raw material, chiefly in the mines, out of which the great
body of manufactures are carried on, and they now discriminate, when they
will, in the sale of that raw material between those who are rivals of the
monopoly and those who submit to the monopoly. We must soon come to the
point where we shall say to the men who own these essentials of industry
that they have got to part with these essentials by sale to all citizens
of the United States with the same readiness and upon the same terms. Or
else we shall tie up the resources of this country under private control
in such fashion as will make our independent development absolutely
impossible.

There is another injustice that monopoly engages in. The trust that deals
in the cruder products which are to be transformed into the more elaborate
manufactures often will not sell these crude products except upon the
terms of monopoly,--that is to say, the people that deal with them must
buy exclusively from them. And so again you have the lines of development
tied up and the connections of development knotted and fastened so that
you cannot wrench them apart.

Again, the manufacturing monopolies are so interlaced in their personal
relationships with the great shipping interests of this country, and with
the great railroads, that they can often largely determine the rates of
shipment.

The people of this country are being very subtly dealt with. You know, of
course, that, unless our Commerce Commissions are absolutely sleepless,
you can get rebates without calling them such at all. The most complicated
study I know of is the classification of freight by the railway company.
If I wanted to make a special rate on a special thing, all I should have
to do is to put it in a special class in the freight classification, and
the trick is done. And when you reflect that the twenty-four men who
control the United States Steel Corporation, for example, are either
presidents or vice-presidents or directors in 55 per cent. of the railways
of the United States, reckoning by the valuation of those railroads and
the amount of their stock and bonds, you know just how close the whole
thing is knitted together in our industrial system, and how great the
temptation is. These twenty-four gentlemen administer that corporation as
if it belonged to them. The amazing thing to me is that the people of the
United States have not seen that the administration of a great business
like that is not a privat