The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-09-07
MAINE CAMPAIGN OVER
CLOSED WITH A BIG RALLY AT
PORTLAND LAST NIGHT.
Speech by Senator Lodge on the Trust
Question-Supervisi and Pub
licity the Remedy.

PORTLAND, Me-, Sept. 6.-The State
campaign was ended tonight by the Re-
publicans with a big rally at which Sen
ator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts.
was the principal speaker. He gave his at
tention to the trust question. In opening,
he urged his hearers to continue in power
the Republican party. Referring to the
war in the Philippines he said he believed
THE embers of insurrection still shoulder
in Springfield, Groton and Boston" lie
said the subject most in the minds of men
was that of trusts, and that the President
had recently said some wise words on this
subject.
Senator Lodge said the President was
not at liberty, as he was, to discuss 1t
from a party standpoint He described the
trust in a technical way and said that 10
IS per cent. of them there was not the
least objection. To undertake to destroy
them by rash legislation would bring on at
the present time the most disastrous par-
ic that could be imagined. He said that
undoubtedly the great combinations pre-
sent certain dangers and certain evils and
that at present the difficulty was in dis
tinguishing among the corporations. He
had been asked What are the evils of
the trusts?' and he had replied that they
can easily be enumerated. First and more
serious in that there is a great popular
suspicion about them. Somewhere there
ought to be some means of a State con-
trolling what il creates. He said this was
an evil, because under this government he
did not believe that anything a creature
of the government should be beyond the
government control.
There had been many schemes proposed
to solve the trust question, the senator
said, and chief of these was that of legis-
lation. Reckless legislation would be de-
structive to prosperity. Another solution
proposed is that of sweeping away the
tariff duties on articles that trust makes.
He said that sounds simple. and would be
punitive no doubt. The utmost it could
do would be to reduce profit. Some trusts
would suffer, and Senator Lodge said that
he would like to see the meat trust pun
iShed that way. The steel trust he said,
is organized to compete in every market
in the world, while many other companies.
having been built UP under the protective
tariff, would be dealt deathblow should
the tariff be removed. You may reduce
the profits of the steel trust, but you leave
it master of the field. If you took off the
duty on woolens. the woolen trust prob
ably would close every one of its mills in
the country.
Senator Lodge thought that the method
of regulating trusts by putting them into
the control of the public through the gov
ernment is the slliest remedy ever sug-
gested. He thought the first remedy is
supervision and publicity, and the latter is
the first thing to seek. In this connection
Senator Lodge referred to the suits against
the railroad merger, and the injunction
against the beef trust. In conclusion he
said that this country wants to retain
prosperity and at the same time meet the
question of trusts. He said that some
means must be found to bring them within
the law, not to ruin them, but to regulate
them, to make the public understand them,
to remove the mystery and the discomfort.