The independent. [volume] (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907, 1905-03-09
PROSECUTE THE TRUSTS

has been calling upon the government
to prosecute criminally the great trust
magnates. They have continually and
persistently violated the law. To fine
one of these trusts $4,000 is not an
equal punishment to a five cent fine OF
an ordinary law breaker. What does
a trust care for a $1,000 fine that is
making $4,000 an hour by violating
the law? The cost of prosecution is
too great for private parties to under
take These trusts ramify all the
states and do business in thousands OF
different places. If the government
owes anything to the people in re-
turn for the taxes paid, it is to be pro-
tected from these robberies. To bring
a civil suit dissolve trust and proh1b-
it it from doing business in any state,
amounts to nothing. There is always
another organization with New Jer-
sey charter ready to do business with
in ten minutes after the order is is
sued. All that sort Of procedure is
useless. The trusts go on just the
same as before. What is wanted is
prosecution that will send Rockefeller,
]. Pierpont Morgan and a lot more
of the pirates to the penitentiary for
a year or two The following letter
which was printed in the New York
Post will give good understanding
of the matter:
In your editorial in today's Issue
under the heading 'The Man Behind
the Octopus" you have pointed out
the real cause of the inability OF the
law to reach effectively trust crime.
After quoting the penal sections of
the interstate commerce law and OF the
Sherman antitrust law, both OF which
make offences against those statutes,
crimes punishable by fine and imprison-
ment, you say:
1--WE are willing to file thousandfold
condemnation upon that hateful abb
stractiOn, trust; but we refuse to
move step against the agreeable
gentlemen who are the trust. Incarce-
rate grave citizens who found char
tiles and wear white waistcoats, dis
play far-reaching public spirit, and
unimpeachable top hats!-the thought
is abhorrent."
You then add:
Until the law smites in their per-
sons few of these gentlemen, who sus-
tain our churches, adOrn our clubs and
promote our philanthropies, the talk
of controlling the trusts as such is the
widest unreason or the most patent
hypocrisy. Nobody likes to be i'm
prisoned.'
1t is an interesting confirmation of
this commentary on the very interest
ing trust situation that precisely this
line Of reasoning was employed by MIR.
Choate in his defence of the directors
of the American Tobacco company.
These gentlemen were brought before
the court of general session in this
city, in 1897, upon indictments charg-
ing them with criminal conspiracy
against trade and commerce by the
creation Of an unlawful monopoly. Mr.
Choate, with his we'll known eIoquence,
drew to the jury narrowing picture
of the horrible spectacle which would
be presented by the eminently respec-
table defendants at the bar, if the YER
dict of the jury should consign them
to Blackwell's island to do chores by
the side of burglars and other common
offenders. His plea was successful in
part, at least. The jury, after over
night deliberation, were unable to
agree, two of their numOer voting for
acquittal although the remaining ten
we're unmoved by Mr.. Choate. The in
dictments were not again brought to
trial, although it was the first instance
in this state that criminal prosecu-
ton was undertaken against the per-
sons behind a great trust
The history of antitrust legislation
and litigation. fully corroborates your
statements that judicial pronounce
ments in civil proceedings against
trusts have not, in practice, had the
smallest deterrent effect. The then
famous decision of our court of appeals
in 1890, in the case of the People VS..
North River Sugar Refining company,
which was civil suit to enjoin the
sugar trust from further activity on the
ground that it was an unlawful monop-
oily, declared the trust to be unlawful
and decreed it's dissolution. In the same
year, 1890, the supreme court of Ohio
ropdorod a ci-,i1or daoroa onoipc+ tt,>