l characteristic of the trust is not the fact that it is a
monopoly, but that it is a monopoly formed by combining several
competitors according to a new plan. The process of placing property in
the hands of trustees is familiar to every business man. In the
formation of a trust the different firms or companies who have been
competing with each other in the production and sale of goods agree to
place the management of all their several properties in the hands of a
board of trustees. The powers of this board and its relation to the
owners of the various properties are ingeniously devised to evade the
common law, which declares that contracts in restraint of competition
are against public policy, and illegal.

The first of the modern trusts was the Standard Oil Trust, which was a
combination formed among several of the refiners of crude petroleum in
the States of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the year 1869. The original
combination grew out of the control of certain important patents
connected with the process of refining. It pursued its course for a
number of years without attracting much attention outside of the centre
of its operations; but of late years so much has been published in
regard to it that the very word "Standard" has come to be almost a
synonym for monopoly. It is probable that certain branches of the iron
and steel trade were the next to be combined by means of a trust, but as
these were arrangements between private firms, not much information as
to the time of their origin has reached the public. The second great
trust to attract general public attention was the American Cotton Oil
Trust, in which some of the same men who have so successfully engineered
the Standard Oil combination are heavily interested. These two great
trusts, the Cotton Oil and the Standard, have attracted widespread
attention, and, to a certain extent, the public has become familiar with
their organization and plan of operation; but popular feeling on the
subject was not fully aroused until 1887, when the newspapers of the
country made generally known the fact that the trust principle of
combination was being rapidly adopted by the manufacturers of a large
number of important lines of goods. The effect which these monopolies
were believed to have upon the public welfare was pointed out by writers
and speakers, and Congress and the State Legislatures were besought to
investigate these combinations and seek to suppress them. Meanwhile it
se