“Well, a trust is one of these things,” said Uncle Ike, as he opened a new paper of tobacco, and threw the old paper, that had been treated with foreign substances, into the fire, “one of these things that are for the benefit of the dear people. You have heard of selling a gold brick, haven't you? The man who sells a gold brick has a brass brick made with a hole in it, in which he puts some gold, and he lets the jay who wants to invest in raw gold test it by putting acid on the place where the gold is filled in, and the jay finds that the brick is solid gold, and he buys it, after mortgaging his farm to raise the money. The man sells the gold brick cheap, because the jay is his friend, and when he has got out of the country the jay tries to sell his gold brick for eight hundred dollars, and he gets two dollars and eighty cents for it. That is one kind of a trust. The trust you mean is a combination of several factories, for instance. The promoter gets all the factories in one line of business to combine. They pay each factory proprietor more than his business is worth, and he is tickled, but they only pay him part money, and give him stock in the combine for the balance, and let him run his old business, now owned by others, at a good salary, and he gets the big head and buys a rubber-tired carriage, and sends his family to Europe. Then the trust closes down his factory and throws his men out of employment, lowers the price of goods to run out others who have not entered the trust, and the people who get goods cheap say a trust is the noblest work of God. After the outsiders have been ruined, and the man who entered the trust in good faith has spent the money they gave him, and tries to sell the stock he received, it has gone down to seven cents on a dollar, and the trust buys it in, and he cables his family to come home in the steerage of a cattle ship. His old employees have gone to the poorhouse or to selling bananas with a cart, and the former manufacturer who was happy and prosperous has become poor and shabby, and he looks at his closed factory, with its broken windows, and he tries to get a position pushing a scraper on the asphalt pavement, and if he fails he either jumps off the pier into the lake, or takes a gun and goes gunning for the trust promoter who ruined him. And after the factory man is drowned, or sent to the penitentiary for murder, the stock in the trust takes a bound and is away above par, and he hasn't got any of it, and the poor competitors of the trust having been ruined and closed up, prices of the goods go up kiting, and the dear people who said a trust was the noblest work of God say it is the dumbdest work of man, and they pass resolutions to down the trust, while the owners of the good stock in the trust stick out their fat stomachs, full of champagne and canvasback and terrapin, and laugh at the people till they nearly die of apoplexy, and drive bob-tailed horses that live better