The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1900-02-22

| for his wife and family will make him 9
coward. 1t behooves US to strike while the
| dre of liberty yet burns.
The American Antitrust League IL non
partisan. We call all American ffoel4en t.
| council. II Democrat, or q PopHllst, o.
| Republican, public man hAs shown himself
| to be a subservient tool OF this great cor
porate power, then all the united power Of
all the men Of the American Anti-Tr
League will be used to crush him and drive
him from public life. We will adopt the tao
ties of our enemy until we have created q
legislative, judicial and executive power in
sympathy with the public welfare. And We
call upon every American citizen who loves
| his country and the great principles of popu-
| lar government better than he does his
party. to Join US In the work OF re-estab-
| fishing the equal rights of American citizen
ship M. L. LOCKWOOD.
President American Antitrust League.
Believing that Mr.. Lockwood repre-
scented an honest, bona-fide movement.
we consented to have our name used as
one of those making the call for the
conference, and on the 18th inst, at
some sacrifice of time and money, we at
tended the meeting in Chicago.
We found that the Democratic party
and the fusion Democrats, under the
leadership of James B. Weaver, Jerry
Simpson and other similar characters,
had packed the convention and taken
possession of the conference.
Their first step was to select a lot of
speakers, many Of them men of whom
the nation had never before heard, to
make speeches and "whoop it up for
w. J. Bryan.
Their next step was to utterly ignore
all members of the real Peoples party
who were In attendance. Although
there were number of our people pres
ent. like Hon. Milton Park, OF Texas;
Hon. Joe A. Parker of Kentucky; Mr..
Walters, of Indiana, etc., not one Of
them was made an officer of the con-
ference, or called upon to be one of the
100 to address the convention.
In the third place those Democratic
midwives were very anxious that the
newborn child should be strangled as
is came from the womb. They had got
ten together more than a thousand per-
sons from all parts of the country, and
they represented that the trust question
was one of the great questions of the
age, overshadowing everything else.
We therefore proposed that the or
ganization so formed should not be a
temporary one; we told them that to
merely come together and make
speeches and adjourn would amount to
no more than a last years birds nest;
that we had already had one such gath
ering in Chicago, and that in two
months is was utterly forgotten, and it
would be the same way with this move
ment.
They proposed to carry on the battle
against the trusts, not through the bal
lot box, but through leagues. We told
them that all governments in modern
times were conducted through parties"
that this was true of the United States
England, France Germany, Austria, etc.
That no reform had ever been accom-
plished in modern times through
leagues" That when the labor popu-
lation of the United States turned their
back on the ballot box their influence
petered out.
That if the conference adjourned and
tried to establish leagues throughout
the United States, it would be fizzle
That we must deal with human nature
as we find it. We must unite just
principles with natural human ambi-
tions. When, a generation ago, it was
proposed to fight the institution of hui
man slavery, a party was formed with
it's ramifications everywhere. If they
had resorted to leagues" slavery would
still be in existence. Ambitious men
campaigned through the country at that
time at their own expense, not only be-
cause they were opposed to slavery.
but because they saw in the honors and
Offices some return for their expendi-
lures of time and money.
If you now ask the opponents of trusts
to go out and toll and labor to create
leagues, which were to bring them no
personal reward, they would shrink
from the hopeless and useless task.
Therefore we urged that the confer
ence should fix a time and place for
national convention, to be held at some
central locality Let all who sympa-
thize with us in opposition to trusts, or
who held kindred principles, meet us
there and inaugurate a grand campaign
against trusts of all kinds, including
the anti-silver trust. This did not suit
Weaver and his allies; they we're not
sure that such a convention would
nominate Bryan, or some other Demo-
crat, for president, and so they pro-
ceeded to denounce us savagely and in
solently; no words of abuse were too
strong for them. The antitrust move
ment must be brought to naught, and
any man who stood in the way must be
crushed. Sulzer, Democratic con-
gresham from New York, said we were
helping Mark Hanna because we would
not go into the Democratic party. We
felt hOnOred in the fact that in the same
breath with which he abused us, he
praised Tammany, and declared it to be
the great reform organization of the
United States.
The conference had been packed with
nomncrofS ond Gu thox, roIo ,c,,rt. ~ - =