Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/485

 THE CRADLE OF THE TRUST 465

Besides these above-mentioned necessaries of life, for the exchange of which regular markets are established in older com- munities, there are certain market conditions that bring every article from the factories under the law, or the effects, of propor- tion between supply and demand. One promotor of this law may be incidentally mentioned before the market idea is left, viz., the department store. As long as this was kept on a strictly cash basis, it served as a sort of market through which the manufac- turer or producer could reach the consumer more directly than could the common retail store. By soliciting "account custom- ers" they are now losing this claim to public recognition, and the city is thus losing one more of her market-places, though it may be said that this, as such, was a sort of makeshift. Far down as we are, its loss will be felt.

Try, now, after considering these conditions, to imagine the attractive feature we should add to our cities if a set of large market halls and places, with proper appurtenances for the trans- action of business and transshipment from or to boat or railroad car, truck or grocery wagon, were established. Think of a large hall, like the one we knew at the Chicago World's Fair as the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building a large hall of 1,100 X 400 feet, filled with a throng of sellers and buyers of all sorts of food products fresh from land and water, while the monumental bronze clock by sonorous strokes tells you the time, and the air is refreshed by the spray from fountains sent 100 feet up into the air. When we get a system of market-places, they will, as a matter of course, be of a size commensurable to that of our cities, and will outdo everything hitherto known; and why shouldn't they ? Market-places, like harbors and railroads, are paying investments.

But now the agitation against the trusts. Is there any sense in this so long as we are maintaining conditions from which harm- ful trusts must develop ? We are trying to cure the top while it is the root that is sick. Would it not seem more sensible to roll up the sleeves and go to work with a spade, fertilizer, and water- ing hose, preparing the soil for a new and better growth, and not rely on a cutting or trimming of the top as the only remedy ?