Rome banished those who had been found to be public enemies by forbidding every one to give them fire and water. That was done by all to a few. In America it is done by a few to all. A small number of men are obtaining the power to forbid any but themselves to supply the people with fire in nearly every form known to modern life and industry, from matches to locomotives and electricity. They control our hard coal and much of the soft,[4] and stoves, furnaces, and steam and hot-water heaters; the governors on steam-boilers and the boilers; gas and gas-fixtures; natural gas and gas-pipes; electric lighting, and all the appurtenances. You cannot free yourself by changing from electricity to gas, or from the gas of the city to the gas of the fields. If you fly from kerosene to candles, you are still under the ban. The report adopted by the National Association of Stove Manufacturers, at the Thirteenth Annual Convention, 1884, said: "While it is true that iron is a dollar or two lower than last year, and that the cost of labor has also been reduced, your committee is confident that there is not a manufacturer present who can truthfully say he can afford to reduce the price of his goods." "It is a chronic case," the President said in 1888, "of too many stoves, and not enough people to buy them." The match company, by whose consent all the fires in the United States and Canada are lighted, was organized, as stated, by the Supreme Court of Michigan, for the purpose of controlling the manufacture and trade. Thirty-one manufacturers, owning substantially all the factories where matches were made in the United States, either went into the combination, or were purchased by the match company, and out of this number all were closed except about thirteen. One of the company, who has been a conspicuous candidate for a nomination to the presidency of the United States, testified that the price of matches was kept up to pay the large sums of money expended to exclude others from the match business, remove competition, buy up machinery and patents, and purchase other match factories. This was told in a suit between two stockholders on a question of their relative rights; but the court, of its own motion, declared the combination illegal, and took notice of the public interests involved.[5]