Valdez daily prospector., 1914-05-09
SATURDAY, MAY g, 1914.
UNDER WHICH FLAG?

a handful compared with the condi- lions seven and one-half years later when he turned the office over to Taft. Limited in number they stood unsupported, separate units, each by itself. They had not yet been fused and welded together by the Morgan system of interlocking directorates. All told there were but l49 plants combined in violation of law, when Roosevelt was sworn in as president
 The Sherman antitrust law was upon the statute book, perfect weapon with which any executive could easily have destroyed every criminal conspiracy against copeti- tion
 In plain terms the law provided:
 Every contract, combination in
 the form of trust or otherwise, or
 conspiracy in restraint of trade or
 commerce among the states or
 with foreign nations. is hereby
 declared to be illegal"
 The law provided further that "ev- cry person" making "any such con tract" or engaging in "any such com bination or conspiracy" and "every person that shall monopolize or con- bine or conspire with any other per son to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the sev- eral states" shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanor and subject on conviction to be punished "by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year."
 As said by Judge Stewart of Yer mont in closing the debate in the House of Representatives when the law was enacted:
 ''The provisions of this bill are
 just as broad sweeping and ex-
 make them, to express the pow
 CT of congress on this subject un-
 der the constitution of the Unit
 ed States"
 But Roosevelt was never in favor of enforcing the law to destroy trusts and combinations. In his first mes sage to congress dealing with this subject he said:
 Combination and concentration
 should be not prohibited, but
 supervised and within reasonable
 limits, controlled"
 The law declared that trusts and com mbinations should be prohibited Roosevelt declared that they should not be proh:b :bited but that they should be controlled" and he soft ened his declaration by announcing that such control must be kept with in reasonable limits"
 What chance had the Sherman law under president who set himself doggedly against enforcing it's pro- hibitions? It is true that he prose cuted an average of six cases year against carefully selected list of these combinations. But he was careful to go just far enough to give color-about campaign time-to the claim that he was upholding the law-.not far enough seriously to in jure those prosecuted, or deter, in the slightest degree, the hundreds that were organizing every month through out his entire administration.
 Mark the result of this two-faced policy: When Roosevelt became president there were 149 combinations and trusts, including railways, all to- gether having total stock and bond issue of only $3,7s4, 100000. When he left the White House there were 1,- 020 criminal conspiracies in combi- nation, including with the unlawfully combined railroads total capitaliza- tion amounting to the enormous sum of $31,672, 100000, more than 70 per cent of which was and still is water. The power of these combinations was unlimited and uncontrolled. They suppressed competition. They in creased transportation charges. They raised the prices of the products of the mines and the factories at will. They paid big dividends on fictitious and fraudulent overcapitalization. They accumulated millions upon mil lions of surplus in every trust treas ury. Gu" of this surplus. wrongful ly taken from the people, they built new railroads, extravagant terminals, and new manufacturing plants. And these in turn, they again oVercapt-
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