The trust arose from the desire of the manufacturers to protect themselves from over-production and the consequent mad and suicidal struggle to dispose of their surplus stock.
Over-production arises because our productive capacity has been developed to the highest degree with labor-saving machinery operated by steam and, electricity, while our consumptive capacity is crippled by the competitive wage system which limits the laborers, who constitute the bulk of our consumers, to the mere necessities of life. I will not tire you with long statistics exhibiting the enormous strides that have taken place in the productive capacity of men due to modern machinery, nor will I harrow your souls with the well-worn details of the narrow, sordid life of squalor lived by millions of our workers. It is patent that the day worker of to-day consumes but little if any more of the necessities of life than did his grandfather of fifty years ago.
Statistically it can be shown that the consumption of beef, flour, potatoes, coffee, tobacco, wool, etc., has varied little if any per capita in the last fifty years. However, every student of history knows in a general way that the ordinary laborers of this country fifty or even 100 years ago lived in a fair degree of comfort, were warmly clad in their homespun and comfortably housed in their log cabins. The best proof of
