Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1896-12-12
VOICES OF THE PRESS.
How the Trusts Work.
(Hartford Courant.)

AS a rule the trusts and combinations
do tend to cheaper the price of their pro-
ducts. Oil and sugar are two noteworthy
instances, but every American who can
read knows that the history of the Stan
dard OIL company is one long record of
special rates; OF unfair privileges, and OF
cruel and relentless opposition. and that
the sugar trust is as offensive to the
nostrils as its product is pleasing to the
palate.
But the beef trust is not credited even
with lowering rates. By means of its
relations. with the railroads. this com
bine is able to fix the price at which live
steers sell, and the price at which dressed
beef goes. The cattle raiser can take
what they are giving or he can eat his
own cattle or reship them TO his ranch
or stable them and let them eat them
selves up. He's in their hands.
So is the retail meat-seler. He must
pay their price or go without. and he
must sell their beef or be run out of
business. There have been numerous in
stances where the local market man was
forbidden to handle local beef under
penalty of having a new store started
where the trust would sell al loss long
enough to ruin him. letting the profits
of hundreds OF other places go against
the cost of maintaining discipline and
making an example.
Now the congressional committee. en-
gagged in studying the beef trust. reports
its inability to reach any conclusions.
as the witnesses cannot be got. Certain
people who refused to testify in the sugar
cases have been told by the United States
supreme court that they must go TO Jail
The same policy in this case would have
been a good thing. The very fact that
witnesses dodge and disappear and are
run out of the way of the court is taken
in petty criminal cases to demonstrate
guilt. OF course. no such inference is
proper with wealthy and influential peo-
pie, And it's curious that though the
money and to be in business mainly for
the sake Of lowering prices and aiding
mankind. Providence or their own luck
or something has brought 1t about that
they have made enormous fortunes. al
most as you might infer. against their
desire or expectation
Now back of the Standard Oil and back
of the beef trust is the special rate on
the railroad. Giving one concern priv
leges not enjoyed by the rest enables it
to kill off all competition. BY and by the
railroad creates a power as Dig perhaps
as itself which it cannot quarrel with.
either for fear of loss of business or of
exposure of delicate relations that aid
private bank accounts and personal
print. II is facts like these. and pictures
like that presented by the Pacific roads,
with the bankruptcy of the companies
and the vast wealth of their manipula-
government control. They reasonably
ask if any publishing house ever got a
special postage rate that enabled ii 10
cut under its competitors The trusts,
shouting SO loud against government IN
reference, are the very factors that will
force the establishment of that control.
if ii ever comes. Senator Hoar's recent
outbreak in Boston on the subject of
business morals fits well in the consdera-
ton of this subject. He said:
1t is not strange that the people Of the
new states who see colossal fortunes ac-
quired by forbidden ways, by the fradu-
lent management of great railroads, by
the perversions of corporate powers be-
slowed by government for public use and
for public ends. or by gambling i'll stocks
or in the necesSaries of life, should strive
to initiate the example on a smaller scale
1t is not strange that a Kansas or Ne.
hraska farmer who reads the railroad
history of the section of the country to
which he belongs. should lend a ready ear
and become a docile discipline to plan
by which he can use the powers of the
government for his own advantage. by