labor unionism was decreed and inevitable. But labor unionism did not live
long enough to die that way.

Naturally combinations of labor entailed combinations of capital. These
were at first purely protective. They were brought into being by the
necessity of resisting the aggressions of the others. But the trick of
combination once learned, it was seen to have possibilities of profit in
directions not dreamed of by its early promoters; its activities were not
long confined to fighting the labor unions with their own weapons and with
superior cunning and address. The shrewd and energetic men whose capacity
and commercial experience had made them rich while the laborers remained
poor were not slow to discern the advantages of coöperation over their own
former method of competition among themselves. They continued to fight the
labor unions, but ceased to fight one another. The result was that in the
brief period of two generations almost the entire business of the country
fell into the hands of a few gigantic corporations controlled by bold and
unscrupulous men, who, by daring and ingenious methods, made the body of
the people pay tribute to their greed.

In a country where money was all-powerful the power of money was used
without stint and without scruple. Judges were bribed to do their duty,
juries to convict, newspapers to support and legislators to betray their
constituents and pass the most oppressive laws. By these corrupt means,
and with the natural advantage of greater skill in affairs and larger
experience in concerted action, the capitalists soon restored their
ancient reign and the state of the laborer was worse than it had ever been
before. Straman says that in his time two millions of unoffending workmen
in the various industries were once discharged without warning and
promptly arrested as vagrants and deprived of their ears because a sulking
canal-boatman had kicked his captain's dog into the water. And the dog was