Brenham weekly banner. [volume] (Brenham, Tex.) 1877-1907, 1897-07-08
EVIL EFFECTS OF TRUSTS.

a gallant fight against thetrusts
| and declares that while we have
them they will corrupt whatever
| they touch, for they are but or
ganized greed, unmitigated by
any public or moral restraint
Their capacity for evil grows as
they grow. They hold the power
to reward and punish public men,
They have become the state, but
in their capacity as governors
they are free from the constitu-
tional limitations, the ambitions,
the traditions, the honors or fears
which keep political rulers from
becoming tyrants. They feel re-
sponsible only to their balance
sheet. A pawn broker in charge
of the national treasury and using
it solely in the interest of his pri-
vate business would be as a treas
urer what the trusts are as rulers
of the United States. Their
managers are business men
strictly and pretend to be any
thing else only when the pretense
is necessary in business.
These trusts, which control the
country's resources and indus
tries and are forever showing that
they believe themselves to be
beyond control, are as deadly a
peril to the republic as would be
the navy and army were both
possessed by a private trusts
whose sole duty was to levy con-
tribution on the people.
The trusts are the embodiment
of arbitrary power in business.
And they combine politically by
instinct to resist any movement
which threatens to change pres
ent conditions in any degree for
the better. We saw that in the last
presidential campaign. Present
conditions are good enough for
the trusts. All are implicated in
the continuing crimes by which
their privilege of spoilation is
preserved.
The trusts reject the doctrine
that the general welfare is of !
higher Importance than any
body's private welfare. They
have got outside the government
of the people, by the people, and
are its most powerful enemies,
for the success of their money
aim can only be achieved
by defeating the purposes of the
government. The working maxim
of the trusts is the wealth of the
country belongs to those who are
clever enough to take it from the
pockets of its owners, and ALI
demonstrating the corrupting
Of legislatures and courts-neces-
5ary to the service of the trusts
in this enterprise are justifiable.
The trusts are reducing the
United States to industrial slave
ry, and either political liberty or
industrial slavery must perish.
The trusts have rotted not only
our commercial and political life,
but they rot our private life as
well. They hold most of the
roads that lead to success. Young
men in the professions, seeing
heir power, seek their favor.
The ambitious, who dread their i
hostility, compromise with integ- 7
'ity and self respect and surren-
Ter. Many newspapers, like law
7ers, prefer trust service to pub s
ic service. When talent is prov |
ID, if it be talent likely to be dan /:
yerous, the trusts offer the high s
st price. !
The rule of the trusts is the
'ule of bribery and its inevitable )
fleet a pervasive sordidness. r
We are arriving at the trust mil
enium, when neither principle !
Tor patriotism, nor pride, nor any
eminent that has generosity or =
in it will be respectable
it be in antagonism to business. 6
The manhood of the nation is be-
ng debauched by the philosophy .
f life of which the trusts are the