Arizona republican., 1908-12-05

| Washington, Nov. 30.-(Special cor | respondence of The Republican. )- | The unpepularity which some of the so-called trusts have aehieyed in this | country in the course of the past compared to the odium which attaches to them in the minds of most Flu ropeans. Nothing will throw a Flu ropean country into such panic of alarm and resentment as the report that an American trust has designs l on their market in this, that or any other line. A few years ago Eng land spent millions of dollars, or rather their equivalent in pounds, to frustrate the attempt of the tobacco trust to. secure control of the British tobacco trade. A little later Ger many waged bitter campaign to bar out various lines of American manu- factures. Now France is violently protesting and preparing to put it's protest into action in order to pre- vent the beef trust from obtaining a dominant position in the meat busi- ness of their country, as the French men are convinced that the trust is trying to. do.
 Not but that Europe has trusts of its own, though they are not called that name. In almost every European country there are monopolies pro- tected by the government itself and some of them are operated directly by the various governments. There are combinations as powerful in their own fields as Standard oil; in fact the European' oil combination oper- ating in the Russian and other oil fields is quite as impressive an or ganiZation as its American competi- tor, and is the Standards one great rival for the oil trade of the world There are also in Europe combina- tions among manufacturers to main tain prices. These exist in almost every important line of production in Germany and to a less extent in France and Great Britain. But the people of these countries have not become excited about the trust fea- lures of their industrial organizations as Americans have. Even in cases where they have encountered features fin the operation of big business which seemed to be inimical to the general welfare their way has not been to get +out in the middle of the road and shout about it to all the world. The muck raker is practically unknown on the other side of the Atlantic. Any soiled linen relating 60 their national business affairs is washed away very, very privately by some inconspicuous official body, or else it is tucked out of sight and the people conveniently forget about it.
 Where the foreigner. and particu- larly the American, is concerned. however, the action of the native European is very different. The very fact that the people of the United States have indulged in so much dis cussion of the iniquities of their trusts has given Europeans an ex- aggerated idea of the power and the octopus-like. characteristics of Ameri- can industrial combinations. Conse- quently whenever the cry is raised in any European nation that an Ameri- can trust is preparing to invade their market the people grab their pocket books with both hands and shout with all their might for the govern meut to kick the invader out-a task which the government usually is quite willing to undertake.
 The agitation which is now being raised against the beef trust in France is a good case in point. The cattle raising business in an important one in France and the agricultural in terests are greatly alarmed for fear that the American packers will secure control of the French meat market and ruin. the local cattle growing in- dustry by the importation of the American product. They have taken Z up the matter with their representa- tives in the senate and the chamber of deputies and as these representa- tives are both numerous and power full it is altogether likely that their demand for legislative action against the American packing combination will be needed. Not only has a clamor for legislation been started but the story is current here that a special representative of the French agricul turists has been spending the past two months in the United States col lecting information about the control of the American market by the Chi eago packers and that this informa- ton is to be used to show the FFenchmen what they may expect if the dreaded Yankee octopus strength IA T A. cording to this story the emissary who has been collecting this material in the United States spent some time in each of the cities of New York, Boston, Chicago. St. Louis, Cincin- natl. Kansas City and Omaha and that in addition he obtained here in Washington some information from reports of the department of com merce and labor that is regarded as good ammunition for use in the cam