The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-04-11
Paper Read Before the ChaaltduQua Circle.

Paper Read Before the Cha,ltauqua Circle.
During the last ten years of the
nineteenth century one of the greatest
evils that has come into existence and
been interviewer in our system of
national life is the colossal trust that
is sapping at the very base of the
nations welfare, defiant of all law,
state and national, holding in contempt
and scorn individual rights. They
have grown to WELD power so great,
that seemingly legislation is powerless
to control or check them. The upper
and lower house of Congress has been
transformed from the loyal and patriot
ic purpose for which it was created, into
gigantic lobby for the trust magnates
and corrupt money power of the pluto
cratic class. Political Shylocks and
adventures, posing as statesmen, are
hand and glove with every scheme and
corrupt project which has for its pur-
pose the purloining of individual rights.
It is not surprising that the people
have been startled and alarmed by the
sudden accumulation of wealth in the
hands of few and have been ready to
resort to direct and violent measures
against trusts, the most conspicuous
objects in their unlawful concentration
of power. The people are cheated with
the empty appearance of political
power when the substantial! things of
life are taken from them.
Depends Oh Equality
OF Opportunity
Our Institutions are good or bad
according to the breadth of opportunity
they confer upon us all. We need not
be socialists, looking for an arbitrary
division of wealth, and yet, may hold
fast to general equality of opportun-
tiles in each generation as of the very
substance of liberty. If we cannot
secure this; if labor and skill become
unavailing or yield between man and
man very disproportionate returns,
then the foundation of the social and
political fabric give way.
Evil Power
of the Trust
The extraordinary success of few
trusts like the Standard Oil and Sugar
trusts, the mastery they have gained
over the present and the still greater
mastery they are thereby securing over
the future, the eagerness with which
their examples are being emulated in
every form of manufacture, ought to
awaken the people like an earthquake
shock to sudden and extreme sense
of danger. Their concentration of
power is certainly an evil-in defiance
of law and public sentiment 1t has
already reached large dimensions and
is redoubling its efforts for further
progress.
A trust ought to be defined as CON-
bination of capital dangerous to general
freedom, and especially disastrous to
the welfare of individual rights and to
the army of toilers of their country
The president of the United States has
more power than any crowned ruler on
earth and yet, compared to the power
of the unhallowed and corrupt COM
binations now forming into trusts, his
power will shrivel to pigmy proper
tiOn.
UnVise Terms
Conceded TO Capital
Inquiring into their new danger
which has developed in connection
with trusts we are to remember that
corporate action has been our most
remarkable development and one of
the most successful of our productive
agents. How then has it so suddenly
taken on so dangerous form and like
an infuriated tiger, broken from the
hand that has held it to service? It is
partly because unlawful and unwlse
terms have been conceded to capital in