The Jasper weekly courier. [volume] (Jasper, Ind.) 1858-1922, 1898-08-19
TRUSTS AND THEIR POLICIES
A Danger 10 the uepublic-Lct Jsss-
tice lie Enthroned In Our
National Life.

The one thing we have always to re-
member in the war with Spain, and in
everything else which affects our ma
| tional life, is, that no harm ever comes
OF justice.
We have stuffed ballot boxes and
stolen elections; we have bribed, bull
dozed, cheated and perjured in our ma
tional politics; we have practiced
fraud. cxtortion and 90 many other
| forms of infamous wrong through the
trusts and unlawful combinations
which seek TO control our business.
that we are in the gravest danger of
losing. through our own fault as a peo-
pie. all that has made our life as peo-
pie noble and inspiring.
We cannot go on exaggerating the
evil tendencies OF the last ten years
without ruin-moral, political and in
dustrial. If we do not gain for our
selves more compelling realization of
the meaning of justice, it will soon be
impossible for anyone but the most
consummate, grasping and audacious
scoundrel to succeed either in our
DOtlitVS bi III our DHSiItSSs
Our national life is but the reflex OF
our social and industrial activities.
Freedom. progress. ciyilization-all
that makes life worth living. for the
individual OF for the nation, depends
fundamentally on justice. When we
forget the meaning of Justice; when
vast combinations of capitalists league
a.
sugar trust. the whisky trust. the to-
bacco trust, the Standard oil trust. the
steel trust and n hundred others. 10
defeat the laws, to control trade, { o de-
fraud the direct producer, to rob and
Cypress the consumer, to coerce labor,
TO bride voters, to purchase elections.
and, through fraudulent control of
men chosen as representatives OF the
people TO exercise, by usurpati ton for
wrong and robbery, the most SOW
ercign and vital powers Of govern
ment-then what hope can any honest
American have for his country or for
humanity except in Justice?
There is no other hope. There can
be none. We have in the white house.
president who, when a candidate
pledged himself TO enforce laws made
to restore to our industrial life that
freedom, that honesty. that justice.
without which in our business, our
politics must become more and more
corrupt. and the hope of preserving
our free institutions more and more
desperate. But our president has done
nothing. We know he can do nothing.
We see him at once the agent and the
victim of the very law breakers against
whom he pledged himself TO use the
power of the people in enforcing the
laws.
Instead of the enforcement OF the
laws at home. we are offered vast
schemes of colonial empire. We are
told that il we accept the imperial poll
cies Of the trusts and combinations,
which are plundering our own people
in open defiance Of the law. 'our morn
ing drum-beat shall be heard round the
world" and the sun shall never set on
the glitter of American bayonets. fixed
TO hold in subsection weaker people,
who.Ain all four quarters of the globe,
through our superior fraud and force.
shall be made to toll for our profit ano
our glory!
If we accept the offer; il we do not
recognize now that the crisis has come
in the history of America. when its
only hope rs nation, when our only
hope as free Americans, is in justice.
then American liberty will cease TO be
possibility. and the increasing cor
ruption of our industrial and political
life will make the name of "Ameri-
can stencil in the nostrils Of the
world. Mississippi Valley Democrat