Unfortunately there is a great tendency to make these evils worse by recrimination. It is very common to hear those engaged in monopolistic enterprises, whether as owners or managers, denounced as unscrupulous villains, double-dyed rascals, scoundrelly enemies of the people, or perhaps in terms less blunt but more scathing. Now, what are the facts of the case? Speaking broadly, it is a fact that the men who own and manage our modern monopolies are as a class far more large-hearted in their sympathies than the average of men. It is only because they do not realize the consequences of their acts that they seem to those who do realize them and those who suffer by them to be incomprehensibly brutal. The same man who at a corporation meeting may do his part toward throwing a thousand men out of employment or wasting a million dollars of the world's wealth to effect some monster "deal," may stop as he leaves his office to help a crippled beggar regain his feet; and when he hears of the destitution that his own official act has helped create, he will give with a lavish hand to relieve it. When we come to questions between labor and its employers, more than this is true. The employers of labor as a class are closely in sympathy with the honest desire of their men to better themselves, and the constant increase in the employment of arbitration to settle difficulties, the experiments in co-operation and profit-sharing, and the furnishing of cheap and good houses to the workers are all evidences of this fact.
The truth is, that it is circumstances, not men, which have created monopolies. For to tell the truth, there are but very few men who, if put in the place of the stigmatized monopolists, would not have done as much or more, as their abilities permitted, to achieve a fortune as have these men. All men strive in general to make as much as possible out of their fellow-men, and to gain the most possible with the least labor. The monopolist only goes further on this road than most other men can go.
On the other hand, a still more common error exists with reference to the monopolies of labor. The newspaper press seems strangely fond of repeating the statement that all labor organizations are kept up by idle and turbulent labor agitators, who wish to live off the proceeds of their fellows' labor. A little candid thought and investigation will convince any one that this is an out-and-out lie, and as such deserves the condemnation of all honest men. Granted, indeed, that labor monopolies are an evil, as we have fully shown, and that the men who have charge of them are far from perfect, and make many mistakes, they have far more to excuse them than have the men who form monopolies for the purpose of adding to fortunes already plethoric. The truth is, that if the men who are so incomprehensibly unjust in their estimate of the work of labor organizations were put in the place of the laborers at the bench or in the mill, they would be foremost in securing their own rights by organizing their fellow workmen. It would be a great thing for the world's peace if men would try to look at their brother's failings through their brother's eyes. Before you criticise a man too harshly, candidly consider whether you would do any better if you were in his place.
