CONCENTRATION OF INDUSTRY 61 



strikes; still more when a rise of price or a stoppage of supply 

 of some necessary or convenience of life for ordinary citizens 

 is attributed to the machinations of a combine or a trust. 

 The rise in prices of bread, meat, and other foods during the 

 last few years, popularly attributed to the action of trusts 

 and rings, has probably done more to arouse a common feeling 

 against combines than any other incident save one. The 

 anthracite coal struggle of the winter of 1902 was a dramatic 

 representation of the entire movement of capitalist control, so 

 clear and full in its outlines as to furnish a national education 

 in the economics of capitalism. Cheap foreign labor, illegally 

 imported so as to depress domestic wages; illegal ownership 

 of coal mines by railroads; absolute control of output and of 

 prices by the carrying companies acting in secret but effective 

 concert; long protracted defiance of public convenience and 

 public opinion by the corporations, accompanied by a refusal 

 to submit to arbitration, broken only by threats of coercion 

 from the federal government — such was the picture presented 

 to the eye in the highly colored press. The result was a curious 

 revelation of that ground swell of revolutionary feeling which 

 always lurks in the recesses of the easy going American nature. 

 Spasmodic local riots were taking place, coal trucks were seized 

 and emptied by the people, merchants suspected of holding 

 back supplies were in danger of their lives, and state con- 

 ventions were passing resolutions in favor of the nationaliza- 

 tion of coal mines. President Roosevelt, interfering in the 

 capacity of peacemaker, effected his end by threatening to 

 march United States troops into the mining district, in order 

 to take forcible possession of the mines, and to secure their 

 operation. 



It is not theoretical objections to trusts, nor any plain 

 condemnation of their practices, but these uncalculated inci- 

 dents that are likely to imperil the peaceful development of the 

 great monopolist corporations. The knowledge of this grow- 

 ing suspicion of the trusts, and of the sudden outburst of popu- 

 lar passion which may at any time be directed against them, 

 has rapidly forced the trust issue on to the stage of party poli- 

 tics. Neither party has any direct definite policy to offer. For 

 the radical difficulty consists in the fact that the great majority 



