The wages were to be based on what the inspectors found to be the
profits of the business, and the help or advice of the proprietors was not
to be taken. As these astonishing rules governed even the farmer and
shopkeeper as well as the manufacturer, you can imagine that there was not
much satisfaction in trying to carry on any business.
"The laboring classes were beginning to discover that they were a large
majority of the community and that there was a mighty power in the ballot.
Their opponents, on the other hand, having lost the control in politics
through universal suffrage, now bent their energies still more to the work
of combining large interests under one management, hoping to wield in this
way a power too formidable to be withstood. Immense trusts were formed in
almost every branch of business, and the syndicate gradually took the
place of the firm and individual corporation.
"A long time previous to the period of which we are speaking, the people
had put part of their business into the hands of the government, with the
idea that it would be done with more promptness and also with more
economy.
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