The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-17

munity against all repetition of the bad conduct, and 1t should never be permit ted thus to assemble its parts as long as these parts are under the control of the original offenders, for actual experi- ence has shown that these men are from the standpoint of the people at large unfit to be trusted with the power, implied in | the management of large corporation.
 But nothing of importance Is gained bs breaking up huge interstate and inter- national organization which has not offended otherwise than by it's size into number of small concerns without any attempt to regulate the way in which those concerns as a whole shall do busi- ness. Nothing is gained by deprivng the American nation of good weapons where with to fight in the great field of interna- tional industrial competition.
 A Summary
 "To sum up this it is practically im possible, and if possible it would be mis- chievous and undesirable to try to break up all combinations, merely because they are large and small and to put the busi- ness of the country back into the middle of the 18th century, conditions of intense and unregulated competition between sn4al! and weak business concerns. Such an effort represents not progressivness but an unintellgent though doubtless
 well meaning Toryism. Moreover the ef-
 Tort to administer law merely by law
 suits and court decisions is bound to end l in signal failure, and meanwhile 70 be
 attended with delays and uncertainties
 and to put a premium upon legal sharp 1 practice. Such an effort does not ade- 1 quateiy punish the guilty, and yet works great harm to the innocent. Moreover 1t entirely fails to give the publicity which is one of the best by-products of the system of control by administrative Of ficials; publicity which is not only good in itself but furnishes the date for what ever further action may be necessary We need to formulate immediately and lefi- nitely policy which in dealing with big corporations that behave themselves and which contain no menace save what is necessarily political in any corporation which Is of any size and well managed. shall aim not at their destruction but at ther regulation and supervision at once that the government shall control them in such fashion as amply to safeguard the | interest of the whole public including producers and consumers and wage work l CTS.
 This control should if necessary be pushed in extreme cases to the point of l exercising control over monopoly prices l as rates on railways are now controlled although this is not power that should " uSou Wiiti IL IS possible to avoid 1t.
 The law should be clear. unambiguous,
 certain so that the honest men may not 1 find that unwittingly they have violated | II. In short our aim should be, not to 1 destroy, but effectively and in thorough going fashion that 1t regulate and con- 1 trol In the public interest the great in- strlmentalitles of modern business which
 1t is destructive of the general welfare
 oi the community to destroy and which 1 nevertheless it is vitally necessary to
 that general welfare to regulate and con l tTol. Competition will remain as very
 important factor when once we have de-
 stloyed the unfair business methods, the | criminal interference with the rights of
 others which alone enabled certain swol- 1 len combinations to rush out their com 1 petition-and incidentally, the 'conserva- i tiVes' will do well to remember that those uhia!T and iniquitious methods by area,
 masters of corporate or capital have done more to cause popular dscontent
 with the propertied classes than all the
 oretions of all the socialist orators in the country put together"