The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-04-27

ing element IN our industrial WOflu
will not get a fair share for its part.
And it's another moral certainty that
the wageearning element won't stand
any wrong arrangement that proposes
to give it permanently the tarred end
of the stick; the common people in this
land are altogether too intelligent to
take such a deal and put up with it.
Recently, through the press, the
country heard Mr. Chandler, federal
senator for New Hampshire. say that
in this matter of OVERRIDING the trust
business-the republicans are a good
deal the worse offenders. That is man
ifestly true to the extent that the tar
if is the father of the trust and the
gold-standard it's sponsor The Stand
ard has lately ventured the prediction
it wasn't a dangerous venture-that
the democrats will denounce the trusts
in their next national platform and
that the republicans will do that self
same thing. Whether this will be done
in all sincerity, we will not now dis
cuss. But, just recall the New Workers,
for instance, who, with Mr.. Croker,
didn't like what the democratic con-
vention did in 1896. Conspicuous in the
leadership of them was Roswell P.
Flower, a man who has had the busiest
sort of presidential bees buzzing in his
bonnet these twenty years. Mr.. Flower
ex-governor of New York-simpiy
wouldn't have it that way when silver
carried in democracys platform: he
was so disgruntled that he would not
help the Palmer Buckner rump affair
he went the whole Mckinley figure.
Now fancy Roswell p. Flower. who
they say, has made more money out of
trust deals than anybody-fancy him
advocating an antitrust plank in the
next national convention. What
finn fam that would be.
Our belief is that Il sincere assertion
against the indiscriminate sway of the
trusts will be framed into the next
platform of this nations democracy.
1t will be a corollary to an assertion,
equally sincere, which will be for free
coinage. And it is this newspapers be-
lief that when, after the usual cam
paigning, the people get ready to go TO
the polls, their judgment will be about
like this: really, we cannot count on
the advocates of the wealth-centering
gold standard to hit the wrong tenden-
cies manifested in the trust movement
very hard, but we have some cause TO
believe that the champions of free coin
age will, if they get into power shcw
some disposition, at least, to put up the
bars against a movement which, how
ever certain it is ultimately to collapse,
may be so fostered that it will live long
enough to cut off labor's right arm and
pluck out labor's right eye"
If Mr. Croker and those whose oracle
he sets himself up to be are honest in
their opposition to trusts, the way for
them to fight effectively is to join those
who are arrayed against the monster
that is equipped and entrenched behind
the trusts. You can see it if you look
in recent years, if you recognize Sc
quences when you meet them you can
see it as plain as day-the trust is the
first-fruts of the movement whereby
the single standard permitted the rich
and favored few to accumulate the
worlds gold-they are now accumu-
lating the worlds purchasing power in
it's varied forms.
The political economy of it all is that
an aggregation of brains--these are
quick-Witted men, keenminded and
far seeng-is dealing exclusively with
the problems of production and organ
iZing the means whereby wealth is pro-
duced. The danger is, nay, the fact is
that this form of organization, which
deals exclusively with production, if
left unchecked, can become a menace
of worse than perilOus proportions,
Unquestionably this malformation in
the industrial world will not be per-
mitted to go unchecked. The brains
that have organized the means for pro-
ducing wealth will presently come face
to face, by peaceful processes no doubt,
with the other brains that, if laggard
about it, will nevertheless organize for
the solving Of the larger and more in
tellectual problem which relates to the
right distribution of wealth.
But will the gold-standard monomet-
alists who write Mckinley platforms
under Mr. Hanna's dictation, or the
silver-fighting contingent that has
played a confederate's part in the gold
conspiracy-wil either of these furnish
this country's great captains in the
crusade for a new-organized distribu--
ton wherewith to meet modern
organized production? Your own quick
answer to that question is a cynical
smile.