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If you are willing to assume your responsibilities as an American citizen you should study seriously the question of the trusts.

Already trust organization has assumed very real and very threatening proportions.

Every family in the United States knows of the existence of the Meat Trust, which cuts down the food supply of the people to add to its bank account.

Every merchant feels keenly the existence of half a dozen trusts on which he is absolutely dependent, and from which there is no escape.

We all have seen the Coal Trust keeping ready armed men to shoot working citizens whenever it should give the order. This Coal Trust, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, boasted that it would, if necessary, “call out the United States Government troops” to shoot the miners. Here is one trust already talking as though it controlled the army and all the other forces of Government. The trusts believe themselves already in control, and their national power is very great.

The crisis of trust development has not been reached. The present power of concentrated, organized money is very great, but it is nothing to the power which money will exert in the future.

This future development of the trust force should be discussed and studied calmly, rationally and dispassionately by all Americans.

There is no use in denouncing or in hating the trusts. It is true that they are entirely selfish; it is NOT true that they represent evil, pure and simple.

The trust is a necessary development in humanity’s journey toward organization, concentration and the simplifying of industry.

The first locomotive ever built was a trust. It performed the work of a thousand four-horse teams, deprived four thousand horses and a thousand drivers of a livelihood.

The railroad trust is simply an extension of the concentration of labor, the simplifying of industrial operation, represented in the building of the first locomotive.

THE TRUSTS IN THE END WILL DO INFINITE GOOD.

They will destroy the mean competition which for centuries has made liars, swindlers and slavedrivers of men.

They will practically eliminate the great number of large private fortunes, and thus compel men to devote their energies to pursuits nobler than the accumulation of money.

At first a few enormous fortunes will dominate the nation–the beginning of these great fortunes you may see already.

Then will come the owning of the trusts–that is to say, of all the great national industries–by the nation itself.

The people of the land will own and operate their own necessities. These necessities, instead of making a few men enormously rich at the expense of many, will contribute to the comfort of many without injustice to the few. —-

The development of trusts must run its course, like every other great feature of human history.

Its beginning–in corrupt legislation, watered stocks, human selfishness–was inevitable.

Its ending–in national ownership, competition eliminated, and industrial life vastly improved–is also inevitable.

But thousands of struggles, thousands of economical battles, thousands of ruined men, will mark this evolution of human industry from the control of individual selfishness to the service of the nation.

The duty of the people is to study and, as far as possible, to foresee and regulate this enormous and inevitable development of the trusts.

The trusts cannot be destroyed, and they should not be destroyed.

But they can be regulated, and with proper vigilance they can be kept from commanding and controlling absolutely this nation, which sees the birth of their great development. —-

We believe that the most pressing public duty at present is the reorganization of the Senate of the United States on the basis of popular election.

It has been said truthfully: “You cannot indict an entire people,” and, fortunately for us, it may truthfully be said, “You cannot PURCHASE an entire people.”

The trusts of the United States base their hopes of continued and growing power upon the United States Senate.

The trusts own absolutely many United States Senators. Of those Senators whom the trusts do not own, many are deeply interested in the trusts, which is the same thing as though the trusts did own them.