The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1907-05-23

| road monopoly ever known. The At
torney- General will not move till the
President says the word. But 1t is Ger
tain that the President will not say the
word for many months. He has been
besought by business interests to be
careful to do nothing that will further
1 disturb values, and, while he will talk
a little during tie Summer about cor
porations, he is likely to heed these
requests. If Hartman will not answer
certain questions put to him by the
Commission the President proposes to
put him in Jail for contempt, provided
he can do 1t. The Federal Court in
New York is to be asked soon to make
Hartman reply. But 1t is a far differ
ent thing to proceed against Hartman
personally in such case than it is to
proceed against the many thousands of
miles of railroad he controls. For there
are thousands of innocent stockholders.
and any legal proceedings that affects
the hundreds of millions of money in
vested in those properties will affect
general business conditions.
Fear Of Injurfng Business.
The President as has been said here
tofore, is still much afraid lest there be
a waning of property before he goes out
of the White House. He is more afraid
| of that than of any other occurrence.
Some business men of good judgment
They may be mistaken in their private
predictions that times will be harder
| six months from now than they have
| been since the panic of 1898, and that
! the hard times will cover a period of a
year or two before there is any quick
ening again. The reports from the
West of poor crops is likely to aggra-
vate any conditions under the surface
that are making for less prosperity. A
cessation of good times-for none of
| the calamity prophets says there is go
| ing to be panic-would be laid at the
| door of the party in power. and espe-
cially at the door of Theodore Roose-
welt
1t may be WELL however, to accept all
such prophesics with caution. for men
of the largest business transactions are
| sometimes mistaken. There have been
prophesies in high quarters heretofore
| of a recession of prosperity which have
not come true.
Prosperity or no prosperity, it is diff
cult to see now the President can long
escape from a prosecution of Hartman
and his roads. If he was warranted in
prosecuting the Northern Pacific and
| dissolving the combination between
those two enormous properties, there is
much more warrant for proceeding
| against the ubiquitous combinations that
Hartman has built up i'm the West.
ne WON ITS sun III tIt
| Northern Securities litigation. altho by
divided court. with a margin none too
wide for comfort. The scope of the
| Hartman operations is several times
greater than the operations of J. ]. Hill
with the Northern Pacific and Great
| Northern.
The Presidents unwillingness to do
anything with the Hartman cases for
the next six months is obvious The In
lterstate Commerce Commission has been
Investigating Hartman for six months.
| but no steps TO prosecute him for COM
/ binations in Violation of the Sherman
antitrust law, have yet been taken. The
! Federal courts all adjourn in June. and
will not be in session again till October.
| If suits are TO be instituted they will
not be reached for, "a year or in time TO
| be under way, when the next Presiden-
| tial campaign is under way. so that the
! Republicans can point with pride to
what they are doing at that particular
stage. and insist that there shall be no
change of Administration lest it be in
| terpreted as q rehpke for the party in
| power, so enterprising in good works.
The Standard Oil Company.
Meanwhile as the Interstate Com
merce Commission dallies along with
the greatest work IT has undertaken, 50
as to comply with the business mems
/ demands. there appears a second in
/ stallment of the report of tie Rureau
| of Corporations on the Standard Oil
/! Company, whose chief devils are we'll
understood 10 be in league with Farri-
man. The big feature Of this report is
THAT the railroad-rate law, as far as
concerns it's provision making pipe lines
between States common carriers. is q
dead letter. Neither the President nor
1.-THE Commission is doing anything to
make the Standard comply with the
rate law. The owners of Standard lines,
comprising about 10000 miles of pipe,
have filed some tariffs for the trans
portation of oil. but the tariffs are filed
/ IN such way as to be a mocllery OF
the law. They are not practical work
! ing tariffs. Commissioner of Corpora
/ lions Herbert Knox Smith says. The
/ few tariffs the Standard lines have filed,
/ he adds, are between points where no
owners of petroleum want to ship it,.
Rates have not been fled for routes be
! tween the fields All cities where re-
fineries exist, or If filed have been wit h
| impossible restrictions. such as that
there should be 5000 barrels in Il
single ShiDment to secure the rate. or
even 100000 barrels. Mr.. Smiths re-
port also details the predatory tactics
| followed by the Standard in pretentinS
ihe construction of Independent pipe
lines. 1t has frustrated efforts to secure
rights of way, has purchased stock in
these rival companies at eXorbitant
prices for the purpose Of gaining con-
troll. has employed railroads as its tools
in these campaigns. the railroads rails
ing and lowering freight rates for the
purpose of embarrassing the new en-
terprises and the patrons of independ-
ent pipe lines.
While asserting that the control of
pipe lines is one of the big factors in
the Standards monopoly, now that rail-
road DETERMINATIONS have been checked
by prosecutions under the Fllins anti
rebate LAWS probably the most i'm
portant factor according to Mr.. Smith s
report-he nevertheless shows that the
Standard has not been materially af-
fected by the independent pipe lines
thus far constructed There Is in fact
only one of any magnitude-the Pure
7 Oil Company-which has line stretch
ing from the Appalachian field to the
seaboard. Two other independent lines
are being built from Indian Territory to
the Gulf of Mexico, and promise to be OF
great use in breaking the Standards
monopoly in that part of the country.
Cost of Transporting OIL.
The Bureau has collected some au-
thentic figures about the cost of trans
porting oil by pipe line. and shows that
it is very small, only third or fourth
as much as the Standard charges, where
producers of nil 9are even able to gel
their. petroleum. carried
The report Is likely TO become very