rst that there is usually a net
reduction of employment, a substitution not of 50 workers at full-time
for 100 at half-time, but of 30 only. For not only will there be a
net saving of labour in relation to the same output, the result of
using exclusively the best equipped and best situated factories, but
since the Trust came into existence in order to restrict production
and so raise prices, the aggregate output of the business will be
either reduced or its rate of increase will be less than under open
competition. The chief economy of the Trust will in fact arise from
the net diminution of employment of labour. As the Trust grows
stronger and absorbs a larger and larger proportion of the total
supply for the market, the reduction of employment will as a rule
continue. Of course, if the scale of prices which the Trust finds most
profitable happens to be such as induce a large increase of
consumption, and therefore to permit an expansion of the machinery of
production, the aggregate of employment may be maintained or even
increased. But, as we shall see below, there is nothing in the nature
of a Trust to guarantee such a result. The normal result of placing
the ordering of an industry in the hands of a monopoly company is to
give them a power which it is their interest to exercise, to narrow
the scope of industry, to change its _locale_, to abandon certain
branches and take up others, to substitute machinery for hand labour,
without any regard to the welfare of the employees who have been
associated with the fixed capital formerly in use. When to this we add
the reflection that the ability to choose its workmen out of an
artificially made over-supply of labour, rid of the competition of
other employers, gives the Trust a well-nigh absolute power to fix
wages, hours of work, to pay in truck, and generally to dictate terms
of employment and conditions of life, we understand the feeling of
distrust and antagonism with which the working classes regard the
growth of these great monopolies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The following is a short summary of the findings of a Committee of
Congress with reference to the relations existing between the railroad
and coal companies which control the anthracite coal-fields in
Pennsylvania and the coal-miners:--"Congress has found (Document No.
4) that the coal companies in the anthracite regions keep thousands of
surplus labourers in hand to underbid each other for employment and
for