to the people's financial structure, which enables its owner to enter any or all of the separate institutions I have mentioned, and combine any or all of them, without affecting their respective organisms, into a new organization which possesses the potencies and the privileges of each, but is unhampered by the legal restrictions of any one of them. Like electricity, the exact nature of a "trust" does not admit of rigid definition, but it is a force which can be exerted only in conjunction with financial organisms, which it joins and yet releases, adds power to, and exempts from consequences. Let us suppose that two men are made into a "trust"—this human combine becomes at once free from the bondage of matter and the senses, sees out of the back of its head and passes in and out through solid walls. It has all the combined strength and more that the two men had and all their human privileges and possessions, but it evades nature's laws as to individuals, and the laws of man both as to individuals and other material things.
To put the description in still another way, a "trust" is an institution which endows itself with the right to use any or all of the seven institutions of the people as the people use them, but so made that its user derives from the institutions the benefits the people intended for themselves, and yet is immune from the legal consequences of appropriating such benefits. Two or more men make a "trust" by combining—acquiring the control of—an insurance company, a trust company, and a savings-bank. The new organization is all of these institutions, performs the functions of all of them, yet can legally do with their incomes, capital, and surpluses things which, from the very nature of each, none of the institutions is allowed to do—the new organization is all of these institutions until the law attempts to bring it to book; then it evades being any one of them. The trust company is empowered to lend money on speculative ventures which the insurance company and savings-bank may not do, so the "trust" lends the insurance company's vast accumulations and the savings-bank's hoard through the trust company with great profit or tremendous loss and enjoys immunity