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manufacturing states we can add the men who own their own 

 homes, and we have a multitude whom no man can number, 

 permanently arrayed in support of freedom and established 

 government. They can make their influence felt not alone 

 by precept and example, but by practical manifestation at 

 the ballot box, and sometimes, when occasion may demand, 

 by meeting unlawful force with force in a most wholesome 

 and exemplary manner. 



Liberty and a free government have owed much in the 

 past to the middle classes, and the present outlook is that 

 they will owe more in the future. There is also a negative 

 influence for good springing directly from such various 

 industries and avocations as are pursued in Essex county. 

 They are in their nature unfavorable to the establishment 

 of trusts and monopolies, which are also object lessons used 

 by the disturbers of public repose and enemies of social 

 order, and which in some of their manifestations are feared 

 by the wise and thoughtful, as opposed to the spirit of our 

 institutions, and calculated to alienate the government and 

 its laws from the affection of the people. While many 

 trusts have undoubtedly cheapened certain articles of nec- 

 essar}- consumption, others have become oppressive and are 

 objects of popular hatred. Their chief danger to the 

 country is that the field of their contests is apt to be trans- 

 ferred from the commercial to the political arena. Tri- 

 umphing over the operation of the ordinary laws of busi- 

 ness, absorbing or crushing all rivals, they encounter the 

 hostility of the masses. This hostility is manifested in 

 political effort for their overthrow. It must l)e met in the 

 :field in which it is offered. It cannot be met by equality 

 in numbers or put down in open discussion, and bribery 

 and corruption become weapons of defence. It is quite 

 likely that the venal influence of powerful combinations 

 upon legislation and the judiciary is exaggerated in the 

 popular mind, and is made the most of by politicians, but 

 that it should exist in any degree, that it should be a sub- 

 ject even of discussion, can only be productive of evil to 



