THE FARMER AND THE TRUSTS. 



409 



great political parties to incorporate in its platform the prin- 

 ciple which I have announced, and which I am sure will 

 commend itself to his judgment, and he will be speedily 

 undeceived. He will discover that any hitherto supposed con- 

 test carried on against the Trusts was a mere skirmish. 

 Against this proposal he would see real war. And yet it does 

 not primarily propose to hinder the Trusts from doing whatever 

 they please, nor is there any ultimate intent to hinder them 

 from doing whatever is approved by the moral sense of the 

 community. Years since I myself once proposed this plank — 

 restricting it to quasi-public corporations, like railroads and 

 water companies — in a committee which sat up all night to 

 construct the most thundering denunciation of railroads which 

 human ingenuity could devise, to be adopted in a great polit- 

 ical convention then in session. The public mind was thought 

 at the time to demand such a bolt, and it was forthcoming — 

 but there were those on hand to see that it was not aimed at 

 anything in particular. I was not specially uninfiuential in 

 the committee in other respects, and so far as I could see had 

 as much force as any other member in shaping the thought 

 and the language of the party platform, but that proposition 

 was voted down without a ripple. 



As I have said, I do not expect the present generation to 

 unite on this principle, simple and obvious as it is. It takes 

 too many years to educate the public mind to grasp simple 

 truth. That it will come in time is sure because it is the only 

 way out of the difficulty, and in the progress of our evolution 

 we shall come to it and take it. 



This chapter, up to the beginning of this paragraph, was 

 written about 1896. If it had been written at the time these 

 pages go to press, May, 1899, it is quite possible that, under the 

 influence of the growing excitement in regard to Trusts, it 

 might have been written in a somewhat different vein. For 

 that reason I let it stand as originally prepared. Utterances 

 framed under the influence of a strong public feeling are not 

 likely to be very wise, or to be long remembered. Daily, for 



