Nineteen hundred and three was chiefly conspicuous as marking the culmination and collapse of the great trust movement which began five or six years ago. The country had fairly gone combination mad, both capital and labor emulating each other in the furious race toward combination and monopoly. All consequences were blindly disregarded, only the advantages of combination receiving any serious attention, and no regard whatever was paid to the workings of these huge combinations. Whoever pointed out their inherent defects, their defiance of natural economic laws, their ineradicable opposition to human nature, their socialistic tendencies, their opposition to individuality, their inability to suppress competition - whoever was bold enough to oppose these tendencies on such grounds was swept aside with contempt and indifference. This phase of the movement, however, was by no means the end of the trust mania. It received an enormous stimulus from Wall Street, where the clever promoter quickly discovered in the increased profits and power of these combines something new to capitalize. These forced profits, together with the premiums paid to original owners for control of good will and for promoters' commissions, were the basis of an enormous overcapitalization, the new concerns frequently being capitalized at several times their real value. Not less than $6,000,000,000 of these new creations was made within a few short years, forming the basis of a colossal speculation, backed by unequaled financial power and launched upon an unprecedented industrial boom. It is not the purpose of this brief review to cite instances of failure. Fortunately, the losses resulting from inability to unload on the public fell chiefly upon those best able to bear them, the panic being strictly financial and, fortunately, not commercial or industrial. For the original shareholders in these combinations who failed to sell, the losses were chiefly on paper; but they were sufficiently heavy to seriously cripple many rich men whose fortunes had been locked up in these enormously inflated new creations. Syndicate after syndicate was formed to finance these organizations; some made fabulous profits, but others were closed out with heavy losses, bringing the country to the verge of the greatest panic in history. Fortunately, the country's general prosperity was only slightly impaired by the tremendous strain thus imposed on Wall Street. The storm was finally safely weathered because of the prudence of our bankers and the strength of our national resources, as well as the continued prosperity of the farmer, who once more proved himself the backbone of the nation. These experiences have effectually killed the trust mania, and its revival is exceedingly improbable. Big corporations, it is true, will remain, for the reason that they are the best known means of doing the world's work; but the era of excessive capitalization of good will, promoters' fees, monopoly profits, and the delusions of visionary economists is happily at an end. Whether the final days of reckoning for the trusts have been seen or not is a question that must be left until the ultimate test of business adversity is applied, which we sincerely hope is still far distant. At best, the future of the industrials is dubious. Along with, and as a natural sequence of, the trust movement came the labor movement. The power of combination once discovered was as badly misused by labor as by capital; even worse, for the demands of labor were pushed to such extremes of extortion and injustice as to throttle business and arouse popular indignation among those who still preserved some ideas of individual freedom.🏁

Nineteen hundred and three was chiefly conspicuous as marking the culmination and collapse of the great trust movement which began five or six years ago. The country had fairly gone combination mad, both capital and labor emulating each other in the furious race toward combination and monopoly. All consequences were blindly disregarded, only the advantages of combination receiving any serious attention, and no regard whatever was paid to the workings of these huge combinations. Whoever pointed out their inherent defects, their defiance of natural economic laws, their ineradicable opposition to human nature, their socialistic tendencies, their opposition to individuality, their inability to suppress competition - whoever was bold enough to oppose these tendencies on such grounds was swept aside with contempt and indifference. This phase of the movement, however, was by no means the end of the trust mania. It received an enormous stimulus from Wall Street, where the clever promoter quickly discovered in the increased profits and power of these combines something new to capitalize. These forced profits, together with the premiums paid to original owners for control of good will and for promoters' commissions, were the basis of an enormous overcapitalization, the new concerns frequently being capitalized at several times their real value. Not less than $6,000,000,000 of these new creations was made within a few short years, forming the basis of a colossal speculation, backed by unequaled financial power and launched upon an unprecedented industrial boom. It is not the purpose of this brief review to cite instances of failure. Fortunately, the losses resulting from inability to unload on the public fell chiefly upon those best able to bear them, the panic being strictly financial and, fortunately, not commercial or industrial. For the original shareholders in these combinations who failed to sell, the losses were chiefly on paper; but they were sufficiently heavy to seriously cripple many rich men whose fortunes had been locked up in these enormously inflated new creations. Syndicate after syndicate was formed to finance these organizations; some made fabulous profits, but others were closed out with heavy losses, bringing the country to the verge of the greatest panic in history. Fortunately, the country's general prosperity was only slightly impaired by the tremendous strain thus imposed on Wall Street. The storm was finally safely weathered because of the prudence of our bankers and the strength of our national resources, as well as the continued prosperity of the farmer, who once more proved himself the backbone of the nation. These experiences have effectually killed the trust mania, and its revival is exceedingly improbable. Big corporations, it is true, will remain, for the reason that they are the best known means of doing the world's work; but the era of excessive capitalization of good will, promoters' fees, monopoly profits, and the delusions of visionary economists is happily at an end. Whether the final days of reckoning for the trusts have been seen or not is a question that must be left until the ultimate test of business adversity is applied, which we sincerely hope is still far distant. At best, the future of the industrials is dubious. Along with, and as a natural sequence of, the trust movement came the labor movement. The power of combination once discovered was as badly misused by labor as by capital; even worse, for the demands of labor were pushed to such extremes of extortion and injustice as to throttle business and arouse popular indignation among those who still preserved some ideas of individual freedom.🏁