The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1911-12-14
THE STRANGLE HOLD.

so far as ne can commit MS party
the president has pledged republi
cans to national interpretations and
to national court of business.
What do these measures imply
and to what are they to lead?
National incorporation will pro.
vide a safe harbor at Washington
for the great interests which do not
find it convenient to meet the legis-
lative and other requirements of the
States. 1t relieves them of many
masters and sets over them only one
master, far removed from the people
and answerable to them only by in
direction.
The Court of Business, or what
ever it may be called, is variOusly
described by different people, but
there is substantial agreement among
them as to one thing. Whether it be
a court, bureau, department or a
plain bossism, the intention is to
give it the power of life and death
over corporations.
Z This idea did not originate with
Mr.. Taft or with Big Business. 1t
fell first from Theodore Roosevelt,
the most garrulous and denunciatory
presidents, the president who had
least patience with orderly judicial
processes, the president who accom-
plished and boosted of more despotic
acts than all the others combined
ever perpetrated and the president
who, more than any other, main
tanned throughout his administra-
ton, close personal and political re-
lations with the very malefactors
whom he publicly condemned.
From this source the suggestion
passed quickly to Big Business.
George w. Perkins of J. Pierpont
Morgan & Co. took it up. Edward
H. Gary of the Steel Trust adopted
it. Andrew Carnegie pronounced it
good. The American Manufacturers
Association and the American Pro-
tective Tariff League accepted it as
their own. Weary of keeping books
on forty-six states, Wall street found
it one of the most promising solu-
tions of a vexatious problem.
Mr.. Taft therefore arrays himself
on the side of Capitalization and des-
potism, on the side of greed and
monopoly, on the side of organized
avarice and on the side of the spec
ulative money trust.
The power that he and the others
would set up at the capital would be
abused to certainty. 1t is not in
human nature to resist the tempta-
tiOns that would attend it's use. 1t
would be to a large extent irrespon-
sible and capricious because it is in
tended to large degree to supplant
laws and courts and popular rights.
That it would soon be employed dis
criminatingly and corruptly there
can be no doubt. The good trust
would be the one that contributed
most to the party campaign fund or
to the party majorities at the polls.
The bad trust would be the one that
for any reason had fallen into dis
favor.
Honest business men ought to de-
feat this thing in their own interest.
Republicans and democrats with a
spark of old-fashioned Americanism
left in them ought to fight it as they
would empire or dictatorship. 1t is
not only betrayal of the States. 1t
is a betrayal also of the republic.
To degrade the states is to degrade
the people. To overload the nation
al government is to deliver it into
the hands of it's enemies and ulti-
mately to break it down.
Is it the aim of Big Business, as it
was the similar wish of an ancient
tyrant, to concentrate the peoples
power in one body, the easier to
strange it?-St. Louis Republic.