Is not, perhaps, the whole system morally
wrong? Instead of these endless attempts to cure the natural results
of the system, is there not need of a radical reconstruction? Various
attempts have been made, divers proposals are offered, in the hope
of curing the causes of present maladies and devising a juster system.
Many of these are doubtless impracticable, or tend to work more
hardship than amelioration. But each proposal, of any plausibility,
has a right to a hearing if it offers to end the great wrongs of
contemporary industry; we must be very confident that it will not work
before we reject it. For some way must be found to right these wrongs,
or our whole industrial order will go to smash. We must not condemn
too hastily a method which has not had a thorough trial, or whose defects
time and experience might remedy. For mistaken experiments can be
discontinued; and great as is the danger in incautious radicalism,
the danger in "standing pat" is greater.
Ought the trusts to be broken up or regulated?
The greatest sinners are, certainly, to speak generally, the great
corporations that we call trusts-though the word "distrust" would
better express contemporary feeling! So great has popular hostility
to them become that the Democratic party platform of July, 1912, declared
that "a private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable," and demanded
"the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary
to make it impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United
States," i.
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