Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1900-08-02
THE TRUSTS AND THE PEOPLE


Iron the Manufacturers Record, Baltimore
The large trusts and combinations
already formed and being formed by
aggregations of capital are considered
hurtful to the masses and the common
people. This is theory. Theoretic-.
ally, thing may be so, and practically
1t may be very untrue. When we
speak of trusts and combines 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 gallon for
kerosene oil; am getting it now for
ten cents gallon. l was paying
twelve and one-half cents for sugar
several years ago, but when the com
bines set in we got it at Eve and one
quarter When the Whisky Trust
was organized was in hopes it would
put up the whisky where the pool
devils couldn't get it, but they have
seemed to cheaper that down to where
they can pay the government $1.15
a gallon revenue on it and yet sell it
for $1.27h, which demonstrates that
they are making it and letting the pub
| lie have it at about twelve and one
half cents gallon.
There is no doubt about the aggre-
| cation of wealth, with brains control
hug it, that they can manufacture any
article cheaper than it Is or has been
manufactured on small scale. The
great railroad combinations, many
think, will eat us up blood rare Oc-
| casionally l get on a little jerk-water
road that is not in the combination,
and want to double my accident pol
icies and be satisfied with fifteen
mile an-hour gait and console myself
with the idea that can ride all day
] for dollar, but when get on the
Pennsylvania or Vanderbilt system of
roads, with their schedules forty miles
an hour, vestibule trains, with parlor
cars, sleeping cars, dining cars,
have a hotel on wheels carrying me to-
wards my destination, and all this
for about two cents a mile. Give me
the road that is in the combine to
carry me where l am going.
| Public sentiment is the safeguard
which is thrown around all aggrega-
lions Of wealth and all combinations
of interest. The Standard Oil, the
railroad combinations. the Sugar Trust
| are as sensitive to public sentiment as
the snow-bank to the rays of the sun.
-usts and combines will not hurt the
public, but stockholders and bondholdt
els may suffer later on, when these
great bulky institutions become un-
wieldy and fall with their own weight.
Fifty thousand men in the United
States, perhaps not more, are inter
ested in the great trusts of the coun-
try. These $4,000 men know that
there are 100000 of other people in
America, and their wisdom teaches
them where boundary lines are, over
which they cannot go 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 may raise the black
/ flag to fight them; but ON thousand
times more afraid Of demagogues and
politicians than am afraid of trusts
| AM. combines. Good government
which means not only the well-being
of the citizen, but the overthrow of all
that will hurt the citizen-depends
upon good men in Office, and we hau
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 ma.
| tional governments Mr. Stead, in
his book "If Christ Came to Chicago"
speaks of the big Four of Chicago"
are clean and their transactions are
/ y .0n,% L,,4 I,0% L., 30 L. q.
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.
iOle preacher is preaching to 5000,
/ twenty preachers around him consider
seventy-five full house, and hun
ared a perfect jam; one physician
making $4,000 year and forty little
doctors in the neighborhood not max
| ing their grub. A Wanamaker sell
ing $50,000,000 a year means many lit
tie merchants applying for clerkship
in his store. 1t is the survival of the
fittest, it may be. When God made
this world he made mountains tower
in. into the clouds and valleys below
the level of the sea; he made lakes
and oceans: He spread out the prair-
les of the west and piled up mountains
around the little valleys along the
ranges of the Rockies and the Alleg-
henies 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 l have
Travelled over this country from ocean
to ocean, and from Montreal to Gal
weston, annually for twenty years. l
have watched the progress Of events
and the professions as they marched.
have yet to know of a single instance
where combines and trusts hurt the
masses or permanently raised the
fprice of any product. am thousand
times more willing to deal with the
trusts and combines and purchase
their products than I am to put my
money into their institutions and i'm
lperil my holdings, conscious of their
want of stability and fearing their fin
al downfall.
OF course these great combinations
affect legislation, if they 10 not control
it in many instances. but while they