Gloucester County Democrat., 1912-08-08

these gentlemen get control OF these
things? Who handed our economic
laws over to them for legislative and
contractual alteration? We have in
these disclosures still another view Of
the tariff, still another proof that not
the people of the United States, but
only a very small number of them,
have been partners in that legislation.
The trusts do not belong to the peri
Cd of infant Industries. They are not
the products of the time, that old Ia
borious time, when the great conti-
nent we live on was undeveloped, the
young natisn struggling to find itself
and get upon its feet amidst older and
more experienced competitors. They
belong to very recent and very So
phisticated age, when men knew what
they wanted and knew how to get it
by the favor of the government 1t
is another chapter in the natural his
tory of power and of governing
classes The next chapter will set us
free again.
l am not one of those who think
that competition can be established by
law against the drift of a world wide
economic tendency; neither am one
of those who believe that business
done upon great scale by single
organizahon-call it corporation or
what you willis necessarily danger
Gus to the liberties, even the economic
liberties, of a great people like our
own, full of intelligence and of in
domitable energy. / 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
Sherman Law Amendments.
Power in the hands of great busi-
ness men does not make me appre-
hensive. unless it springs out of ad-
vantages which they have not created
for themselves. Big business is not
dangerous because it is big, but be
cause its 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
combinations 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.
1t has roared against them like any
sucking dove. / am not assessing the
responsibility; ] am merely stating the
fact. But the means and methods by
olies have now become known. 1t 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
But the problem and the difficulty
are much greater than that. There
are not merely great trusts and conl-
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 evasiye, more
difficult to deal with. There are vast
confederacies (as | 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
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 a money trust,n a
concentration of the control of credi'
which may at any time become in
fnitely dangerous to free enterprise
If such concentration 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 fair 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 Labor Question.
Let me say again that what we are
seeking is not destruction of any kind
nor the disruption of any sound or hon
est thing, but merely the rule of right
and of the common advantage. / am
happy to say that a new spirit has be-
gun to show itself in the last year OF
two among influential men of business
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