The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser., 1900-03-09
WILL TRUSTS AGREE:

A special dispatch to the Baltimore
Sun from Washington, under date of
March 5th, says:
All the representatives of the protect
ed ''industries'' who have appeared be-
fore the Senate and House committees
considering legislation for our colonial
possessions were extremely frank in their
expressions and in their demands.
They insisted upon legislation that
would not affect in any degree the enor-
nous profits accruing to their respective
trusts and monopolies. Some of them
brutally expressed their Indifference at
the unhappy condition to which our
policy has brought Puerto Rico, and in
timated it was a matter of no consequence
how poverty y-stricken the inhabitants of
the island became, or whether they were
reduced to literal starvation, SO money
came into their pockets.
The committee members, or rather the
Republican majority, were told almost in
plain words: I'VE contribute our money
to you when you call upon US, and we
demand the understood equivalent"
AS recently said in this correspondence
the trusts by their threats and demands
bulldozed the President and the Repub.
lican members of Congress into such a
radical change of front. Mr.. Payne,
chairman of the Ways and Means Com
mittee, unwittingly let out on the floor of
the House that the protective policy was
at stake.
He did not state it so strongly as Mr..
H. S. Frye, president of the New Eng
land Tobacco Growers Association This
gentleman said free trade with Puerto
Rico would be ''the entering wedge that
will split wide open the protection policy
of the Republican party
This is just it. The Constitution,
justice, right and fair dealing are all to be
whistled down the wind to save the pro-
tective policy of the Republican party, a
policy under which Carnegie clears a
profit of $4O,OO0,OO0 year.
The Republican party. as said to day by
one of the most practical politicians in the
country, has absolutely forced upon the
Democrats an issue which, if properly
handled by the latter, is sure t. bring
victory.
For the great heart of the people of
the United States will never sanction the
gross and cruel injustice sought to be
perpetrated upon those who have come
under our rule for the benefit of the
millionaire corporations of the protective
tariff
There is tie most tangible evidence
that the Republican leaders are
realizing the dangers of the position in
which they have placed themselves. The
President had hardly gotten back from
New York this morning when the chair
man of the Committee on Ways and
Means was at the White House. There
have been frequent, in fact almost hourly,
consultations between Senators and Rep
presentatives, and it IS not denied there
is an effort in progress to form some
compromise, which the trusts can be eX-
pected to accept, and which at the same
time will not SO grievously offend the
popular sense of justice as does the meas
ure sent from the House to the Senate.
On line with this idea is the amend
ment to the Puerto Rico bill, submitted
to the Senate this afternoon by Senator
Davis, Of Minnesota, chairman of the
Committee on Foreign Relations. 1t is
known that MIR. Davis submitted his
amen ndment to several of his associates
before presenting it.
1t was very favorably spoken of, and
some went so far as to predict it would
be adopted. The trusts, which hold IA
majority of both houses in their iron grasp
possibly may be brought to see the hand
writing on the wall and take warning.
-.
Instead of avoiding the collision of inn
perialsm and protection, as the republi
cans who fathered it intended, the Porto
Rico tariff bill seems likely to precipitate
the collision, and the republicans to be
give up the Philippines or the protective
tariff. If the Supreme Court decides, as
many believe it will, that all territory
owned by the United States is constitu-
tionally speaking Il part of the United
States, the choice will have to be speedily
made, and Senator Foraker has openly
said on the floor of the Senate that he