A.—s

6

The most serious fact urged on behalf of this Bill is that some of the great companies in the State disregard and violate the black list section with impunity. . . . The strong syndicate, entrenched in power and authority, overrides prohibition and penalties, snaps its fingers in the faces of the people, and sets at naught the limitations of statutes and constitution. Concentrated machinery may take the place of men, but machines cannot buy meat or grain from the farmer, cannot read books, or go to theatres or rent houses, or make gardens. Production by too highly specialised methods defeats itself, for it destroys the buyer of products, and a low market price matters little to a'homeless, workless population. To discover that industry, thrift, sobriety, &c, are useless as against the labour-saving machine is to give a shock to the foundations of industrial life. Following the shock comes the loss of character and the degradation of social life. In an article on " Wealth," written by Mr. Carnegie, this trust-magnate frankly states his own observations on the subject : — We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting-house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition the employer is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labour figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and employed, between capital and labour, rich and poor. When a trust puts its powerful grasp upon a town or village it can cause it to prosper or decay. It holds in its power the destiny of districts and of provinces. If a trust breaks the law of one State it moves to another of more lax morality, and brings its huge organization to make or mar the country over which its influence dominates. According to Mr. Lawson's survey of " American Industrial Problems," newly published by the Messrs. Blackwood, American workmen are compelled by their employers to obey certain rules of life. They must be teetotalers ; they must live in villages which the employer establishes for them ; they are subject to a continued occult surveillance. Confidential reports are made periodically to the management on every employee. The careless maxim of some British masters that their men can do what they like with their own time is never heard in the United States. In the workshops private detectives are introduced to find out what the men are saying and doing : — The great Pinkerton has a detective service for this express purpose. .One of his men may be hired as a fitter or mechanic, and he may be in the shop for months without exciting the least suspicion of his character. Every night he will send in a report of all he has seen or heard during the day. Not only the manual workers but the commercial men feel the methods of the trust oppressive. Deep resentment is often experienced with the tone and mode of conducting affairs used by officers of the trust. The American business man naturally likes to have a good deal of latitude in his dealings with principals, and he dislikes immensely having to sign a contract in which he has no freedom or option whatever. The agent of the trust, in effect, says, " This is the price you have to pay for your goods; here are the terms on which you may handle your purchases; this is the price you must ask from customers. Take the goods or leave them." A self-respecting man is galled unutterably under such dictational rule. Years ago we had in this country many proprietors of businesses, or what may be called business men, or yet stating it plainer, employers. Now we have but very few employers; almost all are employees. They are compelled to await the acting of the employer. They have no voice whatever in the industrial affairs of this country. They go to work at the suggestion of the monopoly, work on such terms as the monopoly dictates, and at such length of time as they prescribe—all contributing to the maintenance of a very bitter feeling. As I shall show, these unwise institutions are beyond the power of Congress and practically beyond the power of the State.—(Hon. F. M. Geifpith, 7th February, 1903. C.R., 11th February, 1903, p. 2119.) There can be no doubt .that when the faithful worker and the energetic ambitious aspirant for fortune are shut out from the fields of enterprise something of great importance to the community is lost. It was well exemplified by the operations of the syndicates which exploited the wheat country of the western States. These syndicates were made up generally by persons directing railroad combines so as to control immense areas of wheat land. They planted, sowed, made roads and camps for their men. The railways arranged special rates of transportation on both what they bought and what they sold, they purchased at what rate they liked, and held back their grain if it suited them to " rig the market." They encouraged no settlement; women and children were not seen in their camps ; not a penny was collected from them for school-house or library. They worked the country as if it was a mine or logging camp, exhausting and desolating everything to produce the harvest of greed. The smaller men, the competitors, farmers struggling to maintain their familes and keep up schools, were squeezed and drained financially to impoverishment, selling their little crops at ruinous loss to escape the greater robbery of the railway league. Such action on the part of a trust or syndicate was called " the business enterprise of captains of industry " ; but it was little better than a blight and a curse to those not within the magic ring of collective plunder. Their success I Their success is the shame and the scandal of the country and of Christendom. Their success has been gained by the sacrifice of American manhood and independence, and the prostitution of every pure patriotic impulse in the American breast.—(Hon. F. M. Geifpith in the House of Representatives, 7th February, 1903. C.R., 11th February, 1903, p. 2118.) Tariff. The preponderance of opinion is strongly in favour of the position that much of the power of trusts is owing to protection by tariff. A practical example of this belief may be found in the repeal of the duty on coal (67 cents per ton) on account of the trouble wrought by the strike of the miners against the oppression of the Coal Trust. But, so far as the anthracite coal is concerned, the tariff had little effect upon the monopoly in the United States. It is all located within the national limits, and 95 per cent, of it is in the State of Pennsylvania. They are the richest coalfields in the world, containing vast stores of fuel, the possession of which means almost inexhaustible wealth to their possessors. Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan was the financier through whose