A “trust” may be defined as an industrial combination of such huge proportions as to enable it not only arbitrarily to fix the price of the finished product in which it deals, through the stifling of competition, but frequently to determine alone the price of the raw material it uses and to fix the rate of wages of those whom it employs. Of these great and dangerous combinations there were formed, during the years 1897 to 1900, a number exceeding all those already in existence. That this was permitted to be done with the Sherman anti-trust law on the Federal statute books has puzzled many. Its explanation may be found in the following candid admission made by Dr. Albert Shaw in the _Review of Reviews_ for February, 1897: “The great sound-money campaign of 1896 was carried on by money contributed by corporations—money voted by the directors out of the funds held by them in trust for the stockholders. Nobody, probably, would even care to deny that this is literally the truth.” When the “great sound money campaign” was concluded, it was but fair, of course, that those who had given so lavishly should be allowed to replenish their depleted coffers. And so neither anti-trust laws, supreme court decisions, nor the cry of protest rising from the people was allowed to stand in the way of those generous corporations to whom President McKinley owed so much. In the last six months of 1898 the movement toward centralization that meant monopoly was most alarmingly pronounced. During this time there were filed articles of incorporation by more than one hundred companies of abnormal capitalization. The most important trusts were: CAPITAL Gas trusts $ 432,771,000 Steel and iron 347,650,000 Coal combines 161,000,000 Oil trusts 153,000,000 Flour trust 150,000,000 Electrical combinations 139,327,000 Sugar 115,000,000 Cigarettes and tobacco 108,500,000 Alcoholic 67,300,000 Telephone 56,700,000 Miscellaneous 1,349,250,000 ——————— $2,717,768,000 Among those classed as “miscellaneous” were trusts in leather, starch, lumber, rubber, dressed beef, lead, knit goods, window glass, crockery, furniture, crackers, sheet copper, paper, acids and chemicals, wall paper, typewriters, axes, bolts and nuts, salt, saws, rope, twine, thread, stock yards, matches, refrigerators, potteries, marbles, packing and provisions.