Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1904-08-26
THE DEMOCRATIC AND RE
PUBLICAN POLICIES
On the Trust Issue-The One Effective Be-
cause Right in Prineipal-The Other
Pure Humbug, Costing the Average
American Family $50 Year

Pure Humbug, Costing the Average
American Family $50 Year
What We call trust depends on
monopoly, natural or artificial. With
out such a monopoly, no combination OF
capital can harm the public, or indeed
do ANYTHING but good by eflecting
economies that benefit all by lowering
prices. If it attempts to make prices
extortionate, competition at once
comes in as regulator. The natural
monopoles, as benign Providence
has distributed Natures blessings and
resources, are very few. Substantially
all our trusts rest on artificial monop-
DIV which has been created for them by
governmental power, first in the tarlii
and second in discrimination by rail
roads, which operate by delegated.
governmental powers in the right OF
| eminent domain. or of taking any
citizens land for their own use, Just
as the government can. How wickedly
| the railroad determinations have oper-
ated is illustrated by the Development
! of the Standard Oil Trust. Roughly il
| Illustrated. they charged the Standard
Oil Co. Sl.O0 for freight when its com,
! petitors were charged $500; and not
! only that, but the Standard Oil Co. was
given the extra $l.00 which its competi
tor paid. OF course no competition
could live under such methods, and OF
course they were nothing, in law or
ethics. cut robbery on the public high
way, which railroad is oy virtue of its
power of eminent domain.
Generai.y the trusts. which are organ
lied behind the tariff wall to the porten-
tious extent we showed last week, have
this extra guard in the way of high
waymen's methods BY means of it they
have prevented the fulnIment of ,--e
one valid excuse for high tariff, that
though it might bring eXtortionate
prices for time, the domestic compe-
tition its big profits would invite would
come in to reduce them lower than
ever.
All that is necessary to put an end
to the whole trust evil is--as the
Democratic party is pledged by its
record, its platform and Judge Parker's
! statesmanlike speech of acceptance
first, to lower TO a reasonable point the
tariff on every article whose production
is in the hands of trust, and sec
ond, by adequate legislation to stop
these railroad determinations. The
first could do no possible harm to any.
body, and only stop robbery, because
our manufacturers are already beating
the world, and our trusts are selling
their goods in Europe at third or a
quarter less than they do at home. What
they are thus collecting in robbery OF
the American people, as nearly as it can
be computed, is $780, 100000 year
or $50 for every average family.
When the Democratic party was il
power, in 1887, under the first Cleve
land administration, there was passed
in the nter-stateCommerce act, what
was intended and believed to be sui
ficient legislation against railroad
determinations. The Supreme Court ha.
since by its decisions taken all thu
virtue and effectiveness out of the law
The Interstate Commission, and es
pecially its able Vermont member
Charles A. Prouty, has year after veal
pointed out how the law can be amended
to meet these decisions and accomplish
its purpose, and year after year ha!
/. pleaded with Congress for the necessar,
legislation. But the Republican part,
has refused to do the first thing. A.
with the tariff, it Stands pat" for tn,
trusts.
In the meantime it tries to fool tn,
people with the Sherman law-whicl
Senator Hoar says in his Autobiography
Mr.. Sherman introduced by request
never even read, probably, and neve
pretended to expect to amount to any
thing-and which carried to its logica
| and would fhof
or other tradesmen in town WIFI
should agree on prices would be guilt,
, or crime.
The whole of the Republican policy oil
the trusts is that while steadily build
, ing them up by wrongful stretches o
, governmental power, it will pretend t,
break them down by another stretch o
> governmental power, that is totally i'm
practicable as well as wrong. This wa
admitted, practically, by Attorney
, General KnoXs announcement, immedi
! ately after the decision in the Northern
Securities case, that the government
''would not run amuck." In othe
, words, he said substantially, what is tn
fact, that honestly carried out, this Law
3 would break up four-fifths of the rail
5 road systems of the country.
e As part of this humbug the presen
: administration got out an Injunction
year ago against the beef trust, but tina
t trust has gone on just the same robbin
s consumers of millions upon millions
$ The Republican party has organize
: also Bureau of Corporations, t
e gather information about trusts.
: put George B. Cortelyou at its heaC
e and after he had been there long enoug
i to learn the secrets of the trusts sui
e ficiently, it transferred him to tn
i craftsmanship of its national committe
= to utilize this information in frying fla
s out of them.
e With the lines so plainly drawn be
0 tween the programs of the two parties
. there can be no question which an int
- ligent citizenship will adopt.