Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1900-08-23
The Trusts and The People.
[By Rev. Sam p. Jopes.l

already formed and being formed by
aggregations of capital are considered
hurtful to the masses and the COM
mon people. This is a theory. The
oretically, thing may De 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 was paying forty
cents a gallon for kerosene oil; ! am
getting it now for ten cents gallon.
/ was paying twelve and one-half
cents for sugar several years ago, but
when the CONT ines set in we got it
at five and one-quarter. When the
Whiskey Trust was oaganized was
in hopes it would put up whiskey
where the poor devils couldn't get it,
but they have seemed to chearen that
down to where they can pay the gov
eminent GLIB gallon revenue on it
and yet sell it for $1.273, which dem
onstrates that they are making it and
letting the public have it at about
twelve and one-half cents gallon.
There is no doubt then about aggre-
CATION of wealth, with brains control
ling it, that they can manufacture
any article cheaper than is is or has
been manufactured on small scale.
The great railroad com binations,
many think, will eat US up blood rare.
Occasionally l get on a little jerk
water road that is not in the combin-
alton, and ! want to double my acct
dent policies and be satisfied with .
l5-mile-an-hour gait and console my
self with the idea that can ride all
day for q dollar, but when ! get on
the Pennsylvania or Vanderbilt sys-
tenn of roads, with their schedules
forty miles an hour, vestibule trains,
with parlor cars, sleeping cars, dining
cars, have hotel on wheels carry
ing me towards my destination, and
all this for about two cents mile.
Give me the road that is in the COM
blne to carry me where | am going.
Public sentiment is the safeguard
which is thrown around all aggrega-
tions of wealth and combinations OF
interest. The Standard Oil, the rail-
road mbinations, the Sugar Trust
are as sensitive to public sentiment
as the snow-bank 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 unwieldv and fall with their
own weight. Fifty thousand men in
the United States, perhaps not more.
are interested in the great trusts of
country. Those $4,000 men know
that there are &c, 900. 900 of otherpeople |
in America, and their " isdom teaches |
them where boundary lines are, over
which they cannot 60 without 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 NAV raise
the black flag and fight them; but
am a thousands times more afraid OF
demagogues and politicians than
am afraid of trusts and combines.
Good which means not
only the we'll being of the citizen, but
the overthrow of all that will hurt
the citizen depends upon good men
in office, and we had better pay less
attention to what we call trusts and
combinations and more attention to
whom We elect to office in the muni-
cipal, state and national govern
ments. Mr.. Stead, il his book, IF
Christ came to Chicago, speaks OF
the Big Four Of Chicago and says
of them that their methods are clean
and their transactions are honest, but
that in the road OF their success lies
the blood and bones OF the victims
over whom they have Iun 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 consider Seventy-five a |
full house, and hundred perfect |
jam; one physician making $4,000 a |
year. and forty little doctors in the /
neighburhood not making their grub. |
4 Wanamaker sailing 100000, 600 a |
year means many little merchants
applying for clerkship in his store.
1t is the survival of the tittest, it may |
be. When God made this world He
made mountains towering into the |
clouds and valleys below the level of
the sea; he made lakes and oceans: He |
spread out the prairies of the West
and piled up mountains around the
little valleys along the ranges of the
Rockies and the Alleghenies. In the
oceans waters we find whales and
some very small fishes, and when the |
whales come along the little fish |
have TO hide out. | have travelled |
over this country from ocean To ocean
and from Montreal to Galveston, an
nually for twenty years. have |
watched the progress of events and
the professions as they marched. | i
have vet To know OF a single instance |
where com bines and trusts hurt the !
masses or permanently raised the
I a..