The Air Trust

This book is the result of an attempt to carry the monopolistic principle to its logical conclusion. For many years I have entertained the idea that if a monopoly be right in oil, coal, beef, steel or what not, it would also be right in larger ways involving, for example, the use of the ocean and the air itself. I believe that, had capitalists been able to bring the seas and the atmosphere under physical control, they would long ago have monopolized them. Capitalism has not refrained from laying its hand on these things through any sense of decency, but merely because the task has hitherto proved impossible. Granting, then, the premise that some process might be discovered whereby the air-supply of the world could be controlled, the Air Trust logically follows. I have endeavored to show how such a Trust would inevitably lead to the utter enslavement of the human race, unless overthrown by the only means then possible, i.e., violence. This book is not a brief for "direct action." Doubtless the capitalist press (if it indeed notice the work at all) will denounce it as a plea for "bomb-throwing" and apply the epithet of "Anarchist" to me; but at this the judicious and the intelligent will only smile; and as for our friends the enemy, we esteem their opinion at its precise real value, zero.[...]