Courier Democrat. (Langdon, N.D.) 1891-1920, 1906-05-31
PUBLIC OPINION.
The Grent Lever That Moves the
Politicians.

Don't waste your time dcnouncing
corporations. y corporation can only
act through its president and board Of
directors. To attack Il corporation is
but waste of breath, but the officials
and directors are the II e that are sub
ject to the penalties of the law and to
the great moral force of public opinion.
The coal trust is SOulless, but Brother
Baer and the directors of the railroads
and coal companies who are illegally
combined to plumber the public and
prey on the miners can be reached by
the law and eventually will be. AL
though trust magnates' skins are thick,
yet they are amenablc to public con-
tempt, which is a wonderfully sharp
weapon. Back of the coal trust and the
steel trust is j. T. Morgan. Hurl your
shafts at him.
The Standard Oil corporation is real
~ the Rockefellers and Rogers. The
sugar trust is Havemeyer. The New
York Central railroad is the Wander
bits. The Pennsylvania and Baltimore
and Ohio railroads are entirely con-
trolled by Cassatt; the Great Northern,
the Northern Pacific and the Burling-
ton by Hill; the Southern railway by
Morgan, the Southwestern railroads by
Hartman, and so it is with the other
systems. The industrial trusts are like
wise mostly controlled by one man.
President Roosevelt speaks Of good
and bad trusts" but the trusts and
corporations are only what their man
ayers make them, and the honest or
dishonest directors or managers should
be praised or blamed.
How powerful public opinion is on
those corporation officials who have
slnned is shown by the self Punishment
OF Rockefeller to avoid appearing as
a witness and the fitting of the insur-
ance grafters. The corporation cannot
be punished. If you fine it the money
comes out of the pockets Of the share
holders, so that matchmaking cor
porations is so much vanity. That is
where the efforts of President Roose-
welt against the trusts have failed Of
accomplishment. The case against the
Northern Securities company, which re-
suited in it's virtual dissolution, has
had no effect, but if the law had been
brought to bear on President Hill he
would probably have been glad to see
competition resumed between the
Great Northern and Northern Pacific
railroads.
The administration has utterly failed
in all it's antitrust contests. Every
trust, combine or corporation is still a
monopoly, as far as it can be, and con-
t1nues to plumber the people as much as
the business sagacity of the managers
considers desirable. Will the voters,
who are the victims of trust and corpo-
ration rapacity, indorse the feeble eff
forts of the administration at trust
busting? A true reformer with all the
great power Of the government at his
command should have been able to put
the bodies Of some trust magnates at
hazard in the courts. But not a trust
magnate has been convicted.
Public opinion with it's moral force
alone has done more to curb the trust
magnates, and if the contempt Of the
people Is conferred on the persons and
not on the impersonal corporation it
will have still greater effect.
Underneath all this, however, is the
cause that has fostered the trusts and
that can only be removed by the adop-
ton Of the good old Democratic doc
trine of Equal rights to all and special
privileges to none"