ed will
of the South. During Lincoln's great trial, he attacked and
vilified him. At the time when nearly every household in
the North was mourning for its dead, he tried to persuade
the people that Lincoln did not mean to put down the Rebellion.
He never gave the people wise counsel, and rarely told them
the honest truth. He rarely gave his homage to anybody. When
he did, it was to bad men, and not to good men.

There can be no worse influence upon the youth of the Republic
than that which shall induce them to approve sentiments, not
because they are true, but only because they are eloquently
said.

CHAPTER XXXVI
TRUSTS

I have given the best study I could to the grave evil of the
accumulation in the country of vast fortunes in single hands,
or of vast properties in the hands of great corporations--
popularly spoken of as trusts--whose powers are wielded by
one, or a few persons. This is the most important question
before the American people demanding solution in the immediate
future. A great many remedies have been proposed, some with
sincerity and some, I am afraid, merely for partisan ends.
The difficulty is increased by the fact that many of the evils
caused by trusts, or apprehended from them, can only be cured
by the action of the States, but cannot be reached by Congress,
which can only deal with international or interstate commerce.
As long ago as 1890 the people were becoming alarmed about
this matter. But the evil has increased rapidly during the
last twelve years. It is said that one man in this country
has acquired a fortune of more than a thousand million dollars
by getting an advantage over other producers or dealers in
a great necessary of life in the rates at which the railroads
transport his goods to market.

In 1890 a bill was passed which was called the Sherman Act,
for no other reason I can think of except that Mr. Sherman
had nothing to do with framing it whatever. He introduced
a bill and reported it from the Finance Committee providing
that whenever a trust, as it was called, dealt with an article
protected by the tariff, the article should be put on the
free list. This was a crude, imperfect, and unjust provision.
It let in goods made abroad by a foreign trust to compete
with the honest domestic manufacturer. If there happened
to be an industry employing thousands or hundreds of thousands
of workmen, in which thousands of millions of American capital
was invested, and a f