The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1899-09-14
A FARMERS VIEW
Of the Trust Question by a Successful
Member of His Class.


Mr.. Walter N Allen of Meriden has
submitted to the trust conference in
Chicago for it's consideration the fol-
lowing:
Trusts are denounced as a great evil,
because they swallow up smaller indus
tries and centralize power; because
they reduce the number of employees;
because they pool their earnings to
shut out competition. If these be evils
overwhelming the good, then we should
denounce our railroads as the greatest
evil of them all 1t was the building of
railroads that destroyed navigation on
our rivers; that destroyed the business
of freighting with horses, mules and
cattle.
Witness also the displacement of
labor by the discovery of the power
of steam; by the invention of the sew
ing machine, the mower and the wheat
binder.
These industrial improvements threw
out of employment millions of men and
women and demoralized labor in every
civilized country. But in due course
OF time the good overcame the evil and
labor was soon adjusted to the new
order of progress to the greatest good
to the greatest number.
The antitrust laws of the states en-
body false sentiment against an in
dustrial evolution, the logic of which is
economy of production and economy m
distribution.
Manufacturers and producers of ar
to shut out competition and to ar
bitrarily regulate prices, but if the STAN
dard of prices should be fixed unreal
SOnabIy high, it would let down the
bars and open the field for competition
and result in the dissolution of the
trust The life of a trust therefore de-
pends upon its power to suppress COM
petition which can only be done by re-
ducing the cost of production to the
minimum and selling at prices so low
as to defy all rivalry from kindred in
dividual enterprises.
The life of a monopoly depends on no
such cOntingeno@ s. Monopoly has no
rival. If it had it would not be
monopoly for monopoly means a sole
produce, to sell and to buy. The modern
industrial trust has no such rights or
power, neither by natural law nor the
law of its being.
The tariff system of protection and
modern trusts in principle are closely
allied. The former protects the manu-
tacturer against foreign competition,
the latter protects the manufacturer
against home competition. The tend
ency of both is to reduce the cost of
production and to make the profits in
business more certain without advanc-
ing prices.
Henry Clay, the great Wing leader,
taught the doctrine that high tariff
made cheap goods This proposition
has been demonstrated by experience
and by the highest moral evidence.
If trusts We're to put prices too high
they would invite competition as well
as reduce the demand for consumption
so there is no great evil to be ap-
prehended from trusts for the law of
representation will always keep them
within reasonable bounds. If the sugar
trust were to double the present price
of sugar it would reduce the demand
for consumption one half, and the trust
would lose more money from short
sales than it would make by the ad-
vance in the price; besides this I'M
al Ia a n in he ra-Tr7 Of
gar would provoke competition and end
in the dissolution of the sugar trust.
We should accept the proposition %
do away with the competitive system