tude, gave an improved product, and at first supplied it at a
reduced price. Its crowning merit was that the industries of the country,
being controlled by a few men from a central source, could themselves be
easily controlled by law if law had been honestly administered. Under the
old order of scattered jurisdictions, requiring a multitude of actions at
law, little could be done, and little was done, to put a check on
commercial greed; under the new, much was possible, and at times something
was accomplished. But not for long; the essential dishonesty of the
American character enabled these capable and conscienceless
managers--"captains of industry" and "kings of finance"--to buy with money
advantages and immunities superior to those that the labor unions could
obtain by menaces and the promise of votes. The legislatures, the courts,
the executive officers, all the sources of authority and springs of
control, were defiled and impested until right and justice fled affrighted
from the land, and the name of the country became a stench in the nostrils
of the world.

Let us pause in our narrative to say here that much of the abuse of the
so-called "trusts" by their victims took no account of the folly,
stupidity and greed of the victims themselves. A favorite method by which
the great corporations crushed out the competition of the smaller ones and
of the "individual dealers" was by underselling them--a method made
possible by nothing but the selfishness of the purchasing consumers who
loudly complained of it. These could have stood by their neighbor, the
"small dealer," if they had wanted to, and no underselling could, have
been done. When the trust lowered the price of its product they eagerly
took the advantage offered, then cursed the trust for ruining the small
dealer. When it raised the price they cursed it for ruining themselves. It
is not easy to see what the trust could have done that would have been
acceptable, nor is it surprising that it soon learned to ignore their
clamor altogether and impenitently plunder those whom it could not hope to
appease.

Another of the many sins justly charged against the "kings of finance" was
this: They would buy properties worth, say, ten millions of "dollars" (the
value of the dollar is now unknown) and issue stock upon it to the face
value of, say, fifty millions. This their clamorous critics called
"creating" for themselves forty millions of dollars. They created nothing;
the