manufacturer below a certain point. If less labor is required to make certain things, then men, working as before, will have more things to enjoy, or, having the same to enjoy, will have more time for culture and recreation; while if the manufacturer has a fair profit he can pay fair wages and will have increased capital to be taxed and to be used for the employment of labor.

But if this profit be excessive the result must be evil, for so much capital will accumulate in the hands of the few that it can, and probably will, be used to oppress the people, corrupt public officials, and destroy good government. Certainly when trusts, instead of lowering prices, advance them, those trusts yield excessive profits while directly hurting the people. Nearly all trusts have advanced the prices of the things the production of which they control. This makes it imperative and urgent that they be regulated by law.

The nature of much of this law to regulate trusts must be decided upon after the beginning has been made. Results will indicate further actions. I will, however, take the liberty of suggesting that when a trust is favored by artificial conditions created by law, as, for example, a protective tariff (and I am and always have been a protectionist), those conditions should be removed. The very existence of a trust controlling our market as to anything removes all grounds for a protective tariff on that article.

Many trust properties are capitalized at much more than their worth. This is unjust and dangerous. It is unjust because in order that a fair return may be made on all the capitalization of the trust, the people are made to pay too much for a trust article. It is dangerous because, first, selling large plants for twice what they are worth puts into the hands of a few a dangerous amount of capital; and, secondly, because the public is led to invest in properties at an exaggerated value and collapse and panic and hardship will ensue. Hence a trust should not be allowed to put its bonds and stocks on the market until its properties have been carefully investigated by public officials, whose minute statement is open to the public, and it is found that every dollar of bonds and stocks offered to the public for investment is backed by a dollar of real value.

I will confess that I tried hard to reach conclusions not so favorable to trusts per se, as those stated. But I am constrained to write the truth, as it is given to me to see it, knowing that anything in any wise favorable to trusts is very unpopular, especially among farmers. And trusts have been so outrageously diverted from their proper use and have been so used to rob the people,

that I heartily sympathize with the public opinion of them; especially when I come to buy some trust article, fencing wire, for example. Further, I have not a dollar invested in any trust in any way; and, more, so far as I know, or have reason to suspect, no one that I know has a dollar invested in a trust.

In the weeks that I have spent in Great Britain-England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland-and on the Continent, I have not once heard trusts mentioned in conversation, except when I spoke of them; and I have seen them mentioned only twice in the papers on this side of the Atlantic. Here they are not of public interest or concern. This has a deep significance, when one remembers that the industrial revolution has been less rapid here. There are trusts in Great Britain and in the continental countries, and apparently a protective tariff slightly favors them, but this is by no means certain. But certainly no trusts here have robbed the people as trusts have robbed the people of the United States, and I do not believe that trusts would dare, in any European country, Russia and Turkey possibly excepted, to double and treble the price of articles, while lowering wages and discharging men. Our people are greater than the trust, and when it oppresses them beyond endurance it will be roughly handled, then more wisely attended to, and ultimately it will be used for the public good.

J. STERLING MORTON.

Ex-Secretary Department of Agriculture.

In my letter to the Civic Federation July 22d I think I sufficiently indicated my opinion of the present agonizing solicitude which seems to have permeated the practical politicians of all parties as to the possible despotisms and outrageous monopolies which combinations of large capital may bring about in the United States.

But there is no reason for apprehension. There can be no monopoly if trade and commerce are free. The combination of millions of dollars in any special manufacture can do no more nor less than compete with alert individual enterprise making the same staple. And the competition may make an article of equally good quality and sell it at an equally low price, and have logically an equal share of the market. Small corporations, even copartnerships, will be free to enter every field of competitive manufacture and commerce whenever demand makes high prices and gives promise of profits. Smaller concerns will seldom be

overcapitalized. They will seldom be extravagantly managed. Many of the larger combinations, however, will be threatened and jeopardized by overcapitalization and extravagant management. It will be impossible therefore to pay dividends upon their common stock. That stock will then soon have no value in the market, and the "trust" will speedily go into bankruptcy. The whisky and other trusts that failed from these causes verify this prognosis. There are, however, no "trusts" in the United States, as trusts in their obnoxious sense are defined, but there are many very large corporations. It is impossible to prevent such great corporations, unless each state repeals its general incorporation laws.

Forty-five years ago I came to Nebraska. It was then more than three hundred miles from any point within its boundaries to a railroad. All capital was individual. There was no corporation anywhere within the limits of the territory. There were very few corporations in Iowa or Missouri.

The first corn planted on the farm where I lived in 1855, and have lived ever since, was dropped by hand and covered with a hoe. So was the second crop. But the man with the hoe has departed. The village blacksmith who made hoes has been crushed out by the cruel competition of combined capital. There are to-day ten million acres planted to corn in Nebraska. It promises an average yield of thirty bushels to the acre. This will make an aggregate of 300,000,000 bushels for the state. If the hoe and the man with the hoe who dropped the corn with his fingers had never been supplanted by the double-rowed, two-horse corn planter and, in tillage, crushed out by the double-rowed cultivators, such a breadth of corn would have been an impossibility. Combinations of capital made the corn planters, made the cultivators, crushed out the village blacksmith, and relegated the man with the hoe to everlasting inutility.

But the great multitude of mouths which consume food made from corn get this food at a less price than they ever did before and for a very small per cent of what the cost of corn food would have been at this time if it had continued to be planted and cultivated by a man with a hoe.

These examples are illustrative of the fact that all these great combinations of capital, while they may put out of employment a vast number of traveling men and others differently employed, they also reduce competitive waste. The traveling men and all their expenses have been paid invariably by the consumers of the goods which they sold. The entire advancement and improvement of the industrial world are marked by the wrecks and ruins

of individuals, but illuminated and glorified by the advantages which they have given to the multitude.

The West has been opened up by combinations of capital. The means of production, all the improved implements for planting and tillage, all the perfected machinery for the speedy harvesting and storing away of crops, together with their accelerated cheap distribution by rail, make this fertile West inhabitable and prosperous. But if there had been no incorporation of money out of which to evolve manufactories for improved and cheaper agricultural implements and machinery, these crops, which now astound the world with their magnitude and money value, would never have been grown west of the Missouri river. And even if they could have been grown without the direct power and influence of improved machinery, they could never have been cheaply distributed to the markets of the world, unless there had been further incorporations of capital to build and operate railroads.

The state of Nebraska is swiftly paying off all of its land mortgages. These mortgages largely represent the purchase money. Originally, prior to the alleged "crime of 1873," mortgages upon these farms carried from 40 per cent down to 12 per cent interest per annum. The latter figure was regarded exceedingly low and quite favorable to the borrower. But to-day, upon the same number of acres of land, three times the amount of money can be borrowed that would have been loaned on the same security in 1870 and 1871, and the rate of interest is now 6 and 5 per cent per annum.

By combinations of capital the railways have been doubled as to their mileage in the last fifteen years. Instead of their mortgage bonds bearing 8 per cent, they now carry only 4 per cent. Thus, instead of seeing great possible evils in incorporations of capital for the future, it is better to contemplate and verify the great good which has come to the country because of capitalistic combinations in the past.

The word "trust," as used by partisans, particularly those who are endeavoring to organize the discontent of the United States against the courts, and the laws as construed by the courts, is given a sinister significance. Without any attempt at analysis, definition or explanation, every combination for investment of capital, of whatsoever kind, is denounced as a "trust." This is merely an appeal to envy, malice, and the other meaner characteristics of humanity. Originally, however, the word "trust" was defined as "a beneficial interest in land or other property, the legal title to which is in another, recognized and enforced by the courts of equity."

Having observed individual capital carrying on business in Nebraska prior to its invasion by a single corporation; and subsequently having experienced the change of cost made in the same business when taken up by incorporated capital, and noted particularly the reductions in transportation as charged by stage coaches and ox and mule trains, when compared to rates charged by passenger and freight trains on railways, one is rejoiced at the advent of the money power and the agents of capital into this wilderness. The cost of carrying 100 pounds of freight from Nebraska City to Denver by mule or ox trains was from $5 to $12. Freight between the same points to-day is 50 cents per hundredweight. Passenger fare from Nebraska City to Denver by coach was $150; by rail to-day it is $17. For a seat in the coach from Nebraska City to Salt Lake Citv one paid $300; the rate by rail to-day is $30. Steamboat rates from St. Louis, by the Missouri river, were, on freight, from 75 cents to $4 per hundredweight (the steamboats, however, were not owned by corporations), and passenger fare was $30.

Combinations of capital for vast production and distribution, while they may have destroyed small dealers in great numbers, have, as a rule, ultimately benefited the great majority of mankind. The present tendency toward large aggregations of money for the purpose of carrying on manufacture, commerce, and transportation, may therefore be not dangerous to the millions of consumers who may thus be furnished more bread and more clothing for less hours of labor.

The consummate perfection of civilization will be realized in the lowest possible prices for all the staples of life. The cheaper all staple commodities become, the less hours of efforts and exertion will each member of the human family be obliged to put forth in order to maintain and clothe himself. The more leisure the mass of mankind may have from bodily effort, the more time they may bestow upon intellectual development and moral culture. High prices are not a boon to mankind. High prices always prevail in newly-settled and crude communities. The lowest prices will be at hand when, by combinations of skill and capital, mankind shall have reached the ultima Thule of cheap production combined with speedy and cheap distribution.

By protective tariff advocates, paternalism has been preached in the United States for many years. Out of protection many monopolies have been evolved. When protection shall have been abolished many will die.

Free trade will not compel anybody to trade anywhere, but will permit everybody to trade everywhere. Under free trade