and these restrictions are enforced upon their miners by holding cars from them to fill, as upon competitors by withholding cars to go to market. (Document No. 4, p. 77.) Labour organisations are forbidden, and the men intentionally provoked to strike to affect the coal market. The labouring population of the local regions, finally, is kept "down" by special policemen, enrolled under special laws, and often in violation of law, by the railroads and coal and iron companies, practically when and in what number they choose, and practically without responsibility to any one but their employers, armed as the Corporation see fit with army revolvers or Winchester rifles, or both; made detectives by statute, and not required to wear their shields, provoking the public to riot (pp. 9 and 93-98), and then shooting them legally. "By the percentage of wages," says the report of Congress, "by false measurements, by rents, stores, and other methods the workman is virtually a chattel of the operator."[144] § 4. (_d_) Those who admit that a Trust is in its essence a monopoly, and that it is able, by virtue of its position, to sell commodities at high prices, sometimes affirm that it is not to the interest of a Trust to maintain high prices, and that in fact Trusts have generally lowered prices. We have here a question of fact and a question of theory. Of these the former presents the greater difficulty. It seems a simple matter to compare prices before and after the formation of the Trust, and to observe the tendencies to rise or fall. This comparison has been made in a good many cases, with the result that some Trusts seem to lower prices, others to raise them. The growth of the Standard Oil Company and the strengthening of its power was attended, as we saw, by a considerable fall of price. So also we are told respecting the Cotton Seed Oil Trust, formed in 1883, that "during these four years the price of cotton seed oil fell more than eight times as much as it did during the five years before the Trust was formed."[145] The rates of the most absolute monopoly, the Western Union Telegraph Company, are very little higher than those which prevail in England, where the Government works the telegraph system at a considerable loss each year. The Sugar Trust, on the other hand, directly it was formed, raised prices considerably. The same is true of several of the other most conspicuous combinations.