16 PATTERSON—THE PROBLEM OF THE TRUSTS. [April 2, 
This has come as a result of the growth of legitimate trade, and 
several causes have been contributing factors of that growth. The 
demand for labor; our wide expanse of territory; our isolation 
from the struggle for the balance of power and the wars of Europe ; 
our comparatively light burdens of taxation ; and our free institu- 
tions, protecting the citizen against arbitrary power and affording 
full opportunity for the development of individuality, have attracted 
immigration and furnished recruits to the army of labor. The 
policy of protection, whose justification is the equalization of the 
conditions of competition in order that the products of home 
industry may control the home market, has stimulated manufactures 
by increasing the profits of manufacturers, has secured higher wages 
for workingmen than laborers in similar industries receive in other 
countries, has enabled our workingmen to maintain a higher 
standard of living, thereby made them more useful citizens, and 
enabled them in many instances to rise from the ranks of the 
employés and to become employers. The railways have overcome 
the disintegrating influences of distance and of conflicting sectional 
interests. The establishment of the gold standard has given assur- 
ance to the world that capital can be invested in our obligations in 
confidence of a return in money of full purchasing power, and has 
commanded for the industrial development of the country the sur- 
plus capital of the world. 
~The business of the United States cannot be done to-day by the 
agencies of the past. The flatboat floating down the stream; the 
Conestoga wagon floundering through the mud of a country road ; 
the canal-boat dragged by the mules upon the towing path; the 
small engine, of weak power and low velocity, drawing a few cars 
of ten or twenty tons’ capacity upon a single-track line and the sail- 
ing vessel of small tonnage have all had their day. The typical 
agencies of modern transportation are the four or six track line, the 
hundred-ton steel freight car, the engine drawing its passenger 
train at a rate of sixty miles an hour, the electric lines expanding 
for every city its tributary territory, and the steamship of more 
than ten thousand tons’ capacity. 
Discoveries in science and inventions in the arts have created 
new subjects of commerce, and have made the luxuries of yesterday 
the necessities of to-day. Great mills now manufacture the goods 
which formerly were made in individual workshops. Daily and 
hourly mails, the telegraph and the telephone have brought widely 
