And State Papers 541 



be shorn of his luxuries ; but the wage-worker may 

 be deprived of even bare necessities. 



The mechanism of modern business is so delicate 

 that extreme care must be taken not to interfere 

 with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many 

 of those who have made it their vocation to de- 

 nounce the great industrial combinations which are 

 popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, 

 known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and 

 fear. These are precisely the two emotions, par- 

 ticularly when combined w-ith ignorance, which unfit 

 men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. 

 In facing new industrial conditions, the whole his- 

 tory of the world shows that legislation will gen- 

 erally be both unwise and ineffective unless under- 

 taken after calm inquiry and with sober self-re- 

 straint. Much of the legislation directed at the trusts 

 would have been exceedingly mischievous had it 

 not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance 

 with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or 

 reckless agitator has been the really effective friend 

 of the evils which he has been nominally opposing. 

 In dealing with business interests, for the govern- 

 ment to undertake by crude and ill-considered legis- 

 lation to do what may turn out to be bad, would be 

 to incur the risk of such far-reaching national dis- 

 aster that it would be preferable to undertake noth- 

 ing at all. The men who demand the impossible or 

 the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with 

 which they are nominally at war, for they hamper 

 those who would endeavor to find out in rational 



