The labor world., 1899-09-30
BEFORE THE
TRUST CONFERENCE.

1ltUU4 UUNH ull9NVus
~ HE address of Thomas J. Morgan,
of Chicago, before the trust confer
4 ence, served the excellent purpose Of
saving that much advertised gathering
from being an affront to the intelligence
Of the age. Mr.. Morgan's subject was
'Ihe Trust from the Socialist Point Of
View" # which the following is an alb
stract:
'sWe see from the socialistic view, not
the special interest Of this or that trade,
of this or that nation, Of this or that par
ticular race, but we see the interest of
the whole human race, as it is involved
in the development Of modern industry
and modern commerce.
eve socialists see the end of the
feudal system. We see the domination
of the landed aristocracy destroyed and
the rising Importance Of the new manu-
featuring and business interests. We see
the employer and the merchant stepping
into the imperial parliaments and taking
charge of the guide of the nations. We
see, following the employer. a partner
ship, following the partnership we find
corpjoration, and following the corpor-
alton in its logical order, we see the d1l-
production of the trusts. We welcome
the appearance of the trusts as one Of
the natural and inevitable products Of
our Industrial and commercial system.
''The trust is the legitimate child Of
capital, and If 1T were not for the serious
ness Of the problem, we should be more
than amused at the efforts that are made
to check the growth and kill the off,
spring that is made by those who pro-
duce.
1.-THE socialist sees that you are total
ly impotent to prevent the operations Of
trusts. You are impotent to interfere
with it's growth in the states or in the
Union. 1t overrides our state and ma
tional laws in its progress
Ut is very interesting to note the stand
that is taken by those who are opposed to
their natural offspring. They pose before
the American people as the guardians OF
personal liberty, of good citizenship. Of
manhood, and they tell us that unless
the trust is destroyed we go back to the
individual, and business of the past, and
we will become slaves; that our depend
ence in the future must Ibe not upon gi-
gaatic organizations or individual prop
erty owners, but upon the single indi-
viaual property owners. We socialists go
back and look over your records and we
ask you to listen to what has been be-
fore the corporation came, and before
the trust was dreamed OF. Yeu individual
employers, you individual business men,
you opened the doors of the orphan asyl-
um. and you took out of It your father
less children, and put them into your
individual factories, and ground their
lives into dollars; you took the man and
his wife; you took the mother and the
child, and you put them into the bowels
of the, earth to bring out your black dia-
monds so you could enrich yourselves.
THAT spirit is not dead. It is seen IN
Africa where the poor Kaffir is down
in the diamond mines and The gold
mines, It is seen in the effort to sub
ject the Beers. Not alone there, but
here-you freed Cuba, didn't you? Oh,
the poor Cubans, they must be freed
from Spain; but what do you do with
the negro down South ?-you disfran-
chise him. Then you indiv1dual1stic busi-
ness men, your spirit goes out into the
Philippines, and will reduce the Filipinos
to the level Of your negroes down south.
"You go down to your sunny south
land here and what do you see?-fro4n
Virginia and Arkansas, and all these
other places where these men have come
from that have addressed you about per-
sonal liberty and about the enormous
resources Of their, states as one Of the
inducements to the individual capitaliza-
ton, they tell you there is no restriction
for child labor down south.
"The fetish of private property in the
mines, in the oil, in the forest, and in
the fields, and everywhere else, is the
Ibane of civilization; is the illusion of
civilizatio and must be wiped out of
the intellect. We socialists rejoice that
the trust has come to show you that the
logical sequence of the ownership and
control of what is now known as private
property and the resources Of the earth,
that the private property of this great
country and others like it, as our friend
has said, will be organized into trusts,
until there will be one trust, and you
will not be in it,