Events moved rapidly. The Ruysdael loan served its turn, but its turn soon gave evidence of being brief. As if from plans matured at least a year before, the ready-made clothing trust that Forbes had feared sprang into full being. It issued from the offices of Hallett, but it originated, almost as frankly, from the brain of the man whose lieutenant Hallett was. It threatened the life of the Forbes firm. Controlling nearly all the other large firms of the country, it could dictate to the retail trade, and secure favors from the railways. It so combined its mills as to reduce running-expenses as a whole while lowering prices on the one hand and, on the other, raising wages in its consolidated factories.
Luke had no doubt that this trust had been long prepared; he also had no doubt that its birth had been hurried as a new move in the war against him. He knew that the combination was contrary to the most rudimentary business ethics, and he hastened to inquire into its charter and organization, in the hope of finding some chink in its armor through which the blade of the Sherman anti-trust law might be thrust. He overhauled the law-reports in the libraries, he consulted the most eminent corporation authorities in his profession; but he discovered nothing to his liking. The trust was built upon the statute itself; the weakness of the latter was the firm rock on which the former was founded. Its strength lay in its iniquity.
"It is absurd for us to suppose," the greatest lawyer in New York told him, "that we can end the trust by passing laws. The trusts are a step in social evolution, and you can’t successfully legislate against evolution. When the trusts can’t hire the law’s makers, they will still be able to hire better lawyers to build new trusts within the law than such lawyers as the voters can afford to elect to Congress to frame new anti-trust laws. The laws against the trusts are of no more practical use than the laws in favor of the unions."
Luke returned to Forbes with this dictum.
"Can’t we get some of the outside firms to join us?" asked Luke.
"I have had several offers of the kind," he said, "and I am suspicious of them. I think the firms that made them weren’t really independent. I think it was a move to let the trust into our concern. Besides, this house has always been a Forbes house, and it must remain that or go down honorably."