The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1900-07-12
TRUSTS AND THE PEOPLE.
Rev. Sam Jones, the Evangelist.
Discusses the Subject.
HE IS AN ARDENT EXPANSl0NlST
And Believes That Trade Follows the
FIag-Trusts are Sensitive to Public
Sentiment - Commodities Cheapened
by the Combination of Capital.

The large trusts and combinations
already formed and being formed by
aggregations of capital are considered
hurtful to the masses and the com
mon people. This is theory. The
oretically, 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 Trust, the Tobacco
Trust, etc. When the Standard Oil
Trust was formed l was paying forty
rents a gallon for kerosene oil; am
getting it now for ten cents gallon.
I was paying twelve and one-half
cents for sugar several years ago, but
when the combines set in we got it
at five and one-quarter. When the
Whiskey Trust was organized L was
in hopes it would put up whiskey
where the poor devils couldn't get it,
but they have seemed to cheaper
that down to where they can pay the
government ST. gallon revenue on
it and yet sell it for $1.27b, 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 aggre-
cation of wealth, with brains control
ling 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 | get on a little jerk
water road that is not in the combi-
nation, and want to double my ac-
eident policies and be satisfied with a
15-mile-an-hour gait and console my
self with the idea that | can ride all
day for a dollar, but when l get on
the Pennsylvania or Vanderbilt sys-
tenn of roads, with their schedules
forty miles an hour, vestibule trains,
with parlor cars, l have hotel on
wheels carrying me towards my desti-
nation, and all this for about two
cents a mile. Give me the road that
is in the combine to carry me where |
am going.
Public sentiment is the safeguard
which is thrown around all aggrega-
tions of wealth and all combinations
of interest. The Standard Oil, the
railroad combinations, the Sugar
Trust are as sensitive to public senti-
Inent as the snow-baDk to the rays of
the sun. Trusts and combines will
not hurt the public, but stockholders
and bondholders may suffer later on,
when these great bulky institutions
become unwieldy and fall with their
own weight. Fifty thousand men in
the United States, perhaps not more,
are interested in the great trusts of
the country. Those $4,000 men know
that there are 70,000,000 of other peo-
pie in America, and their wisdom
teaches them where boundary lines
are, over which they cannot go with
out peril to themselves and disaster
TO their business. No combination
now says damn the public" but
they have their weathercocks out on
every prominent cupola watching how
the wind blows.
OF course, political capital can be
made out of such formations of wealth,
and social orders may raise the black
flag to fight them; but | am a thous-
and times more afraid of demagogues
and politicians than | am afraid of
trusts and combines. Good govern
ment-which means not only the we'll
being of the citizen-depends upon
good men in office, and we had better
pay less attention to what we call
trusts and combinations and more at
tention to those whom we elect to
Office in the municipal, State and ma
tional governments Mr.. Stead, in
his book "If Christ Came to Chicago, y
speaks of the big Four of Chicago y
and says of them that their methods
are clean and their transactions are
honest, but that in the road to their
success lies 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.
Our preacher is preaching to 5000,
twenty preachers around him consid-
er seventy-five a full house, and a
hundred perfect jam; one physician
making $4,000 year, and forty little
doctors in the neighborhood not max
ing their grub. A Wanamaker selling
$50,000,000 year means many little
merchants applying for clerkship in
his store 1t is the survival of the
fittest, it may be. When God made
the earth He made mountains tower
ing into the clouds and valleys below