The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1908-05-01
A TRUST THAT PLAYS FAIR.
From Herbert n. Casson's
ROMANCE OF THE REAPER"


airy, 1908.
President Roosevelt in his message
of December said: Modern indus
trial conditions are such that com
bination is not only necessary, but
inevitable Corporation and
labor union alike have come to stay.
Each, if properly managed is a source
of good, and not evil" If capital COM
binations can be good, there must be
some that are good. Would it not be
a proper service to the American peo-
pie to tell them of trust that, while
it had reaped the economical advan-
tages of combination, had yet played
fair with the public and with it's COM
petitors? Hence this story OF the
great harvester combine. Before we
began to publish Mr.. Cassons articles,
we followed up his Investigations with
a thorough inquiry of our own, and we
are bound to say that the business
methods of this institution seem to
conform to the highest standards OF
fair play and square dealing. The In
ternational Harvester combine is not
a tariff trust. It's members surrender
ed dominance in their own business
only when the trend of modern In
dustrial conditions" and overstrenu'
Gus competition made combination
mot only necessary, but inevitable.
For fifty years the Harvester Kings
fought one another on the battle fields
of competition. Their armies OF
agents. drIlled in the arts of rivalry
waged a war in which quarter was
neither given nor sought. 1t was a
fight almost of determination. Out OF
two hundred companies that. went &c
battle with flags waving and drums
heating. only a dozen came home.
It is a common opinion among har
yester men that from first to last
there has been more money put into
the business than has ever been TAX
en- out-so enormously wasteful were
these years of competition. BY l9oz
the harvester business was nothing
other than a terrific and destructive
war. The agents were tearing the
whole industry to shreds and tatters
So far as the Harvester Kings coulo
see. they must choose between compl
nation and ruin.
Not one of them was personally ID
favor of combination. They were IN
diyidualists through and through. Inc
spirit of competition had been Dreo
in the bone. So, when several Oh theH
came together and agreed to combine
If was not of their own free-WlH. II
was because they could do nothing
else. They were hurled together by
social forces over which they had no
control.
There were four of them-Cyrus H.
Mccormick, the Second, Charles Deer
ing. j. J. Glessner, and w. II. Jones
all of them added to the strong pref
erence for competition dehnlte oppo,
sition to trusts, monopolies, and STOCK
speculation. They were not the wall
Street type of millionaire In that
time of booming optimism, they mlght
have made more money in one year
nv selling stock than they had made
in thirty years by selling harvesters.
Rut no one of them had tried 1t. Inc
fact is that they cared more Tor the
good will of the farmers and the pres,
tiee of their machines than they ola
for large profits.
There were several harvester COM
NAMES that remained Independent, put
nrohablv not from choice. / do not
know of one that has not, at some
stage of it's career, tried to get lnIo
a trust. :. ;,
1--WE are big enough now" said W
rus H. Mccormick. ut is not safe tor
one company to have a monopoly.
What we want to do is to regulate
competition, not to destroy it."
with it's $4,000 employees and Az
600 agents, this one company is sup
porting as many families as there are
in Utah or Montana. A square mile
of land would be too small to contain
i+a factories At its hundred ware