Lincoln County record. [volume] (Pioche, Nev.) 1900-1905, 1900-07-20
Til Trusts and The People.
BY Rev. Sam P. Jones.
From the Manufacturers Record,
Baltimore.

aIfeauy formed ana Delng formed by
aggregations of capital are consid-
cred hurtful to the masses and the
common people. This is a theory.
theoretically, a thing may be SO and
practically it may be very untrue.
When we speak of trusts and COM
bines we think of the Standard Oil
Trust, the Sugar Trusts, the To-
bacco Trust, etc. When the Stan
dard Oil Trusts was formed l was
paying forty cents "a gallon for kerr
osene oil; / am getting it now for
ten cents a gallon. I was paying
twelve and II one-half cents for sugar
seversl years age, but when the COM
bines set in we got it for five and
one-quarter. When the Whiskey
Trust was organized | was in hopes
that it would put whiskey where the
poor devils couldn't get it, but they
have seemed to cheaper that down
to where they can pay the govern
ment 81. l5 gallon revenue on it
and yet sell it for 81 .27a, which de-
monstrates that they are making it
and letting the public have it at
about twelve and one-half cents
gallon.
There is no doubt about the ag-
gregation of wealth with brains con-
trolling it, that they can manufacture
any article cheaper than it is or has
been manufactured on a small scale.
The great railroad combinations,
many think will eat us up blood rare
Occasionally l get on little jerk
water road that is not in the combi-
nation, and want to double my ac-
cident policies and be satisfied with a
Is -mile-an-hour gait and console
myself with the idea that can ride
all day for dollar, but when I get
on the Pennsylvania or Vanderbilt
system of roads, with their schedules
forty miles an hour, vestibule trains
with parlor cars, sleeping cars, din
ming cars, I have a hotel on wheels
carrying me towards my destina-
ton, ,and all this for two cents mile
Give me a road tnat is in the COM
bine to carry me where am going.
Public sentiment is the safeguard
which is thrown around all aggre-
cations of wealth and all combina-
tions of interest. The Standard Oil,
the railroad combinations, the Sugar
Trusts are as sensitive to public SEN
timent as the snow-bank to the rays
of sun. Trusts and combines will
not hurt the public, but stockholders
and bondholders may suffer later
on, when these great bulky institu-
tions become unwieldy and fall with
their own weight. Fifty thousand
men in United States, perhaps not
more, interested in the great trusts
of the country. Those $4,000 men
know that there are 10000, 900 OF
other people in America, and their
widsom teaches them where boun-
Diary lines are, over which they can
not go without peril to themselves
and disaster to their business. No
combination now says "damn the
public" but they have their weather
cocks out on every prominent cupola
watching how tue wind blows.
Of course, political capital can be
made out of such information of
wealth, and social order may raise
the black flag to fight them, but l am
asthousand times more afraid of de-
magogues and politicians then 1 am
afraid of trusts and combines. Good
go vernment-which means not only
the well-being of the citizens, but
the overthrow of all that will hurt
the citizens depends upon good
men in office, and we had better pay
less attention to what we call trusts
and combinations and more attention
to those whom we elect to Office in
the municipal, State and national
governments. Mr.. Stead, in his
book "If Christ Came to Chicago
speaks of the "Big Four" and says
to them that their methods are clean
and their transactions are honest, but
that in the road of their success lies
in the blood and bones of the victims
over whom they have run to success.
The successful man or combination
means the downfall of other men
and other combinations. One
preacher is preaching to 5000,
twenty preachers around him con.
slider seventy-fve full house, and
a hundred a perfect jam; one ply
sician making $40, 900 a year, and
forty other little doctors in the neigh
borhood not making their grub. A
Wanamaker selling $50,000,0O0 a
year means many little merchants
applying for clerkship in his store.
II is the survival of the fittest, it may
be. When God made this world he
made mountains touring into the
clouds and valleys below the level
of the sea; he made lakes and oceans
He spread out the praries of the west
and piled up mountains around the
little valleys along the ranges of the
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