River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1912-08-15


movement OK prices, and this brought
him to the subject of trusts. concern
ing which he said in part:
/ am not one of those who think
that competition can be established
by law against the drift of world
wide economic tendency; neither am
I one Of those who believe that busi-
ness done upon great scale by
single rganization-call it corpora
ton, or what you willis necessarily
dangerous to the liberties. even the
economic liberties, of great people
like our own, full of intelligence and
OF indomitable energy. I am not
afraid of anything that is normal.
dare say we shall never return to the
old order of individual competition,
and that the organization of business
upon a great scale of cooperation is,
up to certain point, itself normal and
inevitable.
Power in the hands of great bust
ness men does not make me apprehen-
sive, unless it springs out Of advan-
tages which they have not created for
themselves. Big business is not dan
gerous because it is big, but because
its bigness is an unwholesome inf1a-
ton created by privileges and exemp-
tons which it ought not to enjoy.
While competition cannot be created
by statutory enactment, it can in large
measure be revived by changing the
laws and forbidding the practices that
killed it, and by enacting laws that
will give it heart and occasion again
We can arrest and prevent monopoly
1t has assumed new shapes and adopt
ed new processes in our time, but
these are now being disclosed and can
be dealt with
Concentration Of Credit.
But the problem and the difficulty
are much 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 Gas l may perhaps
call them for the sake of convenience
of banks, railways, express compa-
MES, insurance companies, manufac-
turing corporations, mining corpora
lions, power and development COM
panies and all the rest of the circle,
bound together by the fact that the
ownership of their stock and the
members of their boards of directors
are controlled and determined by COM
paratively small and closely inter
related groups of persons who, by
their informal confederacy, may con-
troll, If they please and when they
will, both credit and enterprise.
There is nothing illegal about these
confederacies, SO far as l can per-
ceive. They have come about very
naturally, generally without plan or
elaboration, rather because there
was so much money to be invested
and it was in the hands, at great
financial centers, of men acquainted
with one another and intimately as
ISOLATED in business, than because
anyone had conceived and was carry
ing out a plan of general control;
but they are none the less potent a
force in our economic and financial
system on that account. They are
part of our problem. Their very ex-
istence gives rise to the suspicion of
a money trust" a concentration of
the control of credit which may at any
time become infinitely dangerous to
free enterprise. If such concentra-
ton and control does not actually ex-
list, it is evident that it can easily be
set up and used at will. Laws must
be devised which will prevent this, IL
laws can be worked out by fair and
free counsel that will accomplish that
result without destroying or serious
ly embarrassing any sound or legiti-
mate business undertaking or neces-
sary and wholesome arrangement.
Question Of Conservation.
OF conservation and allied matters
Governor Wilson said:
l do not know any greater question
than that of conservation. We have
been a spendthrift nation and must
must do more than that. We must
develop, as well as preserve, our wa
ter powers and must add great wa
terways to the transportation facili-
ties OF the nation, to supplement the
railways within our borders as we'll
as upon the Isthmus. We must revive
our merchant marine, too, and fill the
IN Ky
must add to our present postoffice
Service parcels post as complete as
that of any other nation. We must
look to the health Of our people upon
every hand, as well as hearten them
with justice and opportunity
With regard to the development of
greater and more numerous water
ways and the building up Of a mer-
chant marine. we must follow great
constructive lines and not fall back
upon the cheap device of bounties and
subsidies. In the case of the Missis-
sippi river, that great central artery
of our trade, it is plain that the fed
eral government must build and main
tain the levees and keep the great
WA1CA0 Al AdA AOS III II0 general use.
1t is plain, too, that vast sums of
money must be spent to develop new
waterways where trade will be most
served and transportation most read
lily cheapened by them. Such expen-
ditures are no largess on the part of
and nearly every shonkeener in the