I am not yet able to see that any trust can succeed unless it is founded on a natural or legislative monopoly, and furthermore on a monopoly whose product cannot be produced in an amount exceeding the demand at the price which has been customary before the formation of the trust; and I cannot see any chance for legislation to do any good unless it is in the repeal of all such laws as are found to furnish a basis for the organization of an artificial monopoly.
It cannot have escaped the attention of the reader that trades-unions are a monopolistic organization on the side of labor entirely parallel with the trusts on the side of capital, "a product of the same age and of the same forces," and an endeavor to deal with the same problem from the standpoint of another interest. The motives of coercion, discipline, and strict internal organization are the same in both cases, and some of the sanctions are the same; for the pools and rings have tried the boycott until they have proved its worthlessness. There is a notion afloat that the modern trades-union is a descendant of the mediæval gild. It might, with equal truth, and equal futility, be asserted that the modern college, stock exchange, and joint stock company, are descended from the mediæval gild. The nineteenth-century trades-union is a nineteenth-century institution, as much or more so than the ring, pool, corner, or trust. They are all products of the same facts in the industrial development, and one is just as inevitable, and, in that sense, legitimate, as the other. There are some who, while vehemently denouncing trusts, offer us, with great complacency and satisfaction, as a solution of the "labor question," the assertion that the employers and employees ought to combine or coöperate in some way; they do not appear to see at all that if any such thing should be brought about it would be the most gigantic "trust" that could possibly be conceived.
