Part 70

But if a trust buys the legislators it can count votes and secure delivery of the goods purchased.

Use your influence to curb the power of the trusts by taking away from venal legislators that power to sell to trust managers the Senate of the United States.

This subject you should discuss with your neighbors. You should urge it upon all of those voters with whom you come in contact.

You should influence legislators in your State to vote for a Constitutional amendment causing popular election of Senators--and no legislator will resent your suggestion if he be an honest man.

Everybody knows that the United States Senate to-day does not represent the people. There are exceptions among the Senators, but they are in the minority. Every year the Senate is less and less representative of the nation, more and more representative of organized capital. Good Americans, irrespective of party, will strive to work for this change in the national machinery. Take away from the trusts now the power to tamper with national laws through the Senate.

THE PROMISING TOAD'S HEAD

The head of a toad, like the head of a trust, is superficially a hideous thing to look at.

Sometimes it is alleged that valuable jewels are found in a toad's head, and on this account the hideousness even of the far-famed horned toad of the West becomes less repulsive.

The trust toad, as you will find by examining it closely and studying events, has a head equipped with jewels of a very fine quality. Many years from now men will be very glad that the trust toad was born, because of the good that will come from it. ----

Already we see that the trusts are inevitably strengthening labor unions. They are bringing the men into closer relationship and forming them into greater and more closely united bodies of workmen.

The trusts organize admirably the great industries and prepare the day when all of these industries will be owned by the Government--that is to say, by the people themselves.

The trusts eliminate competition, which is a stupid, out-of-date form of barbarism, leading to cheating, thievery and adulteration.

The trusts do away with the vast armies of middlemen, and, by diminishing every day the number of those who live on the work of others, they compel an ever-growing number to enter the fields of useful production. ----

Just at present the jewel that stands out most prominently in the ugly trust toad's head is "FREE TRADE."

Men have argued and fought and voted and made speeches and paraded for Free Trade--and all in vain. The more they talked and paraded, the heavier were the duties.

But when the TRUSTS want Free Trade, they will have it, for the trusts control legislation.

And we SHALL have Free Trade, for the trusts WILL want it very soon.

A trust engaged in manufacturing wants to buy as cheaply as it can the raw materials used.

The trusts will soon own all the industries, all the manufactures, and they will want freedom from the duties which are now paid on the material.

Already there is in process of formation a great Clothing Trust.

The small man who makes clothing now must pay a duty on wool to protect the American farmer who raises sheep.

How long do you think the Clothing Trust will tolerate this duty on wool?

How long do you think the Trust engaged in making cloths in America will tolerate a duty on wool that makes the industry so expensive?

Some of the duties will be retained, of course--at least until the trusts shall be powerful enough even to despise foreign competition.

But one thing after another the trusts will want free from duty, and these things will be freed as fast as the trusts' order is given. ----

The trusts are going to do a great deal of good to the masses of the people in time. They will end by forcing universal Government ownership of monopolies upon the people.

TRUSTS WILL DRIVE LABOR UNIONS INTO POLITICS

A workman should use the best tools at his command--the workman's best tool is his ballot. Everything that men want it can give them if used intelligently. The reasons urged against its use by labor unions are conscientious but not strong. They are based upon the fact that labor men fear to trust each other, and fear especially to trust their leaders. They will not vote as unions because they fear that they may be sold out--that is the plain, unpleasant fact.