Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/473

Rh that it is the force thus obtained for the individual which has built up the country and carried it forth to its present eminence. Hence it must be with reluctance and the gravest feeling of responsibility that any new feature tending toward the limitation of the personal freedom is made a political or social, a commercial or industrial, issue.

Nevertheless the time seems to have come to have this done. We lack the curbing influence of European nobilitations, titles, or decorations, and must find other means for the legislative and executive divisions of our government to keep the social and industrial evolution within proper bounds. We have in the so far successful struggle for a reformed civil service a precedent that ought to show us the way to follow when a proper base is built.

Let us, therefore, for a time turn our mind from the higher political agitation for an abstract solution of the general trust problem, and let us sketch a picture of what other nations, less occupied by political activity, have done to deprive this question of its acuteness before we again give vent to political excitement.

By examination we shall find that the main difference between public or quasi-public institutions related to transportation and commerce of this and other countries consists in the ownership. While in Europe all these features, or bearers, of modern social life are owned, maintained, or managed as public institutions by state or municipality, or by corporations subjected to such strict control that they are reduced to financial or administrative middlemen, we have allowed these features to grow entirely into the uncontrolled ownership and management o [sic] private persons or corporations, and we have with the weakest or protests seen this done so thoroughly that the public in many cases finds itself situated like the miners to the corporation store. That is, the public has to pay prices for necessities and commodities of life as fixed by private interests, with but little controlling influence of competition, without any alternative but to pay the fixed price for the quality offered, or starve. In this fact lies the gravity of the trust problem.