Part 68

That same French government derives millions from its tobacco business, incidentally giving the people good tobacco cheap instead of poisonous tobacco dear. The red Indian dodging bears and using his squaws as slaves had to start that great tobacco industry before the French government could get it.

Don't waste your time and energy joining the thoughtless crowd that howls against trusts. Use your vote and your voice to put those trusts under government control as soon as may be. Be glad that an old Vanderbilt had brains enough to build great railroad systems. Don't denounce him or begrudge him the fortune he made.

His work was worth the money.

Let us say to his little descendants the pee wee Vanderbilts of to-day:

"You have had enough now. Although you have done nothing, we shall pay you generously for what your great-grandfather did, and with your kind permission, or without it, we shall transfer these roads to the people whose patronage gives them value." ----

In due time this pleasant message of just appropriation will be delivered to all the various trust owners. They will all be well paid for their work. They deserve to be, for they have done as individuals the work which the collective commonwealth could not do.

But they will be made to see that they cannot forever keep what they have created. If a man invents a steam engine worth to the world at large ten thousand billions, he is allowed to keep his property only seventeen years, under our patent laws. Shall we allow a clever highway robber of a commercial organizer to keep the proceeds of his energy for himself and his descendants forever? ----

We had almost forgotten the mammoth mentioned at the top of this article. That mammoth, dead and forgotten, is the forerunner of to-day's trust. The mammoth was hated by all created things around him. An accidental blow from his left hind foot would break up any family in existence.

But his vast weight and power ploughed the first paths through the swamps and forests. The paths made by the mammoth through unexplored tracts were a great boon to half-savage man. In fact, man followed along those paths after awhile and learned how to kill the mammoth very neatly.

The trusts are marking out organized paths through the hitherto chaotic, disorganized systems of industry. Those paths will be useful to all men through all time. The trust will be killed when his day comes, as the mammoth has been killed.

Let us be patient meanwhile, and not forget that, though a monster, he was a monster absolutely necessary and very useful.

TRUSTS AND THE SENATE

If you are willing to assume your responsibilities as an American citizen you should study seriously the question of the trusts.

Already trust organization has assumed very real and very threatening proportions.

Every family in the United States knows of the existence of the Meat Trust, which cuts down the food supply of the people to add to its bank account.

Every merchant feels keenly the existence of half a dozen trusts on which he is absolutely dependent, and from which there is no escape.

We all have seen the Coal Trust keeping ready armed men to shoot working citizens whenever it should give the order. This Coal Trust, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, boasted that it would, if necessary, "call out the United States Government troops" to shoot the miners. Here is one trust already talking as though it controlled the army and all the other forces of Government. The trusts believe themselves already in control, and their national power is very great.

The crisis of trust development has not been reached. The present power of concentrated, organized money is very great, but it is nothing to the power which money will exert in the future.

This future development of the trust force should be discussed and studied calmly, rationally and dispassionately by all Americans.

There is no use in denouncing or in hating the trusts. It is true that they are entirely selfish; it is NOT true that they represent evil, pure and simple.

The trust is a necessary development in humanity's journey toward organization, concentration and the simplifying of industry.

The first locomotive ever built was a trust. It performed the work of a thousand four-horse teams, deprived four thousand horses and a thousand drivers of a livelihood.

The railroad trust is simply an extension of the concentration of labor, the simplifying of industrial operation, represented in the building of the first locomotive.

THE TRUSTS IN THE END WILL DO INFINITE GOOD.

They will destroy the mean competition which for centuries has made liars, swindlers and slavedrivers of men.

They will practically eliminate the great number of large private fortunes, and thus compel men to devote their energies to pursuits nobler than the accumulation of money.

At first a few enormous fortunes will dominate the nation--the beginning of these great fortunes you may see already.

Then will come the owning of the trusts--that is to say, of all the great national industries--by the nation itself.