Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1907 — THE TOBACCO TRUST. [ARTICLE]

THE TOBACCO TRUST.

The Fairbnnks organs are engaged in a desperate conflict with Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly and all of the independent Republican publications which declare that the vice-president is unfit to be president. This is a fight that Democrats can view with complacency, at least.

The discovery from time to time of a new trust, organized, owned and operated by the Standard Oil company, throws further light on the unexampled and unparalleled prosperity of one John D. Rockefeller. These things are pretty hard on the people, but there is hope in the fact that so far there is no corner on shavings.

The government announced one day that it was going to ask for receivers for all trusts against which it brought proceedings. On the day following this announcement suit for the dissolution of the tobacco trust was begun and the appointment of a receiver was asked for. Two days later word came from Washington that the receivership program would not be carried out. Mr. Roosevelt, it appears, had changed his mind—a thing he has done so often as to defeat every trust busting effort he has ever proposed.

The Republican leaders have determined that it would be “suicidal” for their party to undertake to revise the tariff before the presidential election. As it will be equally suicidal for it not to do so it is clearly between the trust devil, which does not want revision, and the deep sea of public opinion which demands it. Possibly the next national Republican convention will “promise” revision later, but that old deception will not work any longer. The only hope of tariff reform is through the Democratic party.

The cry, “back to the conetitntion,” is all right, but it must be uuderstood that it means the real constitution of the fathers and not the constitution as interpreted by the Rockefellers, Harrimans and public plunderers of their ilk. Let us get back to the constitution, by all means, and bow down before it in honest contrition for the abuses that have been heaped upon it. In the meantime, however, it will not help much for the friends and representatives of the trusts, monopolies and railroad thimbleriggers to join too loudly-ih the demand. They have no honest use for such things as constitutions and their interest in it is suspicious,

The leaders of the Republican tb - party only a few years ago dei dared that there were no trusts in the United States. Later this statement was abandoned and the Republican, leaders began defending the trusts on the ground that they were good things and the inevitable results of our commercial growth, which, of course, was nonsense. Just now the United States., government has taken steps to prove not only that trusts exist, but that they are—as the Democratic party has asserted at all times —a menace to the welfare of the people. The government, in its proceeding to dissolve the tobacco trust, names sixty-five corporations and twenty-nine individuals as defendants. The American Tobacco Company, which is the hub company of the trust, began its monopolizing business with $25,000,000 capital. It now has assets of $275,000,000, and is reaching for the absolute control of the tobacco business of the world. Of the annual production of domestic tobacco, estimated at 800,000,000 pounds, 75 per cent is purchased by the American Tobacco Company and its associates and its allies at prices which the government alleges to be unlawfully influenced by the combination. It is said that this is in defiance of the usual laws of I trade, where open competition by many separate and independent concerns control the prices. The plan of operation, according to the government petition, has been to acquire, through other confederated companies, the business of successful opponents, taking from owners and managers promises not thereafter to engage in the tobacco business; to drive out other opponents by destructive competition; to deter any who might wish to engage in the trade, and finally to gain control of the agencies through which tobacco products were distributed. In pursuing this plan the government charges that the trust has resorted to the naost disreputable practices. No trusts? Good things and commercially inevitable? Well, hardly. And the tobacco trust is only one of h large brood.