the economic energy and superiority of the Standard Oil Company. Small refineries, such as those now outside the Standard, could not hold the American market a month in competition with the Russians. In short, it has preserved the industry to this country, and at the same time improved the quality of the people's light and reduced its price 75 per cent; and all this without government aid, purely as a highly developed productive enterprise competing against the government-aided capital of Russia. I could go through the whole list of industries where great improvements have been made and large reduction in prices accrued, and substantially the same facts will be found.

Next, what is the influence of corporations upon the conditions of labor? It is commonly asserted that large corporations tend to destroy the laborer's liberty and individuality by making him a part of a productive machine. Mr. Cleveland sounded this note in his last message to Congress. A little touch of fact would show this to be a pure phantom of the imagination. Nothing could be more contrary to the whole history of wage labor. If there were any truth in this, we might expect to find that laborers had more freedom and greater individuality before the wage system began. Yet everybody knows that then they had neither liberty nor individuality; that it was not until long after the wage system came that laborers acquired any liberty, political rights or social individuality.

The laborer's freedom and individuality depend upon two things-permanence of employment and good wages. Wherever the employment of labor is most permanent and wages are highest, there the laborer is most intelligent, has the greatest freedom and the strongest individual identity. Where do laborers get these conditions? It is not where capital is small and employers are poor. On the contrary, it is where large corporations. prevail that wages are highest and employment most continuous, and everybody knows it is there where the laborers are most independent. It is notorious that large corporations have the least influence over the opinions and individual conduct of their laborers. Let it be known that a large corporation is trying to influence the election of candidates for office, and that is the signal for the working men to vote against them. Instead of being controlled by the corporations they act almost uniformly on the rule of defying and opposing them.

Nor is there any loss of individual liberty in becoming a fractional part of a large productive concern. What society wants is not individuality as producers but individuality as citizens. What we need is that the laborer should give less and less of his

personal energy to earning a living and more and more to his social and individual improvement. A permanent stipulated income is the first step toward real individual freedom for the laborers. Nothing is so depressing to manhood, nothing makes the weak so cowardly, as precariousness of income. The small business man who does not know from quarter to quarter, and sometimes from month to month, whether he can meet his obligations, is neither as brave, as intelligent nor as free a citizen as the wage laborer in the safe employ of a large corporation. As a matter of fact, the corporation and banker have far more influence over the votes of small business men whom they have befriended or patronized than they have over their own laborers. A laborer's freedom does not depend upon the fact that he works for wages, but on the amount of his wages. With high wages and permanent employment the laborer's freedom and welfare is secured. The laborer has not a single interest, social, economic or political, in the existence of employers with small capital.

How do large corporations affect the interest of the farmers? There is probably no class in the community who derive more benefit from the economic improvements of large corporations than do the farmers. All the great improvements in tools, architecture, sanitation, domestic appointments, art, literature and general refinement, are the products of industrial centers where large capitalistic enterprises abound. Every form of commodity outside of food which enters into the farmer's life has been immensely improved and greatly cheapened by the efforts of large corporations. Transportation, which is an important item in the farmer's economy, has been reduced 50 per cent during the last twenty-five years, as will be seen by the following

While the farmer has received all the advantages produced by large corporations in lower prices of everything he buys, and lower transportation, the price of what he sells has undergone very little fall, and of many products no fall at all, and some have even risen.

What is the influence of large corporations upon business. stability and prosperity? This is one of the most important features of the subject. The greatest menace to modern society is business depressions, which usually are the result of ignorant eagerness among competitors. A slight boom in business leads to a rash increase of output. Without any general knowledge of what is being done elsewhere each hopes to fill the new void, with the result of an increase of output wholly disproportionate to the demand. For instance, the Illinois farmer, when the price of corn is high, will double his acreage for corn, and next year finds that he can hardly sell the corn at any price, and is compelled to use it for fuel. Large concerns tend to remedy this evil on the same principle that they invest heavily in experimentation. They take pains to gather accurate information of the condition of their business throughout the world. They find it pays to be informed as to what next year's demand is likely to be. Their investments are so large that they could not afford seriously to miscalculate the demands of the market. With their comparatively accurate information, they adjust their production with great precision to the present and probable future demand. As a matter of fact, in lines of industry where the very largest concerns are organized there is the least perturbation. If the raising of corn were in the hands of a few well informed corporations instead of thousands of uninformed small farmers, the erratic ups and downs in corn farming would be largely avoided. Industrial depressions can never be eliminated until the relation of productive enterprise to general consumption is reduced to some degree of precision, which the small go-as-you-please producers can never do.

Large corporations are superior to small concerns; first, because by the use of large capital and superior methods they improve the quality and reduce the price of commodities; second, they are more favorable than smaller concerns to high wages, and individual freedom of laborers; third, by introducing scientific precision into industry they tend to increase the permanence of employment and reduce the tendency to industrial depressions, all of which are vital elements in the nation's prosperity and progress.

In studying the literature against large corporations one is

impressed by the marked absence of careful presentation of facts and rational discussion of the case. There seems to be no attempt to apply economic principles or recognize the great law of societary evolution. The only hint thus far of a policy to be adopted is the proposition of Mr. Bryan, which is that Congress pass a law forbidding all corporations to do business outside the state in which they are incorporated without a license from the federal government. It is difficult to imagine a gentleman who is about to be for the second time a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, seriously making such a proposition. Yet he recently presented this to the Nebraska Democratic convention, and repeated it to this conference. This is so contrary to the spirit and traditions of democracy, which is usually opposed to any trade restrictions whatever, and so contrary to the American idea of free intercourse between the states, and so contrary to Mr. Bryan's previous declarations, that one has difficulty in taking him seriously. If this is really the best that his mind can suggest on the subject, it is a depressing gauge of his statesmanship. It would hardly be possible to invent a proposition that would be more fertile in creating corruption, injustice, favoritism and business demoralization. A license might be granted by one administration and refused by another, for purely political reasons, which would be equal to confiscating the property of the corporation, since it would destroy its business value. There is not a single aspect of this proposition which is not surcharged with economic and political iniquity. It partakes neither of economic sense, political wisdom, fair statesmanship, nor even party shrewdness.

It is not to be assumed, however, that large corporations are always wise, or good, or fair. They are born of the same spirit and partake of the same attributes as the small business venders. Their main ambition is to make profits. It is the duty of the state, therefore, to see to it that the conditions shall be such as to make dishonesty, unfairness, oppressive dealing, difficult and as impossible as any other offenses against the welfare of the community. This cannot be accomplished, however, by the petty nagging and corruption-creating license-granting proposed by Mr. Bryan. The federal government if it acts at all should act in exactly the other direction. It should surround industrial enterprise with the maximum freedom and the maximum protection to all, and no uneconomic privilege to any.

To this end it might be well for Congress to enact a law empowering the government to grant national charters to corporations, which should give them the right to do business over the

entire territory of the United States, against which no state should have the right to interfere. This would be economic, in that it would give the market of the entire country to every business enterprise. National charters could have the proper qualifications subjecting the corporations to a certain supervision and compelling annual reports to be made. Second, it might also be provided that companies using a public franchise, like railroads, should not be permitted to make uneconomic discriminations in their rates of traffic, that they should be subject to public accounting, and that all contracts with shippers should be accessible to all other shippers. The general influence of publicity and inspection by the national government, coupled with the corporations' protection in its right to do business throughout the United States, would tend to create a wholesome influence around corporate conduct. While affording corporations the full support of the national government in their business rights, it would. free them from the petty uneconomic nagging of partisan legislation in the different states. It would carry out the true idea of protection that the American market should be open to every American producer and that the interests of the laborers and the public is safeguarded by the national government; at the same. time leaving the essential features of business to be determined by the free action of economic forces, which are more permanent, more sure and more equitable than the wisest statutory enactment would ever be.

GEORGE R. GAITHER, JR.

Attorney-General of Maryland.

The day's program was closed by the reading of a paper by Attorney-General George Gaither, Jr., of Maryland, on "Maryland and the Trusts," who said:

The phenomenal growth of trusts, as the consolidations of great business interests into central corporations are currently designated, has excited the deepest interest in the minds of the people of this country. The meaning of this tremendous change in the economic relations of the nation is being earnestly considered by every thinking citizen, and some effective remedy for the evils which the growth of this new system threatens to produce is eagerly looked for. It is peculiarly fortunate that this new problem has developed so rapidly that it has not as yet been complicated by political antagonisms, and no partisan spirit