The year 1910 promises to become a very prosperous one for the profit-crazed trusts, particularly the steel trust, which seems to possess a remarkable ability to maintain its good standing with the ruling powers in Washington.

This trust's net earnings during the last quarter of 1909, which amounted to the tidy sum of forty-one million dollars, indicate a gross profit of 1910 of close to one billion dollars, or a net profit of about two hundred million dollars, according to estimates made by experts.

The public is defenseless against such a gigantic organization which, with backing from Washington, does practically as it pleases. It continues its relentless opposition to trade unions in order to keep wages down and increase dividends.

The tobacco trust, which at present is in disfavor in the capital, earned fifty and one-half per cent on its common stock last year, and the net profit was $30,448,384. The corporation now has a surplus of over forty-two million, which is more than the originally invested capital.

And still there are many people of supposedly normal or better-than-normal intelligence who insist that the trusts have nothing to do with the present high cost of living! Where do these enormous profits come from if not out of the pockets of the American public, under the guise of "legal business"?