/ '
8 The Conservative *
Southern negro hod been ns free and ns
intelligent ns some of our anti-trust
friends , he would have turned white at
the revolution threatened by such a laborsaving
bor-saving device.
You fanners kno s' what labor-saving
machinery has done for you , and if some
men have grown
KAHM IMPLEMENTS.
cultural iinplenients , I am sure you have
no grievance against them. It is within
the lifetime of men standing before mo
that mowers and reapers were invented ,
so that one man can mow in a day now
thirty times as much grass as he could
with the old scythe. You no longer
thresh your grain with horse power , but
save time and money by mutually join
ing and getting a steam thresher. I
have seen it estimated that it would re
quire the entire population of the United
States , working six days in the week
and one hundred days in the year to
shell the country's corn crop by the old
hand process of shelling. Modern rakes ,
hay forks , steam plows and steam reap
ers and harvesters have also cheapened
the cost of producing crops and light
ened the farmer's tasks. While all
these influences and the opening of vast
areas of agricultural land in the West
have also cheapened the price of cereals
and other agricultural products , the de
crease has not been so great proportion
ately as it has in the cost of necessaries
of life which the farmer is compelled to
buy. Wheat may have fallen 80 or 40
per cent in twenty-live years , but sugar
has dropped over HO per cent , cotton
cloths between (50 ( and 80 per cent , nails
75 per cent , boots and shoes over 40 per
cent , and other articles correspondingly.
It is no longer necessity for the wife and
daughter to pass a largo part of their
time at the spinning wheel or the loom
for invested capital now furnishes much
cheaper and bettor clothing than can bo
made on the farm.
These are the results of identically the
same tendency as that which has given
rise to larger financial combinations and
some of them are the direct result of
these combinations. To remind you
how the spirit of co-operation for mu
tual benefit has extended I need only to
recall the system of associated dairy
ing as it exists in New York state.
Wall street men would probably call it
the butter and cheese trust. Instead of
each farmer making his own butter and
cheese and finding a limited market for
it in the village near which his farm lies ,
his milk and cream are carried to a
cheese factory or to a butter factory
and there made into dairy products ,
known according to the particular dairy ,
not alone in that locality but through
out the world for this system of asso
ciated dairying has put New York but
ter and cheese in the foremost rank ,
and there are produced amwally for do
mestic or foreign consumption over
180,000,000 pounds of cheese and over
20,000,000 pounds of butter in these fac
tories. Sometime in the future perhaps
some enterprising farmer who has heard
my speech today will conceive the pro
ject of combining most of these factor
ies and making a complete butter and
cheese trust , and if he succeeds , and the
result is similar to that which has fol
lowed many other consolidations of cap
ital , wo shall have bettor butter and
cheese , an even wider market , cheaper
prices for the product and higher prices
for the farmer's milk.
Denounce combinations of capital as
we may , we cannot deny that they have
produced great ,
MOKE GOOD
fl resultsfar
THAN EVIL.
hnrpas8illg lluy
possible evils. In no industry has so
much capital been invested and in none
has consolidation of capital been so
marked as in that of transportation.
The railroads of the country are only a
little more than half a century old.
With a very few oxoeptions they have
been entirely built and equipped by
private capital. They now penetrate
every corner of the land and bind it all
together in one close embrace. They
have an invested capital , actual money ,
of over $15,000,000,000. They employ
800,000 men. They operate over 180-
000 miles of track. They carry over
500,000,000 passengers and over 700,000-
000 tons of freight annually. They have
become as essential to commerce as the
circulation of blood is to the human
body. A brief cessation of operation
paralyzes business and industry. These
great enterprises were not originally so
closely associated as now. They had
distinct and separate organizations.
They were independent in their opera
tion. Each charged its own freight
rates and passenger fares. They soon
saw the necessity of closer alliances.
Capital and railroads were combined
into great railroad systems , until today
a comparatively few systems control a
majority of the mileage in the country.
This consolidation began early in the
history of railroads and the extent to
which it has grown is indicated in the
fact that in 1870 it rcqxiired nearly fifty
of the largest railroad systems in the
country to control a majority of the
mileage , while now it does not require
more than twenty. These twenty sys
tems , acting in harmony as they often
do , wield tremendous power but has
the result of railroad consolidation been
an increase in rates , a deterioration in
equipment , or a cessation of railroad
construction ? Quite the contrary. In
1870 it cost 88 cents to ship a bushel of
wheat from Chicago to New York by
rail ; in 189o , only 12 cents. In 1870
there were 50,000 miles of railroad in
operation ; in 1890 , 180,000 miles. In
convenience and comfort of service , in
cheapness of fares , iii wages paid , in
equality of freight rates and in every re
spect except as to dividends paid to
stockholders the effect of consolidation
has been advantageous.
In the case of street railroads , whore
the same tendency towards consolida
tion and monopoly
STREET RAILWAY
has been visible ,
BENEFACTIONS.
the resiilts have
been equally beneficial to the public.
In Now York and Brooklyn , less than
ten years ago , a do/en or more compan
ies in each city controlled the street
railway tracks and charged a separate
faro over each line. Now they have
been combined into a few systems and
one faro over all the lines of each sys
tem is now the rule. Combination of
capital has in this instance saved hun
dreds of thousands of dollars each year
to the people of those cities besides do
ing much to build up the cities by bring
ing the outlying sections into close com
munication with the heart of the town.
Perhaps no greater monopoly exists
in the country than the Western Union
Telegraph com
TELEGRAPH
pany. Its capital
TRUST.
is $100,000,000.
Stretching over a large part of the land
it has gradually purchased or leased all
its important rivals until today iiino-
teuths of all the telegraph lines are
within its system. It controls 82(5,000 (
miles of wire as against 112,000 in 1870.
Yet monopoly in this case does not
mean extortion. Combination of capi
tal has not imposed new burdens upon
the people. The average cost of each
message sent by the Western Union
company in 1870 was 75 cents , while
in 189(5 ( it was only 80.9 cents a reduc
tion of GO per cent.
The shipping and navigation interests
have shown the same tendency of all
large ontorpri s e s
CONSOLIDATION.
, n Qf
combination of capital and effort , and
lower freight rates , speedier navigation ,
larger , safer and more comfortable boats
have followed the merging of financial
interests.
The Standard Oil company , harsh as
it may have been in competition with
rivals , has certainly
GREASE.
ly not taken ad
vantage of its monopoly to exact higher
prices from the public. So thorough
and so comprehensive has been the or
ganization of this tremendous industry
that oil is delivered by the company di
rect to the door of nearly every villager
in the land at the lowest price ever
known. As an example of successful
business organization after the modern
method of combination this immense
corporation has no equal.
We have heard a great deal said about
the sugar trust which is a combination
of formerly independent sugar refiner
ies that alone by themselves could
hardly make both ends meet. The re
sult of pooling their interests seems to
have been to turn unprofitable business
into profitable , to give employment to