Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/312

296 of that diversification which, is an accepted sign of progress. The trust succeeds the corporation as the corporation succeeds the firm, as the firm succeeds the individual artisan, as the individual artisan differentiated from the Jack-of-all-trades of the early household.

A trust may be a combination of plants and operations theretofore separately conducted by corporations, corporations and firms, or by corporations, firms, and individuals. Its essential characteristic is the solidification of formerly diverse and opposing interests. This may be obtained by a combination under the trust certificate plan, or by the complete absorption of the ownership of the combining elements. Thus a corporation may be absorbed in a trust which may be transformed into a corporation, which in time may form a constituent element of a greater trust. Under each combination there is increased centralization of control and the extension of the operations in a widening field. And it sometimes happens that one man, or a few men closely associated, hold a controlling interest in, or predominate in the direction of, several organizations. There are two or three firms in New York, for example, any one of which regulates the management of two or more railroad or other corporations.

In each sphere of development, from the growth of the planetary systems out of the nebulous mass to the ascent of the living organisms of highest endowment from the protoplasmic mass of dull and homogeneous sensation, all progress has been along the lines of differentiation of function and structure and co-ordination of like functions in a decreasing number of structures or organizations, each characterized by an increasing centralization of control of a broadening field. If the working of the industrial forces that has led to the formation of corporations and trusts is directly analogous to the working of forces that along other lines has led to analogous effects, this industrial aggregation is a natural and inevitable step of industrial evolution that therefore can not but be beneficent in its final results.

As evolution along any line is most direct when its forces are least impeded, the industrial development of the United States should have been most rapid, for here conditions have been more favorable to industrial activity than among any other people at any time in history. The American settlers were of vigorous ancestry; natural wealth abounds; the climate is temperate; and there has been the least retardation from the evils of government, the evils of war, and religious intolerance. From this is another proof that the formation of trusts is a natural step of industrial evolution, for it is in the United States that they have been of most direct growth and have attained their greatest dimensions and their greatest strength.