The trusts will soon own all the industries, all the manufactures, and they will want freedom from the duties which are now paid on the material. Already there is in process of formation a great Clothing Trust. The small man who makes clothing now must pay a duty on wool to protect the American farmer who raises sheep. How long do you think the Clothing Trust will tolerate this duty on wool? How long do you think the Trust engaged in making cloths in America will tolerate a duty on wool that makes the industry so expensive? Some of the duties will be retained, of course--at least until the trusts shall be powerful enough even to despise foreign competition. But one thing after another the trusts will want free from duty, and these things will be freed as fast as the trusts' order is given. ---- The trusts are going to do a great deal of good to the masses of the people in time. They will end by forcing universal Government ownership of monopolies upon the people. TRUSTS WILL DRIVE LABOR UNIONS INTO POLITICS A workman should use the best tools at his command--the workman's best tool is his ballot. Everything that men want it can give them if used intelligently. The reasons urged against its use by labor unions are conscientious but not strong. They are based upon the fact that labor men fear to trust each other, and fear especially to trust their leaders. They will not vote as unions because they fear that they may be sold out--that is the plain, unpleasant fact. We cannot believe that their fears are well founded. We know that leaders both able and honest can be found among American workingmen, and we say that they should be found and trusted promptly. ---- For mark this: THE TRUSTS WILL INEVITABLY COMPEL THE LABOR UNIONS TO BECOME POLITICAL UNIONS. TRUSTS WILL MAKE IT CLEAR TO UNIONS THAT THEIR ONLY HOPE IS IN POLITICAL ACTION WHICH SHALL GIVE THEM THE POWER TO CONTROL LEGISLATION. When individual firms are competing the injustice of one firm may be punished and controlled by a strike. THE TRUST WILL RENDER THE STRIKE LAUGHABLE AND USELESS. Suppose all the shops or manufactories of a certain kind to be under the control of one trust. What good will a strike do? The concern in which the strike occurs will simply stop work. Its business will go to other concerns in the trust; the firm in which the strike occurs will calmly draw its share of the trust profits and laugh at the strikers. The latter will lose their wages and time--no one else will lose anything. What does one paper mill care for a strike if all the other mills in the Paper Trust are running, and making the money which it nominally loses? ---- Perhaps the workingmen think they can stop ALL the manufactures of a certain kind. In the first place they probably cannot--with trusts that reach across 3,000 miles of country. And if they could, what about the TRUST OF TRUSTS?