The Bemidji pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Beltrami County, Minn.) 1896-1917, 1900-07-05
TackIing the Trusts.

TackIing the Trusts.
In its latest platform the republican
party renews its obligation TO the
American people by declaring thai
trusts and combinations which tend to
stife competition and to raise prices
to the detriment of consumers must be
suppressed. The republican party is
not dead to the virtue OF allowing
combination OF capitalists, IN
whose hands great enterprises can
only be successfully promoted. But
Justice, blindfolded, can see great
danger in allowing free ruin and .
smooth road to such combinations.
Industrial cliques, with a thirsty de-
sire to declare dividends t. its stock
holders need watching. And when
their sole object seem to be to cnrtail
expenses to the lowest possible limit
and to put up the price Of commodl-
ties to the highest possible notch, the
public welfare demands their dis
couragement. The Workmen and con-
sumers cannot be protected otherwise.
The trusts are no longer struggling
infants. They are full-grown giants,
s:with muscles of iron and a heart OF
flint. Z They are exporting from this
country commodities Of almost every
sort; they send them abroad, pay
freight rates and sell them under the
handicap of hostile tariffs. They
need subsidies or bounties no longer.
If our protective tariff has become q
wall, as many republican statesmen
claim, shielding them from all COM
petition to the detriment OF our peo-
pie, it is time to put articles con-
|trolled by trusts on q lower tariff
schedule.
1t is nice to see our manufacturers
prosperous; there is something sublime
/ in seeing factories run on half time
after combine and making more
money than they did on full time when
the trusts are enabled TO export their
goods to other shores and sell them
|one-half cheaper than at home, we be-
4 gin to pity the American consumer.
Steel rails have been exported to Eng
land where they can be produced for
SIS ton, and yet were selling here
for s24. It was lately shown that the
Carnegie Steel company, with cap
italization of s25, 600, 600, is making
clear profits OF SAC, 0O0, 900 year.
Mr.. Frick has shown that out of this
big earning the workingmen have
been the least to benefit and the con-
sumers the greatest sufferers.
It only needs a Prick here and there
to prove that trusts are evils, and the
republican party never had more
worthy cause than when it promises to
remove those evils. The Philadelphia
Ledger is a conservative and ortho-
dox republican paper, published in
1.-THE smoke Of mandatory and breath
ing the air of such commercial COM
lbinations. Answering Senator ALI
Eson and Speaker-to-be Henderson,
who treat the regulation OF trusts as a
state matter and ask for some plan 81
effective legislation, the Ledger says;
| But, as matter of fact, congress
| has q weapon which readily can be
used to cl.eckmate most of the OPP
pressive combinations against whose
exactions protests go up from the
people. The majority OF the trusts
deal in products protected by the
tariff, in whole or in part, from for.
eign competition. The primary OBJ.
1iect of tie protection principle is te
secure to American labor remuner.
alive wages. Where labor is denied
it's share of profit, or where, by means
of monopoly, prices are enhanced te
the consumer to an unreasonable de
gree, the tariff is misapplied ane
ought TO be abandoned or modified
The problem OF the trusts
calls for solution, and the people
call upon congress to do It's part
Evasion of duty by the national lay
makers will not be condoned.