n
hands and agree not to fight, leaving monopoly again?

And, Jonathan, if there should be a return to the old-fashioned,
free-for-all scramble for markets, would it be any better for the
workers? Would there not be the same old struggle between the
capitalists and the workers? Would not the workers still have to give
much for little; to wear their lives away grinding out profits for the
masters of their bread, of their very lives? Would there not be gluts
as before, with panics, misery, unemployed armies sullenly parading
the streets; idlers in mansions and toilers in hovels? You know very
well that there would be all these, my friend, and I know that you are
too sensible a fellow to think any longer about destroying the trusts.
It cannot be done, Jonathan, and it would not be a good thing if it
could be done.

I think, my friend, that you will see upon reflection that there are
many excellent features about the trust which it would be criminal and
foolish to destroy had we the power. Competition means waste, foolish
and unnecessary waste. Trusts have been organized expressly to do away
with the waste of men and natural resources. They represent economical
production. When Mr. Perkins, of the New York Life Insurance Company,
was testifying before the insurance investigating committee he gave
expression to the philosophy of the trust movement by saying that, in
the modern view, competition is the law of death and that co-operation
and organization represent life and progress.

While the wage-workers are probably in many respects better off as a
result of the trustification of industry, it would be idle to deny
that there are many evils connected with it. No one who views the
situation calmly can deny that the trusts exert an enormous power over
the government of the country, that they are, in fact, the real
government of the country, exercising far more control over the lives
of the common people than the regularly constituted, constitutional
government of the country does. It is also true that they can
arbitrarily fix prices in many instances, so that the natural law of
value is set aside and the workers are exploited as consumers, as
purchasers of the things necessary to life, just as they are exploited
as producers.

Of course, friend Jonathan, wages must meet the cost of living. If
prices rise considerably, wages must sooner or later follow, and if
prices fall wages likewise will fall sooner or later. But it is