304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in a mystery that the ordinary mind did not penetrate, under the 

 cloud of which they have wrested undue personal gain. The con- 

 version by men to their personal ownership of funds and estates 

 held by them as trustees was an abuse from which the common 

 law for centuries was inadequate to afford immunity. The devel- 

 opment of the ethical trust relation sustained by those in active 

 conduct of the great industrial organizations of this century to 

 those whose funds are invested therein has been more rapid than 

 the development of the legal safeguards for the protection of that 

 relation. But as every abuse is the forerunner and the cause of 

 its own remedy, the deleterious manipulation of stocks, bonds, and 

 securities of every sort must give way before a public intelligence 

 that tends more and more to a perception of the methods by which 

 it has been possible. And this intelligence will compel the em- 

 bodiment in legal codes of measures that will place these recently 

 developed trusteeships upon as clearly defined and safe a basis 

 as the earlier and simpler trusteeships were placed by the system 

 of jurisprudence and jurisdiction organized by the Earl of Not- 

 tingham. 



It is frequently asserted that a nation's industries are in most 

 healthful condition when conducted by a great number of inde- 

 pendent producers. If carried to its logical conclusion, this im- 

 plies that the village artisan who employs one man to assist him 

 is guilty of an act of injustice. For otherwise, if A has a right to 

 better his condition by working for wages under the direction of 

 B, why should not both A and B, if they can better their condi- 

 tion by doing so, work for wages under the direction of C ? And 

 why should not scores and hundreds of men work under the direc- 

 tion of the master mind of Z ? It is true that whether impelled 

 by the desire to obtain increased profits, or by the constant de- 

 mand for the reduction of prices, it is the tendency of an indus- 

 trial combination to absorb the performance of the functions con- 

 tributing to the manufacture of its ultimate product, thereby 

 either destroying or curtailing the profits of those theretofore 

 engaged in the performance of those functions. For example, 

 but a few years ago the placing in the Northwestern markets of 

 coal from the Pittsburg bituminous coal field involved the mak- 

 ing of profits by the mine producing coal, the agent in Pittsburg 

 that purchased it on commission, the firm who employed him, the 

 company over whose docks it was loaded in vessels at the ports of 

 Lake Erie, the owners of the vessels which carried it to the North- 

 west, the owners of the docks on which it was unloaded at the 

 head of the lakes, and the dealers who disposed of it in the vari- 

 ous Northwestern cities. The pressure of competition reducing 

 the possibility of separate profits has forced the combination of 

 these different agencies of production and distribution for in- 



