The Wisconsin tobacco reporter. (Edgerton, Wis.) 1877-1950, 1914-06-12

There is unmistakingly sentiment
prevailing that the business of the
country wants and needs at least a
temporary rest from further legisla-
tive interference, that it is even ready
to swallow an interstate trade commits
sion and the prohibition of interlocking
directorates, but it is up in arms and
Indignation against the proposition of
exempting labor and farmer trusts
from all provisions enacted and to be
enacted in restraint of trade and mo-
nopoly under the past and present anti
trust legislation. The country is up in
arms against making labor and farmers
unions privileged classes to enjoy i'm
munity from violating and breaking the
antitrust laws. There is no law in ex-
istence preventing workingmen and
farmers from organizing and forming
unions for the amelioration of their
condition. But what the administra-
tion wants to do in it's pending anti
trust bill is to permit unionized organ
izations of labor and farming to do the
very things which are being outlawed
when done by organizations of industry
and capital To say that labor and
farmer unions are not organized for
profit is simply prepOsterous. We need
only to call attention to the Burley To-
bacco Trust to expose the assertion
that farmers do not organize for profit
as a self-convicting denial What the
Burley Tobacco Pool intended to effect
and did effect ought to be too fresh yet
in the memory of our readers to need
reiteration. And the means by which
they effected the object and aim of the
organization were such as to obliterate
the entire criminal code. With this
dire object lesson of the tobacco pool
ing trust, tainted as it is with the mis-
deeds and crimes of the night riders,
still fresh in the memory, it is almost
inconceivable how the administration
can assent to place such such an organ
lZatlon into an exempt class OF legal
lied law-breakers, except on the ground
of moral and political cowardice. And
if the methods of the tobacco pooling
trust are to be sanctioned by law, at
least to be exempt from lawful prose-
cution, how long will it take before
similar organizations will spring up all
over the country for the purpose of
creating a monopoly in every commod-
ity of agriculture and of tyrannizing
such Of the farmers as would like to
retain the independence of their action
and property? The spirit of monopo-
lizing tobacco crops, by no means for a
philanthropic end, but to gain very
material and inordinate profit, has re-
Gently entered also the Pennsylvania
tobacco fields. And if the tobacco
crops of every state under the exemp-
tion and privilege granted in the ad
ministration' antitrust bill should be
pooled and doubled in price without any
risk of violating a restraint in trade,
what would become of the competitive
trade in the cigar leaf business? If
manufacturers are prohibited from
combining to monopolize a product,
from screwing up the price above
reasonable profit, and from wiping out
competition, why should the farmers
be exempt from the same prohibition?
And why should labor unions be per-
mitted to do the very things which their
employees are lawfully prohibited to do
to them? The immortality of such an
exemption is generally admitted Even
President Wilson has acknowledged it,
in refusing to give his assent for an
open and direct exemption. But he
seems to have compromised with his
conscience by consenting to cover the
exemption clause in a phraseology
which may mean anything and every
thing and which, of course, will have
- L 4 ao,1,.4 Il