Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1888-09-01

of in Congress. Did they purposely intenC
to affront the President by taking no notice
of his suggestion. or did the democratic mem
, bers of the ways and means committee ant
of the House, cody accept the same conclu-
sion that stated at Portland, namely: That
neither the President of the United States
nor any private private citizen of the
L nited States could affect the existence OF
trusts, or cure the abuse thereof, by voice OF
vote in a national campaign. The Presidents
charge that trusts had their origin in a pro-
lection tariff, does not therefore have foot
of ground 10 stand on, and was eontradicted
in every line of the free trade experience. |
have quoted from England. IL is very well
TO make stump speeches against the republi-
can party as having formed trusts, TO hold
them responsible for their existence, and TO
introduce it as an issue in a national CAM
paign, but even the democrats who are max
ing these speeches, when put upon their re-
sponsibility as Legislators, did not dare to
bring the subject forward. They knew, If
the President did not, that trusts were deriv-
ed from State charters, and did not exist
under national law. Nor did the passage of
the Mills tariff bill through the democratic
House, afford the only occasion in the history
of Congress that the democratic party
Very Unanimously Backed Out
of an investigation of the trusts. do not
desire to be personal or ceusorious, and least
of all do accuse any man, but it is fresh in
the memory Of all my hearers that since
President Cleveland was inaugurared it was
charged that a senator for great State owed
his election TO bribery, TO bribery of the
rankest character ever charged in our politi-
cal history. So notorious was the charge
that the legislature of the State memorialized
the Senate of the United States on the sub
ject and asked only the favor that there
might be an open, fair aud full investigation.
The bribery was charged against one of the
most prominent members of perhaps the
largest trust in the United States. Far be il
from me to say that he was guilty. | know
nothing of him. certainly know nothing to
his personal discredit, but the charge was
made and made openly, not made anony
mOusly, not made in corner, not made by
an individual responsible or irresponsible,
not made merely by newspaper but made
by the legislature of what the democrats are
fond of calling''a sovereign State of this
union" There, my friends, was the oppor-
tunity for these irrepressible, voracious, ON
nivorous and enthusiastic democratic oppo-
nents of trusts TO get right into the secret
history, if there a history, of all the
crooked transactions, if there were any
crooked transactions, of one of the largest
trusts in the nation, to ascertain whether il
was guilty monster, whether it was a cor
rupt and dangerous organization, whether its
members were paying for the election of
United States senators and buying up State
legislatures by the outlay of vast sums of
money. We have seen that the contriyers of
the Mills tariff bill avoided the whole sub
ject, and now what did these democratic
senators, many of them in service, these
senators that are preparing to make stump
speeches on the republican iniquity in the
matter of trusts, what did they do! Did they
spring forward eagerly TO the Investigations
Did they champ their senatorial bits with
impatience to get in the race for who should
first chase these wicked trusts, OF this one
wicked trust, down? Not one of them.
They spoke against yestigation, they worked
against investigation they