222 THE THIRD POWER 



social progress. But, as in agricultural industry of the civil- 

 ized world, all its iniquities and evils are concentrated ex- 

 clusively on the distributive side, similarly in this new trust 

 movement all evils and iniquities of the latter are concentrated 

 on its subjective side. Being perfectly right, inevitable and 

 beneficial in their object, which is the improvement in pro- 

 duction, the trusts are monstrously wrong and harmful in 

 their subject, i. e., as to the character of their present owner- 

 ship. While trust is to industry as a whole what the machine 

 is to the single establishment, — a means of saving time and 

 productive power, the fact of their ownership being concen- 

 trated in a fciv hands, turns them into the instruments of in- 

 dustrial exploitation and economic enslavement of all pro- 

 ducers of wealth. But just broaden their subject, just let all 

 the people participate in their ownership, and all their evils 

 will be transformed into the greatest benefits for the masses. 

 As any attempt to oppose the economic and social advance 

 represented by the trust movement, while being practically an 

 attempt to move backward into the anarchy of the old com- 

 petitive system, would be necessarily and inevitably abortive, 

 if not disastrous, the only problem which confronts the 

 human society in the trust issue is not, how to abolish or 

 even hamper and restrict them, but how to use them for the 

 benefit of all the people. The fate of anti-trust legislation in 

 the United States is highly demonstrative and sufficiently in- 

 structive in this respect. Introduction and growth of profit- 

 sharing and arbitration principles in the trust movement in 

 the United States as well as in other manufacturing coun- 

 tries, especially in England, is exactly the principal move- 

 ment in the direction of broadening the subjective side of the 

 trust system, which is destined to transform them into eco- 

 nomic and social factors, highly beneficial for the masses. 

 As human society is not merely a mechanical conglomerate 

 of individuals and represents some organic whole, and as, 

 furthermore, it always develops as a whole, in one direction 

 at a time only, the agricultural trusts seem to be bound to 

 come. However peculiar conditions of agriculture in all 

 civilized countries, which preclude its being concentrated in 

 a few hands and render such a concentration impossible, are 



