The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1904-08-26
THE DEMOCRATIC AND RE
PUBLICAN POLICIES
On the Trust Issue-The One Effective Be.
cause Right in Principal-The Other
Pure Humbug, Costing the Average
American Family $50 a Year

Pure Humbug Costing the Average
American Family $50 Year
What we call trust depends on y
/ monopoly, natural or artificial. with
ont such monopoly, no combination OF
capital can harm the public, or indeed
| do anything but good by efecting
4 economics that benefit all by lowering
| prices. II it attempts to make prices
eXtortionate competition at once
/ comes in as a regulator. The natural
! monopolies, as a benign Providence
| has distributed Natures blessings and
! resources, are very few Substantially
! all our trusts rest on artificial monop
| oily which has been created for them by
/ governmental power. first in the tariff
/ 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 wickcdly
! 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. Sl00 for freight when its com
! pettors were charged 800; and not
/ only that. but the Standard Oil Co. was
4 given the extra 81 90 which its competi-
! tor paid OF course no competition
| could live under such methods, and of
course they were nothing, in law or
ethics, ,ut robbery on the public high
way. which railroad is ~ virtue of its
! power of eminent domain.
Genera..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 ii they
| have prevented the fulniment of ,..e
! one valid excuse for high tariff, that
though it might bring extortionte
| prices for a time, the domestic compe-
ttion 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 reasonable point the
tariff on every article whose production
| is in the hands of a 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 a third or a
! quarter less thanThey do at home What
| they are thus collecting in robbery of
the American people, as nearly as it can
/ be computed, is 81 250000,0O0 a year
or $50 for every average family.
When the Democratic party was in
/ power. in 1887, under the first Cleve-
/ land administration, there was passed,
| in the er.state-Commerce act, what
was intended and believed to be suf-
ficient legislation against railroad
determinations. The Supreme Court has
! since by its decisions taken all the
! virtue and effectiveness out of the law.
| The Inter state Commission, and es-
| pecially its able Vermont member,
| Charles A. Prouty, has year after year
! pointed out how the law can be amended
| to meet these decisions and accomplish
| its purpose and year after year has
! pleaded with Congress for the necessary
| legislation But the Republican party
has refused to do the first thing. As
with the tariff, il Stands pat' for the
| trusts
In the meantime it tries to fool the
people with the Sherman law-which
Senator Hoar says in his Autobiography
Mr.. Sherman introduced by request,
never even read, probably, and never
pretended TO expect to amount to any
| thing-and which carried to its logical
end, would mean that any three grocers
/ or other tradesmen in town who
should agree on prices would be guilty
or crime.
The whole of the Republican policy on
the trusts is that while steadily build
ing them up by wrongful stretches of
: governmental power, it will pretend to
break them down by another stretch of
/ governmental power, that is totally inn
practicable as well as wrong. This was
! admitted, practically, by Attorney
/ General Knoxs announcement, immedi-
atey after the decision in the Northern
Securities case, that the government
would not run amuck." In other
words he said substantially, what is the
| fact, that honestly carried out, this law
would break up four-ffths of the rail
road systems OF the country.
As part of this humbug the present
administration got out an injunction n
year ago against the beef trust. but that
trust has gone ON just the same robbing
consumers of millions upon millions
The Republican party has organized
also Bureau of Corporations, to
gather information about trusts. 1t
! out George B. Cortelyou at its head
and after he had been there long enough
to learn the secrets of the trusts suf-
1 ficiently, it transferred him to the
! Craftsmanship of its national committee
] to utilize this information in frying fat
! out of them.
With the lines so plainly drawn be-
tween the programs of the two parties,
there can be no question which an intel
/ lgent citizenship will adopt.