Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1911-02-10
ceptions as one having knoWedge of
the property at stake.
Will South Dakota
Stand for This?

J. Pierpont Morgan, organizer of the
Steel Trust, the shipping Trust and
a dozen other gigantic combinations
of capital, coneeiving it to be good t??)g
for the people of this state, aspires
to merge its independent telephone
lines, which he either owns or con-
trolls with those Of the Bell Company
which he also largely owns and con-
trolls. a - 5
A man does not haveFto be endow-.
ed with an inordinate amount of horse
sense to perceive what is inevitable if
the absorption of the Independents by
the Bell is allowed To go unchallenged.
At conferences held in New York and
Chicago a. few weeks ago at which
II. P. DAWSON, one of Mr.. Morgan's
partners, Theodore N.sVail, President
Iof the Bell System, and representa-
tives of the independents were pre-
isn't it was openly stated that with
tcompetition ended rates could be rails
ed and economies instituted that would
enable the monopoly to place the stock
of the Independents on an per cent
basis. With both companies operat-a
| ing between practically the same
points, under one management it fol-
lows that one of them will cost -
to pay dividends OH the outstan Rg
stock of the absorbed companies than
to operate them under the circumstan-
ceS. ,r.E -,s3tfssE4! "a st-.s ,s;,s
Thus, the monopoly, which now owns
1 the Western Union Telegraph Com
pany and through that corporation has
recently acquired six of the largest.
of the transatlantic cables, will con.
troll every channel of communication
1 on land except the telepost automatic
telegraph lines. Ii would probably
buy this too, if the stock of that COM
pany was not tied up in voting trust
! with Rear Admiral Sigsbee of the
Maine and others sitting tightly or
the lid to prevent just such a con
tingency.
With the end of the autonomy Of.
the Independents, every advantage Sc
cured by competition will be at once
surrendered ard every section of the
state that has heretofore profted by
the keen rivalry for business that has
existed between the two systems will
experience the same arbitrary infa-
ton of rates as has followed the ter:
mination elsewhere. The butcher, the
grocer and the doctor will pay the
freight. The can protest and anathe-
matlze the trust, call Morgan mean
names and make the air heavy with
sulphurous maledictions, but it wont
do any good. In effect the trust will
say: IF you don't like it, you need
not have a telephone But i. you are
without telephone connection in
these days you cannot do business.
The trust knows this. Will the great
commonwealth of South Dakota stand
idly by the roadside while Wall street
in its greed for added revenues i'm
poses another burden upon this con-
stituency. whereby it may extort new
tribute from every community in the
! state? @ n 5t.s55 5E
When he acquired control Of the
independents, Morgan made an affida-
Wit to the Supreme Court Of Ohio that
his purchase was for private invest
ment and not for the Bell Company.
10 get around this lie now proposes
to turn the stock of the two systems
into a. single company, which is onl,
another way of whipping the devil
around the stump and accomplish
by indirection what he is legally pro
scrlbed from doing directly. Have
the people of South Dakota at whose
pocketbook this move is aimed nothing
TO say? Have they no rights, which
a Morgan must respect? Have they
become SO inert over tile frequent
abuse Of corporation privilege that
they hesitate to assert themselves? II
not Its time for them to get busy, be-
fore ore ~ is too lateS National News
Service.