The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-17
Henry L. Higginson De- clares Common Law Can
 Cope With Monopoly
PANICS DISGRACE
 TO GREAT NATION
Boston Man Says That Congress Can do no Wiser Thing Than Pro- viding for Currency
 Reform
By HENRY l.. HUTCHINSON GOT Lee HigginsOn & Co.,, Boston Bank
 ers1

By HENRY l.. HUTCHINSON
 GOT Lee Higginson & Co.,, Boston Bank 1 ers.)
 l l believe that the sherman law is bad. 1 It should have told business corporations how they could do their business and not how they could not do it. But It is fair to suppose that 1t Is now not being inter- preted in the sense which Senators Ed munds and Hoar. who wrote it, meant that it should be. They were men of good understanding, and, as the law now is in- terpreted and used. 1t is destructive.
 The government is using the law ruth lessly declaring that 1t will be enforced no matter what the consequences may be, l and 1t adds to the indictments consider able attacks on men of high character who have not consciously done anything | wrong.
 l If the characters of our best men are injured or ruined by the government ill | the person of the attorney general. it is a great injury 10 our country, for character goes beyond anything in value; it is hard ly won and easily lost. Men will pay ] fines, will suffer hardships, but they will not allow themselves to be slandered if they can help it.
 Government Answer Childish l If director or manager of manufac- l turing establishment asks the government what course to pursue he simply is told: Do nothing wrong and you will be all right"-a reply that really is childish and fit only for the primer of a day school. Yet such is the answer sent from Wash ington
 In one or two instances the government. l is reversing the decision of former ad- ministrations It is declaring that Presi- dent Roosevelt did not know what he was doing when he allowed the Tennessee Coal and Iron company to be taken in. or rather that he believed the two men com ing to him that it was to be done to sasts a worse panic, when in fact Il was done' for profit
 This assertion is purely sensational For years the Tennessee Coal and Iron com pany had been a Wall street football. had no doubt great value, and. so far as any one knew. had been badly managed. Up to date 1t is hard to see that it has been profitable property.
 Do not Understand Act
 The fact remains that neither the bust ness men nor the lawyers who advise them understand the meaning of he sherman law, or wherein any corporation may sin against it. They can get no in- formation from Washington, except through the decisions of the supreme court-and these decisions must be much delayed.
 | Therefore, any man wishing to under take an enterprise will hesitate or refuse to undertake it because he does not care to sin against the law, and he certainly 1 does not wish to be attacked. And men i'll l their own enterprises hesitate, draw in, and do as little as possible, because they do not know what is legal, for 1t Is evil dent that the words "legal' and right which should be synonymous, are not so.
 Beyond all this, one notes that Judgment
 in attacking the corporations is not used. Therefore, people are frightened, and bust 1 ness languishes. Of course, this will re- act on the man who lives from his daily wages, and 1t will bear much harder upon I him than upon any capitalist or small in- vestor.
 Menace of Hunger | great many people can go on quietly | living on what they have, but the work | man must have his wages or he staryes. The government will have to contemplate a great many hungry mouths until .Iis enforcement of bad law is given up.
 Meanwhile, it is difficult to believe hat | politics las nothing to do with it. We l have known for a couple of months that the officials in the southern states and many of the planters were trying to make d league in order to hold up the price of cotton. If this is not in restraint of trade. what is?
 | The interesting thing about this experi- ment is to that they earnot do 1t. which ought to be a lesson to our repre- | sentatives that the natural laws will act, | notwithstanding any Legislation at Wash ington or elsewhere. In short, they can only impede and cannot prevent the world moving on. | This attempt at a cotton combination. | for which aid was sought in New York | and now is sought abroad. is sinful, if the | Sherman law has any value. But. of course, the cotton planters will say, as the wheat farmers and corn farmers say. | that they raise the crops and they have a right to ask what they pelase for their products.
 Laws of Trade to Prevail No power on earth can prevent this | combination and it will succeed or net. according to the laws of trade, and not 1 according to the laws of Congress. But | ernment attack them.
 l 1t is not to be displted that a certain | control over the corporations is advisable and perhaps necessary. Men have come | to regard the public good as paramount. but of course, they cannot forget them selves. If our Congress would busy itself | in making a law which is constructive and not destructive. like the sherman law, as today interpreted, 1t would do a great good.
 i It may demand things. 1t can require publicity to the fullest extent Very ike | ly commerce court or commission, such as President Roosevelt suggested and as President Taft has suggested. might so regulate business that people would be 1 content. for what business men need, like everybody else, is to know what they | can and cannot do. No wise man wishes I to have unlimited power. and certainly no man today dreams mat he can have absolute power to dc just as he pleases-- indeed. most men wouId ask that son,e limit be put upon their own power in or ---~---------------------
 tCGNTTNuED ON PACE s, The Hest Take Southern railway for Af1,ut,