This is the age of Trusts. The trust permeates every department of industrial and professional life. We have the oil trust, the sugar trust, the grain trust, the political trust, trusts controlling substantially every branch of industrial enterprise throughout the entire country. The advocates of trusts make the claim that they are a benefit to the people in this, that they combine the manufacture and sale of the product into a smaller compass, thereby decreasing expenses of manufacture and sale, thus benefiting the people by giving articles to them at less price than can be given under the old system of competition. The great money trust, having its headquarters in the city of London, has its ramifications throughout every civilized nation; Paris, Berlin, the United States, and other nations having extensive branches. This money trust is enabled to fix the price upon all commodities, whether raised from the earth or manufactured by the ingenuity of man, and to a large extent controls absolutely the output and prices. So true is this that the wealth of the country is being fast accumulated into the hands of a few to the detriment of the great body of producers and manufacturers and consumers of the world.
The Medical Trust is the one of which we now propose especially to treat. This trust is formed by the organization of all the physicians of the United States into what is known as "The American Medical Association." The first organization of this trust was something like twenty-five years ago. It was originated among the physicians known as Allopaths. They sought, by the passage of laws, to prohibit the practice of medicine and the cure of the sick by any other class of persons or physicians than those who had been graduated from an Allopathic medical college. This, after a few years' trial was found to be impracticable, because of the influence of other physicians who were graduated from the Homæopathic, Eclectic, and other schools.
The contest was one of great bitterness, but finally was compromised by allowing all physicians to enter the trust who were graduates of any school of physicians.
