We have often heard of the blessings
of trusts—how they can cheapen the sell
ing price of articles by practicing the
“economics of production,” which can
only come from the concentration of
capital; how they can make better and
purer articles by gaining control of pat
ents, etc.; how they can regulate supply
so as to prevent the terrible evils (to the
constituents of the trust) of “overpro
duction,” and how they can accomplish
many other marvelous and beneficent
things. But upon close investigation all
of these theoretical blessings vanish, and
the trust is seen to be a selfish, greedy
aggregation of capital bent on ruining
competitors by fair or foul means and
on fleecing producers of raw materials
at one end of the line and consumers of
finished products at the other end.
