The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-08-24

peculiar division of governmental power.
When the industrial conditions were SIM
ple very little control was needed, and
no trouble was caused by the doubt as
to where power was lodged under the
examination. Now the conditions are
complicated and we find it difficult to
frame national legislation, which shall
be adequate, while as a matter of prac
tical experience State action has proved
entirely insufficient, and in all human
probability can not or will not be made
sufficient. to meet the needs of the case.
Some of our States have excellent laws
laws which it would be well indeed to
have enacted by the National Legisla-
ture. But the wide differences in these
laws, even between adjacent States and
the uncertainty of the power OF enforce
sufficient control l believe that the ma
tion must assume this power of control
by legislation, and if it becomes evil
dent that the Constitution will not per-
nit needed legislation, then by constitu-
tional amendment. The immediate need
in dealing with trusts is to place them
under the real, not nominal control of
some sovereign to which, as its creature,
the trusts shall owe allegiance, and in
whose courts the sovereign's orders may
with certainty be enforced. This is not
The case with the ordinary so-called
trust today, for he trust is a large State
corporation, generally doing business in
other States also. and often with a ten
dency 10 monopoly. Such trust is an
artificial creature not wholly responsible
to or controllable by any legislature, nor
wholly subject to the jurisdiction of any
one court.
"Some governmental sovereign must be
given full power over these artificial and
very powerful, corporate buildings. In
my Judgment this sovereign must be the
national government. When it has been
given full power, then this full power
can be used to control any evil infu-
ence exactly as the government is now
using the power conferred upon it under
the Sherman Antitrust Law. Even when
the full power has been conferred it
would be highly undesirable to attempt
too much, or to begin by stringent legis-
lation. The mechanism of modern bust
ness is as delicate and complicated as it
is vast, and nothing would be more pro-
ductive of evil to all of us and especially
TO those least well off in this worlds
goods, than ignorant meddling with this
mechanism, and above all, if the meddling
was done in a spirit of class or sectional
rancor 1t is desirable that this power
should be possessed by the nation, but it
is quite as desirable that the power
should be exercised with moderation and
self-restraint.
THE first exercise of that power
should be the securing Of publicity among
all great corporations doing an Inter
state business. The publicity, though
1on-inquisitorial, should be real and
thorough as to all important facts with
which the public is concerned. The full
light of day is a great discourager of
evil. Such publicity would by itself tend
to cure the evils of which there is just
complaint, and where the alleged evils
are imaginery it would tend TO show that
such was the ease. When publicity is at
tained it would then be possible to see
what further should be done in the way
of regulation"