The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-10-10

There are two ways by which YOU
can be protected against further
wrong. The first, an by far the best.
IS to insist on the enactment of real
and effective antitrust legislation by
the State and Nation. know that
failure along this line in the past has
been conspicuous and disheartening,
and that men have secured your sup
port for office by promising much and
then doing little. | know thai you
feel II anything can be done along this
line ii should have been accomplished
long ago. But the people have acted
on a false theory about this matter,
and further they have not had a sutti-
GENTLY definite legislative program.
They have made it too much a matter
of narrow partisan politics. When a
party in power has failed to legislate
against trusts the disposition of some
of US has been to fool ourselves about
II because It was our party that was
responsible. Let us now know the
truth and act accordingly. There
never has been an antitrust law pass
ed in North Carolina that those sent TO
Raleigh to lobby for the trusts We're
opposed to.
There never has been an antitrust
law passed in North Carolina under
which the worst trust in the State
could be convicted.
The best party man as well as the
best citizen and the most practical re-
former. is he who recognizes these
truths, and demands that things be
done differently. Tt is a stock argu-
ment of the trusts and their sympa-
thizers to defend as sufficient and ade-
quate the most worthless antitrust
avs.
1t is by this method that they "a
best quiet the demands of the people
for a better law. The strongest party
is the party that best serves the peo-
pie, and when a party is not serving
the people the best wa to make it
stronger is for its members to admit
it's faults. and correct them. I
therefore, wOuld have you know that
North Carolina must have antitrust
law, for she has none.
The United States Government has
declared through the highest court
that the organizers of the American
Tobacco Company are criminals and
have been for twenty years, and dur
ing all these years these criminals
have escaped punishment and by their
crimes accumulated your money In
their pockets. In the opinion that de-
clared these men criminals the court
wrote int the statute, a word which
Congress had expressly refused to
place there, which went far to nullify
the only law on the statute books that
was broad enough>if enforced, to pro-
! IeCl the producer
The law said it was unlawful to re-
strain trade. The Supreme Court said
tina meant unreasonable restraint
of trade.
The criticism of that opinion by
Judge Harlan, Of the Supreme Court
Is, in my opinion, just and l could not
speak stronger words Of condemnation
Of it. President Taft in a public ad-
dress this week commends nat opin-
TON ord acLC n tr11St an OrJ1f RI hn
declared illegal that would not fall
under the condemnation of the court
in hat case. The answer to that
question is that no trust necessarily is
illegal under that decision.
The beef trust, steel trust, sugar
trust and all others, insist that they do
not unreasonably restrain trade, and
the President will not undertake to
say what the Supreme Court will say
about any trust being unlawful ever
if the facts be agreed p 1t was
not known, even after the
Oil Company decision, and before the
american Tobacco case was decided,
what the decision in the last case
would be. The court is a board of ar
b%itration to say what trust is bad, and
what trust is benevolent and good
There is. and under their decisions can
be no rule to guide US in advance.
Their are hundreds Of trusts now,
and the Federal Court cannot determ-
inc one a year or certainly nave not. Il
the decision which the President com
mends remains the law it Will be a
least a century before the status Of the
trusts now in existence is known, ano
bv that time there would probably be
others Even as to the American To-
bacco Company. which is adjudged tc
be a criminal, there is no disposition
or power. under the recent decision, t
punish the real Offenders. If the men
who ORGANIZED the tobacco trust were
i'm nrisoned there would probably no
he another formed in your day OF
: mine. something needs to be lone be
sides depend on the law as It is.
, 1t would seem to require no 1urthel
argument to convince you that repre-,
{ sentative government is in large meas
: ure a practical failure, and When tnE
;s trna t4ne emedv is more direct gov