Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1890 — TO LYNCH A COMBINE. [ARTICLE]

TO LYNCH A COMBINE.

THREATENING LYNbH-LAW ON THE BINDING-TWINE TRUST. ■Operations of the Trust's Agents In the Philippine Islands—Their Attempt to force the Holders of Hemp to hell »t a Toss Causes Great Irritation and Calls Out a Threat to Apply Lynch-Law. “Lynch a trust?” That would be a wast undertaking; but if It could succeed it would at least prove more effective than the Republican effort to break down trusts by talk and threats to take off duties that protect them. A trust alter having been lynched would proDaDiy inever rise from the grave to besiege the Republican Congress for higher duties -and get them again. The Republican talk about squelching •trusts means nothing, absolutely nothing, so long as they continue to feed ■them on high protective duties. The diquor trust gets more protection than -ever, ami so does the linseed oil trust. “The newly formed window-glass trust has been getting an average of 105 per cent, protection, and the McKinley hill, as it passed the Republican House of Representatives in May, actually made the protection still higher. To deal out protection with one hand ;and pass worthless laws against trusts ■with the other is as absurd as that other scheme of the Republicans, to pass McKinley bills for the purpose of shutting foreign trade, and then to vote money out of the Treasury to pay people to build ships and sail them upon the •seas. The most practical way to deal with 'trusts in America is to remove the duties from the article or material of which •they create a monopoly. Senator John Sherman ar.d Hon. J. C. Burrows, one of the makers of the McKinley bill, have both suggested that 'this is the thing to do, only they forget all about this remedy when it becomes :necessary to vote on the subject in Con.gress. Burrows helped to make the McKinley bill, the most infamous measure in the interest of trusts that the •country has ever seen, and there is no ■evidence that he raised his little finger to put into the bill a paragraph expressing the principle he has publicly championed, that protection should be withdrawn in all cases where it has given occasion to the formation of a trust. Senator Sherman has advocated the same view; yet when those fifteen Republicans voted with the Democrats to .put binding-twine on the free list he did not join them. Senator Sherman has a •convenient way to meet such cases. He simply denies that there is any such trust in question, and then he goeswright •on voting high duties right and lefk While this is the best way to deal with trusts here, another way has been suggested on the Philippine Islands—to apply lynch-law. This law cannot be applied to the case in our land; but the agents of the twine trust have been threatened with it in the manila hemp is grown.

The Philippine Islands are a Spanish •dependency lying to the southeast of China. Their principal product is manila hemp, which takes its name from Manila, the chief city on the islands. 'This manila hemp is sent to the United ■ States in largo quantities, our imports ffieing in 1889 nearly six and one-half •million dollars’ worth. This trade takes to - thoso islands the •representatives of our binding-twine trust for the purpose of buying up the hemp crop. Senator Davis told, in his ;attack on the trust in the Senate, how “the entire business, including the •sources from which that commodity was supplied, was governed by a combination of all (or substantially all) the manufacturers of binding twine. In the Philippine Islands they limited and controlled the price of one-half the raw ■material, and in Yucatan they controlled <tho other half.” It was Sn carrying out this plan of controlling the price that the trust’s agents in Manila were threatened with lynchllaw. Mr. A. R. Webb, the United States »Consul at Manila, sends several reports to the State Department at Washington about the contest last winter and spring between the buyers for the trust and the '-native dealers in hemp. The dealers, Mr. Webb says, had bought the crop at prices ranging from $8.57 to $lO per -hundred pounds. The American and English syndicates refused to pay the ■native dealers a price sufficient to cover ’the cos); of their stocks, and the Consul ‘thought that many of the dealers would 'undoubtedly be ruined. The trust had vessels chartered, and they were lying in the harbor ready to d;ake away the hemp; but still tho trust refused to buy. Two of those vessels ihad cost the trust over $30,000, simply for lying in the harbor and waiting till it ihad forced the dealers to sell at lower prices. A report in this way got into ■circulation on the islands that tho syndicates had “untold millions at their command,” and that they would buy no hemp till the price went down to $5 per diundrod pounds. This state of things produced great irritation among tho people, and called forth a chivalrous sentiment of sympathy with the dealers as the weaker .party to the fight. The Consul sends two articles from the principal paper of Manila, which show how intense was the irritation which these greedy mon--opolies had caused in that distant land. Lynch-law is hinted at by the Manila paper as the remedy for the evils •described. “To the force of attack,” it says, “the force of resistance opposes itself, and never was it more our duty than now to remind tho Americans of their famous lynch-law.” A trust has mover felt the halter draw with good opinion of lynch-law. While the Manila way of dealing with trusts is not to be recommended to our wheat-growers it ihas at least one striking merit: it would be efficacious to the last degree. Tho valiant talk of Senator Sherman and Representative Burrows lacks that merit •entirely. You can’t kill a trust by calling it names. The binding-twine trust will be hurt badly by free twine; it can grin and endure Senator Davis’ denunciation of it as “that all-comprehending, unsatisfied and extortionate monopoly.”