The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1900-10-18
Democratic eories and Trusts.

Democratic Theories and Trusts.
Colonel Bryan continues to offer to
Western way station audiences the
two threadbare remedies for trust
abuses which have done duty in his
repertory on a hundred previous
transforming tours. No other Dem
ocratic statesman, so far as we can
discover, has shown the slightest dis
position to infringe on the Nebraska
leaders, exclusive patent on these
two twopenny panaceas; and they
may have accordingly for many rus
tic voters the air of new and startling
additions to political knowledge.
Colonel Bryan's schemes for checking
the evils of the trust system are, how
ever, about as pretentiously hollow
as his plans for doubling the value of
the farmers products and the labor
er's wages by clipping to half weight
the dollar in which both prices and
wages have to be measured. His
AlSb DlOJCCU lOl u oSOcs
under the Federal Governments pres
ent grant of power, is to put on the
free list all imports competing with
the product of any and every domes-
tic monopoly" His second is to
create Federal Bureau of Licenses
which is to issue permits to every
combination of capital organized in
one State and seeking to do business
beyond that States borders, and
which is to refuse permission to enter
other States to any corporation sus-
pected of carrying watered stock or
of designing to secure an exclusive
field for its operations. That Colonel
Bryan should, among Democratic
statesmen and orators, have himself
an undisputed monopoly of these
two flimsy and impotent devises for
Federal interference is scarcely to be
wondered at. For whatever political
extravagances doctrinaire of Colo
mel Bryan's Populistic training and
tendencies may venture to espouse
and advocate, every serious minded
Democratic leader plainly realizes
that the campaign Colonel Bryan is
conducting against the so-called
trusts is forcing the party he leads
into an attitude absolutely antago-
nistic to the traditions and theories
which have guided it for nearly a
century.
Neither of Colonel Bryan's proposed
legislative remedies can, in fact, be
squared with accepted Democratic
doctrine. When the Mckinley Tariff
bill was passed, in 1890, it's reciprocity
sections were viciously antagonized
Democrats in both houses of Congress
on the ground that the President
could not properly be invested with
power to alter import duties by virtue
of mere Executive agreements with
foreign governments. Such an ex-
tension of Executive power, it was
held, was an open violation of Demo
cratic theory, and when the Demo-
cratic party regained control in 1892
it promptly repclicted in the Wilson
German bill all outstanding reciproc-
ity agreements. Colonel Bryon would,
however, by his free list suggestion
not only introduce chaos into the es-
tablished system of raising Federal
revenues, but would arm the Presi-
dent with arbitrary power to alter
import duties at any moment with
out check or hindrance. In other
words, the Democratic Presidential
candidate proposes practically to
transfer the power to levy customs
duties from Congress to the President
"a proposal which naturally alarms
and scandalizes every consistent
friend of the Constitution and
every faithful follower of the teach
ings of Jefferson"
Colonel Bryan's second remedy is
equally antagonistic to Democratic
theory. 1t seeks again to shift to the
shoulders of the Executive powers
and responsibilities which belong to
Congress. 1t imposes on a minor
Federal bureau chief the duty of de-
termining whether combinations of
capital are or are not acting 'in re-