No Socialist was ever heard finding fault with a trust simply for existing. A Socialist would as soon find fault with a green apple because it had been produced from a blossom. In fact, Socialists regard the trusts as the green apples upon the tree of industrial evolution. But they would no more destroy these industrial green apples that are making the world sick than they would destroy the green apples that make small boys sick. They pause, first because they are evolutionists, not only in biology, but in everything; second, because they recall that the green apples that make the boy sick will, if left to ripen, make the man well. In short, Socialists regard trusts, or private monopolies, as a necessary stage in industrial evolution; a stage that we could not have avoided; a stage that in many respects, represents a great advance over any phase of civilization that preceded it, yet a stage at which we cannot stop unless civilization stops. Therefore, Socialists take this position: _It is flying in the face of evolution itself to talk about destroying, or even effectually regulating the trusts._ _Private monopolies cannot be destroyed except as green apples can be destroyed—by crushing them and staying the evolutionary processes that, if left alone, will yield good fruit._ _Private monopolies cannot be effectually regulated because, so long as they are permitted to exist, they will regulate the government instead of permitting the government to regulate them. They will regulate the government because the great profits at stake will give them the incentive to do so and the enormous capital at their command will give them the power to do so._ In other words, Socialists say that the processes of evolution should go on. What do they mean by this? They mean that the good elements of the trust principle should be preserved and the bad elements destroyed. What are the good elements? The economies of large, well-ordered production, and the avoidance of the waste due to haphazard, competitive production. And the bad elements? The powers that private monopoly gives, through control of market and governmental policies, to rob the consumer. Socialists contend that the good can be saved and the bad destroyed by converting the private monopolies into public monopolies—in other words, by letting the government own the trusts and the people own the government. This may seem like what the foes of Socialism would call a “patent nostrum.” It is nothing of the kind. It is no more a patent nostrum than the trusts are patent nostrums. Socialists invented neither private monopolies nor public monopolies. Socialists did not kill competition. Competition killed itself. Socialists simply were able to foresee that too much competition would end all competition and thus give birth to private monopoly.