The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-07-08
TRUSTS NOT BAD.
William Travers Jerome Sees
Good in Some Combines.
Evil, However, When They Cor
rupt Officials, He Declares.

in the tabernacle when William Trav-
ers Jerome spoke. He leaned against
s. piano and talked in a rather low
voice that at times caused those in the
rear seats to demand that he speak
louder, or walked back and forth
across the platform smiling at the
audience. In manner he reminded
many of Governor Folk and to the
who heard him from beginning to
end. He spoke, without announcing
his subject, for exactly one hour.
Proud of the West.
Mr.. Jerome began by saying that he
liked the west because of its large in
dependence.
TT seems to me-" said he, that if
the late John Hay had contested with
a bootblack in preparing a treatise on
the ethics of diplomacy, the produc-
ton of each would be weighed on its
merits alone, and if you thought the
bootblack was right, you'd say so.
You Of the west have kept, and do
keep, that vital interest in everything
and for that admire you. You are
fitted with good minds out here, and
you look at the world with healthy
eyes. You lack the cynicism of the
east, but you should not forget how
differently we live. In the west you
make mistakes sometimes, of course
a bad bond for a state treasurer is
taken, or you have a bad failure
which no one understands and which
may cost you something, but you pick
UP courage and go again into the field
Of commerce and make another start
to repair the past. Those things are
experiments with you.
ain the east with it's dense popu1a-
ton, we cannot try those experiments.
We must be conservative. In New
York, for instance, in the section of
the east side where 7 live, there are
more people packed into tenements
than are in Topeka. New York city
has more people than. are in the whole
state of Kansas; it has more Jews
than ever were in Jerusalem, more
Irish than would make another Dub
lin, more Italians than the pope rules.
In such circumstances as those, we
often are confronted with problems
which in this great west would be sim
pie. We are distinctly a different
people, one may say. You think of US
as effete fasteners, crushed beneath
the iron heel of Pierpont Morgans,
Russell Sages and such ilk, and we
think of you as down trodden, Popu-
list ridden Kansans. You think of
Wall street and you groan. My dear
people. Wall street has legitimate
functions. Who is building your rail-
roads, digging your wells, financing
your great undertakings, if not Wall
street? When you strike a blow at
the financial interests of the country
you hurt yourselves.
Sees Good in Trusts.
This may not please you, but I did
not come all the way out here to say
something 10 please you. All Cn1S
talk about trusts is mostly nonsense.
I tell you, and I hold no brief from
the trusts, that no man has been in
position to know more of the in
EQUITIES of trusts than I have been,
and yet declare that nothing in this
country has been touched by trust
that has not been caused to grow and
improve. Despicable a man as is
John D. Rockefeller, you have only to
look at your own country crossroads
to find men in a smaller way, doing
exactly as he has done. This is bust
ness and business is war. This is
commerce; this is competition; it is
war and strife. do not say that this
is moral. 1t is immoral. But don't
tell me that if the men at the cross
roads had more power they would not
use it to their own advantage, or that
they would use it any more gently
than Rockefeller uses 1t.
Don't take the things you hear too
seriously, these wild cat stories about
trusts and the harm they are doing
Everything touched by a trust in this
country, l repeat it, has been improved
in quality and raised in price. The
trusts have given stability to labor The
the side upon which they should be
checked, and ruthlessly, too, is that
they debauch our public life. Not con-
tent with the enormous profits they OBJ
tain, they seek gifts at the hands of the
peoples representatives to which they
are not entitled. It is there that I find
fault with the trusts. 1t is there they
should be held back. They buy legisla-
lures, they buy our judges, our admin
1strative officers, they produce moral
evil that strikes at me and at you. 1t
brings an atmosphere into our higher
life that makes it go lower and ever
lower.
Honest OhicehoIders Rare.
Everywhere I go I am struck with
the idea that the bulk of the people of
America are honest and pure and that
n
that despite this disposition the honest
man in office is a rarity? When a really
honest man gets into office the people
rally around him and pat him on the
back and say, good boy simply for
the fact that he has kept his hands out
of the bag; so low has fallen the esti-
mate Of public life
Mr.. Jerome said along these lines that
our great constitution was framed with
the idea that the will of the people
should rule, but gradually there had
grown up between them and their will
a powerful machine composed of politi-
cal parties He wished that the wrath
the west would turn on the trust
would be directed to the politicians.
They had, he said, forgotten the old aph-
orism revived by Cleveland, that pub
lie office is a public trust'' and. at the
end had substituted, private snap"
The prevailing sentiment today, he said,
is not what is the will of the people,
but What is there in it?'
''If you doubt this said Mr.. Jerome,
''look at that august body, the United
States senate Take the case of Massa-
chusetts, for instance-Murray Crane,
successor to Hoar. There is nothing in
the gift of the people of his state that
he may not have for the asking, but
look at Cabot Lodge. Does anyone
that knows Massachusetts, believe that
he could be elected to anything in
which the people had a voice? 1 dom
mean that there's anything wrong with
Cabot Lodge; he's about as broad as
the edge of a penknife blade, but God
made him for man, so let him pass.
He is controlled by a little crowd one
of those little machines little groups