SOCIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF THE TRUST 9 



doing business on too small a scale to be able to afford it. Their profits 

 are too small, and it is not possible for them to increase them without 

 increasing their plant to a great magnitude. They are therefore doubly 

 handicapped. The trust is able to secure the services of specialists 

 and profit by the discoveries they are able to make. Great establish- 

 ments do not employ specialists solely because they fear competition. 

 They are employed fully as much to secure the benefits that may result 

 from more economical processes as to gain an advantage in a com- 

 petitive market. This being the case, it is not probable that there 

 would be less employment of such persons even if the trust had a com- 

 plete monopoly of the market. 



It is clear from this account of the manner in which modern manu- 

 facturers are working for the improvement of their respective products 

 that they have opened a new field of employment. In the early day 

 there was no opportunity for the man who had the genius to invent or 

 discover. He had to work amid the surroundings of poverty, and 

 society often lost entirely the benefits that might have resulted to it 

 from the labors of these specially gifted individuals. Such, however, 

 is no longer the case. Any man with inventive power is able to find a 

 place in the employ of a large firm where, in laboratories provided by 

 the employer, he is able to make discoveries that will add greatly to 

 the health and happiness of the race. In this way it appears that society 

 gains most when its industries are conducted on the largest practicable 

 scale. 



It is quite true that the trust is enabled to dispense with the services 

 of a great number of commercial travelers, but this is a social gain. 

 It is also true that the advertising feature of trust-conducted industries 

 is reduced to a minimum, but this is a gain when considered from the 

 point of view of social welfare. The more men a society must employ 

 in the distributive industries, the more wasteful is its organization. 

 Every reduction in energy needed to bring goods from the producer 

 to the consumer is an advance in industrial progress. If the entire 

 population might engage in production, there would be a great increase 

 in well-being, 



A great deal has been written about the subordinate position of a 



