Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1892 — The Cordage Trust. [ARTICLE]

The Cordage Trust.

Since the cordage trust got control of nearly all tlie cordage mills of the country last year, it has made no less than six advances in price. The following table shows the full extent of these advances: Aug. 27, Feb. 25, 1891. 1£92. per lb. per lb. Advance cents. Cents, per cent. Manila, 54 In 954 12% 25.6 Manila, % in 10% 1294 24.3 Manila, % in 10% 13% 23.2 Sisal, 54 in 6% 9% 37.0 Sisal, %in 7% * 9% 34.3 New Zealand, 54 in... 0% 8% 29 5 New Zealand % in.... 7% 9% 27.5 The trust has complete control over the manufacture of binding twine and binding-tiwine machinery. Though the duty on binding twine has been reduced it is still prohibitive. Thus freed from foreign competition, the trust, by its control over the patents on twine machinery, is able to prevent new plants from being erected to compete with it. Only a short time ago the Legislatuoe of Minnesota appointed a committee to take the necessary steps to establish a binding-twine factory in the prison at Stillwater. This committee tried to purchase machinery of the trust, but found that it could not get it for less than $200,000 —an exorbitant price. The excuse which the trust offered for making so enormous a charge was that it feared iabor trouble. Its real object, however, was to prevent the State of Minnesota from manufacturing twine and selling it at a fair price to the farmers. Has Secretary Blaine succeeded in convincing the President that “trusts are private affairs,” with which the public has nothing to do? If not, why is not the Cordage trust made amenable to the anti-trust law, of which McKinley and his followers were wont to boast bo proudly? McKinley boasts that one page of his tariff can not be repealed in ten years; and he says with a sneer: “They have started in to repeal it item by item, and there are 2,500 items. ” This is tho taunt of mere physical obstruction, which is fatuous enough to fancy that its position is so buttressed against the will of the people as to be impregnable. McKinley overlooks the fact that if the people shall find the demolition of the tariff wall by piecemeal too slow, they may rise in their might and topple the whole business over in “.horizontal” fashion. Big crops at home and famine abroad can not always be depended upon to postpone the day of reckoning. At Gooseberry Ravine, Nevada County, California, some boys found four pieces of float quartz containing gold to the value of $6, $lB, $23, and $32 respectively. Prospectors have been thick in the ravine ever since, and recently one of them found a ledge which is believed to he the source of the float. A new typewriter, under the “point," system, produces writing* which the blind can read