it has been said: "The
r have no souls to save, no body
f kick The new are even more il
tangible, as they even disclaim hay
ing any existence. The subsidiar