Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1905 — AN UNFORTUNATE RECORD. [ARTICLE]

AN UNFORTUNATE RECORD.

The record which the Republicans in the State Senate made on the anti-trust bill is, we think, certain to give the party a good deal of trouble in the future There is no way of escaping for it. Doubtless the gentlemen are trusting to the shortness of memory which the people so often show, but that will not serve them in this case. For the vote is a matter of record. The trusts in question is likely to become more and more dominant, and so there will be great and probably increasing curiosity to know how public men have voted on it. Party platforms will be judged, not by what they say, but by the way in which they have been lived up to in the past. In spite of the platform of the Republican party of Indiana, a Republican Legislature refused to enact a law designed to prevent “combinations in restraint of wholesome trade and commerce.” And Senator Hendee, one of the Republican leaders, had the hardihood to say: There is not a t'ltesHn the country, not a trust in the Unitpd States. And yet every time the word trust is uttered our Democratic triends raise a hue and cry. It is a foo! proposition. In other words, Senator Hendee condemned the platform of his own party, took the ground that there was no reason for making the declaration that it did make, and put himself in antagonism to the Republican President of the United States. There was not one argument advanced against the bill that is worth a moment’s consideration. For instance, Senator Wood of Tippecanoe denounced the bill as “socialistic.” When he made that foolish and indefensible statement he condemned his party for its enactment of the Sherman anti-trust law an which the defeated bill was based. Of course everyone understands that the so-called independent manufacturers who opposed the bill did so because they are making contracts and agreement in restraint of trade—are doing the very things which the big trusts are doing. That is all there is to it. The opposition of these men was the best possible argument in support of the measure. Yet it was this very opposition that led Senators to vote against the bill. The supposed interest of a few manufactures outweighed the interests of the people. It was the same as with the private banking bill —the people were forgotten, and party pledges were spurned. The argument was that you could not restrain the big combinations without hurting the little ones, and that therefore there ought not to be any effective regulation at all. But the unfortunate record is made, and it will not be forgotten.