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. 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 1840 only 8.5 per cent. In 1850 the percentage was 12.5; in 1860, 16.1; in 1870, 20.9; in 1880, 22.5; and in 1890, 29.2. The year 1880 saw within our borders twenty cities each with a population of over 100,000; 286 each with over 8,000. In 1890 there were twenty-eight cities each having 100,000 inhabitants or more, and 448 having 8,000 or more. It was mostly manufacturing and mechanical industry which thus brought these hordes of human beings together. CHAPTER VIII. THE MARCH OF INDUSTRY