82 PETER S. GROSSCUP 



Other craftsmen came. Other workshops, great and 

 small, without an outward sign of change, surrendered their 

 individuality for a place in one of the great industrial families. 

 The secret was out, the fashion set, the noise of the new car- 

 pentery was heard in the land, and the day of the so-called 

 trusts had opened. This was nothing less than industrial 

 revolution, not only in semblance, but in deeper significance. 

 Revolution always excites concern. Where — the inquiry 

 pressed home — where will this all end? Have we come to this, 

 that the few will be masters and the many servants? Where 

 will I be left? Am I to be oppressed — to find still harder con- 

 ditions added to those already borne as the price of liveli- 

 hood? Where will it leave the artisan, the merchant, the 

 small manufacturer, my neighbors generally? Is industrial 

 liberty for them gone? Are they henceforth — they and their 

 children — sentenced to hard service with no hope of eventual 

 emancipation? 



The answer to these questions was the act of congress of 

 July 2, 1890, commonly known as the Sherman anti-trust law. 

 As interpreted by the supreme court, that act embodied a 

 public purpose, unwisely formed, I think, to deal with the so- 

 called trusts on no basis other than that of extermination — 

 to cut them out root and branch — to sweep the lands with a 

 decree like Herod's, that no child of consolidation should be 

 found to have escaped. We are now well into the fifteenth 

 year since the passage of the Sherman act. In its means of 

 enforcement, as well as in its purpose, the act was as compre- 

 hensive as language could make it. It withheld no power, 

 civil or criminal, that the lawmakers thought would contribute 

 to the complete eradication of the supposed evil. It had been 

 preceded, in Texas, Kansas, Michigan and Maine, by state 

 laws directed to the same end, and was quickly followed by 

 like laws in one half the other states, including New York, 

 Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and the west gen- 

 erally. Thus, so far as enactments make law, the law, both 

 national and state, has for a period three times longer than it 

 took to put down the rebellion, been in battle line against the 

 so-called trusts. 



