New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1918-09-02
Nursing Sedition

ANuA SLIS 0COAAAOAA
Suppose the following notice were to
appear tomorrow morning throughout
the country:
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Certain avaricious persons zceW
knoVn, are acting IN concert untd10-
fully to control the price of food, to
restrict the supply and to defraud
both consumers and producers. In
zpar time this is intolerable. Yet your
government is pozcerless to abate the
eriz. This notice is merely to oc-
quaint you zl'ith the facts.
What would be the effect upon the
normal American citizen? The question
is rhetorical. Even those unused to vio-
lent feelings, the most law-abiding of
men, would say: eff the government is
powerless, the people are not. This is
case where the people are justified by
their government beforehand in taking
the matter into their own hands and act
ing upon the unwrtten law" That is
what they would say, provided they
thought the governments opinion valid
and had no reservations as to it's motives
in making the extraordinary announce
ment. But what would be the effect
among the uneasy and volatile elements
of the population, impatient of second
thoughts and incapable of subtle dis
tinctions? Would it not turn them at
once into raging Bolshevists? That
question also is rhetorical Every one
knows how the radical minded would re-
act to statement from the government
containing both the Indictment and the
invitation.
Well, the case is that the government,
through the Federal Trade Commission,
has issued observation-disclosures literally
that very notice to the American people.
That it has not produced the effects
which in supposition seemed inevitable
is owing mainly to the fact that the peo-
pie had reservations as to the moral re-
sponsibility and general competency of
the Trade Commission.
1t said of the packers, naming them
by their corporate names, that they
preyed upon the people Internationally,
that they employed their power unlaw
fully to control the price of meat and
other foods, and to restrict supplies, and
to defraud both food producers and food
consumers.
The impotence Of the government was
not specifically declared. That was left
to be inferred from inaction and silence.
Sixty days have passed. The govern
ment has neither repudiated the charges
nor acted upon them against the packers,
who, if guilty, ought to be sentenced
along with the l. W. w. leaders to penal
servitude for twenty years as Instructors
Of the war. The logical implication of
this darkness on the part of the govern
ment-the equivalent of the phrase "your
government is powerless" is sup
piled, as we should have expected, by The
NeaO Republic, which says:
"Ten years ago such revelations as the
Federal Trade Commission is making
would have given rise to universal de-
mand for criminal prosecution. But we
have lost our illusions of the efficacy of
criminal procedure in such cases The
arrest and conviction of few more or
less responsible officers of the packing
companies would no more shatter the sys-
tenn of business Realpolitik than the as
sassination of Won Mirbach or a Won
Echorn skaters the system of political
Realpolitik."
The Neav Republics violence is intel
lectual 1t proposes merely that the gov
eminent shall take over the nations
butcher business; but what will the Boil
shevist do with the same conclusion that
''the efficacy of criminal procedure in
such cases" has been an illusion?
If The Neac Republic can be emotion
ally moved by the Trade Commissions
report to say the intolerable German
thing we are fighting in Europe is to be
found also in American business, how
viii that same document have affected
the minds that are cultivated by the Hill
QUITS ard Dorgers and Haywoods and q
thousand pro German propagandists?
We do not know how much harm it does