IS COMBINATION CRIME? 53 



other workmen from taking their places, were in reality honest, 

 well-meaning, law-abiding citizens! But they had unhappily 

 been " brought into conflict with great cpmbinations of capital," 

 and Mr. Hudson's arguments are not answerable for the result. 

 You and I have a perfect right to use our means to manufacture 

 sugar or to mine for coal, or to add to the prosperity and wealth 

 of our community by adding to our own by employing it in any 

 industry we may elect for. But we must be careful not to stand 

 in the highway where " the competition of labor for wages " may 

 be perchance brought into our vicinity. For that competition 

 might happen to run up against us, and so be brought into 

 conflict with us, and thereby " violence " might be " provoked." 

 And then, if our business is ruined and our property destroyed, 

 Mr. Hudson is not responsible — we had fair warning! Mr. 

 Hudson can fill his pages with any doctrines it pleases him to 

 invent, and find publishers for them ; but he will not pay us for 

 our smoking factories and broken machinery. That is our 

 affair, not Mr. Hudson's. 



Mr. Huxley somewhere speaks of gentlemen who put their 

 statements "into italics as the queen puts her soldiers into 

 bear-skin caps, to make them look formidable." Mr. Hudson 

 puts his statements into figures for the same paramount purpose. 

 .His picture of the bloated capitalists, by combinations extract- 

 ing from the masses a sum three times as large as the national 

 debt, is appalling, to be sure. And were this not sufficiently ap- 

 palling, he adds to it the following dazzling array : " Let us 

 suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the abolition of 

 competition will return a certain proportion of the enhanced 

 profits to the workingman in the shape of increased wages. If 

 the anthracite-coal pool raises the price of coal fifty cents per 

 ton, and gives the miners ten cents of the advance, a gain of 

 $3,000,000 is secured in the annual wages of the. miners; but a 

 burden of $15,000,000 is imposed on the labor that consumes the 

 coal. If the coke syndicate raises its price fifty cents per ton, 

 and gives its workingman ten cents advance, the advantage to 

 labor at the coke-ovens is $400,000 in a year ; but a loss of many 

 times the amount is inflicted on labor in the various forms in 

 which that product finally reaches the consumer. If the 

 same operation were repeated by combinations controlling 

 every industry and every staple of consumption, what would 

 be the result ? An addition would be made to the cost of life, 

 of which one fifth would be given back to labor in the form 

 of increased wages, and four fifths would be drawn from labor 

 to swfell the profits of capital. Change the proportion to 

 whatever form you like, the fact remains that all these com- 

 binations are organized to increase the profits of the capital 



