The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-25

ment, of course. practically operate the | trusts and turn the profits over to their | iidle owners. This would mean release | from responsibility and immunity of prosecution for the trust owners, while at the same time the government would have to serve as strikebreaker for the 1 trust owners, and the armed forces of the government would be employed to keep the working class in subjection.
 Movement Cannot Be Fettered | If this were possible it would mark | the half way ground between industrial despotism and industrial democracy. But it is not possible, at least only temporar- l fly, long enough to demonstrate It's fail ure. The expanding industrial forces now | transforming society, realigning political parties and reshaping the government itself cannot be fettered in any such ar | tificial arrangement as MT. Roosevelt proposes. These forces with the rising | and awakening working class in alliance with them will sweep all such barriers from the track of evolution until finally they can find full expression in industrial | freedom and social democracy. In this scheme of state socialism, or rather state capitalism, MT. Roosevelt | fails to inform us how the idle owners of | the trusts are to function except as profit absorbers and parasites. In that I with entirely, and that is precisely what will happen when the evolution now in | progress eliminates In the reorganization I of society.
 | The trust question will be settled in due | time, not in accordance with the precon- | ceived notions or plans of any of us, but | in obedience to the laws of evolutional progress and in harmony with the mex orable logic of events
 Sherman Law Puerile Effort Let us now briefly examine some of the legislation enacted ostensibly to restain and regulate the combinations of capital known as trusts. The sherman antitrust law was enacted by Congress in 1S9O It is no doubt true that large share of good faith entered Into that measure on the part of those who supported it, but a more puerile, silly piece of legislauon was never enacted. There is the same politi- cal wisdom and constructive statesman ship in that measure that there was in the pope's bull against the comet.
 The sherman antitrust law was fhe first attempt to suspend by legislative en- actment the laws underlying our indus trial and social development. This meas ure would have applied with equal force to gravitation or the ebb and flow of the tides.
 What combination has ever been re- strained under the operation, or more properly. inoperation, of this so-called law? For four years after it was written in the statute books it was a dead letter and in fact lost to sight until the great railroad strike occurred in 1894 when Judges Grosscup, Woods, and others of the fed eral bench made the happy discovery that the sherman antitrust law had been en- acted for the purpose of restraining workngmen from forming combinations in restraint of trade. and forthwith the leaders of these workingmen were put in jail, and upon the application of these judges to President Cleveland the regu- lar army was ordered out, Governor Alt geld of Illinois protesting, to break up the combination of striking employees and re- store the rule of the united corporations.
 Power of Unions Destroyed
 At the same time that the combination of employees was destroyed by the armed force of the government in pursuance of the decrees of the federal judges, the 26 railway corporations entering at Chicago were united in powerful combination in restraint and suppression not only of trade. but of everything else that stood in the way of their interest, but no cog nizance was taken by the courts of the despotc power they exercised in viola tion of the sherman antitrust law.
 
 provisions of the law were place upon the bench by the powerful interests that were violating the law, and so it Is not in the least strange that only combinations of workingmen were broken up and only their leaders sent to Jail.
 In all the 2l years that the Sherman anti-trust law has been on the statute books, not a single examination of capi- talsts has been broken up and notza sim gle capitalist committed to jail under it's provisions, notwithstanding they have been violating every section of 1t ever since it was enacted.
 Shows Only Class Rule
 If this fact, coupled with the fact that combinations of workingmen have been repeatedly broken up and their leaders jailed by the government for the alleged violation of this law. does not go far to demonstrate the supremacy of the capital ist class and the subjeetion of the work ing class, class rule in a word as main tained by socialists, I must confess my inability to understand its true significa- tion
 As for the prosecution of the trusts, the reports of which are now occupying so much space in the daily papers, it should not be overlooked that the national elec- ton is only year hence, and this fact will account for the major part of the prosecution" The rest is due to the enormous fees and perqu.sftes which fall to the elect who by the grace of the pres dent, whose campaign fund was furnished by the trusts, are commissioned to vault into the arena and slay these same trusts in cold blood
 To me there is something funny in the idea of President Taft, ex-President Roosevelt, Attorney General Wickersham, Special Attorney Frank B. Kellog, ct al, destroying the trusts Or restraining their operation within the limits prescribed by law.