Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1892 — NEW TRUSTS FORMING. [ARTICLE]

NEW TRUSTS FORMING.

TO RAISE PRICES AND CHEAPEN LABOR. The New York Tribune Ii Badly Rattled— A Free-Trade Scare —MoKluley Bill Talk —Steel Ball* for India—Some Democratic Doctrine. —' A Season of Combine*. The Iron Age of July 14, 1892, probably on the strength of the report of a House committee.Qji trusts, said: • “Contrary to the promises usually held out in the organization of trusts, that increased proiits were to be derived from economies introduced rather than from any advance in prices, an inquiry into actual results Shows that almost universally an advance is made whenever the busim s.s Is sufficiently ■consolidated to warrent such a course. The principal reason is that so many -decrepit or otherwise unprofitable concerns are necessarily closed and withdrawn from competition.” This conc-lußton may be news to the New York Tribune and other hlgh-pro-teirtlonist papers that have been saying with Andrew Carnpgie, “the public may regard trusts or combinations with serene confidence,” but it is an old story to tariff-reformers who have been studying trusts fqr several years, Realizing, then, that trusts mean highe'r prices, closed mills,, less work, and therefore lower wages, it is with forebodings that we read in this same journal of the formation in one week of several gigan-■ tic trusts in the highly protected iron industry. It is announced that the Michigan Car Company, the Peninsular Car Company, the Detroit Car-Wheel Company, the Michigan Forge and Iron Company, and the Detroit Pipe and Foundry Company have merged their Interests, and will henceforth be known as the Michigan-Peninsular Car Company. The Michigan Car Company and the Peninsular Car Company are the largest manufacturers of freight cars in the world, and the capacity of the combined companies will be 100 cars per day. The prospectus of this new and promising trust has occupied two columns in each of the leading metropolitan papers for a week. It says the company will begin business the Ist of September with $8,000,000 Capital; that the profits ■of the individual companies for the last four years and nine months have amounted tp $4,334,295.97; that present profits are at the rate of $1,100,000; that this will, “after paying the interest upon the bonds—B per cent, upon the preferred stock ($5,000,000),. 12 per-cent, on the common stock*; and carrying SBO,OOO to the surplus fund—leave 14 per cent, applicable to further dividends upon the common stock.” It is also estimated that the consolidation will result in an annual saving of more than SIOO,OOO. Protected by a 45 per cent, tariff, and with several protectionist members of Congress on its Board of Directors, who understand how to manipulate both tariffs and trusts, a brilliant future may be predicted for this new star in the McKinley firmament. It is now in order for protectionist papers to begin to tell us that freight cars are not an article of daily consumption with common people, and that if prices are advanced the difference yvill come out of the pockets of rich railroad corporations or will be cheerfully paid by foreigners who ship goods over our railroads. Another consolidation mentioned in the Iron Age is that of the Enterprise Iron Works and the Youngstown Iron and Steel Company, both of Youngstown, Ohio, with a capital of $1,500,000 These firms have been sharp competitors and it is expected that prices will be better sustained and profits greatly increased by this deal, which virtually includes several other iron mills with Identical interests, and which is expected soon to include four or five companies that are ,expected to join the “Union Iron Company,,’? Other similar but smaller consolidations are mentioned to gladden the author of the MoKinley bUL who hates, cheapness, and thinks it unamerican. , — The Tribune,l*-“Rattled." The New ,-York Tribune is doing strange things lately. "It undoubtedly thinks itself Republican to the backbone, but it is publishing some good Democratic doctrine. It had a column interview the other day from the Hon. Frank Hurd, of Toledo, Ohio, on the Chicago tariff plank. Perhaps the Tribune Imagines that that plank doesn’t mean what it says; that the Democrats of the country did not intend to discard “protection" so abruptly and so completely; and that by ventilating the views of the more radical Democrats it can turn public sentiment against this Democratic declaration on protection. If so, it never made a greater mistake. It has never given its readers as wholesome economic food as It is now giving them while it is laboring under this delusion. Mr. Hurd approves of the Chicago tariff plank, which declares Republican protection to be a fraud, and thinks it goes none too far. Asked about incidental protection, he said: “I do not see where there is any distinction between protection and incidental protection. If the former is declared a fraud, that includes the latter. The best way I can give you an idea of this is by telling you what Sam Cox once said in private conversation. He said that when a man came to rob you of SSO, which he knew that you had in your pocket, if he should, incidentally, at the same time, relieve you of your watch and any other valuables that you might have, he did not see but that the latter was just as much robbery as the former.” Mr. Hurd thinks “the wealth and power of Great Britain are directly due to her system of taxation and methods of free trade.” The more intelligent portion of the Tribune’s readers will soon learn to like this kind of food, and will demand more of it, evon if they have to subscribe for Democratic papers to get it.

Free Trade Scare. A few years ago when the Be] üblicans were certain that protection was a benefit to the wage earner, and Democrats were not certain that was not a benefit, the cry of “free trade,” “Cobdenite,” etc., may have had considerable effect upon the unthinking mind. But the campaign of education that has been on since the tariff message of 1887, has caused a great change in the opinion of the people, and especially in those of the working people, whose wages, during the last few years, particularly in the protected industries, have been reduced •often. They begin to realize what the Democratic press has been telling them —that 'protection in no way benefits labor, but on the contrary, as a rule makes less work in many industries and therefore oauses lower wages. The New York Tribune, American Economist and other high tariff papers, have yet to learn of this change in public sentiment, and are still attempting to frighten the people away from Democracy by this old bugaboo cry. It might be wejl for these protection maniacs to reflect that in three of the four platforms thu3 far presented to the American voter, no sanction whatever is given to the protective theory. The Democrats, the Prohibition’sts and the laborers and farmers have discarded forever this old humbug which has mortgaged farms, reduced "wages and robbed consumers to produce the pro-

teotive millionaires who now alone form the backbone of the protectionist Republican party. MoKinley Bill Talk. ’ Tho Republicans tell us that the MoKinley Dili is doing its own talking. Yes, that’s so; it’s talking very loudly all over the oountry, and has large audlenoes everywhere. At Homestead, Pa., there are 4,000 in the audience, whloh has been entertained between talks by fireworks from Winchesters and by drums and fifes and bayonets in the hands of the State militia. These men did not leave their work because they were offered higher wages—far from it. They arewilling to acoept considerably less wages If they can return to work as union men. But the Carnegie Steel Company, Itself a com Dination of a half-dozen of the largest steel mills in this country, does not believe that employes have the same right to organize that employers have, and has concluded to exterminate the Amalgamated Association, which alone has kept wages above the starvation point in the iron and steel industry. There is also an audienoe of 3,000 at the Caur d’Alene mines in Idaho, who struck against a -reduction of wages last April. The talk here has also been accompanied by shot arid shell. Then there’s 400 in the audienoe at the Eureka Iron and Steel Mills at Wyandotte, Mich., now on strike because the manufacturers refuse to pay the old scale or to employ union men. These are but a few of the people now listening to the tariff talk of the McKinley bill.

Steel Rail* for India. We find In the Indiana Sentin°l a curious story about an American manufacturer’s offer to sell steel rails in India. It is asserted that one Shepherd, a Colonel in the British army, now engaged in constructing a railroad in India, received bids for the supply of rails from manufacturers in England and in America. “The lowest," says the Sentinel, “was from Andrew Carnegie, at $22.50 for seventy-pound steel laid down in India.” The Sentinel also says; “The chief engineer of one of the largest English railway syndicates, who is now in this city, confirms the above in full.” The ring price of steel rails at the mill in this country, as , fixed and maintained for the last year by the steel rail combination, is S3O per ton. According to this story, Mr. Carnegie offered to sell such rails, with freight charges paid to a port in India, for $22,50. It is well known that Trust combinations frequently sell their goods abroad at prices lower than the prices exacted at home, but we are not inclined to accept this story without additional testimony. We presume the Sentinel has seen Col. Shepherd’s letter, of which it speaks. We suggest that the publication of it and the testimony of the English engineer would set forth in a convincing way the history of a very significant and interesting transaction.—New York Times.

A Shodily Challenge. Sen tor Vest said in his speech on the Springer free wool bill that the firm of F. Muhlhauser & Co., manufacturers of shoddies at Cleveland, Ohio, were the largest shoddy manufacturers in the world, and that shoddy is made from many kinds of vile materials. This firm, perhaps to advertise its greatness, makes an offer in the American Economist of July 15 1o wager SIO,OOO with Senator Vest—not that the Senator was mistaken as to the size of their mills or as to the kind of material used, but that they can produce shoddy that the Senator cannot tell from wool. Not being an expert, the Senator will probably not accept the challenge and attempt to beat this company at its own game. This challenge, however, serves to illustrate the great progress that is being made, under the McKinley administration, in the manufacture of shoddy. The manufacturers are confident that they can make this imitation oogus wool so nearly like the genuine article that no one, not even a United States Senator, can detect the difference. The one is shoddy, however, and is a fraud and a deception upon the American people by the authority of McKinley. This In Democratic Doctrine, Andrew Carnegie In Triumphant Democracy: Far be it from me to retard the march of the world toward the free and unrestricted exchange of commodities. When the democracy obtains sway throughout the earth the nations will become friends and brothers, instead of being, as now, the prey of the monarchical and aristocratic ruling classes, and always warring with eaoh other; standing armies and warships will be of the past, and men will then begin to destroy custom houses as relics of a barbarous, monarchical age, not altogether from the low plane of economic gain or loss, but strongly impelled thereto from the higher standpoint of the brotherhood of man. All restrictions upon the products of other lands will then seem unworthy of any member of the race, and the dawn of that day will have come when Man to man the world o'er Shall brothers be and a' that.

A Conundrum. The last Iron Age contains a lettei from Belgium on American hardware in Belgium. It appears that we supply nearly all kinds of hardware in that market, and in many kinds of goods, such as hay forks, lawn mowers, mincing and meat-chopping machines, scythes and oilstones, ice-cream freezers, typewriters, axes, locks, wrenches, etc. America takes the lead. Now here Is a conundrum for McKinley and the makers of the Republican platform. If our manufacturers of hardware can pay high wages here and ship goods, to compete with those made in Europe, where wages are very low, why is a 45 per cent, duty needed on these goods to cover the difference of wages so that the hardware manufacturers of Europe will not drive our manufacturers out of our own markets? The Carnegie Steel Company authorities say that if all of the men in all of their mills strike it will be an oasy matter to get men to fill their places. Perhaps this is so, but what a reflection on McKinley’s measure, which was to provide work for all at high wages! There must be a screw loose somewhere when 15,000 or 20,000 men in the highly protected iron industry are so anxious to get work that they will underbid other ironworkers ‘ But perhaps it is due to dull times, which have caused the weekly production of pig iron to decline over 4,000 tons since June 1, and, of course, McKinley cannot be held responsible for everything. The Iron Age, of July 14, says that “Pennsylvania probably surpasses all other States * * * in the extent and expense of her riot duty since the civil war.” It may be pertinent to recall here that high “protection’! began duripg the civil war and that Pennsylvania has probably enjoyed more of this McKinley panacea than any other one State. Possibly there is some connection between these facts. Mb. Frick testified that the Carnegie Company would probably have to go into bankruptcy if wages were not reduced. As the protective tax on steel covers all the pay-roll this is equivalent to saying that the American steel industry is so weak and young an infant that It cannotafford to pay any wages at all.— New York World,