Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1899-09-22


$50
This weeks issue of the New Sharon
Star contains card announcing the re-
tirement of n. j. Vail from the editor
ship to assume the position of managing
editor of the Ottumwa Daily Press. Mr.
Vail has been identified with the Star
for thirty-six years and has an excel
lent standing in the editorial fraternity.
Mr.. II. A. Nicholson, the present pro-
prietor of the Star, will keep it up to the
standard
COMMON SENSE ABOUT MONOPO-
LIES.
New York Tribune.]
Not only Mr.. Bryan but the great
Chicago antitrust conference, appears
to have been handled without gloves by
Mr.. Bourke Cochran in his second
speech, in reply to Mr.. Bryan, Saturday
afternoon. The day before he lacked
the element of combat and did himself
less than justice. though his speech
contained much that might well be
studied. But after MIR. Bryan had in
dnlged in an appeal of his usual order,
Mr.. Cochran began with return to-
practical sense, which must have been
shocking to the western orator and his
friends. Only few sentences need be
repeated to show the scope and the sin
gular incisiyeness of this reply:
Now who is hurt and where? Where
has this octopus got possession of
somebody? on whom is it acting?1
Where is its lair? ! am free to confess
that when you call an aggregation of
capital combination, a hydra headed
monster, an octopus. 1t doesn't cast any
light upon it that illumines my path
way. l can understand how the use of
these phrases can have some effect, as
nothing frightens people so much as
ncomprehensible noises.
IF you point out 10 me. as Mr.. Bryan
did this morning, the fact that we have
not seen the evils of this monopoly yet,
why then say you are simply creating
a fanciful picture; your excessive affec-
ton for your fellows has conjured up
a grave evil that exists only in your
own brain. Like Don Quixote of old,
Your are constituting yourself a
knight errant of POLITICAL economy
not against the windmill, but enlisting
the windmill on your side. Applause
and laughteD.'
The pitiful lack of evidence that any
body is being injured by the monsters
of iniquity at which so much lurid
rhetoric is levelled appears to the
speaker the fatal weakness OF the dem
onstration But he also puts home
again the fact that. as labor represent
atives had declared. wages are higher
than they have ever been before, SO
that the country is doing wonderfully
well in returns To workers. Then Mr..
Cochran asks:
If you want competition, must not
somebody succeed? Will you suppress
the man because he excels another SO
far that he constitutes monopiy?....
Restricted competition always pro-
duces the domination of the baser,
while free competition produces the
domination of the best"
1t Will be hard for any who discuss
this subject inteligently to eyade the
force of this reasoning, that COMPETE
| ton, If real and free and effective in
producing the highest excellence, must
tend to destroy competition. Its natural
result is survival of the fittest." Just
| here the speaker had missed a point
| the day before in reference to the
tariff. He had said "Manifestly 1t is
easier to make combination between
! the producers in one country than In
| all countries, and to that extent the
! tariff favors trusts. There would be
sound sense in this statement If the
number of "the producers We're per-
petually the same. But If the tariff
| increases ten fold or one hundredfold
| the number of producers in this coun-
| try as in some cases it has done. then
it is obviously foolish to reason that II
| makes combination between the pro-
! ducers easier. On the contrary, by as
surfing new enterprises here against de-
structive foreign competition it builds
up in every direction such home compe-
tition that combination of "all the
producers" Of yesterday has to face
new foes today. and fight for its life to-
morrow. Mr.. Cochran presumably held
it not profitable to discuss the tariff,
question at length, but IL he had looked
the fact straight in the face, and real
lied that the upbuilding and multiple
cation of domestic competition Is the
one influence which would-be monopo-
lies find it harder to overcome than al
others. he might have felt that the
trust" question could not be intelli-
gently considered IL the tariff were ig.
4 nored.
J Mr.. Cochran puts much stress ON tht