The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-07
THE FARMER: AUGUST ', 1912

dangerous because it is big, but be- cause it's bigness is an unwholesome imitation created by privileges and ex- emptions which it ought not to enjoy.
 The general terms of the present federal antitrust law, forbidding
 "com mbinations in restraint of trade"
 have apparently proved intellectual.
 Trusts have grown up under its ban
 very luxuriantly and have pursued the methods by which so many of them have established virtual monop- olies without serious let or hindrance.
 It has roared against them like any
 sucking dove. I am not assessing the
 responsibility; am merely stating the fact. But the means and methods by
 which trusts have esta ablished monop-
 olies have now become known. It will
 be necessary to supplement the pres
 ent law with such laws, both civil and
 criminal, as will effectually punish and
 prevent those methods, adding such other laws as may be necessary to
 provide suitable and adequate judicial
 processes, whether civil or criminal,
 to disclose them and follow them to
 final verdict and Judgment. M
 But the problem and the difficulty
 are mush greater than that. There
 are not merely great trusts and com
 binations which are to be controlled and deprived of their power to create
 monopolies and destroy rivals. There
 is something bigger still than they are
 and more subtle, more evasive, more difficult to deal with. There are vast
 confederacies (as I may perhaps call
 them for the sake of convenience) of
 banks, railways, express companies,
 insurance companies, manufacturing
 corporations, mining corporations, power and development companies and all the rest of the circle, bound together by the fact that the owner
 ship of their stock and the members of
 their boards of directors are controlled
 and determined by comparatively 5
 small and closely interrelated groups of persons who, by their informal con federacy, may control, if they please and when they will, both credit and
 enterprise. They are part of our prob
 lem. Their very existence gives rise to the suspicion of money trust,o
 concentration of the control of credit
 which may at any time become in fnitely dangerous to free enterprise. If such a concentra tion and control ]
 do not actually exist it is evident
 that they can easily be set up and used at will. Laws must be devised which will prevent this, if laws can be work
 ed out by faif and free counsel that will accomplish that result without destroying or seriously embarrassing
 any sound or legitimate business un-
 dertaking .or. necessary and wholesome arrangement.
 The Labcp Question.
 Let me say again that what we are seeking is not destruction of any kind
 nor the disruptiom of any sound or hon est thing, but merely the rule of right and of the common advantage. am , happy to say that new spirit has be ] gun to show itself in the last year or two among influential men of business and, what is perhaps even more signif-
 cant, among the lawyers who are their expert advisers and that this spirit has displayed itself very notably in the last few months In an effort to return in some degree at any rate to the prac tices of genuine competition.
 If am right about this, it is going to be easier to act in accordance with the rule of right and justice in deal ing with the labor question. The so called labor question is question only because we have not yet found the 1 rule of right in adjusting the inter
 I.,f, 1,1 ovxf% %a1 I@oY the happiness, the energy and spirit Of the men and women who do the
 daily work in our mines and factories, on our railroads, in our offices and marts of trade: on our farms and on the sea, are of the essence of our na- >tional life. There can be nothing 1 wholesome unless their life is whole l some; there can be no contentment un- less they are contented. Their physi- ], cal welfare affects the soundness of
 .he whole nation. We shaK never get
 very far in the settlement of these vital matters so long. as we regard
 everything done for the workingman, by law or by private agreement, as a
 concession yielded to keep him from i agitation and disturbance of our
 peace Here again the sense of uni- versal partnership must come into l play if we are to act like statesmen, as those who serve not class, but a
 nation.
 The working people of America-if 1 they must be distinguished from the
 minority that constitutes the srest of i it-are, of course, the backbone of the nation No law that safeguards their l life, that improves the physical and
 moral conditions under which they ! live, that makes their hours of labor l rational and tolerable, that gives l them freedom to act. in their own in-. ] terest and that protects them where
 they cannot protect. themselves can properly be regarded as class legisla- | ton or as anything but as measure l taken in the interest of the whole 1 people, whose partnership in right ac- l ton we are trying to establish and
 make real and practical It is in this 1 spirit that we shall act if we are genu- l inc spokesmen of the whole Country. Currency Laws.
 l As our program is disclosed no
 man can forecast it ready made and
 before counsel is taken of every one concerned-this must be it's measure l and standard the interest of all con