The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-03
DOLLIVER ON
 TIE "IOWA IDEA"
Says There Is No Cause for
 Alarm Over the Tariff
TRUSTSWILL GRADUALLY GO
Iowa Senator Shows Where Numer- GUS of These Combinations Have Run Against the Courts and
 Got Badly Worsted.

Chicago. October 2--The Iowa idea" came to the surface tonight at a mass meeting under the auspices of the Ma tional League of Republican clubs, which met in annual convention here today. United States Senator J. P. Deliver of Iowa was responsible.
 Mir. Deliver said in part:
 Let us look at the Iowa idea for a minute. It has been presented to the country as the sudden impulse of dis satisfied mischief makers within the re- publican party On the other hand it is the mature Judgment of man whose wisdom has never failed the republican party in the forty years of his uninter- rupted public service.
 Our people recognize the value of large capital for the transaction of a great business and especially for the commercial conquest upon which we are now entering. But they recognize also the danger of abuses. both in the organ ization and management of great indus trial enterprises, and would have the government of the United States stand between the community and the reckless perversion of the beneficent law of cor porate property, 1t is evident that even if it were desirable to kill the trusts it could not be done by merely remitting the duties which their foreign competi- | tors pay at our custom houses.
 Even MT. Bryan, who talks of putting the captains of industry into a cbaingang l and sending J. Pierpont Morgan first to the poor house and then to the peniten- tiary, admits publicly that the free trade remedy falls very far short of the object l he has in view Nearly every sober student of the subject admits that 1t was the pressure of competition which has drawn some of our industries first into groups and then into gigantic combina- tions under a single corporate manage ment.
 Not the Foundation.
 Our tariffs have been defended out of consideration for infant industries but that is not the foundation of the protec- tive policy. They have been defended on account of the difference in the wage scales of Europe and America, but that Is not the foundation of the protective policy. The long debates that were held in other generations about the rates of duty, whether the wall should be low ) enough to allow foreign merchandise to ) flow over it or high enough to barely , allow 1t to leak over or to be pumped
 
 principle which has identified the doc Urine of protection with the present day miracles of our industrial progress. Protection in the perfection of its de- = sign, as described by Mir Hamilton does e not invite competition from abroad says i Mir Blaine in his famous chapter on the , tariff question in it's relation to the poli- < tical revolution in 1860, in Twenty years of congress, but Is based on the controll- ing principle that competition at home e will always prevent monopoly on the part of the capitalist, assure good wages to the laborer and defend the consumer against the evils of extortion.'
 Passing Through Trying Times.
 That principle, which never failed to justify the doctrine of protection in any ] period of the past, Is today passing through an ordeal hardly even anticipat- ed when the tariff law of 1897 was placed upon the statute books. The census of 1900 has given an accurate account of the trusts and what they are doing and the daily reports of the market place indl- cate what their present standing and future prospects actually are. We know that they are 1855 in number, representing the consolidation of 2040 separate plants. We know that less than ten per cent of the factory labor of the country Is em- ployed by them and only IA per cent of our manufactured output Is made by them, and. leaving out chemicals and the products of iron and steel the per- centage is hardly visible to the naked eye In the textile industries they are almost unknown.
 Between 1890 and 1901 most of them have been established, and in the aggre- gate. counting all kinds of stocks and all kinds of bonds which they have issued. | their gross capitalization has been six | , Io1f nf AAl1a aNc frOv xrhf at least two billions should be deducted to cover spurious stock which represents nothing except the swindling projects of | adventurers and cheats at common law. So that putting all the consultations which have been effected in the last twelve years together. four and half billions of dollars may be set down as their true aggregate capitalization, in- cluding their bonds.
 Enlarge Production Capacity.
 ''These corporations have enlarged our productive capacity by the addition of new bonafide capital in a degree hardly noticeable They have merely undertaken to dazzle the speculative world by play ing upon the popular fancy for full page advertisements. And in nearly every one of them the motive of the organization has been mainly to shield capital all ready invested from the operation of natural forces always present in the com : mercial world. If they have failed In that they have failed in everything, and the power which some have been afraid would be used to wrong and burden the com munity has not even proved equal to the task of taking care of Itself.
 Before anybody makes up his mind that the so-called American trust is permanent institution, let him consider the long list of ambitious combinations which have already had their affairs wound up by the courts of justice. The alcohol trust, the bicycle trust and scores Of others whose names are now l even forgotten.
 What was the matter with these as- tonishing creations of the promoters art7 Nine ont of ten of them were bogus. and without stretching the law very much could have been denied the. use of the mails on an ordinary fraud order. Only yesterday one of the mammoth establish ments, the National Salt company, had little business before a court of equity fin New Jersey. The organization of that trust in 1SS9 was looked upon everywhere as step in the direction of monopolizing the necessaries of life.
 Other Trusts Will Go.
 'If the day of settlement has already come to so many of these once formidable institutions. how has 1t fared with those