Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1909 — TO TRAIN GUNS ON PHONE TRUST [ARTICLE]

TO TRAIN GUNS ON PHONE TRUST

Independents Will Attack Mll-lion-Dollar Bell Merger. FI6HT INVOLVES $400,000,000 Government to Be Asked to Put Btop to Monster Move Which Threatens Existence of System Serving a Population of 20,000,000 —Battle to Be Opened In Chicago on Dec. 7 Missouri Seeks Ouster Against Giant Combine. Jefferson City, Mo., Nov. 30.—Attorney General Major today filed an application before Judge Valliant, justice of the Missouri supreme court, asking for the appointment of an examiner to inquire into the legality of the proposed merger of the American Telephone and Telegraph company, the Bell Telephone company and the Missouri and Kansas Telephone company. New York, Nov. 30. —Declaring that the courts will be invoked to check the monopoly of communication that is threatened by the billlon-dollar combine recently announced by the American Telephone and Telegraph company, representatives of the independent telephone interests throughout the country are planning in this city a national fight for the principle of open competition. With $400,000,000 invested in the independent telepohne plants, leaders In this movement assert the interests of the public demand that the government take immediate action against the merger. At a convention of the Independent Telephone association that has been called In Chicago for Dec. 7, a formal protest to Washington against <£e restraint of trade that they declare will be effected by the absorption of the telegraph interests by the Bell system will be made. Suits to prevent the acquisition by the Bell compqpy of important systems In 'Ohio, Tnßfdha, Missouri, fowtr and Michigan, have already been instituted in St. Louis and Cleveland. The independent forces also are preparing to build a trunk wire system from the Atlantic seaboard to the Missouri river. “We feel that we owe a moral as well as a business obligation to the men who have placed $400,000,000 of their earnings in the home telephone plants,” said E. H. Moulton, president of the Independent Telephone association. “We shall exert ourselves In every possible way to show the government that it, too, has an obligation to protect these investors as well as the 20,000,000 consumers In Independent telephone systems."