The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-01-10
BIG CSINESS.

One Of the most significant meas ures that is now before Congress is bill which proposes to make legal combinations for foreign trade con trol. It is part of that plan called industrial preparedness and looks towards the conquests of markets by the United States. In commerce there are no Monroe doctrines.
 This bill is merely roundabout way of legalizing the trust and all nonsense to the contrary notwith- standing, has that specific reason for existence.
 Now the Industrial Worker does not pretend to say that the trusts are any ways outlawed at the pre- sent time. except by a popular fic- tion that exists in the imagination alone. But they know that they are likely to experience the hand of the uolitician seeking notoriety who may start something under one or other of the trust laws which may cause them expense and much untoward criticism and unpoDularlty
 The country has been suitably worked up to a point where any thing can be done in the name of preparedness and hence just now the time is ripe in the name of prepar- edness to Legalize combines which are to face foreign competition. The bill still allows the legal taboo to exist as far as the domestic trade is concerned, but when the combi- nation seeks foreign trade it is to be allowable.
 The nicety Of legal distinction without difference has never been so prettily rendered and already, sure of the passage Of the legalizing bin, the capitalists are consolidating in syndicatcs for the purpose they all- i eee of competing for foreign trade.
 Thus for example, the Douglas fir lumbermen have organized to cap- lure foreign" trade and to obtain legal standing they await the pass age of the new law. But hardly had they organized into a syndicate when the southern pine dealers also framed up a similar combination "after foreign trade and are await ing the legislative absolution to con- fess their standing.
 It ought 10 be c1o1r as the noon day sun that it is literally impossible to create combination in for ign trade and confne it's operations to those exdomestic markets. On the contrary. it is evident, that combi- nation is combination, and if keen competition is tolerated at home, it will sooner or later result in the dis tintegration of this foreign consoli- dation.
 Even now the greatest opposition exists between the Douglas fir oDe- rators and the southern pine or pitch pine" dealers for the eastern markets, and they meet in no very friendly rivalry, ostensibly, although in reality that is only between the smaller fry in the game.
 The fact of the matter is that the combination is very real throughout and the control of the Weyerhauser timber syndicate is just as obvious in the west as in the central or Southern States It has simply con- solidated the big interests in the lumber industry and left competition to the little fellows in every district subject to the dominating influence of the trust in all
 Of course all that is technically illegal. But the economic power of the Trust easily places it above the operations of laws passed by Con- gress or the States Yet these are days when a condition of eXen technical outlawry is no longer t0Sbe approved. and hence the new law, which escapes the censure of being a legitimization of the Trust which it actually is, gives these combina- tions a social and legal standing which even reasonable" decisions by Supreme Courts cannot give.