THE MEANING OF CORPORATIONS AND TRUSTS. 303 



other, from whicli can not but come a more reasonable and 

 equitable solution of the problems that are continually pre- 

 sented to each. 



And notwithstanding all the attacks that have been made upon 

 them, labor organizations survive. Like the other trusts, they are 

 the product of natural forces ; like the other trusts, they fulfill a 

 natural function. As men of greater knowledge and broader views 

 come to their control, the directors of great industrial organiza- 

 tions who want to be just toward their employees find it advan- 

 tageous to communicate with them through such representatives. 

 The situation can be gone over with them more frankly and thor- 

 oughly and in shorter time than would be possible with each of 

 the workingmen separately, or with all of them jointly, and the 

 report and recommendations of these representatives to the work- 

 ingmen can be met and received as the result of the best judgment 

 of competent minds acting in their behalf. It is to be hoped that 

 in time the perception of a common interest and a common sense 

 of justice between employer and employee will render the labor 

 organizations unnecessary. It is likewise to be hoped that advanc- 

 ing civilization will reach a plane whereon all political govern- 

 ment will be unnecessary. 



An assertion that has been used with great vehemence against 

 industrial aggregations is that they are instruments for ensnaring 

 and misappropriating the funds of the weak and unwary. Con- 

 demnation on this ground was made of the minor industrial and 

 financial combinations. The cry against corporations a generation 

 ago was as bitter as that against the trusts of the present. It has 

 arisen from the fact that the multiplicity of means that have been 

 developed for borrowing capital, the giving of mortgages, the issue 

 of stock certificates and bonds of different kinds and forms, with 

 the attendant manipulation in stock markets, has given men with 

 predominating desire for personal gain opportunity for obtaining 

 money in excess of the needs of their business, or of the value of 

 the property which they can oflier as security, and complicated 

 methods of bookkeeping have concealed its unjustifiable applica- 

 tion and the misuse of profits. Instances of such defection have 

 been so numerous as to breed in the minds of a considerable por- 

 tion of the population a certain distrust of all that pertains to the 

 buying and selling of stocks and bonds, and this distrust in many 

 places with many people is so deeply rooted that the advantages 

 to the entire community gained by honestly and discreetly man- 

 aged industrial combinations are overlooked. It is the men of 

 largest brains and keenest wit that in the fields of finance and 

 industry conceive and control enterprises of magnitude, and when 

 this keenness of wit has been combined with lack of scruple they 

 have often been able to envelop the conduct of their enterprises 



