4 "Che Conservative ,
THE TKUST ( JUESTIOX.
The following is the speech of Hon.
Edward La Rue Hamilton , delivered at
the last session of congress. It is one of
the strongest presentations of the trust
question ever written :
As Mr. Lecky has remarked , "There
is a constant tendency in the human
mind to expect too much of govern
ment. "
There will probably never couio a
time when the moral regeneration of
mankind can be accomplished by legis
lation. Nothing short of a moral regen
eration as great as that with which No-
hemiah electrified the Jews at the re
building of Jerusalem can oven approx
imately even things up. A Bible class
and a committee of ways and means
have few points of resemblance.
Industrial Transition.
In the language of Edmund Burke ,
"It is one of the finest problems of leg
islation what the state ought to take
upon itself to direct by the public wis
dom and what it ought to leave with as
little interference as possible to indi
vidual discretion. "
The trust problem is a part of our
commercial life part of our national
life. It is important beyond the present
and is intimately associated with the
future organization of economic life.
Wo are in the midst of another trans
ition period in human history. "We are
passing from individual to corporate
enterprise necessarily. We are passing
from individualism to centralization.
The huge business machine , with all its
machine ramifications , is driving out
the small workshop. You cannot shoe
a horse by machinery , so the blacksmith
shop remains ; but a horseshoe trust
sells the horseshoes cheap , and a horse
nail trust sells the horse nails cheap , and
a hammer trust sells the hammers cheap
that drive the horse nails home.
But lefc us be fair. The laborer never
received higher wages for shorter days
than now ; never went homo to a better
home than the American homo , and
never was better fed and better clothed
than now , and never had more time and
opportunity for reading and mental de
velopment than now. Neither can it be
denied that everything in our markets ,
from a pin to a locomotive , from a pair
of shoes to a suit of clothes , has more of
grace and is more scientifically fitted to
human needs than ever before. By
combination , business in most industries
is being reduced to a few large units ,
run by a few largo units.
This is an age of commercial giants ,
working with perfect accuracy with
machines perfectly designed to do their
work without deviation. If flesh and
blood are caught in the cogs , the ma
chine grinds on. However , let us be
fair again. There never was a time
when greater scientific consideration
was given to the amelioration of the
condition of all classes than now ; but
charity even has its machine attributes ,
and there has developed such a thing as
charitable brokerage. The machine and
the management threof , have become
identified , and the management has be
come in a measure subordinate to the
machine.
Sellers mid Muyers.
Neither indiscriminate malediction nor
spasms of political oratory will con
tribute to bettor understanding of these
colossal results of modern industrial
evolution. Conditions can only bo un
derstood and abuses can only be reme
died after careful , unbiased , scientific
investigation.
This government does not belong to a
few of us ; it belongs to all of us , and
wo are many. Every citi/sn is a seller
as well as a buyer. Ho is a seller of his
own labor or its product , and ho is a
buyer of the labor of others and its
products.
As a seller , he wants to sell high ; as a
buyer , he wants to buy low ; and ho is
no more entitled to arbitrary artificial
aid from the law in one capacity than
in the other. If the law should under
take to keep prices down for the benefit
of buyers , it ought to keep them up for
the benefit of sellers ; and , inasmuch as
every citizen is a seller as well as a
buyer , he illustrates in his own proper
person the impossibility of such law.
The ownership of property implies
the right of free use and free sale ,
whether the property be labor or mer
chandise , and whether the owner's will
be exercised separately or in combina
tion with others.
The Itiglit to Acquire Property.
Any scheme of correction which over
looks the right of every citizen , morally
and legally , through diligence in busi
ness , to better his condition in material
things , subverts the natural law of our
being and must fail.
No matter how much some people
may think Dives ought to be punished
for setting a good table , Dives and Laz
arus are equally entitled to protection
under the law. The law can not oblit
erate the natural differences in man.
God made man different here , and here
after , we are told , the difference will be
still more marked.
Dives and Lazarus left many descend
ants , and in the whirling years the rich
have begged and beggars have become
rich , and care can never bo legislated
out of the world nor happiness be legis
lated into the world. The man with
forty acres wants 160 , and when he gets
1GO he wants more. It is more than a
hundred miles between the fashionable
and the unfashionable sides of a brick
wall.
There is also the engineer at the throt
tle , the capitalist in the coach , and the
tramp on the track seeking a dry culvert
to sleep in. There is blazing wealth
and abject poverty side by side.
There are churches and jails ; homes
of wealth and homes of the friendless.
There is too much to oat and too much
hunger ; too much clothing and too many
people in rags ; too much coal and too
many shivering firesides ; and it has
been so ever since pasturage grow scarce
for the joint flocks of Abraham and Lot.
Modern Industrial Method * .
The thousands of steamboats and
steam engines , fleets , factories and rail
roads that lay dormant in the discovery
of Watt under the lid of the teakettle ,
the electric possibilities that flashed
from the clouds down Franklin's kite
string , have brought evil as well as good
and pushed humanity into more com
plex conditions. The tremendous and
tireless physical and mental energy of
mankind is constantly tending toward
results. Labor and capital , working to
gether in inexhaustible material , have so
perfected methods and machinery that
means of production have been increased
beyond computation. A modern blast
furnace running full blast yields 700
tons of pig iron a day , I am told. A
modern cotton factory runs 2,000 spin
dles at the rate of 10,000 revolutions a
minute under thie supervision of two
operatives , I am told.
Typesetting and press work were for
merly done by hand. Now typesetting
machines do five times the work of a
single compositor , and presses are per
fected to the capacity of from fifty to
100,000 copies per hour.
The twenty-six letters and ten figures
with which events of the world are daily
told , have become the nucleus of incor
porated publishing companies , with ap
purtenances of electricity flashing along
wires that girdle the globe like nerves ,
and receiving a shock at one point vi
brate iu every part , so that the electric
flash of an event last night , somewhere
along the lonely song of a telegraph
wire far out upon a western plain or in
the heart of Asia , is translated into type
and becomes news by sunrise appur to-
nances of night editors and day editors
and all kinds of editors , night reporters
and day reporters and all kinds of
reporters , who chronicle the social round
of clothes and conversation ; the birth
and the obituary , the pulpit and the
prize fight ; who sit about the speaker of
the house of representatives and the
president of the senate and numbar the
hairs of their heads ; who are deep in
government secrets ; who make and un
make political careers and reputations.
So that there are graveyards of press-
murdered ambitions , and there are pass
ing shows of press-made statesmen who ,
editorially and reportorially swelled ,
strut briefly in the public glare.
Modern industrial operations are con
ducted upon the theory of production
upon the largest scale of many sales
with small profits , large in the aggro-
gate. So close is a large business fre
quently run that the difference between