Instances are not uncommon where consolidations are complicated by reason of the companies which it is desired to combine owning public franchises which are not transferable. The most usual way of getting around this difficulty is for the new company to hold the stock of the old companies, or a majority thereof, in its treasury, and to operate under leases from the old companies. This is the plan followed in the case of the street railway systems in the north and west divisions of the city of Chicago, where the situation is still further complicated by a majority of the stock of two companies holding such leases, being in turn held by still another corporation-the Union Traction Company.

The evil effects of trusts and monopolies can scarcely be questioned, but it is far better to have the great corporation, although it is in effect a trust, than to have a combination of capital where its management is confined wholly to trustees not accountable to stockholders. Publicity is both the preventive and cure for a great deal of rascality in the world. In case of the great corporation, it pays its tax to the state, and is subject to proper limitations. Creditors are able to judge of its financial condition, and the public may determine whether it is conducting business within the limits of its charter. But whether the trust is a combination formed under the purely trust method, or a gigantic corporation, its objects are the same: the creation of a monopoly and the control of the market. For this reason public sentiment is hostile to it. Judge Thomas M. Cooley, a few years ago, speaking of trusts, said:

*J. Pierpont Morgan & Company. So successful has this firm been as underwriters that other bankers readily accept bonds and stocks offered by them, and thus through them promotion becomes comparatively easy.

"A few things can be said of trusts without danger of mistake. They are things to be feared. They antagonize a leading and most valuable principle of industrial life in their attempt not to curb competition merely, but to put an end to it. The case of the leading trust of the country has been such as to emphasize the fear of them, and the benefits that have come from its cheapening of an article of commerce are insignificant when contrasted with the mischiefs that have followed the exhibitions in many forms of the merciless power of concentrated capital."