THE MEANING OF CORPORATIONS AND TRUSTS. 309 



has raised in the minds of many a vague fear akin to that which 

 children feel when they read of giants and genii, and politicians 

 have conjured with their names as nurses frighten infants with 

 tales of great monsters that are coming to eat them, and this not- 

 withstanding that the greatest effect in all fields of human effort 

 has been gained through organizations, characterized by combi- 

 nation and recombination, that, working under centralized con- 

 trol, have enlisted great numbers of men in the attainment of far- 

 reaching ends. The advantages of combined action in bodily 

 attack and defense led step by step through the grouping of tribes 

 and clans to the formation of great armies. Upholders of like 

 ecclesiastical doctrines have associated themselves in organiza- 

 tions that have sought to extend their sway by united effort. 

 Similar needs of similarly conditioned masses of men have caused 

 the growth of political governments that have combined and 

 recombined. With advancing civilization the soldier's calling 

 becomes of less and less importance ; with the growth of the 

 intellect ecclesiasticism loses its dominance ; and with the loosen- 

 ing of the shackles of paternalism the sphere of political govern- 

 ment recedes. Advancing humanity now demands, more than 

 ever before, the service of him who contributes most to that 

 wholesome care of the physical being which is essential to the 

 highest development of the mental and moral life. The artisan 

 and the tradesman, who were the butt of ridicule, the object of 

 contumely, when my lords the warriors and my lords the bish- 

 ops ruled the world, find that their vocations, increased and 

 extended by the aid of science, are of inestimable value to the 

 human race. The forces tending toward the highest civilization, 

 that through physical conflict have evolved the great nations 

 which abide side by side under a fuller promise of peace that 

 throughout the strife between mind and mind as to the Unknown 

 Cause have evolved the great religious organizations that seem 

 more and more content to abandon useless dogmas, to join in the 

 promulgation of moral precepts that are common to them all and 

 in the ever more discreet ministration of charity are now swirl- 

 ing with greatest intensity in the field of industry, evolving the 

 great industrial organizations, that through the mutual reaction 

 of one upon the other will bring that clearer knowledge by means 

 of which they will be made the peaceful and harmonious agents 

 of the higher life. And therefore, inseparable from consideration 

 of the causes that have led to industrial combination and the 

 effect of industrial organizations in the present, is speculation as 

 to the direction the tendency toward such combination will take 

 in the future, the extent to which it will involve industrial func- 

 tions, and the effect the organizations will have upon the individ- 

 ual life of the members of a community. 



