The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1899-03-04
Trusts and
/: Monopoly

Their Curse and a Cure.
by ID. 4. Petrc.

|T HE age of trusts and combina-
| tions is the subject talk today
among a vast number of the
American people. who believe them to
be serious menace to industry, and
without doubt an apparently sound
conclusion. 1t would take up too
much time and space to mention the
hundreds of combinations which have
been formed in the United States dur
ing late years, besides the average
reader is well informed of the situa-
ton.
We all admit the evil from a COM
mercial point of view; but when we
leave the field of trade and discover
that measures are on foot to control
the education of our youth, the last
measure of wickedness has been added
to the already overlooking bowl of
justification. I refer to bill before
the Illinois state legislature which
aims to put the public school teachers
of Chicago under the control of the
Rockefeller University, of which Mr..
Harper is president. From a political
and economic standpoint the average
reader can readily grasp the field of
thought which surrounds and gov
ems this gentleman, and we can infer
from his past teachings in this parti-
cular, what the result would be should
the public school teachers Of Chicago
be trained to educate after his way of
thinking. Another source would pre-
vent the organization of any new col
lege without an endowment of at least
100000. 1t is hardly possible, how
ever, to conceive that such a vicious
measure could ever be passed by any
legislature which had the least idea
as to the result effect it would have
on the rising generation. The prop
osition now before the people-of
trusts arar sue4a-a ,nIeiace to society
is how to remedy the evil, it is al
ways an easy proposition to condemn
existing conditions, hut it remains fer
those to come forward and suggest
cure. without which the vague utter
ances of the discomfort may even
prove worse than the disease itself.
| Recently a suggestion was promul-
gated through the United States SUI
preme court that the remedy against
trusts laid with the several states to
solve; but another outline for cure
was not set forth, and thus, SO far as
the courts advice is concerned, we
must still grope in the dark, and con-
tinue in the uneven tenor of our ways.
But there are possibly remedies which
in the writer's opinion might tend to
stay the progress Of monopoly, though
the plan is by no means original.
One process would be through u
grad uated income tax (Which accoru-
ing to the courts under the constitu-
ton cannot be made valid-though
entirely correct in 1862, when all i'll
come tax law provided for taxing all
incomes over $600;) but perhaps an
other plan might meet with better
and surer success, and that would be,
to leave the proposition to work out
it's own wreckage. 1t is an old motto
which says, that the best way to
change a bad law is to strictly enforce
it," Perhaps under this ruling there
fore, it would be well to let the system
of trusts and monopoly gain the
length Of their tether, when the whole
public will be so utterly surprised and
uwed that they will speedily rise with
one voice and subdue by wise means
Il condition of society which is fast
paupcrising the nation NOTWITHSTANDING
ing its enormous productive wealth.