The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1911-10-19
HOW TO CURE TRUST EVILS.
Governor Wilson Says We Must Send
"Man Behind the Gun"
to Jail.

George E. Miller sends the follow
ing from Sea Girt, N. j., to the De-
troit News:
If Governor Woodrow Wilson ever
becomes President of the United
States his message on the subject or
trust busting will come to congress
with the decisive emphasis of the
rifle shots which echo through his
library from the range as you sit IN
conversation with him in the state
executive summer home here. They
will if the governor retains the opin-
ions he now holds on the illegal
things done by the people character
lied by Mr. Roosevelt as maletactors
of great wealth.
Governor Wilson is no hopeless de-
spondent He disagrees utterly with
those who believe the law cannot be
made to reach such as seek to adjust
the business machinery OF this coun-
try so that all the wealth will fall in
to few hoppers. His ideas are
sharply defined and his plans SIM
plicity itself.
He would send violators of the law
to Jail.
That is the whole of the antidote
he prescribes. Fines, he says, place
too much of burden of the punish
ment upon the innocent. And he
SCOTS at the idea that the guilty can
not be detected and convicted.
''The managers of corporations
themselves always know the men
who originated the acts charged
against them as done in contraven-
ton of the law; is there no means by
which their names may be disclosed
to the officers of justice? Every act,
every policy in the conduct of the af-
fairs of corporation originates with
some particular officer, committee or
board. The officer, the committee,
the board ordering an act or origin
ating a policy contrary to the law, or
intended to neutraliZe or contravene
it, is a serious offender against so
ciety and must be punished if our in
situations are to stand.
1T is neither sensible nor effect
i've to attempt to punish the corpora
ton. We do not indict the gun, but
the man behind the gun. 1t is a
fatuous and unnecessary fiction to
treat a corporation as in all respects
a legal person.. To control such of
it's acts as are against public policy
we must cease to deal with it by
means of the law as if it were only
single individual, responsible in
dividual, and must handle it for
what it is-an artificial agency. You
cannot punish a corporation. Fines
fall upon the wrong persons, and
moro heavily 11non tho innOcont than
upon the guilty. Those who know
nothing whatever of the offense for
which the fine is inflicted must pay
as we'll as those who originated and
carried through the illegal act. So
the real punishment falls upon the
stockholders and the customers.
IF you will but put one or two
conspicuous dummies into the peni-
Tertiary there will be no more dunn
mics for hire. You can stop the traf-
fic in dummies, and then when the
idea has taken root in the corporate
mind that dummies will be confis-
Gated the custom of the business will
change. Modern business enterprise
makes the corporations indispensable.
None of us, take it, has any quarrel
with business success, but all of us
ought to have an irreconcilable quar-
rel with business lawlessness. AS I
told the lawyers of the American Bar
Association in an address last year,
corporations do not do wrong. In
dividuals do wrong. When we stop
that wrong we have taken from the
corporation all the power of evil of
which the people so justly complain