The sun., 1900-09-18

have been drummer for fourteen
years, have travelled enough throughout
the country TO know that human nature
and business conditions are about the
same everywhere, and have learned, be-
cause the question has come right home
to me, considerable about Trusts.
Perhaps this seems like an oyer-conh-
dent statement, but / want TO say that
if any drummer, or anybody else, can
gainsay what am now writing. should
like to hear from him. In this discussion
we must, like busy men engaged on a
hard business proposition that actually
concerns rs, eliminate all the pipe
dreams, all the cheap stories, all the Hun
garian jokes, all the stuff and nonsense;
we must get right down to cases-as
win now.
Eirst-Rcinember that trusts are big
combinations for business purposes; big
ger and bigger, if they are necessary, and
can do themselves good by being bigger
and bigger; smaller and smaller, or fall
ing to pieces altogether, IL they cant do
themselves any good.
1t is little vulgar TO say that every
body is ''out for the DUST" but every
body is, just the same. To be little
more exact, let us believe because it is
perfectly true, that anyone who has gone
into trust, or has helped to form a
trust, has done it for what he expects to
be his own advantage Anyone who is
opposed to trust will succeed in inter-
fering with it, or breaking it up, just in
| proportion as he, and not the trust, is
working in harmony with some economic
| law
Economic law is a arge-Sounding eN-
| preston, but | know what it means.
Years ago, no matter how many, there
weren't any factories people made things
at home. Afterwards they gathered in
factories and made things there. Then
came machinery, which displaced many
Of the work people. This was a hard
ship to them, but they couldn't help it;
and after they got oyer feeling badly.
they were glad to live under the new con
ditions.
Years ago Jones & Son, or Jones &
Co., had capital enough and brains
enough to do everything that was requir-
| ed of business concern. After while
no partnership had money or brains
enough for the business requirements of
the time. Then corporations were neces-
sary. By the way. corporations are char
tered by State legislatures. and what
| State legislatures do for them, or to
them, they can undo-provided of course,
nobody is wronged in the process. Please
keep that all ir mind, because it is i'm
portant. 1t is important to know that
corporations, and after them trusts, are
creatures OF the law and cant transcend
the law, and since we, the people-the
pecpul, Mr.. Sulzer would call us--elect
the lawmakers, it is our own fault il the
laws don't suit us.
Come down to the present time in this
matter of the development Of industry.
This matter of the development Of pro-
duction, manufacturing and commerce, is,
according to economic laws; that is, ac-
cOrding to things as they must absolutely
happen, according to things that couldn't
happen any other way. Just as machin-
cry has more and more replaced hand
work-greatly to the advantage of the
manual laborer in the end--because he
could turn to better things and could
make more money at it, and could buy
the necessaries and the luXuricS Of life
cheaper, because they We're made cheap
er by machinery and could be sold cheap
er-sO on the financial end of it, i'll the
way of providing and using capital in the
matter of selling in all kinds of markets,
there has been a corresponding change;
biz capitals taking the place of small
ones, smart fellows going out and tack
ling all the problems of invention, econ
omics, travelling, selling. advertising, ETC.,
instead of old-fashioned ones. The cor
poration is pretty old, the trust fairly
new. When the trust dropped down up
on us nothing new happened in particular
except that bigger and bigger corpora
tions were to take the place of the older
and smaller ones.
Here we are, then, down to the present
time. Business was bad around 1913 and
aI. Hundreds, yes, thousands, of man
ufacturers, jobhers and merchants were
fiattened out; first, by the uncommonly
hard conditions brought upon them by
the Cleveland panic, and then by kind
of structural weakness in their business
caused by the violence of competition.
These hard times, making this too vio-
lent competition more weakening than
it could ever have been under other CON
ditions. made the formation of trusts, all
of them that could possibly be formed,
very easy. The manufacturer wanted to
reduce the violence of the competition or
do away with it altogether. He was tired
of worrying. He wanted peace. He
saw, too, that there were economics in
production and distribution that he him
self, working alone, could never realize,
that would be realized the moment he
and his competitors worked together
buying larger quantities than ever be-
fore together, making things up togeth-
er, selling then together, cutting the
price little together perhaps, and, if
so, increasing the quantity of sales. In
the new scheme was n chance to live.