The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1891-08-07
TYRANNY OF TRUST
They HAVE LONG CONTROLLED MA.
TlONAL AND STATE LAWMAKERS.

A Great, Fundamental Evil Which Must
First of All BE Eemedied When the
People Get Control of the Government.
Copyright. 1891, by Reform Press News Assc-
citation, New York..
Corporations, combines and trusts are
menacing the permanent interests of
the country and are now seriously dis
turbing its social and industrial law ana
order. Twenty years ago men of brains
and foresight began to cry out against the
liberation of such organizations, and to
~foretell the results which would follow
their existence. Had these men been
sent to state and national legislatures.
the people of the country would now be
at peace among themselves and pros
perity and content1nent would be gen.
eral. But their pleadings and warnings
were either u%nnoticed or unheeded, and
we are now struggling with tho grievous
and dangerous conditions which they
foretold. These conditions owe their ex-
istence altogether to the legislation
which has been enacted during the past
twenty years. This legislation was en-
acted by greedy and INSCRIPTIONS poll
t%icians, who have been sent to the on
gress of these United States-the boosted
greatest country on earth.
Il +
The Reform Press News association
recently published a list of about a hun
dred of the larger trusts, and therefore
statistics will not be given here. But it
may be said that there is not a staple ar
Tcle of consumption or utility handled
through the channels of commerce and
trade in this country today that is not
controlled and priced by these organiza-
lions known as "trusts." If a citizen
goes into a grocery store and makes a
purchase he pays a crust price for the
article he buys, pays a trust" price for
the paper that wraps it up and a trust
price for the Irvine that is tied around it.
Y
A trust is a big combination of corpor-
atoms or factories. Let's try to make it
clear and see what its objects and re-
suits are. Take the cotton plaid trust
for instance, which says it is mot a
trust" but a simple business arrange
ment." A great many cotton factories
are engaged in making plaids. Each
factory is trying to do a big business
and wants to extend the sale of it's goods.
There is a strong competition among
them-so strong that it amounts to a
fight with each other. In this strong
fight, in which one factory wants to whip
the other, prices are put down as low as
the goods can possibly be made at a
profit. The location of some factories is
such that they a turn out the goods
cheaper than other factories, and if the
fight goes Oh some of the factories must
go down. And this would be strictly
business; for if a factory cannot make
and turn out goods and sell them as
cheaply as they ought to be sold it ought
to stop and leave the work and trade
to some factory that can. But they don't
do this. A factory that can make and
sell the goods at a reasonable profit wants
a larger profit; but it knows that an.
other factory somewhere else can make
the goods as cheaply as it can aud will
continue to compete with it, even if the
factories in bad locations should be shut
out. Then all the factories come to.
gether and consult; and all agree that
they will charge a certain price for theil
goods, and the price is always made
high enough to allow the factories in
the disadvantageous localities to have q
big profit. But this isn't all. They SEE
that all the factories combined can put
out more goods than the people want il
all should run onfull time. So they all
agree that the output shall be a certain