"THE FINAL TRUST."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10198, 6 July 1911, Page 1

"THE FINAL TRUST."

Professor W. T. Mills, special commissioner of the municipality of Milwaukee, lectured at the King's Theatre last evening on the subject of " Tho Final Trust," There was a fair attendance, and Mr G. R. Whiting, president of the Federation of the Trades Councils of New Zealand, occupied the chair. By way of introduction Professor Mills said ifc was inevitable that some final organisation must be formed to govern all industries and the markets in which the products of these industries were distributed. In older days the means of production—the tools with which to make things—were cheap, A month's wages would buy all the tools necessary to build a house. Therefore there was no necessity for combination in order to acquire the means of production, no occasion for joint organisation or joint ownership. The spinning wheel was so cheap that, anyone could own it. But the inventor came along and transformed the spinning wheel into a vast factory. Joint ownership and joint labour became necessary to production. With the increased capacity for production brought about by machinery it became possible to supply larger areas from one producing centre. Organisation in the supplying and control of larger markets became necessary. The partnership was outclassed by the corporation as n more efficient method of controlling industrial forces. Corporations were purposely built without any soul, so that funerals should not interfere with business.

Tiie establishment of the system of limited companies made it possible for men to join a corporation without accepting responsibility beyond what they contributed to the corporation. The corporations in each industry widened their markets until they came into direct competition. Then camo the necessity for continual improvements, continually increasing efficiency of organisation, continual additions to productive capacity. Th» best management had to win, and that meant the one which could hire labour cheapest. The meanest employer had to be the most successful. Every time he conquered a competitor he. took over his competitor's market'. The light must go on until one organisation had conquered all the others or entered into combination with them. Whenever a monopoly existed production was limited. The industrial corporations had ceased " doing '' each other, and lmd started to "do' Mho pe*>p!e. Production could also be limited to those localities where raw material, transportation and labour were cheapest. It would go to the places where labour wa.s most poorly organised and most sorely oppressed. The question of language or nationality or religion did not enter into these mattors. These things counted for not one hairs-breadth of power in determining the place of production and the labour employed, in it. Monopolies limited the market to what the people could pay for. As they could do with employing less people, the number of people, who could pay became, less, and the whole progress of centralisation tended to cut the ground from under the monopoly's own feet. Under competition conditions each business had to get larger, but under monopoly the one remaining business must grow smaller. It could not continue to invest its accumulated funds in its own business indefinitely. and so must invest those accumulated funds in other industries. Hence the centralising of control must go on and develop. It could not be bounded by weans or by frontiers. The search for markets i 'ust out'«trii> all boundaries. No country could hope to escape. American !M.,'iop.)ii.?s were running British trauiiS'idpl? flJid Sjdiu:\ r f ' '• ~ * '

Monopolies would not only limit production ; tliey would destroy the products when the market price rell. Monopolies would buy politicians wherever they were to be bought. The Federal Parliament of Australia had recently refused to allow the Government to establish a State steel industry, and a few days after the Victorian Government placed a contract for forty locomotives with the Baldwin Company, United States, for £55,000 more than they could have made them for in Victoria. But New Zeal an dors could not afford to sneer at Australians while they had a Government that owned the Bank of New Zealand, nor at Americans while they paid Is a gallon for American kerosene. By way of conclusion, Professor Mills showed that when the last big trust and combination captured the earth it vvtiuid rind it was quite unable to use it. Under the continued operation of private monopoly, they must come to the era either of a final trust which would be stultified by its own potentialities, or an arrangement whereby the industrial workers' organisations of the world would be incorporated into one great international organisation for the control of industry.