Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1907 — THE BEEF TRUST At HOME AND ABROAD. [ARTICLE]

THE BEEF TRUST At HOME AND ABROAD.

The steel trust sells steel rails to the Japanese $lO a ton cheaper than it sells them, in America. The steel trust made $160,000,000 net profit last year. This is the tax the Dingley tariff allows it to collect from the American people.

The Republican papers over the country are picking out men for the Democrats to choose a presidential candidate from. Strange to say, not one of them has suggested William J. Bryan. If this doesn’t look suspicious, how Joes it look? The Fairbanks machine is desperately afraid that Taft, backed by Roosevelt and quietly helped along by the Beveridge contingent, is planning to do some poaching in Indiana. That is why the machine is working so hard to cinch its grip.

Occasionally the Indianapolis Star prints a new installment of of its editorial flattery of Mr. Fairbanks. The Star’s chief owner, Dan S. Reid, railroad and steel trust magnate, is carrying out his part of the bargain whereby Beveridge is to be humbled, Fairbanks exalted and Reid given a pass (perhaps) to the senate. And it is not so long ago, either, that the Star “poked fun” at Mr. Fairbanks in nearly every issue.

A poll of the 3,000 members of the National Association of Manufactures showed that 55 per cent of them favored immediate revision of the tariff, 20 per cent expressed a “hands off’’ sentiment, 17 per cent were indifferent and 8 per cent believed that the time for revision had not arrived. On the strength of this poll the associa-' tion at its convention in New York adopted a resolution for immediate tariff revision. But it won’t get it if its members vote for Republican congressmen, as most of them have done for many years.

Just when the Republican state machine was beginning its district campaign among the editors in the interest of Mr. Fairbanks, the strike of the Evansville street railway men took place. And it happened that Henry W. Marshall, member of the Republican state committee from the Tenth district, was president of the Evansville Street Railway 'company and that he imported strike-breakers from various outside cities. It is understood that that the state machine is anxious to have this importation of strikebreakers by one of its , members forgotten.

The beef trust is still sore over the publication of the ReynoldsNeill report!, about a year ago, showing conditions in the packing houses. The trust officials complain that as a result of the publican of that report the canned beef industry’s foreign business was almost ruined. -In proof of this they give out the following figures; “Exports of canned meats for the nine months preceding June, 1906, 60,809,174 pounds, valued at •7,188,040; exports for the nine months beginning June 1906, when the Reynolds-Neill report was published, 18,966,828 pounds, valued at •2,302,546. Decrease in business in the business, 14,885,494.” It will be bard to convince the American consumer, however, that the beef trust has lost money. If it lost in its foreign trade it doubtless has made up the shortage in this country. By sqneezing down the price of cattle and by increasing the price of dressed meats in the home markets the trust no doubt has managed to show the usual dividends.