The Topeka state journal., 1899-09-13
IT is OPEN.
Great Trust Conference Called
at Chicago
By the Civic Federation Begins
Business.
NEARLY EVERY STATE
Is Represented by Delegates In
Attendance.
Music Hall Is Packed With
Spectators.
NEARLY EVERY STATE


of trusts and combinations with repre-
sentative men from nearly every state
in attendance opened here today. Cen
traI Music Hall was packed with the
200 delegates and hundreds of specta-
tors.
The meeting was called to order by
Chairman Franklin H. Head
Franklin H. Head was followed by
DR.. Howard S. Taylor who as the rep
resentative of Mayor Harrison well
coined the delegates to Chicago.
Attorney General e. c. Akin acting
for Governor Tanner. who was too ill
to attend, delivered an address of well
come for the people of Illinois.
The first taste of the real business
confronting the delegates came in the
papers delivered by Prof. J. w. jerks
and Prof. Henry Carter Adams, both
under the caption of Problems Before
PROF. ADAMS PAPER.
Prof. Adams. of the University of
Michigan, said in part:
Industrial combinations, whatever
their form, whatever their purpose,
whatever their explanation, are mat
ters of public concern. 1t is said we do
not know enough of this new form of
industrial organization to judge prop
erly respecting it. If this be true, and
if on this account trusts are to be al
lowed a probationary existence, 1t IS
the plain duty of the government to
hold them meantime to strict ac-
count. If trusts are what they claim;
that is to say the van guards of new
Industrial organization which holds
within itself great industrial Dement'S
the sooner this fact is recognized by the
public the better for all concerned II
on the other hand there is danger in the
extreme application of this form OF or
ganization, the government certainly
has a right to possess itself of all facts
necessary for a judicial opinion and for
effective legislation
Where competition controls, the gov
ernment may safely refrain from inter
ference, but where competition IS eX-
cluded, or where the conditions of its
exercise are such as to give one com
petitOr an advantage over another
nothing remains but public supervision;
and the most important, indeed. the
essential agency for legislation or Tor
administrative supervision is thor
oughIy organized bureau of statistics
and accounts clothed with authority
over the auditing departments of these
industrial associations.
THE question before this convention
is indeed a great question. 1t moves
in many directions and embraces many
considerations. It is at bottom ques-
tiOn of social theories and social ideas
Its vastness will be appreciated when
it is observed that it's judicious treat
ment will result in securing for the peo-
pie the advantages of the industrial
development of the past century while
to ignore or to fail in it's solution would
result in prOstituting the wealth Gre
ated bya a hundred years of phenOm-
email development to the service Of
Glass;
PROF. BROOKS ADDRESS.
John Graham Brooks of Cambridge,
Mass. lecturer on social economies at
the University of Harvard read pa
per under the head Are the new com
binations socially dangerous?' He
spoke in part as follows:
I'VE do not say a corporation is good
alton is or does. If the business is
properly safe-guarded the corporation
renders a social service as essential as
the college, the library, or the church.
If the larger combinations now under
discussion can be so far controlled as
the Boston Street railway and indeed
most Massachusetts are controlled,
should say the trust is not to be fear
ed but to be welcomed. The supreme
question that confrOnts US is that of
possible regulation
"I submit that the time is at hand
for some kind of wide, thorough and eff
fective organization. Nor do believe
it open to doubt that the immense pres
sure of this necessity is producing the
socalled trust. 1t makes itself far more
than it is made. Men will fight it as
they fought Mckinley, and with pre-
cisely the same results. 1 believe 1t to
be the beginning of practical sense to
understand that the new combinations
can in no sense be permanently smash
ed. The party which proposes to do
this in the sense of absolutely check
ing them, will have plenty of leisure
to regret it. The real problem. imne-
diate and imperious, is now to regulate
and guide the new force that stands
merely for the latest stage of indus
trial growth. If the combinations are
to work for the public well as for
private good three things, two of them
now largely under the voters control,
must be brought about:
"F'irst-AS absolute a publicity of
methods and account as the largest
Massachusetts corporation has to sub
NIT to-
'Second-Every artificial advantage
given by the tariff must be removed.
g Third - Railroad determinations
shall not be allowed to these combina-
tions.
whatever the future may have in
store we are not yet ready for state
control of railways. For the immedi-
ate future Ca decade or SOD the best
intelligence must go to this special evil
of railroad discrimination. The trust
plus special railroad favOrS can never
be other than a danger because it
makes directly for that wider econO-
mic equality that is already peril
enough
'.Given an absolute publicity of fact
and the one dominating of danger
capitalization-is already half
met. If the trust movement spreads,
as now seems likely, by far the larger
part will go to the wall from sheer
speculative bravado. The people mean
while will be rapidly educated, and
above all, the banks will be swift to
learn the lesson, and refuse to under
its risks. Only those trusts will sur
xivo that are rrl1dPuflv organized and