128 
Strong—The Legal Status of Trusts. 
duction, and raise prices. This idea is expressed by Judge 
Cooley when he says, “ Trusts are things to be feared. They 
antagonize a leading and most valuable principle of industrial 
life in their attempts not to curb competition merely, but to 
put an end to it. The course of the leading trust of the coun¬ 
try has been such as to emphasize the fear of them. When we 
witness the utterly heartless manner in which trusts sometimes 
have closed manufactories and turned men willing to work into 
the streets, in order that they may increase profits already rea¬ 
sonably large, we cannot help asking ourselves whether the 
trust as we see it is not a public enemy, whether it is not teach¬ 
ing the laborer dangerous lessons, and whether it is not help¬ 
ing to breed anarchy. ” In the minds of the people “ trust ” has 
become synonymous with “ extortion, ” and “ combination ” with 
“ conspiracy. ” 3 
Unfortunately there has been but little study of the economic 
character of the trust and of the causes that have produced 
them, by those who have demanded repressive legislation; conse 
quently it has not been perceived that the trust is an economic 
evolution which is both natural and inevitable, and which has 
proceeded from individual effort to partnership, then to corpora¬ 
tion, and finally to trust or partnership of corporations. “ The 
modern trust, like the earlier corporation, is grounded in a com¬ 
mercial tendency which grows out of commercial necessity,” 4 and 
it is interesting to note that the present fear and apprehension 
is but the counterpart of that felt in the early part of the cen¬ 
tury in regard to corporations. It was with the greatest diffi¬ 
culty that a charter could then be obtained for any purpose, how¬ 
ever beneficial it might be; but this hostility was compelled to 
give way to the necessities of changed business methods which 
the revolution in the processes and organization of production 
and transportation rendered inevitable after the first quarter of 
the century. It is not within the scope of the present paper to 
discuss the many causes that have called the modern trust into 
existence, and to show that they are the necessary result of 
s “ The Corporation Problem ”•— Cook, page 234. 
4 “ The Trust, an Economic Evolution,” an address by C. F. Beach, Jr., 
at the Union League Club, Chicago, March 30,1894. 
