The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-26

cent of the corporations engaged in iD- terstate commerce would be required to take out . license under this plan-pos, sibly not cne-half of one per cent--and ninety mine per cent would ind in the law requiring a license in the case of the larger onesi
 The license. however, would not pre- vent the growth of the corporations IT,
 eensed. II would simply bring them
 ritent and compel them to deal with the public in such a way as to afford the public the protection necessary.
 4ne of ts rs:tTictlons sugssssea ss pelled to sell to all purchasers in all parts of the country on the same terms.
 after making due allowance for cost of restrietion as utterly impracticable.." He says: If 1t can be shown that in order to drive out competition. a cor fpcration cwning . large part of the ne one part of the country. where 1t has competitors. at a low and unprofitable price. and in another part of the coun-
 ant sls' a price. this is i evidence m that it is attempting an unlawful monopoly and
 justihes conviction under the antitrust law"
 If such an act Is now unlawful. why
 is he so frightenad at plan which
 proteeti6ns The trouble with the pres eps law is that 1t does not restrain the evils at which it is aimed. The plan proposed In the psnnocratic platform veillance of the government when 1t has
 after aftsnsu subjects s 1t to Federal scrutiny: in ne an indsanits sort f'y of Way. and then
 leaves the officers of the law to SCOUT the country and hunt up violations or the laws provisions. Mir. Taft is un- he entirely faiix to comprehend the de- tails of the plan. He says:
 "To supervise the business of cor porations in such . way as to hx the price of commodities and compel the cialistic plank as was ever inserted in Democratic political platform" And yet this sentence is found in the same paragraph with the sentence
 1t Is even now a violation of the Sher- man antitrust law for a corporation
 to attempt to destroy . competitor by selling at low and unprofitable price orbitant price where 1t has no compe- tition. Tn what respect is our plan more sociaiistfc than the plan which Mr. Taft endcrses7 Merely in the fact
 to MT. Taft's logic. plan is not socisl-
 istic which Is not effective. but the
 same would be sociaiistic if made ef-
 fective. Why should a. corporation
 supplying twenty millions of people
 for a corporation controlling twenty
 live per cent of the total product sup
 plies one-fcurth or more, of our pop
 ulation--sh ould such Q corporation be
 permitted to sell at. one price in one
 part of the country and at another
 price in another part7 What reason
 can a corporation have for such dis-
 crimination? Prices are not made as a matter of favor; when a big corpora
 ton sells to the people of one section
 at one price and the people of another section at another price-the cost of transportation being taken into con- sideratton--fhere ts a reason for it, and in almost every case the reason is to be found in the effort to destroy com petitor. One of the most familiar methods of the trust is to undersell a toras territory--the price being main
 petitor is driven to bankruptcy and then the price Is raised. That has been done over and over again. It is open and notorious: and yet, with the Republican party in complete power at Washington, what effort has been made to prevent this. This remedy although vehemently denounced by Mir. Taft
 will appeal to the average man as not only very salutary. but very necessary.
 Fifty per cent is fixed as the mini-
 mum limit. When a corporation con-
 trols fifty per cent of the total pro duct, 1t supplies forty millions of peo-
 pie with that product. Is that not
 enough? Mfr. Tafts objection to this