192 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



We cannot therefore but believe that trusts have come to 

 stay, and that the wise thing for the people to do is to multi- 

 ply them more and more, and push the productive capacity 

 of each to the full extent, until we have a surplus of every 

 commodity' that can minister to human need. The people 

 should do all this. The people, in the sovereign capacity of 

 the State, should create the trust and control it, keeping it from 

 doing harm, and compelling it in all things to seek the gen- 

 eral welfare, never becoming the instrument of private greed. 



III. Such are the advantages of the trust, and its possi- 

 bilities. But, on the other hand, there are great disadvan- 

 tages and serious evils connected with the trust, especially 

 in the early stage of its development, before the people have 

 learned how to control it. If the trust's power for good is 

 great, its power for evil is tremendous. 



1. The necessary tendency of the trust is to throw both 

 manual laborers and brain workers out of employment. In 

 this respect it is like new machinery and improved processes. 

 Hence it follows that in the nation there is a great army 

 of the unemployed and in the world a host of idle men. The 

 department store shuts up many retail and wholesale stores 

 in city and country, in all lines of business whose products 

 are sold by the syndicate. So it is with all the trusts. This 

 evil, though serious for the time, yet in the end will be rem- 

 edied by the fact that the increased product of the trust will 

 create new wants which in turn must create a demand for 

 more labor. This remedy must be thoroughly applied ; the 

 laboring man, manual or brain worker, skilled or unskilled, 

 must be taught the value of leisure and how to utilize it, in- 

 stead of abusing it to the injury of the man. The man whose 

 daily work is to perform some minute operation assigned him 

 in the remarkable division of labor must use his leisure so 

 that his manhood shall not be dwarfed and his versatility 

 destroyed. He who knows only how to make the hundredth 

 part of a watch is at the mercy of circumstances ; so also is 

 the man who is a mere adding machine. The man must be 

 more than his occupation, — he must be above his employ- 

 ment; then, when one thing fails to afford him a living, he 

 can turn to something else. The mobility of labor must take 

 the place of immobility. 



