The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-05-26
TRUSTS THAT THREATEN WAR

"-AAs
 Miss Ida M. Tarbell, writing in the June American Magazine on the Tariff question, takes occasion to call atten- ton to the ever-increasing monster United Shoe Machinery Company which threat items to become one of the greatest trusts in the world. It all ready practically controls the linen thread industry of the country. and threa tens to absorb all the Shoe Manu- facturers. There is just one force to hinder the final absorption of the shoe business, says Miss Tarbell. She con- tinues:
 There is rival trust with as rapa- cious a maw and as brutal a strength as any the country has produced, on the trail of the shoe that is the Beef Trust.
 Nearly twenty years ago when the amiable MT. Mckinley was disposed to give a duty on hides MT. Blaine wrote him an emphatic letter in which he said, Tt will yield profit to the butcher Beef TrusD only, the. last man that needs it.. MT. Blaine pre- vented the duty then-but MT. Dingley gave it, and certainly the beef trust has profited as much as the shoe has suffered.
 ..But while the cost of the leather has been steadily increasing under the duty on hides, there has been going on in the Beef Trust the inevitable com bination which special privileges al ways breedA Buying practically all the cattle on the hoof, the packers owned all the hides. Hides go to tam ners to be prepared for sole leather; It has always been prosperous ana widely spread business in the country. But the dream of the Beef Trust is to allow nobody to do anything directly or indirectly connected with the steer which it can do. It owned the hides; why should it not tan themI Ana promptly it began to acquire tanner ies. There is no space here to go in to the history of the steady absorption by the packers of this great American industry which has been going on in the last few years. It is the familiar tale; all that is essential here is the fact that today the united packers, Armour. Swift and Morris control fully thirty of the largest tanneFies in the. country. There is no weH-informed and candid person in the leather or shoe trade who does not say that it is inevitable that the packers should soon own, control andf operate the entire leather business of the country.
 And the next step? Signs of what it will be are already abroad. Re- peated rumors have come that the Ar. mourS were going into the shoe busi- ness. The alarm that they meant not only to absorb shoe making but har- ness, beIting and other leather manu- featuring has sounded! "In the reports of the recent tariff hearings is a letter from the president of the Wholesale Saddlery Association of the United States protesting against the duty on hides. In this letter ne writes:
 ' The statement that follows may appear to you very far fetched, but it is my confident personal opinion that if the condition which confronts leath- CT manufacturers and the manufac- trrers of leather articles continue and advances with the same strides during the next ten years that it has during the past five, mot only will the beef packers control the manufacture of the leather, but they will likewise control by ownership the shoe, harness, belt ing and other leather industries And this is only one of the several such if1timations to be found in the re- ports There is nothing surprising in it. That the packers should absorb the manufacturing from leather is quite logical as that they should make leather.
 ."And what is to be done about Certainly any special advantage which these combinations have through the tariff should be taken away: Hides and flax should be free as the Payne bills provide-though whether they will be when it is finally passed. no man knoweth."