THE CONSOLIDATIONS CALLED "TRUSTS" 81 



march of industrial development. Its results seem to }^ou not 

 abnormal, for you were born into the world as things now are. 

 But in its elimination of the individual from the mechanical 

 trades ; in its change of the whole face of town and country life, 

 in its so-called factory questions, it kindled anxieties that un- 

 settled the confidence of your fathers, as much as our later 

 anxieties have unsettled yours. 



The change of which I have just spoken did not bring in 

 the trusts, but it was the beginning of the so-called trust. It 

 created the conditions and furnished the constituents on which 

 the trust was subsequently builded. The process we called 

 consolidation is a continuation only of the processes that set 

 in when our neighbor the shoemaker took down his sign and 

 closed up his shop. 



One day there entered the industrial world a new kind 

 of craftsman. Looking about, he saw that the needs of man- 

 kind were supplied from mills and factories, great and small, 

 scattered over the land. He measured the wastes of their 

 rivalry and the economies possible under single management. 

 He then did a thing, simple enough in conception, though dif- 

 ficult to execute — he proceeded, without changing them in 

 any other respect, to join these mills and factories, or the 

 greater of them, into single ownerships. Not a factory was 

 removed or demolished, not a fire put out nor a sign changed. 

 But the new joinery, though invisible to the eye, was as effect- 

 ive for the purpose in mind as if all the scattered mills had 

 been torn down and then rebuilt on a single site under a single 

 sign. The conception thus set on foot presented itself to the 

 financial world in the form of stocks, preferred and common; 

 the former theoretically covering the present value of the 

 property, the latter the expected increase of value to be 

 brought about by the craftsman's joinery. The old owners 

 stepped out, except as they retained some portion of the stock 

 of the consolidated companies. The new ownership was 

 financed by syndicates and banks. And thus set in the 

 development that is rapidly taking away from the people at 

 large the ownership of the properties we call the industries 



of the country. 



vol. s-a 



