The Tucson citizen., 1902-09-08
DEMOCRATIC TICKET.
For Delegate to Congress:
j. +. WILSON,
OF YaVapai, County.
FOR J0int Councilman:
LEVI III. MANNING,
OF Pima County.
TRUSTS AND COMMON LAW.

1t IS not surprising to IND the San
Francisco Call, the special organ OF the
beet sugar trust, enthusiastic in its
commentator of President Roosevelt's
mild attitude toward the trusts, and
especially in his declaration at Provi-
dence, that "the mechanism of modern
business is as delicate and complicated
as it is vast, and nothing would be
more productive of evil to all of US, and
especially to those least we'll off in this
worlds goods, than ignorant meddling
with the mechanism"
In discussing this declaration, the
San Francisco Call says:
If we accept these opinions as correct
and he ls short-sighted, indeed, who
will dispute them-we have stablished
q common basis for argument. 1t fol-
lows that the trust question, if it needs
attention of any kind, should receive
scientific treatment, and not the brutal
surgery advocated by the ill-informed,
the envious and the enemies of the state.
Proceeding further in the same line
the Call gives unreserved approval to
the Presidents remedy of publicity"
and adds:
This may appear to be mild recourse,
but unless we 90 behind the common
law of the land, and utterly deny the
accepted doctrine of the right of the in
dividual-meaning by this the individ-
ual as unit or as one in combination
to make the most of his opportunity
in legitimate sense, the prohibition of
the trust by an act of brute force will
not only prove unwise but will react on
the nation, affecting the richest and
the poorest. the highest and the mean
est alike. Calling man highwayman
does not make him one, and the inf1ict
tion of summary punishment on him
because OF an undeserved bad name is
not to be condoned by resort to such a
fiimsy excuse.
1t -'ould be interesting to know what
provision of "the common law of the
land" guarantees anything to the trusts
or to the people who form and maintain
them. We would like to have the Call
point it out, or to confess that it does
not know what it is talking about, and
the latter is the alternative it will be
forced to adopt, for there is nothing in
our law to justify the existence of trusts.
In reality they are and always have
been in violation of the common law,
which has been defined as common
right. 1t is fundamental principle of
the common law that com mbinations in
restraint of trade are unlawful, and this
doctrine had always been enforced in
this country up to the era of trusts.
There are dozens of decisions from the
courts that contract to go out of GER
tain line of business and stay out is alb
solutely void and cannot be enforced.
And yet that is the central feature of
the trust organization.
The whole common law theory is op-
posed to monopoly and favorable to open
competition in trade, and open aggress-
ion on Me right of the people to compe-
ton was gpromptly condemned by the
courts. The common law does not ex-
actly call the trust magnate highway.
man, but it does call him law breaker,
and infiicts punishment on him when it
is enforced. The trouble with the
Roosevelt administration is that 1t does
not enforce the law.