portant benefit to the public. We are managing all
the works in the trust as if it were all a single property,
controlled by different managers; and the saving in expense, over
the old plan of cut-throat competition, when everybody was striving
to save himself and sink his rivals, is an enormous one.

One thing which has caused much hue and cry, is the fact that we
have closed half a dozen mills or so. But the matter stood in this
way: these mills were not favorably situated for doing business,
all things considered; and all the mills in the country cannot run
all the time, because there are more mills in existence than are
needed to supply the market. These mills must have been closed
soon, if the trust had not commenced operations, because they could
not be run under the old regime and pay expenses. We knew we could
make the oil at a less cost in our other mills, so we concluded to
buy out the owners of these at a fair price, and shut up the works.
Prices of linseed oil have been raised somewhat, we confess; but we
claim that they had been forced down much too low, by the excessive
competition which has prevailed for a few years past. Of course
some of the most hot-headed and grasping among us, were anxious to
force prices away up, when they once realized that we had an
absolute monopoly of the linseed oil trade of the country; but the
great majority were practically unanimous in a demand for just
prices only, and the adoption of the policy of live and let live;
for trust-makers are not entirely selfish.

We claim, moreover, that we are breaking no legal or moral law by
this action. We are, for the most part, private parties or
firms--but few corporations,--hence the attempt to abolish trusts
on the ground that the corporations composing trusts have exceeded
the power given by their charters will fail to reach our case. We
have certainly done this: we have killed competition in the linseed
oil trade; but we submit that with so many other interests and
trades organized to protect themselves from outside competition,
and control the prices at which their products are sold to the
public, we were, in self-defence and for our own preservation,
obliged to take this step.[1]

[1] It should be explained that the above is not given as a
_bona-f