The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-07-07

in the world? Because our exorbitant
tariff system has made 1t Impossible
for an American to build snip IN
competition with the British ship
builders on the River Clyde. Yet the
Republican gang has the infinite gall
to pirate about its patriotism
Our boys are rushing to face death
in search of gold in the Klondike re-
gion, when the oceans of the world
contain a million Klondikes, if the Re
publican party would only permit
them to work the water main.
Straws.
Republicans claim in public to be
the great and only trust busters, not
withstanding the fact that under Re-
publican rnisrule trusts have sprung
up like mushrooms in a damp cellar
and have become plentiful as berries
in June.
1t is said that .straws show which
way the wind blows" Here is a.
Straw which indicates that the
trusts have nothing to fear from Re
publican trust busters. 1t is the APP
pointment of Attorney General Phi
lander c. Knox, Republican trust bust
er par excellence, to succeed the late
Matthew Stanley Quay of Pennsylva-
MIA in the senate of the United States
There would have been nothing sus
picious about that performance were
it not for the influence which secured
the appointment for Mr.. Knox. There
can be no question about his intellec-
tuaI qualifications for the position
The same can be said of some other
Pennsylvania Republicans-Congre
men John DalZell and Joseph G. Sib-
ley, for instance. People will open
their eyes in establishment and begin
to inquire as to the why and where
fore of his appointment when they
learn that the transfer of Mr.. Knox
from the attorney generalship to the
senate was procured by the earnest
efforts of Mr.. Frick, Mr.. Cassatt and
Mr.. Donald Cameron to induce u. S.
Senator Boise Penrose, the new Re-
publican boss of Pennsylvania to per-
ernor Pennypacker, who nomfnally
made the appointment, does not APP
pear to have been considered at all
in the premises. The amazement of
the people will grow like Jonah's
gourd vine when they learn that Mr.
Frick is the heaviest stockholder in
the steel trust, that Mr. Cassatt is
president of the Pennsylvania rail-
road company, which is one of the
defendants in the coal trust case now
pending, and that Mr.. Cameron rep
resented the Standard Oil trust and
Wall street interests in persuad ding
Boss Penrose to let Mr.. Knox go to
the senate. Here we have the strange
spectacle, the mystifying anomaly, of
three of the chief trust magnates in
the land securing the appointment to
the senate of Attorney General Phi
lander c. Knox, who has been ex-
plotted far and wide as the greatest
trust buster on terra frma.
Folks who still dare to think will
be forced to one or two conclusions:
First, either that Mr.. Knox is the only
lawyer in America capable of con-
Quoting a suit against a trust, which
is absolutely prepoSterouS, for there
are hundreds of lawyers as able as he
is, and that the trusts were anxious
to get him out of the attorney gem
erals Office, because they fear him
more than they do any other human
being; or secondly, that the Knox
anti-crusade has been a bunco game
from the beginning, and that Messrs-
Prick, Cassatt and Cameron, together
with those whom they represent, pro-
cured him the senatorship as reward
for favors already rendered the trusts
secretly while in the cabinet and to
be hereafter rendered in the senate.
According to the press reports
President Roosevelt stood by consent
ing to the transfer of Knox from the
cabinet to the senate, just as Paul
stood by consenting to the stoning of
Stephen.
One paper says: 1.-The president is
greatly pleased that Mr.. Knox will ac-
cept the position" which looks like he
is glad to get rid of him.
Another Straw.
Here is another straw. 1t has been
told in Gath and proclaimed on the
streets of Askalon by the Roosevelt
shouters for 10 these many months
that the trust magnates-especially
those whose habitat lair is Wall street
who are bitterly opposed to the pres
ident change appears to have come
over the spirit of their dream, if Hon.
Francis B. Loomis, assistant secretary
of state, can be believed. That illus
trious public functionary recently
swung around the circle in New
York and elsewhere, to vary the sit
uation. On return to Washington he
delivered himself of an interview. He
says:
while in New York 1 spent two days
on Wall street chatting with many rep
resentatives of the financial interests
and I find that there is no longer any
disposition to make a fight. And in ac-
cepting the situation the feeling toward
Mr.. Roosevelt seems to have undergone
a change and heard many friendly
comments. I confess I was surprised
at the extent of this change"
Yes, indeed, 1.-The feeling toward Mr..
Roosevelt seems to have undergone
change among the Wall street trust
magnates and Brother LOOMS heard
MANY friendly comments by the afore-
said trust magnates-
Mr.. LOOMS does not vouchsafe to an
eager and inquisitve world the reasons
why Wall street mas undergone such a
change as to cause Wall street mag
mates who were erstwhile abusing the
president as a menace to the republic
to make many friendly comments upon
him now. Has the president changed
his views or have the trust magnates
Plain people can not be blamed for
being bewildered by all this kaleido-
scopic performance.
They can not be censured because by
an old process they figure it out that
two and two make four and that the
transfer of Mr. Knox from the cabinet
to the senate at the behest of Messrs-
Frick, Cassatt and Cameron taken in
connection with the change of feeling
in Wall street in favor of the president
has sinister meaning.
The trust Tnagnates who secured the
senatorial toga for Mr.. Knox since they
have esta blisned the entente cordia1e
with that famous trust buster ought to
compel the young ruffianly scions or