DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42346#0059
GROWTH OF CO-OPERATION
47
The writer holds no brief in defense of either the trusts
or the practices referred to—as subsequent chapters will
disclose—but the hypocrisy of those who assail large cor-
porations, while at the same time asserting or assuming
on the part of individuals virtues they do not possess, is so
distasteful that the temptation to expose it cannot be re-
sisted.
The demagogue who makes the welkin ring with de-
nunciations of the trusts is silent regarding the short
weights and measures, the adulterated goods, the poisoned
milk used and sold by men in his audience. He never says
to them, “The heads of trusts may cheat and defraud, but
they only do on a large scale what you do on a small; they
cheat the public, you cheat the women and babies in your
neighborhood—people who know you and trust you. You
buy goods of the trust and, in the main, you get the quality
you order and you get full weight and measure. You dole
out these same goods by short weight and measure, as of-
ficial records show.”
The man who should say such true things might im-
peril his reputation as a “trust baiter,” but he might also
gain votes and high office in the end, for the people like the
truth even when it cuts.
The large corporation, the “trust”—call it what you will
—is here to stay so long as competition, national and in-
ternational, is to produce quantity. It is here to stay be-
cause it is an economic evolution. When quantity is the
object men will cooperate together up to the point where
cooperation ceases to produce the maximum of results by
the expenditure of a minimum of effort—that is a self-evi-
dent proposition.
Any law that tries to check cooperative growth is a law
against maximum efficiency and, therefore, contrary to the
spirit of the age which demands, above all things, quantity,
which demands labor- and capital-saving devices in all in-
47
The writer holds no brief in defense of either the trusts
or the practices referred to—as subsequent chapters will
disclose—but the hypocrisy of those who assail large cor-
porations, while at the same time asserting or assuming
on the part of individuals virtues they do not possess, is so
distasteful that the temptation to expose it cannot be re-
sisted.
The demagogue who makes the welkin ring with de-
nunciations of the trusts is silent regarding the short
weights and measures, the adulterated goods, the poisoned
milk used and sold by men in his audience. He never says
to them, “The heads of trusts may cheat and defraud, but
they only do on a large scale what you do on a small; they
cheat the public, you cheat the women and babies in your
neighborhood—people who know you and trust you. You
buy goods of the trust and, in the main, you get the quality
you order and you get full weight and measure. You dole
out these same goods by short weight and measure, as of-
ficial records show.”
The man who should say such true things might im-
peril his reputation as a “trust baiter,” but he might also
gain votes and high office in the end, for the people like the
truth even when it cuts.
The large corporation, the “trust”—call it what you will
—is here to stay so long as competition, national and in-
ternational, is to produce quantity. It is here to stay be-
cause it is an economic evolution. When quantity is the
object men will cooperate together up to the point where
cooperation ceases to produce the maximum of results by
the expenditure of a minimum of effort—that is a self-evi-
dent proposition.
Any law that tries to check cooperative growth is a law
against maximum efficiency and, therefore, contrary to the
spirit of the age which demands, above all things, quantity,
which demands labor- and capital-saving devices in all in-