Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-28
THE TRUSTS AND TIE LAW.

officially outlined in the New York
papers to be: that the various
refneries forming tine trust will forfeit their
charters; that the property will be bought
up by the trust in the form Of a great corpor-
alton organized under Connecticut charter,
and that in such shape the great combine
will be impregnable against all legal as
saults."
1t is quite possible that by change of
form in their organization the trust eombi-
nations may continue to successfully nullify
the principles of law under which they are
condemned. That result will be due not to
the fact that their shift will satisfy the law;
but that the benumbing influence of
nonopolistic wealth on the administration of
justice, is able to ignore and override the
settled principles of law, with impunity.
This has been made sufficiently evident in the
previous history of. the trusts. They were
known to be illegal from the very start.
An unbroken line of decisions declared
them to be so. Yet they have been in sue
cesstul operation for years; and the sum
total of the struggle to put them down has
been the renewed and authoritative declara-
tion, of what was a perfectly we'll settled
principle at their inception, that combina-
tions and contracts in restraint of trade are
illegal and void.
But while the obvious evasion of shifting
the trust organization into the corporate
form may be successful in prolonging the
supremacy of the combinations, it is i'm
portant that the public shall understand
exactly the principle, or the lack of it, on
which this evasion stands. The idea that
the illegitimate purposes of the trust can be
legally attained by corporation is shown
to be shallow pretense by the fact that the
very decisions which have declared the
trusts monopolies to be illegal, have made
the same declaration against corporations
formed for the same purpose. This was
done in decision against the Chicago Gas
Trust; in Judge Barrett's decision against
the Sugar Trust, which has been affirmed
by the higher courts; and finally the New
York Court of Appeals in its last decision
says:
There can be no substantial con-
solicitations which avoid and disregard the stat
featuring corporations must be and remain
several as they were created or are under the
statute.
In addition to this the injunction in the
case of the North River Company forbids
the transfer of any of the assests of that
company. These legal principles and
this mandatory direction of the court must
be ignored and nullifed in order to carry
ont the programme of the trust. That such
practical declaration of the superiority of
a privileged class of capital to the laws and
courts may be made, is quite probable.
That it may be successful for the time being
is also possible. But its alternate doom
should be made certain by clear popular
comprehension of the fact that it is def
ance by organized wealth of the laws, which
are intended to be equally enforced upon
rich and poor.
But it is quite possible that the managers
of the trust policy may sfnd some une1-
pected difficulties in the way of carrying
out this programme of notification. The
courts have dealt with the trust only SO far
as to declare it to be illegal, and all the
steps taken in its organization become null
and void. In settling up the affairs of the
corporations comprised in the trust, re-
ceivers would deal, not with the holders of
the trust certificates, but with the original
shareholders OF the several corporations;
and the only claim of the trust would be an
exceedingly involved one, for the consider
ations paid to the several corporations in
pursuance of the illegal agreement. With
these complications in the way of the
maintenance of the combination, and even
of the return of the original value of the
trust investment, the certificates become
very hazardous security; and the fact that
they retain any value at all, simply assumes
the character OF an expression of the belief
in Wall street that the moneyed interests
behind the trust will prove more powerful
than the law as declared by the highest
courts.
This makes it clear, as THE DISPATCH
has already said, that the issue is only
whether the corporate wealth comprised in
the trusts can be made to obey the law. II
the supremacy of the law is asserted by the
unmistakable method of lodging the defiant
trust magnates in prison, the day of the
trusts will be promptly brought to an end.
MISS WILLARD's APPEAL.