Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1908 — MOTIVE FOR STEEL MERGER. [ARTICLE]

MOTIVE FOR STEEL MERGER.

Executive Permission Gave Trust Control of Ore Situation. The president's statement that he gave his blessing to the steel trust when it “benevolently assimilated” Its chief competitor, the Tennessee Coal and Iron company, during the panic a year ago excites no surprise in Wall street. But the reason assigned for the executive benediction, to prevent further “widespread disaster,” does provoke a smile. The financial editor of the New York Journal of Commerce says, “The financial district learned at the time that the transaction was sanctioned by Washington, but it did not know that the viewed there as an act of charity.” ■.— —— But on second thought this writer solemnly concludes that the affairs of the trust’s small competitor were in a bad way through reckless speculation in its shares by certain “Interests” aad that Its merger with the trust probably averted serious consequences. The next sentence gives the key to the situation. “How far financiers connected with the steel trust were responsible for the developments that forced the Tennessee Coal and Iron people into a hole is another question.” The laugh certainly is not on Mr. Morgan, the good natured wolf who ate up the lamb Just to avert a serious panic among other lambs. Did the kind wolf have a motive for getting the lamb into a hole and then generously swallowing him to get him out?

The president says that the merger added only a paltry 4 per cent to the steel trust's share of the total output. But the New York Tribune, commenting at the time of the deal, said that possession of the “immense ore and coal lands” owned by the Tennessee company would give to the trust “control of the iron ore situation of the United States." A pretty little stake this for the clever little game, 700.000,000 tons of ore and 2.000.000,000 tons of coal, according to the Tribune, enough to make the trust good for a hundred years? Along with this went a plant fitted to make “open hearth” rails, something the trust was greatly In need of.

And the steel trust still gets a tariff bonus of 40 cents per ton on ore. $4 per ton on pig iron, $7.84 on rails and ranging upward on® other steel products to $25 and even SIOO per ton in some cases. These tariff duties help to make the trust “effective” and have enabled it to tax the people many hundred millions since Mr. Roosevelt became president. Has he kept “hands off” for the same reason that led him to O. K. the chewing up of the trust’s juciest competitor? JESSE F. ORTON.