nt has modern labour become
to the fixed capital under which it works. It has been claimed as one
of the advantages of a Trust that the economies attending its working
enable it to pay wages higher than the market rate. There can be no
question as to the ability of the stronger Trusts to pay high wages.
But there is no power to compel them to do so, and it would be pure
hypocrisy to pretend that the interests of the labourers formed any
part of the motive which led a body of keen business men to acquire a
monopoly. One of the special economies which a large capital possesses
over a small, and which a Trust possesses _par excellence_, is the
power of making advantageous bargains with its employees.

It is possible that a firm like the Standard Oil Trust may to some
limited extent practise a cheap philanthropy of profit-sharing in
order to deceive the public into supposing that its huge profits
enrich many instead of few. But there is no evidence that the
employees of a Trust have gained in any way from the economies of
industrial monopoly, nor, as we see, is there any _a priori_
likelihood they should so gain.[142]

But the practical ownership of its employees involved in the position
of a monopoly is by no means the full measure of the oppressive power
exercised by the Trust over labour. Since the means by which Trust
prices are maintained is the regulation of production, the interests
of the Trust often require that a large part of the fixed capital of
the companies entering the Trust shall stand idle. "When competition
has become so fierce that there is frequently in the market a supply
of goods so great that all cannot be sold at remunerative prices, it
is necessary that the competing establishments, in order to continue
business at all (of course, under perfectly free competition many will
fail), check their production. Now an ordinary pool makes provision
for each establishment to run in one of the two ways suggested.
Manifestly a stronger organisation like the Trust, by selecting the
best establishments, and running them continuously at their full
capacity, while closing the others, or selling them, and making other
use of the capital thus set free, will make a great saving. The most
striking example of this kind in the recent history of the Trusts is
furnished by the Whisky Trust. More than eighty distilleries joined
the Trust. Formerly, when organised as a pool, as has been said, each
establishment ran at part