The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1898-03-11
The Trusts.

ans to cry out against the trusts. Every
Kind of manufacturing business is con-
yloulerating into trusts. People mistake
IF certain conditions. No independent
spirited business man would become
part aud parcel of a trust by turning his
entire business over to board of trustees
and abdicating all control of it of his own
free will. 1t is the conditions that environ
the parties composing trust that COM
choice; the trust or bankruptcy and utter
collapse, and no laws that can be framed
against trusts will abolish them, because
when they dissolve the several businesses
which have combined into one compos-
ing the trust will cease to exist if sepa-
rated, till only one remains. Competition
will have killed all but the strongest and
that will take the place of the trust and
become powerful monopoly.
The effort to kill the trusts by statute
directed against the trust simply, is shall
low and futile craftsmanship. The law
which will abolish the trust must abolish
the conditions that cause it. The trust is
the involuntary struggle of business to
exist.
The first and primary cause is the in
suficiency of money i'll circulation to
more equally divide the products of labor
among the great laboring, producing
masses; the disproportion of money to
the large amount of products created,
which meagre quantity of money causes
the price to be so low that the producer
has little or nothing for his share when
he has exchanged the products of labor
for money, while the class who own
money and obligations on others, are
compelled to part with but comparatively
small amount of their money to secure
all the wealth the producers have created.
Hence the rich steadily grow richer, if
they are nou-p producers, while the pro-
ducers grow poorer, and as the price of
their products decline, they cut prices
and compete with each other till ruin
stares both parties in the face, then sew
eral pool their plants, appoint board OF
trustees to manage as one business what
formerly constituted several separate and
distinct businesses of the same class, and
that is the trust. This result is just as
certain as contripetal force tends to form
solid sphere of what it acts OH.
And this being true it is plain that law
directed at the trust" simply, must kill
the business if it kills the trust.
What is the remedy? The national
remedy is found in three separate and
distinct parts. First the complete national
control of the circulating medium or
money, involving its issue or creation and
its future care and control of the same in
the interest of people solely without par
TALLY or favoritism TO any.
Second, the complete ownership and
control of the telegraph and telephone
service, by incorporating them i'll the
postal service.
Third, though last but not least by any
means, the complete control of the
sources of transportation, which is almost
all done at present by railroads At the
founding of the government, the rivers
lakes and bays were all declared free to
transportation, the same as the public
roads, and had railroads and telegraphs
existed in those days of sturdy manhood,
they would have been classed among the
public utilities for the use of all, and
necessary part of government machinery
for the protection and welfare of society.
These three necessary functions to the
we'll being of the people at large must be
won back and placed in the hands of the
government to be managed for the ben
eft of the whole people, as the first three
steps in adjusting government to pre-
noting the ends of modern civilization.
There is probably very much more will
have to be done on similar lines, but
these three must precede all others, and
in the maan time the people must be
brought nearer to the law-making power,
in fact be made direct part of it.
In powerful article on trusts by SEN
ator Marion Butler of North Carolina, i'll
the March 4rena, the Senator says in
summing up the subject =
Gin short, those who have trust on
money, trust OH transportation, and
trust on news. have it in their power to
levy tribute on every man and on every
industry in the nation in order to enrich
themselves and their allies. They
have even taken charge of the govern.
ment itself. They are the authors of the
present hard times, and they are directly
responsible for the organization of every
trust. Was there trust in existence be-
fore half of the peoples money was de-
stroyed by burning the greenbacks and
demonetizing silver. and the control of
our finances was placed in the hands of
banking syndicate ?"
Our Only Danger.