Amador ledger., 1900-07-13
Trusts and Combinations Be-
ing Considered.
ARTICLES MANUFACTURED CHEAPER BY TRUSTS
When Trusts and Combinations Fail
Only the Stockholders Will
Suffer From It.
By REV. SAM P. JONES.

alreduy iormeo ana oelng formed by
aggregations of capital are considered
hurtful to the masses and the common
people. This Is a theory. Theoreti-
cally, thing may be so, and practi-
cally 1t 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 cents gal
Ion for kerosene oil; I am getting it
now for ten cents gallon. was pay
Ing twelve and one-half cents for sugar
several years ago, but when the CON-
btnes set in we got it for five and one
quarter. Whom the Whiskey Trust
was organized was in hopes that 1t
would put up whlskey where the poor
devils couldn't get it, but they have
seemed to cheaper that down to where
they can pay the government s1.15 a
gallon revenue on it and yet sell it for
Sl.273, which demonstrates 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 aggreea-
tion of wealth, with brains controlling
it, that they can manufacture any arti.
Gle cheaper than it is or has been man
ufactured on a small scale. The great
railroad combinations, many think,
will eat us up blood rare. Occasionally
get on little jerk water road that is
not in the combination, and want to
double my accident policies and be sat-
isfied with a 15-mile-sn-hour gait and
console myself with the idea that I can
ride all day for dollar, but when I
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, l have hotel on wheels carrying
me toward my destination, and all this
for about two-cents a mile. Give me
the road that is in the com bine to carry
| LAG " AOiO dLu SOLuS'
Public sentiment is the safeguard
which Is thrown around all aegrega.
tions of wealth and all combinations OF
interest. The Standard Oil, the rail.
road combinations, 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 bondhold.
ers may suffer later on, when these
grest bulky institutions become un-
wieldy and fall with their own weight.
Fifty thousand men in the United
States, perhaps not more, are interest
ed in the great trusts of the country.
Those 5o,0o0 men know that there are
10, 900, 900 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 pub.
lic," but they have their weathercocks
out ON every prominent cupola watch.
ing how the wind blows.
OF course, political capital can be
made ont of such formations of wealth,
and social orders may raise the black
flag to fight thems but l am a thousano
times more afraid Of demagogues ano
politicians than I am afraid of trusts
and combines. Good government
which means not only the well-beine
of the citizen, but the overthrow of all
that will hurt the oitizen-depends
upon good men In Office, and we hao
better pay less attention to what we
call trusts and com mbinations and more
attention to those whom we elect to Of
fee in the municipal, State and nation
81 governments. Mr.. Stead, in his
book '1f 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 run to.
success. The successful man or COM
bination means the downfall of other
men and other mbinations One
preacher is preaching to 5,000 twenty
preachers around him consider seventy
five a full house, and a hundred a
perfect jam; one physician making
$40, 900 year, and forty little doctors
in the neighborhood not making their
grub. A Wanamaker selling $50, ,00O,-
900 a year, means many little mer-
chants applying for clerkship in his
store. It is the survival of the fittest,
1t 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 Ale
ghenies. 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,
from Montreal to Galveston, annually
for twenty years. have watched the
progress of events and the professions
as they marched. have yet to know
of single instance where COM bines and
trusts hurt the masses or permanently