I THE THE PROBLEM 'HE discussion of the "Trust" problem during the past fifteen years has brought this subject through the hysterical, demagogical, and denunciatory period on to that stage of development where calm, sane, and deliberate judgment prevails. Facts regarding the organization and management of "trusts" and their effect upon the industrial and commercial life of the American nation have been gathered, tabulated, studied, and digested until the mists of uncertainty and the clouds of ignorance have vanished, leaving these combinations of capital standing forth in the bright light of a perfect knowledge, with their forms, effects, and tendencies fully known. The origin and development of "trusts" and their valuable features and evil tendencies may be summarized as follows: The principle of co-operation is a fundamental law of society. It has its birth in man's instinct for self-protection and self-preservation; and in the earliest stages of social development took the form of village communities, clans, tribes, and nations. Step by step in the progress of civilization this spirit of association has been developing in the social and political life and in the industrial and commercial world. This Although slower in its development than the social and political movements, the industrial evolution has been going on, steadily and persistently, through various forms of organization, until our age is confronted with vast combinations of tremendous and far-reaching power. movement has developed from the individual in business to the partnership, from the partnership to the small corporation, from the small corporation to the pool, from the pool to the trust, and from the trust to the giant corporation. The giant corporation is the latest phase in the growth of the principle of co-operation and is solely the result of the evolution of industrial progress amid certain well-known natural economic conditions and is not in any sense an excrescence on the commercial and industrial body politic. Every sensible man favors the existence of corporations, for the reason that individual citizens cannot provide sufficient capital to develop the resources of our country. Vast sums of money are required to inaugurate and carry through great undertakings. And what one man cannot do for lack of means, several may accomplish by uniting the capital which each can command. To utilize the forces of steam and elec tricity in this growing country, and to handle the gigantic business operations of the present day, individuals have been forced to co-operate and to take advantage of the corporation laws. Our present economic system could not exist, our grasp of the markets of the world could not be held, were it not for corporate life. The corporation, great or small, is organized to enable men, as a collective body, to do what each member may do as an individual. The right to combine, when the object of the combination is the general good, is recognized by Federal and State law, and has not been successfully questioned by any recognized student of economics. The giant corporation, compactly organized, honestly financed, and rightfully managed, through the elimination of the unnecessary duplication of plants, of the reduplication of administrative machinery, and of the competitive struggle for the control of the market, will prevent waste, will reduce the costs of production, will furnish steady employment at an increased wage to the employees, will do away with child labor and the sweat-shop, will lower the prices of the finished products, will open new markets and will bring within the reach of the masses, at the cheapest price, kinds and quantities of goods unobtainable before the existence of these aggregations of capital. Furthermore, such a corporation, through its control of the market, will be en |