People's party paper. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1891-1898, 1896-07-24
put upon the statute books in answer

which the Harrison Administration
had left a dead letter. To this
pledge Mr.. Cleveland additionally
bound himself by voluntary utter.
ance in his inaugural address. Yet
before the people who listened to
that address had left Washington, he
put at the head of the Department
of Justice the favorite attorney of
the trusts man who had grown
rich in their employ and who had
given to them in writing his opinion
that the trust laws were "unoonstitu-
nal, null and void" The World in
stantly cried aloud in protest against
this betrayal of the people, but its
warnings were unheeded.
So far from proceeding against his
old clients under these laws, Mr..
Olney, as an attorney for the trusts
might have been expected to do,
wrote into his first official report a
sneering and sarcastic passage to
show that only absurdly crsdulous
persons could for one moment take
the antitrust laws as serious enact.
ments, or imagine that Congress had
power to place any effective restric-
tons upon oonspiracies of monopoly
in restraint of trade; and Mr.. Cleve-
land, instead of turning the traitor
out of his Cabinet, transmitted his
report to Congress with his own ap-
prevail.
These were but the beginning OF
disappointments to the peoples
hopes. The commission they had
secured to protect interstate COM
MERGE against extortion by railroad
pools not only did nothing effective
in that direction, but latterly has
even made itself the friend and ad-
vooate of railroad highwaymen in
their schemes, as the attorney-Gen-
eral had been the guardian and pro
tector of the trusts. In the Senate
the shameless spectacle was present
ed of the Sugar Trust using dis
tinguished Democratic Senators as
its agents and attorneys, and through
them debating schedules that enabled
it rob the Treasury of fifty millions
of needed revenue, while the Secre-
tary of the Treasury stood by
actively abetting the plot and venal
Senators speculated through Wall
street brokers in the results of their
own legislative action.
This growth of corporate and
plut0cratic influence at Washington
has been constant. The shameful
history of the first ,secrat SOL If
bonds to the Morgan syndicate for
six millions less than their value in
the open market is still fresh in the
public memory. So is that of the
second attempt to repeat the robbery
on much larger scale last January
an attempt averted only by The
Worlds extraordinary activity in ex-
posing it's iniquity and arousing
re sistless popular protest
against it. In the one case the peo-
pie saw the Government actually in
the control of the money power, led
by Mr.. Pierpont Morgan. In the
other they saw how grudgingly it
allowed itself to be saved, and how
even in yielding it was at pains to
save to the money power as much as
possible of its coveted plumber.
Equally irritating to the popular
sense of justice was the overthrow
of the income tax. The enactment of
law imposing trifing impost of
two per cent, upon superfuous in
comes was the one apparently earn
est attempt made in all these years
to do some small measure of justice
to the people--to distribute the bur-
den of Government support with
some show of equity, to make the
corporations, the bankers and the
benefciaries of tariff bounty pay
some part at least of their just share
of the taxes. Yet no sooner was
this law enacted than a fierce and
determined assault was made upon
it. The masses of the people, who
pay taxes on nearly everything
they consume, were made to
understand that the owners of super.
fuous wealth were not going to pay
their share, or even a small part of
it, if by any means they could avoid