1903.] PATTERSON—THE PROBLEM OF THE TRUSTS. 19 
the promoters and underwriters, by the soundness of the principles 
upon which the combination is organized and conducted, and by 
the freedom of the business from governmental interference. It is 
not surprising that the number of the industrial organizations and 
the magnitude of their operations should arouse the public interest 
and should cause more or less fear as to possible consequences. 
Every great industrial development has excited such fears. The 
steam engine, the railways and all forms of labor-saving appliances, 
from the spinning jenny to the typesetting machine, have seemed 
n their turn to threaten large additions to the ranks of the unem 
ployed and heavy losses to different classes of people; and yet, in 
each case, the result has been the opening of new avenues to 
employment and a substantial advance in civilization. So to-day 
no one who is accurately informed as to present industrial condi- 
tions can doubt that, because of American financial skill in secur- 
ing combination of resources and concert of action, the products of 
industry have been brought to a higher standard, the labor which 
produces them is better paid than ever before, and the consumer 
buys them upon relatively more favorable terms. 
Concurrently with the organization of corporations with 
increased capital for production, manufacture and trade, there have 
come into operation unions of laborers of larger membership and 
greater activity. Every one ought to concede that it is right that 
workingmen should receive full and adequate compensation for 
their labor and should have that legally guarded freedom of 
contract which will enable them to sell their labor to the best 
advantage. Every one ought to concede also that workingmen 
should form associations for the protection of their interests and to 
secure increases in their wages ; but it is not right that those union- 
should undertake to reduce the mass of workingmen to a low level of 
mediocrity by means of limitations of the hours of voluntary labor, 
and by restrictions upon the quantity and quality of work to be 
performed by the individual laborer; nor is it right that the unions 
should attempt to monopolize the supply of labor by preventing the 
employment of non-union laborers. Such limitations and restric- 
tions aggrandize the labor leaders, but they degrade the working- 
men ; they tend to deprive intelligent, industrious and ambitious 
workingmen of the opportunity to rise out of the ranks; they 
diminish that effectiveness of American labor which has been not 
the least of the causes of the country’s industrial supremacy ; and 
