unes to many, sudden wealth
to a much larger number, while the unexampled prosperity of the country
raised up in a perfectly normal manner a wealthy class, the like of
which, in number and power, our country had never known before. As
therefore immigration along with much else multiplied the poor, the
eternal, angry strife of wealth with poverty, of high with low, of
classes with masses, crossed over from Europe and began on our shores.

The rise of trusts and gigantic corporations was connected with this
struggle. Corporations worth nigh half a billion dollars apiece were
able to buy or defy legislatures and make or break laws as they pleased;
and as such corporations, instead of individuals, more and more became
the employers of labor, not only did the old-time kindliness between
help and hirers die out, but men the most cool and intelligent feared
the new power as a menace to democracy. Strikes therefore commanded
large public sympathy. Stock-watering and other vicious practices,
involving the ruin of corporations themselves by the few holders of a
majority of the shares, in order to re-purchase the property for next to
nothing, contributed to this hostility; as did the presence in many
great corporations of foreign capital and capitalists, and also the
mutual favoritism of corporations, showing itself, for instance, in
special freight rates to privileged concerns. Minor interests and
individual employees, powerless against these Titan agencies by any of
the old legal processes, resorted to counter organization.

The Patrons of Husbandry grew up in the West, with influence longer than
the Order's nominal life, of which the often unwise "Granger" railroad
legislation was one sign. In the East trades-unions secured rank
development, and the Knights of Labor, intended as a sort of Union of
them all, attained in 1887 a membership of a million. The manufacturers'
"black list," to prevent any "agitator" laborer from securing work, was
answered by the "boycott," to keep the products of obnoxious
establishments from finding sale. Labor organizations, so strong, often
tyrannized over their own members, and boycotting became a nuisance that
had to be abated by law.

[1880]

Labor agitation had of late years become greatly easier owing to the
extraordinarily increased percentage of our urban population. In 1790
only 3.3 per cent. of the people in the country lived in places of 8,000
inhabitants and upward, and so late as 18