capitalist investors and borrowers, consumers and producers, to control
the large interests--the central feature of the "State Socialist"
policy. But the conservative unions do not stop with such progressive,
if non-Socialist, measures; they take up the cause of the smaller
capitalists also _as competitors_. The recent attack of the Federation
of Labor on the "Steel Trust" is an example. The presidents of the
majority of the more important unions, who signed this document, became
the partisans not only of small capitalists who buy from the trust, sell
to it, or invest in its securities, but also of the unsuccessful
competitors that these combinations are eliminating. The Federation here
spoke of "the American institution of unrestricted production," which
can mean nothing less than unrestricted competition, and condemned the
"Steel Trust" because it controls production, whereas the regulation or
control of production is precisely the most essential thing to be
desired in a progressive industrial society--a control, of course, to be
turned as soon as possible to the benefit of all the people.

The Federation's attack was not only economically reactionary, but it
was practically disloyal to millions of employees. It applies against
the "trust," which happens to be unpopular, arguments which apply even
more strongly to competitive business. The trust, it said, corrupts
legislative bodies and is responsible for the high tariff. As if all
these practices had not begun before the "trusts" came into being, as if
the associated manufacturers are not even more strenuous advocates of
all the tariffs--which are life and death matters to them--than the
"trusts," which might very well get along without them. Finally, the
Federation accuses the "Steel Trust" of an especially oppressive policy
towards its working people, apparently forgetting its arch enemy, the
manufacturer's association. It is notorious, moreover, that the smallest
employers, such as the owners of sweat shops, nearly always on the verge
of bankruptcy and sometimes on the verge of starvation themselves, are
harder on their labor than the industrial combinations, and that in
competitive establishments, like textile mills, the periods when
employers are forced to close down altogether are far more frequent,
making the average wages the year round far below those paid by any of
the trusts. The merest glance at the statistics of the United States
census will be sufficie