184 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the combination of capital the more power it exerts for good or evil. Give 

 almost any set of men the exclusive control of the market, and there is hardly 

 any limit to their selfish and indecent greed. Take, for instance, the jute 

 trust in the cotton states. Jute is a foreign production, largely used in bag- 

 ging cotton. This trust got its work in well, controlled nearly all the jute 

 bagging in the market, and then applied the lever to squeeze the "brine" out 

 of the toiling millions. Up, up, up it went, until it became absolutely 

 oppressive to the cotton industry; and other materials for bagging cotton had 

 to be substituted. 



Coming home to every household in the land, take the sugar trust. Under 

 its manipulations the sugar we use in our households has advanced one and a 

 half cents per pound, or more than twenty per cent. The consumption of 

 sugar in this country, annually, amounts to about 3,000,000,000 pounds, or 

 fifty pounds per capita. This adds 135,000,000 additional cost to the con- 

 sumer ; and, as the bulk of this article passes through the hands of the trust, 

 •we can readily see what an enormous margin it swallows up. The trust buys 

 the imported raw sugar, refines it under strict regulations as to supply, and 

 thus controls the market and the price. They also have in a great measure 

 the control of raw sugar, since it is not sold for consumption, to any extent, 

 in that state. The sugar trust has the control of netirly all the sugar refin- 

 ■eries of the country, and when it suits their purpose they will close up a cer- 

 tain number of these establishments, and thus limit the supply on the market. 



The millers are arranging a trust to limit the production of the staff of life, 

 and thus to enhance its value to them and its cost to the bread eater. This 

 they aim to do regardless of the cost or supply of wheat. If they can limit 

 the output, the market they have, and the terms will be theirs. But, says 

 one, this can not be. Nearly every bread-eating community in the land has 

 its own mill or mills to fall back upon. This was so in days gone by, but it 

 is so no longer. The big fish have swallowed up the little ones, and they will 

 not allow any more small fry to breed. The large milling establishments, by 

 this plan, will in a great measure control the markets of this country at least, 

 and those who are too small, financially, to gam admittance into the trust, 

 will be only too anxious and willing to reap a part of the benefits growing out 

 of it. How this trust will benefit the wheat-grower is not so plain. Last year 

 one of the large Minneapolis mills, managed on the mutual benefit principle, 

 divided $40,000 profits among its employes, the mill still holding the lion's 

 share. How many of the 138,000 farms in Michigan would be required, grow- 

 ing wheat at eighty-nine cents per bushel, as last year, to divide $40,000 

 profits among the employes ? Yet millers say milling don't pay. 



Michigan has salt enough stowed away in its bosom to supply the whole 

 nation for untold generations, and yet the salt rings have, or are trying to get 

 up, a trust to limit its production and its consequent cost to the consumer. 



Would these trust sharks hesitate a moment to get up a trust on fresh water 

 and air, if it were in their power to do so? 



But the cry is, monopolies can not work in this land of free competition. 

 Ah, but free competition is first destroyed, and then the evil is apparent to 

 all. 



As a people, we are rapidly falling into the power of the money-bags. 

 Almost everything we eat and drink, except our home productious, are doc- 

 tored and adulterated. The hog, the ox, and the cotton fields, in a great 

 jneasure, supply our tables with butter and our pantries with lard. The four- 



