The French Broad hustler. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1896-1912, 1905-02-16
A Solar PIexus tor the Beef Trust.


The dicision of Justice Holmes makes
the task of smashing,.the beef trust very
simple.
The ramifcatlOHs of the beef trust are
Tar greater than the consumer realize,
though they know thatiit is a heavy burden
upon the breakfast and dinner table and has
almost driven beef from the supper table.
The extentIof, ,its ramifcations is thus de-
tailed in virile article in Everybody Is
Magazine by Charles Edward Russell
SIT fixes at its own will the price of
every pound of fresh, salted, smoked or
preserved meat prepared and sold in the
United States. 1t fixes the price of every
ham, every pound of bacon, every pound
of lard, every can of prepared soup. 1t
has an absolute monopoly of our enormous
meat exports, dressed and preserved. 1t
has an absolute monopoly of the Ameri-
can trade in fertilizers, hides, bristiles,
horn and bone products, 1t owns or con-
trolls or dominates every slaughter house
except few that have lnconsiderable local
or special trades. 1t owns steam and cleo
tic railroad, it owns the entire trolley car
service in several cities, and is acquiring
the like property elsewhere. 1t owns fac
tories, shops, stock yards, mills, land and
land companies, plants, warehouses politl
clans, legislators and Congressman.
sit defies Wall Street and all that there
in is. 1t terrorizes great railroad corpora
tions long used to terrorIzing others, It
takes toll from big and little. 1t gouges
millions from railroad companies, and cent
pieces from obscure shippers. Today it is
compelling lordly railroad to dismiss its
general manager, tomorrow it is blacklist
ing and running some little COMMISSION
merchant. 1t is remorseless, tireless,
greedy, Unsuitable, aud it plans achieve
ments so much greater than any so far re-
corded in the history of commerce that the
imagination flags in trying TO follow its fu-
ture possibilities.
cit fixes, for It's own profit, the prices
the farmer of the West shall receive for his
cattle and hogs, and the prices the butcher
of the East shall charge for his meat.
"It fixes the prices that the grower of
California shall receive for his fruit and
the price the laborer of New York shall
pay for his breakfast.
st lays hands upon the melongrowcr of
Colorado, and the cotton-grower of Geor-
gia, and compels each to share with it the
scanty proceeds of his toll.
cit can affect the cost of living in Aber
deem and Geneva as easily as in Chicago
and New York.
cit has in the past three years increased,
for its own benefit, the expenses of every
household in America. 1t controls or in
fluences prices of one-half the food con-
sumed by the nation. 1t has its share in
the proceeds of more commodities of daily
consumption than all other trusts, combin-
ations and monopolies together, and the
prices of these il seeks to augment for its
own profit.
SIT can make within certain limits, the
price of wheat, of corn, of oats, what it
pleases; it will shortly be able to control
the price of every loaf of bread.
'Its operations have impoverished or
ruined farmers and stockmen. destroyed
millions of investments, caused banks to
break aud men to commit suicide, precip-
itated strikes and annihilated industries"