The Saint Paul globe., 1900-04-22
APPROACHING THEIR DOOM
POWER OF THE TRUSTS WILL BE-
GIN TO PIE CRUSHED OUT
THIS YEAR
GREAT COUNTER CONSPIRACY
The Tobacco Trust TOttering-Out-
put of Southern Mills Will
Wreck the Wire
TrCSt.

begin TO lose their Importance and power.
Two are already dying. They will die
hard and will be years about 1t, but the
beginning OF the end is here. There eX-
lists a vast conspiracy of silence as to the
facts, for the main prop of those two
hogs Of the trusts, the Tobacco Trust and
the Wire Trust, called hogs by even the
other trusts, is the misplaced confidence
Of the public In their strength. There is
nothing so fatal TO the business bully, the
trust, as TO have its weakness known.
Naturally the interests that are under
mining the trusts are in the league of
silence, and no secrets are so carefully
guarded as those of the trusts, save those
of the concerns that are fighting the
trusts. So long as the general public be-
neves the trusts strong it pays the trust
prices In the belief that they are, going
to be maintained, and buys in large guam
titles. If it were known that the tobacco
trust instead of controlling 60 per cent
of the business will by the middle of the
summer control less than 80, and that the
wire trust instead of controlling 80 per
cent Of the wire business WILL when ex-
listing contracts are completed, control
less than 90, confidence in the trusts and
their prices would be broken. This would
hurt the nontrust tobacco and wire in
terests as much as the trusts, for now
they get the same prices as the trusts,
and they need the money more.
A CASE OF FILICIDE.
Another reason for secrecy Is that the
trusts are being killed by their own pa
rents just as the little snakes are eaten
by their mammas when they are large
IT. IA nancial h-ainS
Of the country have been bulldog trus 8.
They have built them finer and fatter
than they ever dreamed when they be-
gan. But to the promoter fattened on
per cent and the financial glutton accus-
toned to 10 per cent on his investments
the or 6 per cent that the trusts are
able to make at the present prices OF
their shares seems stale, fiat and un-
profitable OF course, so long as the anti
trust legislators continue to advertise the
wickedness and remunerative attractive
ness Of the trusts, investors who did not
get in during what may now be called
the golden age of the trusts will con-
tinue to keep them going. But the imam
cial Napoleons who made the trusts are
now finding their most promising fields in
the organization of new trusts or in
frustrating enterprises.
Perhaps 1t is fitting that the beginning
OF tnG US Snl dSdiitSl OAlC WIN - N@9t 49,
having its beginning in Cleveland, the
city that gave birth to the greatest and
most remunerative Of all the trusts be-
cause 1t was the first (the Standard OH
company. Oddly enough, the Steel and
Wire company, the wire trust, furnished
the money that is building the largest
Of the nOn-trust wire plants, that of the
Alabama Steel and Wire company, at
Ensley, near Birmingham. George H,
~ a nd q
here in Cleveland when the wire trust was
formed. They sold out to the trust at a
good stiff price. and now, with number
of other capitalists of Cleveland and 9TH
er cities, some of them also using money
paid for old plants by the wire trust,
they are building at Ensley a steel plant,
rod mill and wire works that will pay
clean profit of 81 900 a year if the con-
spiracy of silence can be maintained
and prices kept where they are now.
INTERESTS UNITED.
OF course this is not TO be expected, for
prices are bound to come down, but the
fall will be as slow as the combined eff
forts of the trust and the antitrust in
terests 10 keep the public in ignorance OF
the facts can make it. Some idea of the
money there is in this silence as well as
an idea OF the reasons the wire trust is
called one of the two trust hogs, can be
gained from the fact that before the wire
trust was formed a l1eg of nails cost l.20.
Today the price is about 81 a keg retail,
and wholesale dealers have to pay the
trust $500 a keg. When the trust says
anything about the price of nails In the
way of explanation it says that the prices
are higher because the price of wire rods
is higher 1t does not add that the rea-
son wire rods are high is that it bought
up the Wire-rod mills when 1t was organ
ized, this being the vital part of it's great
enterprise. But this is only half an en-
swer, either, for the wire trust sells wire
rods for $55 a ton in the open market,
this being the prohibitive price 1t puts
on rods to head off competition in the nail
business. Seven dollars worth of labor
makes of this $55 ton of rod twenty kegs
of nails, for which the trust charges but
$64 wholesale, little If anything more than
the cost. or course these prices make 1t
impossible for non-trust nailmakers to
compete with the trust if they have to
buy their material from the trust, wire
rods being the nailmaker's raw material
The trust fighters go farther back than
this. In the case of the United States
Wire and Nail company, which is just
completing it's plant in Pittsburg, the new
concern will make It's own rods. This is
a small company organized by Pittsburg,
Cleveland and Chicago capitalists that
has been for a time making nails from
non-trust rods that were picked up in
driblets here and there, although the
quantity was small. Now the company is
building a rodmill. 1t Will buy steel bill
lets where 1t can, much Of its material
being the rough ends sawed from rail-
road rails in the railmills. The competit-
or in the new South is really more i'm
portant one, and the South will take the
lead In the fight with the wire trust
MILLS WERE NOT FEARED.
The trust, when 1t was forming, didenot
fear the competition of the Southern iror
mills and mines, for 1t was thought that
the high percentage Of phosphates in the
ore made 1t unavailable for making gooG
steel That was so then, but recent pro.
eesses have made this ore as good as any
If the trust will only keep prices I'D g
little longer, the profits Of these new con.
Germs meanwhile will give them a very
comfortable amount of working capita
with which to meet the cuts In price that
the trust will have to make If 1t does not
reorgan1Ze It's business on a competitive
basis or go 10 smash. It's expectations OF
controlling the production of steel along
with the Federal Steel company, by con.
trolling the output of the mines. which
was really the foundation of the trusts
perfected plan of stranglng competition
is now seen to be empty That is the
reason the men who built the trust giant
are taking up, both as promoters and in.
vestors, the enterprises that Will kill il
The present plant of the Alabama com.
pany has a capacity Of 300 tons of wire
rods q day. 1t is to be increased to 500
While the output Is not large in compari.
son with that of the trust. It Is snfn.
ciently large to be significant. Steel hill.
lets are bought from the Alabama SteeI
and Shipbuilding company and the Ten.