The Saint Paul Globe

MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL.

It is from every point of view an unfortunate circumstance for the country that both parties profess opposition to the trusts. Such an attitude, of course, precludes the possibility of the trust issue receiving the prominence which it merits in the political campaign now in progress. Yet there is no question-indeed, there can be none-which is so fraught with the same tremendous possibilities of evil to the country as the question of the public control of the trust organizations.

We may choose to ignore the fact, but it is none the less a fact of the most grievous significance that it is since the public outcry against the trusts grew loudest that those organizations began to spring up in numbers and financial proportions great enough to cause serious alarm.

Nothing has occurred in the past year or two either in politics, in legislation or in judicial action which seems to have been accepted by the trusts as adequate to cause them to suspend or lessen the extent of their operations. With the total capital employed in this country in manufacturing and mechanical operations, according to the census of 1890, a little over $6,250,000,000, the aggregate capital reported for existing trusts far exceeds $7,000,000,000, and is steadily on the increase.

This growth has been such as to cause alarm to even the most altruistic student of social and economic questions. Toward the end of 1898 the total number of trust organizations in existence was in the vicinity of 200, and their capital stock and bonded debt aggregated $3,660,000,000, of which something like $1,000,000,000 belonged to companies chartered during the year. By the beginning of March of this year the number had increased to 353, and the stocks and bonds had reached the aggregate of $5,830,000,000. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1 of the present year 121 corporations were chartered, each of which had a capital stock and bonded debt of more than $10,000,000.

It may and doubtless will materially affect the future of our political institutions, should we prove to have embarked permanently in the policy of governing other races in distant lands, as subjects rather than as citizens. The developments now in progress in China may touch us very closely, and may not be brought to a close until this republic is fully involved with other powers in the inevitable smash which is impending in the Orient. But all of the consequences which may come to us from those directions, great as they may be, are, after all, relative in their nature and effect. With the production of the necessaries of life controlled by a few large concerns, and that control extending and becoming still more assured each succeeding day, the certainty of revolution in the effort to produce an effective remedy becomes all the more certain the longer we put off dealing with such threatening conditions. It would be hard to specify an article in general use, the supply of which is not controlled by some trust or other, so that potential competition in the production and sale of it is becoming less and less effective every day, if it has not ceased to exist entirely.

The approaching national election will determine very little, so far as the trusts are concerned. The trouble-chiefly lies in the fact that public men, as a rule, like individuals, are controlled by money; and the trusts have the money-most of the money of the country, in fact. But whatever that election does or does not settle, the sooner the American people get ready seriously to settle with the trusts and with those who in public life have thus far done, either negatively or affirmatively, all they could to aid and protect them, the better it will be for their own peace and prosperity.