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

ana car reconstruction companies until
they refused him the facilities ac-
corded to others; nay more, that the
representative of the Standard al
lance at Louisville, KY, threatened
firm which ventured to become the
agent and consignee of Mr.. Rice's
oils in that city with "a competition
which will not be confined to coal
oil or to any one article, and viii
not be limited to any one year.
In this way common carriers, pro-
ducers in other industries from whom
a competitor may desire to buy, and
dealers who may desire to buy from
him, are made unwilling to have
business relations with him, through
their dread of mourning the hostili-
ty of such a great and many headed
combination. 1t clothes itself with
a cloud of mystery and thus adds to
their fears, until competition ham
pered and boycotted at every turn
gives up the contest and sinks into
subsection or ruin.
THE TRUST A CHAMELEON.
To all this the organization of the
trust easily and promptly adapts
itself. Any given corporation has
its general powers marked out and
defined by its charter and when it
ventures to exercise other powers its
acts are ultra vires and void, and
may involve forfeiture of its exist
ence.
1t cannot, therefore, meet an emer-
gency by an immediate occupation
of some other field of operations, or
by the prompt adoption of some new
and unrelated business. But trust,
having no such legal or other neces-
sary limitation of its powers or
sphere of action, may combine in its
organization, which is generally a
secret one, as many corporations
and as many kinds of corporations
as its purposes of production, Of
warfare, of competition or of clan
destine intrigue may require.
Charters are obtainable under gen
eral laws in many of the States by
merely filing in the proper office arti-
Giles OF agreement and paying small
fee for them. Hence the managers
of a trust can at any time form new
corporations, subsidiary to their
main organization, for the single
purpose of crushing a troublesome
rival or of wrecking or terrorizing
some remote but necessary producer
or customers of that rival, or for the
sole purpose of making some special
contract, or of receiving, it may be,
some railroad rebate, not allowed by
law to be directly made or granted.
The connection of such corporation
with the trust may not be suscepti-
Bile OF legal proof, nor even suspected
by the public-may indeed be I'M
known to any but the Utmost circle
of managers-yet it can be clothed,
at once, with all the power of the
entire combination, for accomplish
ing the purposes for which those
managers have called it into being.
1t may be likened to squadron Of
light cavalry, secretly enlisted in the
service of the trust, but not wearing
its uniform or marching under it's
colors, that can be used either for a
direct assault upon a presumptuous
opponent, or for cutting his line of
supplies or of communications, at a
point SO remote and unguarded that
he may never suspect the true source
of the mysterious blow that has dis
abled or Frustrated him at the very
time that he felt himself safest and
strongest.
THE TRUST AN AMBUsCADE.
We have now considered the trust
in its four most important and best
known relations, but l cannot dis
miss this part of my subject with
out dwelling still further on the
quality of the trust just referred to
and limited at in previous papers,
which is Of great moment in any at
tempt to estimate its future influence
both as an economic and political
factor, for we cannot avoid consider
ing it in both aspects.
| mean it's secrecy. Not only are
the proceedings of the trustees or
managers secret, they are generally
also without record. Their method
of managing the immense interests
they control seems based upon the
advice of Tallyrand, "Never write"
When the Standard Oil Trust was
under investigation by the commit
tee of the New York Senate, al
though it had been in operation I'M
der the trust organization for six
years, and had meantime doubled
the value of its capital, the record
of the proceedings of the trustees
covered only some sixty pages of an
ordinary book, and was absolutely
destitute of any minute of the real
business of the trustees during all
that time. Its entries were of the
most formal and trivial nature, be-
ing frequently confined to the record,
that the minutes of the last meeting
was read and approved, but the min
utes themselves were not entered
have already stated that the
aboard of trustees" of the sugar
trust not only kept no minutes, but
at the time of the congressional in
vestigation had no stated place of
meeting. They met informally, at
the office of one or another member
of the board, and had, as testified to,
no inmates to keep, because as Mr..
Havemyer said, they never took any
votes, but just ''felt each other"
Every individual corporation OF
, course, keeps its own books, but its
books would throw no light what
ever on the doings of the combina-
ton. The great central directory
who WELD the power of all the cor
poration because they hold all their
stock and receive all their dividends
and profits, meet, consult and plan,
and departing leave behind them
no footprints" to indicate to any
one what these plans are There is
immense power in mystery. 1 can
not doubt that the market quota
tions of trust certificates are really
rated as much ON the money value
Of their power as on the money value
of the visible property they repre-
sent 1t is this power that adds
might and terror to the operations
of the trust, and l cannot better
close this paper than by quoting a