unately there is a great tendency to make these evils worse by
recrimination. It is very common to hear those engaged in monopolistic
enterprises, whether as owners or managers, denounced as unscrupulous
villains, double-dyed rascals, scoundrelly enemies of the people, or
perhaps in terms less blunt but more scathing. Now, what are the facts
of the case? Speaking broadly, it is a fact that the men who own and
manage our modern monopolies are as a class far more large-hearted in
their sympathies than the average of men. It is only because they do not
realize the consequences of their acts that they seem to those who do
realize them and those who suffer by them to be incomprehensibly brutal.
The same man who at a corporation meeting may do his part toward
throwing a thousand men out of employment or wasting a million dollars
of the world's wealth to effect some monster "deal," may stop as he
leaves his office to help a crippled beggar regain his feet; and when he
hears of the destitution that his own official act has helped create, he
will give with a lavish hand to relieve it. When we come to questions
between labor and its employers, more than this is true. The employers
of labor as a class are closely in sympathy with the honest desire of
their men to better themselves, and the constant increase in the
employment of arbitration to settle difficulties, the experiments in
co-operation and profit-sharing, and the furnishing of cheap and good
houses to the workers are all evidences of this fact.

The truth is, that it is circumstances, not men, which have created
monopolies. For to tell the truth, there are but very few men who, if
put in the place of the stigmatized monopolists, would not have done as
much or more, as their abilities permitted, to achieve a fortune as have
these men. All men strive in general to make as much as possible out of
their fellow-men, and to gain the most possible with the least labor.
The monopolist only goes further on this road than most other men can
go.

On the other hand, a still more common error exists with reference to
the monopolies of labor. The newspaper press seems strangely fond of
repeating the statement that all labor organizations are kept up by idle
and turbulent labor agitators, who wish to live off the proceeds of
their fellows' labor. A little candid thought and investigation will
convince any one that this is an out-and-out lie, and as such deserves
the condemnation of all