The trusts, it is feared, will become too rich and powerful to be controlled. I do not think so. The reason that some of them already defy the power of the states is that, being so few, they have not until now attracted the serious attention of legislatures. And even now our anti-trust legislation is more concerned with the impossible task of abolition and prevention than with the practicable one of regulation. When we have learned by blundering what we can not do we shall easily enough learn what we can do, and find it quite sufficient. Governmental ownership and governmental control are what we are coming to by leaps and bounds; and with the industries and trade of the country in fewer hands the task of regulating them will be greatly simplified, for it is easier to manage one defendant in a single jurisdiction than many in a hundred. But, it will be asked, is this to become a nation of employees working for a few hundreds of taskmasters? Not at all. The spirited and provident employee can become his own employer and the employer of others by investing his savings in the stock of a trust. The greater its gains, the greater will be his share of them. The “crushed out” small dealer, too, can recoup himself by becoming a part of what crushed him out. Naturally the tendency of the trusts will be to “work the stock market,” to “put up jobs” on the small investors, and so forth. Prevention of that sort of thing is a legitimate purpose for legislation, and promises better results than “drastic” measures to destroy the trusts themselves. To do the latter the laws would have to be drawn so as to forbid any commercial enterprise requiring more capital than its manager could himself supply. That would be a strange law which should undertake to fix the amount of capital to be combined under one management, or limit the number of persons permitted to supply it; yet nothing less “drastic” will “down the trusts.” And that would not, for it would be unconstitutional in every state of the Union. As a contribution to the literature of humor it would be slightly better than an apothegm by Josh Billings, but distinctly inferior to that Northwestern statute making it a felony to conduct a “department store”—every country store being of that felonious character. It is not, perhaps, too late to explain that in these remarks the word “trust” is used in the popular sense, meaning a large aggregation of capital by combination of several concerns under one management. It is my high privilege to know a better word for it, but in deference to those who do most of the talking on this engaging theme I assent to their kind of English. 1899. POVERTY, CRIME AND VICE I Andrew Carnegie once said in an address to a young men’s Bible class: