The Portland daily press., 1892-11-24

Reading Coal Combine the Text of His
Sherman Antitrust Law is Constitu-
| tionaI and Effective.
CHIcAeo, November 23.-In an inter-
view yesterday with reporter of the
Inter-Oeean, ex-senator George #. Ed
munds, who is now in this city, said:
THE government can legally seize every
pound of coal shipped by the Philadel-
| phia and Reading Coal Company across
the state line of Pennsylvania if that
company is violating what is known as
the Sherman Trust law. If the Philadel-
phia and Reading, or any other coal COM
pany, has combined with another oom-
pany for the purpose of controlling
either the price or the output of any
commodity, it is amenable to the Anti
trust law and its product is liable to
seizure, while the principals are liable to
arrest and imprisonment.
"What do you think of the contention
of the trusts that the act is unconstitu-
| tional?'
There is nothing in the claim. The act
is unquestionably constitutional. It was
passed unanimously by both House and
| Senate, but not until after the most
searching and exhaustive discussion and
investigation. Every line was carefully
reviewed by the best constitutional law
yers in Congress, and every possible
feature that could at all be questioned
was stricken out before passage. There
is not the shadow of doubt in my mind
about the constitutionality of the act.''
what was the act designed to cover?'
s'It is intended and, think, will cover
every form Of combination that seeks to
any way interfere with or restrain from
| competition, whether it be capital in the
form of trusts, combinations, railroad
pools or agreements, or labor, through
the form of boycotting organizations that
say man shall not earn his bread, un-
less he joins this or that society.
Both Are Wrong; Both Are Crimes
| and indictable under the Antitrust law.
''If that law is enforced, do you think
it will smash the trusts?''
"Most certainly. The law is all right,
the courts are all right, and the people
are all right. Let the, officers charged
| with the enforcement of the law do their
full duty, and trusts and combinations
will go to pieces as quickly as they
sprang into existence, and unless they
are checked it is only a question Of time
until between tyranny of capital on ono
side and of labor on the other, there
will be no liberty for the people worth
the name. These trusts should be brok-
en- up. They should be destroyed, and
am in favor of any scheme directed to
the breaking up of great monopo lies
which get hold of a particular business,
or production in the country. and are
enabled thereby to command every
body, laborer, consumer, producer, and
everybody else-as the sugar trust, the
oil trust and many other trusts or COM
binations. Although for thetime being
the sugar trust has perhaps reduced the
price of sugar and the oil trust the price
Of oil, that does not alter the wrong of
The Principles of Any Trust.
By trust 1 mean every combination to
get control of life the and industry of
the producing and consuming classessof
the country.
1--WE cannot shut up our eyes to the
fact that if capital combines, if great in
dustrial establishments combine, like
mining industries, coal industries, pork
packing industries; if any kind of the
great operations of society combine; if
the people who own the capital and the
plant combine to regulate the price of
wages of laborers, just like the great
ornaments of Europe, labor is COM
PEELED to combine to defend itself, and
SO the country has been turned, and
other countries have been turned in the
last forty years. into great social camps
Of enemies, when they ought to be one
great camp of cooperative friends. The
laborers, therefore, were quite right in
combining to resist and defend them
selves against the combin atoms of
capital and property and plants, as they
may be called.
'sAnd it runs everywhere. 1t has run
through every class Of society, and it is
one of the great evils of the social
progress of this country, and every other
which exists, that there is hardly
trade and there is scarcely an industry
except the farmers, that, in one way or
another, has not combined to defend it,
self and make aggressive warfare upon
those with whom it is brought in con-
tact by employment on the one side or
other, or by purchase or SALE"