170 Presidential Addresses 



The whole subject of the trusts is of vital concern 

 to us, because it presents one, and perhaps the most 

 conspicuous, of the many problems forced upon our 

 attention by the tremendous industrial development 

 which has taken place during the last century, a de 

 velopment which is occurring in all civilized coun 

 tries, notably in our own. There have been many 

 factors responsible for bringing about these changed 

 conditions. Of these, steam and electricity are the 

 chief. The extraordinary changes in the methods of 

 transportation of merchandise and of transmission 

 of news have rendered not only possible, but inevi 

 table, the immense increase in the rate of growth 

 of our great industrial centres that is, of our great 

 cities. I want you to bring home to yourselves that 

 fact. When Cincinnati was founded news could be 

 transmitted and merchandise carried exactly as has 

 been the case in the days of the Roman Empire. 

 You had here on your river the flat-boat, you had on 

 the ocean the sailing-ship, you had the pack-train, 

 you had the wagon, and every one of the four was 

 known when Babylon fell. The change in the last 

 hundred years has been greater by far than the 

 changes in all the preceding three thousand. Those 

 are the facts. Because of them have resulted the 

 specialization of industries, and the unexampled 

 opportunities offered for the employment of huge 

 amounts of capital, and therefore for the rise in the 

 business world of those master-minds through whom 

 alone it is possible for such vast amounts of capital 

 to be employed with profit. It matters very little 



