The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-30
HH ACTION AGAINST ''... THE SUGAR TRUST Suit Will Be Entered to Outlaw
 the Concern s THE TRUSTS FIX PRICES High Cost of Living Is Trnceable to Industrial Combinations Among the Producers of All Kinds
 or Foodstuffs
THE TRUSTS FIX PRICES
BY WILLIAM ROSTER

Washington, October 29.--(Special )-De- partment of justice officials are putting the finishing touches to the complaint against the sugar trust which will ask that the concern be declared outawed under the Sherman antitrust act. The government petition will be filed in the future in the circuit court in New York In general the action will parallel the suits against the oil and tobacco trusts, whose dissolution awaits the action of the United States supreme court
 The beginning of the case will mark a move on the part of Attorney Gen eral Wickershaw to demonstrate how the high cost of living is to be traced di- rectly to the door of the big industrial combinations. Crack open a trust and the reason for the increased cost of living will be found inside. This is the general principle on which the department of justice is mov- ing and, the tariff aside, an amazing amount of evidence is being accumulated to show that, with or without the last revision of the tariff. the cost of living would have risen to its present towering heights. This much was demonstrated to Attorney General Wickersham and his associates are preparing, with or without any further revision of the tariff, to dem onstrate how the cost of living may be reduced through regulation of the trusts by the courts
 It Is in foodstuffs chiefly that the pinch Of the increased cost of living has been felt Incidentally, the cost of living has risen and in various other ways the burden that the ultimate consumer has to bear has taken on increased weight
 It is an Illuminating fact that in every instance where prices have risen there is found to be in existence a trust which has controlled output to control prices The beef trust is found busily at work driving up its scale of prices. With the increased cost of groceries the whole sale grocers combination comes into view. ff 0ff
 There is an intimate connection between the rise in the price of butter and eggs and the appearance on the scene of the Chicago butter and eggs board. The raw cotton monopoly has an intimate bearing on the increased cost of clothing. The sugar trust explains the increased cost of sugar. The plodding citizen who seeks to build his own home finds that there is a window glass trust that seems to send up the price of glass, a brick trust that sends up the price of bricks, the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing company of Pittsburg sees to it that the prices are raised on the bathtubs and all modern sanitary plumbing appliances.
 The electrical trust lifts the prices on all electrical appliances.
 The light might be extended indefinite ly. The point is that in every commodity entering into general consumption the prices have been indiscriminately and in ordinately raised and behind each of these increases there stands trust, which, using the tariff as an excuse, has without warrant or necessity damned up the prices to the consumer to the fullest extent that the tariff will bear" This has already been demonstrated by the department of justice through inves- legations begun long before the Payne Aldrich tariff law was passed. ,
 These investigations are beginning to bear fruit and the prosecutions have been begun of many of the combinations which have conspired to raise prices to unwar- ranted high levels. There may be cases where the tariff is the cause, but the de- pertinent of justice is Investigating wide- ly and deeply, and in all the instances cited in the matter of food and cloth- ing, building material, household uten- sils and innumerable avenues of trade, the Investigations have ultimately brought the officials to the door of trust, or combine that has arbitrarily raised it's prices not from any economic reason, but wholly on the gross law of greed.