Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-10-14

from violating the lAw--the- eternal and true test---the execution of the antitrust laws by the federal govern ment is a failure; and that the exist enoe and nourishlng condition of the very trusts you have prosecuted con vinces the people that the trusts are superior to law. or as Woodrow Will son, president of Princeton university, said last week:
 "The most striking fact about the actual organization of modern society is that the most conspicuous. the most readily wielded, and the most formIda- ble power Is not the power of the gov ernment, but the power of capital. Men of our day In England and America have almost forgotten what 1t is to fear the g0yernme:I, but have found out what 1t Is 10 fear the power of capital. to watch 1t witk Jealousy and suspicion, and trace 10 it the source If every open or hidden wrong"
 l submit that the collection of fines from trusts aggregating million dol lars, If you had collected SO much, which has not been done, would be no punishment worth the name of pun ishment to the 2S7 trusts with an ag- gregate capitalization of $6,972, ,44S,- S51.00. The fining process in trust prosecution Is analogous to those fines imposed by police justice upon per sons keeping illegal resorts in towns. These fines often operate as sliding scale of license lax-so may dollars whenever the aroused moral sense of the community will no longer be silent while the lawless dive debauches the people. What the people wish to know Is this: How many trusts have you compelled to dissolve-in truth, and not merely to officially dissolve, and then continue to fix the price, as the dissolved paper trust has done? The meat trust paid fine and soon put up the prices of all that men must eat by some ow-you-see-it-and-now-you-don't slelght of hand that seems to escape further prosecution while continuing to levy a tax upon all the people. No prosecution of the trusts Is effective that is not felt by the public in re- lieving them of trust imposition in what they buy. Your department says the paper trust was prosecuted and dissolved, but the publishers know that the mills in the trust have combina- ton now as injurious to them as before your prosecution. You say you have trust has put up the price of the manu- factured product 1t sells and put down at will tie price of the raw material 1t buys from the farmer. You do not claim, believe, to have ever even in- stituted proceedings against the steel trust, and only last year, in the teeth of the law, your department acquiesced in the complete monopoly of that giant of trusts when 1t took over the only large company able to compete with 1t in any line of production.
 If your department in seven years has prosecuted nineteen civil and twenty-five criminal cases, in which no trust official has been jailed and no pelled to take It's grasp from the throat of free competition while 223 new trusts have been born during the Me Kinley and Roosevelt Republican ad- ministra tions, how long at this rate of progress will 1t take the Republican administration to stop the extortion of 2S7 trusts that fatten by taxing the people? That Is the question that the voters are propounding and it is a question which the department of jus 1 tice should answer.
 | 1 am, sir
 l Yours very respectfully,
 1 [Signedl
 JOSEPHUS DANIELS. ! procc