The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-07-18
TOBACCO TRUST A CRIMINAL

rnchacked and UNPUBLISHED. Politl-
cal platforms have rung the changes
against the outrages OF
candidates have Numbered against
trusts and secured office on the pledge
Il am a dangerous man-to trusts
for the Tobacco trust knows that II
am elected / will see that stripes are
put on big criminals as we'll as Nttle
ones legislators have enacted statutes
called IAN act to destroy trusts when
were known by them to be pink tea
subterfuges-these promises and cam
,paign pledges have been made only
tc be forgotten or re~pudiated until the
people had begun to think there was
no hope even of putting the brand Of
Law Breaker upon the men espon-
sible for creating the monopoly and
criminally destroying competition.
North Carolina has done nothing. The
trusts own the Republican party in
North Carolina, they control more
Democrats than is good, and brighten
into inactivity more than is generally
known. The result is that, while Tex
as, Missouri, Kansas, Mississippi, Ten
nessee, and other States, and the Fed
eral Government have been prOsecut-
ing trusts and timing them, North
Carolina has been engaged in the dis
gusting spectacle of denouncing them
before elections and forgetting the
denunciations after election. After
the State had settled the suffrage
question and established the educa-
tiona policy on a sound basis, and
had settled the temperance question
by adopting State Prohibition, the peo-
pie then demanded that the trusts
should be compelled to end their rob
berry of farmers and their destruction
Of competition. The Legislature of
1907, under the leadership of Hon.
e. J.. Justice, in the House and Hon.
r. D. Reid in the Senate undertook
to pass an antitrust law with teeth.
1t was a battle royal. The best bill
possible Of passing by that Legisla-
ture CATER the Aycock bill, the best
Of all, was seen to be impossible)
passed the House and Wen to the
Senate. There it was defeated. The
result was the passage of an innocu-
Gus statute, fittingly called a pink
tea statute. Mr.. Justice, Mr.. Reid,
Mr.. Lockhart, Mr.. Aycock, Mr.. Holt
and other real antitrust men point
ed out that it vas a sham and a delu-
sion. Such it proved to be, but the
agitation brought the trust question
before the people SO that in 1908 the
successful candidate for Governor
owed his nomination to his %denuncia-
ton Of the trusts, particularly the
tobacco trust, his pledge to the people
to put the big thieves as we'll as the
little thieves in stripes. Legislators
elected at the same time promised
to enact effective antitrust laws. The
slogan of the 1908 campaign, as phras-
ed by State Auditor Dixon, was In
200 we elected Aycock as our Edu-
%cational Governor; in 1904 we elected
Glenn as our Temperance Governor:
and in November, we will elect
Kitchin, who has promised to be and
will be our Trust-busting Governor"
The Legislature of 1909, which
came into office with Governor
kitchin, debated and discussed the
( uSt plIIS, anu lOrn1alIN passed
the humbug Of. a pink-tea statute or
a substitute for the Lockhart bill.
which Senator Lockhart truly called
the BlOw-Bassett subterfuec." It
, turned out to be d sham and no trnst
was roubled by it. Again in 1911.
the Hous passed an act introduced
by burlington, Of Iredell, hat the At
! rHn ra,o-aI -.:I
trusts, but again the Senate cut the
heart out of it, n it slumbers on the
statute book as the third sham act
that the Legislature pas+ed-eacl,
time giving the people a stone when
they asked for bread. The whole
antitrust legislation for three sa.-