"TRUSTS" IN LIGHT OF CENSUS RETURNS 169 



though they may be men of high character and personal in- 

 tegrity, they will probably hold that efforts to influence by 

 improper inducements the action of legislators and assessors 

 and of men in authority who may, under certain circumstances, 

 have the power to do things adverse to their interests, are per- 

 missible, on the principle that the end justifies the means. 

 The political influence of these large aggregations of capital 

 is the chief danger, and the one which will be the hardest to 

 eradicate. It may safely be predicted that there will be some 

 sort of supervision over them sooner or later. This super- 

 vision ought not to be such as to interfere with the pursuit of 

 the business for which they were incorporated; but it ought 

 to give their transactions such publicity as will not only pro- 

 tect the investors who buy their securities, but also convey 

 to the great mass of consumers some conception of the profits 

 which arise from the existence of industrial combinations. 

 There can be no doubt that many of the thoughtful men of 

 the country look with much suspicion and anxiety upon the 

 influence being exerted by these vast corporations in the 

 United States. The heads of these institutions are men of 

 experience and wide influence, who stop at hardly anything 

 which is to their own advantage. Many years ago, the late 

 Senator Cushman K. Davis, then a rising young lawyer in 

 St. Paul, delivered a very interesting address to the students 

 of the university of Minnesota, entitled Modern Feudalism. 

 The lecture attracted a great deal of attention, and led to his 

 entering public life as a candidate for governor of the state 

 shortly thereafter. At the present time, Senator Davis's ad- 

 dress reads like prophecy. The concluding paragraphs were 

 as follows: 



" Feudalism, with its domains, its untaxed lords, their 

 retainers, its exemptions and privileges, made war upon the 

 aspiring spirit of humanity and fell centuries ago with all its 

 feudal grandeur. But its spirit walks the earth to-day and 

 haunts our institutions, in the great corporations with their 

 control of the national highways, their occupation of great 

 domain, their power to tax and to escape taxation, their 

 sorcery to debase most gifted men to the capacity of most 

 splendid slaves, their pollution of the ermine of the judge and 



