Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1908-10-20

the interests Of the people demand,
would the number Of trusts have null
tiplied so rapidly? Not only would
the trusts doing business have been
put out of business, but men would
mot have put money into new trusts
If they had believed that the law
against trusts and against persons
guilty of combining would be vigorous
ly enforced.
/ submit that by the test OF punish
ing lawbreakers and lettering others
from violating the law-the eternal
and true test-the execution of the
antitrust laws by the federal govern
ment is feilure; and that the exist
ence and iourishing condition of the
very trusts you have prosecuted con-
yinces 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 welded, and the most formida-
BILE power is not the power Of the gov
eminent, but the power Of capital. Men
of our day in England and America
have almost forgotten what it Is to
fear the government, but have found
out what it is to fear the power of
capital, to watch it with jealousy and
suspicion, and trace to it the source
IF every open or hidden wrong"
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
10 ln no ~
ishment to the 2S7 trusts with an ag-
gregate capitalization of $6,972, 49,
S51O0 The filming 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 a 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 w-you-see-it-and-now- you-don't
sleight of hand that seems to escape
further prosecution while continuing to
levy 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 a combina-
ton now as injurious to them as before
your prosecution. You say you have
prosecuted the tobacco trust, but that
trust has put up the price of the manu-
featured product it sells and put down
ut 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 it 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
trust robbing the people has been COM
PEELED to take its grasp from the throat
OF free competition while 223 new
trusts have been born during the Nc
Kinley and Roosevelt Republican adj
ministrations, how long at this rate Of
progress will it take the Republican
administration to stop the extortion of
PSI trusts that fatten by taxing the
people? That is the question that the
voters are propounding and it is
question which the department of jus
tice should answer.
] am. sir
Yours very respectfully,
ISignedl
JOSEPHUS DANIELS.
Chairman Press Bureau.