The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1899-06-30
Legislation Against Trusts.


ferent firms or combinations or pools, or
against the management of different cor
porations by central agency or trust.
The common law prohibits each of these,
special statutes are directed against them
and the courts are quick to act.
But the various companies now domi
mating the industrial field are neither of
these things. The law would have been
quick to prevent the thirty or forty COM
panies making tin plate from agreeing
OH one price. 1t would interfere to pre-
vent these companies from uniting in a
Crust" maintaining their individual
existence but surrendering their indi-
vidual freedom
But this has not happened. The Amer
lean Tin Plate Company has bought all
the works making tin plate outright 1t
owns them all in fee. A New Jersey cor
poration, it can, like the corporation of
any State, by the Federal Constitution
do business in any State, buy property in
any and control this property. No law
can interfere with these rights or abridge
them. The old companies are gone. One
new company owning all their property
and doing all their business is in their
place 1t has made no agreement to
maintain price because it needs none,
since it makes all the tin plate in the
country. 1t is not trust" holding
various companies in illegal subsection,
because it mas bought out their property
and their business is being wound up.
No antitrust legislation yet passed or
proposed meets this situation. A man or
company has right to buy all the
property either can pay for, i'll as many
Statac &c aiti,ar o11H a riubt tn
control the property when it is bought
and to sell ils product at the price put on
it. Yet the American Tin Plate Company
is fixing tin plate prices as summarily as
| if it were a trust or were party to all
has disappeared, and yet each step in the
suggested a remedy, A very serious re-
sponsibility rests OIL those managing such
a company. Let the advance made by
use of duty OIL tin plate intended to
with competition, and the existence
and be IN peril. The tariff is means for
monopoly.
The above clipping from strong adj
ministration paper, which implies strong
goldbug and trust paper, is a most clear
and comprehensive definition of the
modern trust. 1t is also most glarine
expose of the legal stupidity of our mod
ern day jurisprudence. Here is simply a
Juggling legal trick to fool the owls OH the
bench. A dozen tin plate mills cannot
meet by their agents. agree upon price
that the tin plate of all the mills shall be
sold for. That is in violation of the law
which holds that competition mus
not be, destroyed by a mutual agreement
amongst several corporations or person.
to sell only at one fixed price To under
stand how blind and stupid this modern
Justice is, "full of wise saws and modern
instances, we need only understand how
these dozen or half hundred factorie:
proceed.
They give up their several charters, &C
to New Jersey, buy charter and asses:
all the properties that are going to bunce
the modern judge, who has his eyes fixed
on an old English law called the common
law, framed hundreds ofyears ago Whel
the tin plate men get their properties al
scheduled they issue stock i'll the name
and by authority of this new charter made
by the laws of New Jersey and pay for
all these properties with this stock. The
property now all belongs to this imag.
mary millionaire, this artificial person
that exists only on paper and was created
by New Jersey clerk. The Jersey clerk
makes a law much stronger than the
common law" which the modern Justice
is meditating on with the gravity of a
Chlnaman over the graves ofhis ancestors,
while the tin trust men go off laughing
over their smart trick in getting round
the common law which prohibits the
| formation of trust because it would be
"derogative of trade"
All of the $50 trusts which have sprung
up within short time are defying the
antitrust laws of Congress and the States
behind the same paper screen, and the
courts and attorneys general, state and
national, declare the law is powerless to
do anything with the trusts that are put
ting up the price of everything they sell
the people and putting it down OIL all
they buy from them
1t looks like it would be very simple
matter TO bring these robbers into sub
lection to the law if those in power de
sired to do SO. The trust is but a cor
poration, charter granted by the State,
a creature of the State The grantor
could impose any condition it chose on its
own creature. 1t could place super
vsing officer over it whose duty should be
to report the business of the corporation
TO the public, restrain its capital stock
within the valne Of the plant or property
necessarily employed in the business.
A simple code of rules governing the
privileges granted corporations would
restrain them from becoming mighty
trust monopoles which rob the people
and threaten their liberties. The cor
porations or trusts have grown to be
public menace and a great public wrong,
and it is folly to say there is no known
way to stop the wrong and protect the
people. The safety and protection of the
people are far above any money making
business of few individuals