Gilpin observer., 1905-04-13
COMBINES WILL STAY
NECESSITY OF CORPORATIONS
Modern Enterprises Have outsrown
Individual Effort-But Trusts
Will Be Curbed by Ade-
quate Supervision.

quate Supervision.
Pittsburg, April s.-For the first
time in the history of the Traffic
League the three aspects of railroad
traffic were represented last night in
Pittsburg, the greatest tonnage origi-
mating point in the world. The occa-
sion was the third annual banquet of
the Traffic Club of Pittsburg.
Samuel Spencer, president OF the
Southern railway, spoke for the rail-
roads; Willis l.. King, vice president
of the Jones & Laughlin Company,
Pittsburg, presented the interests of
the manufacturers, and Judge Peter s..
Grosscup of the United States Circuit
Court, Chicago, upheld the rights of
the people.
Speaking to the toast, 1.-The Regen-
Grafton of the Corporation" Judge
Crosscup said in part:
I'VE are now we'll into the fifteenth
year since the American people started
out, through the Sherman act, and the
several state antitrust acts, to destroy
the so-called trusts. Are they de-
stroyed? Are they diminished? Has
any one of them, except from causes
arising within itself, been destroyed or
diminished? True it is that some of
them have been bitted and reined until
they are again in the highways of the
law. Some of them have voluntarily
come back to the highways Of the law.
Some have never departed from these
highways. Some are still at large.
But none that l can recall have
been destroyed; none have succumbed
to the full length of purpose with
which, as a people, we started out to
annihilate them. Whatever has been
the success of our policy Of measure
able control, the policy of humiliation
has proved failure-a fiat, sheer fail
ure.
THE reason of this is not far to seek.
A corporation is only the individual
multiplied. The so-called trust is
nothing but the corporation enlarged.
In these days, when enterprises have
grown so large that no single indi-
vidual can launch them, or keep them
going, the only industrial expedient
that civilization has yet found of mass
ing and co-ordinating the wealth of the
many into one management, unless we
accept Socialism as workable means,
is the corporation. Socialism has yet
to prove itself; SO that the corporation
Is civilizations sole and only way of
welding large masses of capital. AS
such, as l have many times said, the
corporation is here to stay. The large
corporation is here to stay. To blind
our eyes to this truth is to grope in the
mountains in the dark.
But there is no need in all this that
we should conclude that there is moth
ing wrong-that the public sense that
there is something wrong is without
foundation.
ie har 10 ,&a
not to set aside all the industrial and
commercial laws of the trust. The cor
poration is here to stay, but not to de-
stroy the individual ideals, the indi-
vidual aspirations, and the individual
opportunities that have given to the
past everything in it that is worth pre-
serving. The corporations, and the
enterprises they embody, have grown
great. But behind them, and above
them still rise the peaks of humanity !;
higher than commerce itself, for COM
merce only serves humanity by sitting
at its feet; higher than manufactures;
majestic above the state itself. And
the heart and the hope of humanity is
the Individual Man
ITO enjoy opportunity; to measur-
ably exercise individual dominion: to
be man among men; a proprietor,
even though in small way, among the
proprietors-these are the instinct, the
incentive. and in great part, the hope
of the race. And it is just this instinct,
this incentive, this individual hope,
that having mounted the heights,
seems ready to disappear again.
The cause of this phenomenon-to a
republican people, an appalling phe-
nomenon-is the corporation.
But you ask me: How can the
course of things as they are now going
be changed? How can the individual
men be brought back into proprietor
ship? My answer is: Take the cor
poration at once and forever out of the
list of suspects. Put the corporation,
as national banks and trust companies
are now put, under the supervision and
control of law, to the end that it be-
come faithful steward.
Make it impossible to capitalize cor.
porations at figures that can have no
purposes other than that of artificial
and temporary inflation-an imitation
that on collapse leaves the victims
holding the bag.
Make impossible the geologic cap
ftalization-the capitalization laid in
layers, one on top OF the other, the last
kept green for little while only by
dividends snatched from the air, or ab.
stracted from the assets"