The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-02-14
ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE
And Platform of the Antitrust Con-
vention.

The national antitrust conference,
composed of members from states and
territories of the American union, as
sembled at Chicago on the 18th, 18th
and 14th of February. 1900, earnestly
urges all citizens who oppose the in
dustrial combinations commonly known
as trusts, to organize at once to deprive
those combinations of their power.
We make no assault upon business
combinations for diminishing produc-
tive cost or augmenting productive eff
cheney. The more easily wealth is pro-
duced, and the more there is, the better
for verybody-provided distribution is
equitable. What we do attack is COM
binations for coercing producers and
leSSenlng production. 1t is such combi-
nations that constitute the trust evil
and them we would abolish root and
branch.
When oppressive trusts are examined
they are found to be combinations not
for augmenting wealth, but for hamp-
ering its production; not for making
good things plentiful and cheap, but
for making them scarce and dear. The
strength of the trust does not lie in a
more perfect organization of producers
and productive facilities for greater
usefulness. 1t lies in more intense
concentration of monopoly privileges.
In some instances these privileges are
owned by the trust itself. In some
they result from combinations produced
/ ny puDIC pO1Cy. III OIn6fS they are
/ farmed out in more or less secret ways
| by the principal beneficiaries to sub
| sidiary trusts.
Chiefly by means of railway discrim-
ination and exclusive pipe line service.
| the Standard Oil trust has acquired
such undisputed control of American
! oil that it can lower the price to pro-
ducers and raise the charge to consum-
ers at will, and so enable itself to de-
| clare quarterly dividends on millions of
| W9faTG6 stock at a c-0 hay nd
| all bounds of legitimate profit. To this
| oil trust monopoly engendering laws
| have committed the regulation of the
| peoples needs and rights in one de-
| partment of industry Their needs
! and rights in another have been by
| similar laws committed to the beef
! trust. This trust also derives it's far
/ reaching powers, which extend over
cattle raiser on the one hand and meat
! consumers on the other. chiefly from
! Determinations in railway rates and
/ terminal facilities. From the same pro-
life source of special privilege comes
| the grain elevator trust, which lowers
the price of grain. to the farmer while
| increasing the cost of bread to the me-
chanic. Railway determinations, but
tresSed by coal tariff and monopoly
in mineral lands, is responsible also for
| the anthracite coal trust, which already
exists and for the bituminous coal
trust which is rapidly forming, where
| by the miner, who would trade coal for
| 1000, must submit to eXtOrt1On or
starve and the farmer who would trade
! food for coal must submit to extortion
| or freeze. Even the sugar trust de-
! rives no small proportion of it's des-
| potic power both in business and poll
ties from discriminating railway rates.
| This trust moreover, like the coal
| trust, is a beneficiary of tariff favors.
| So is the paper trust. Secured by tariff
! against Canadian competition in raw
materials, and controlling the American
sources of supply, the paper trust has
been able. by mere arbitrary decree,
without alteration in the cost of pro-
| paper to an extent which involves the
| loss OF many millions of dollars to the
| press of the country. Then there is
| the majestic steel trust. Through pat
| ents and tariff indulgences and rail-
| way determinations and the monopoli-
cation of some of the richest mines
which bountiful nature has bestowed
with impartial hand upon mankind
that trust sweeps the area of other
great departments of industry and pro-
claims itself monarch of all it sur
veys.
As a elimination to this aggregation OF
gigantic trusts, INSCRIPTIONS congress
Sional lobby now threatens to set up an
all-embracing banking trust This lobby
demands that the government wholly
surrender to private corporations its SOW
ereign functions of issuing money inSo-
far as that function affects paper money
II that were done, a banking trust Woulo
result which would regulate the volume
L OF paper money and dictate commercia-