People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1895 — THE ANTI-TRUST LAW [ARTICLE]

THE ANTI-TRUST LAW

IT 18 DECIDED TO BE A HOLLOW MOCKERY. What W* Need Now Is a Sound Anti* Trost Law —The Beef Combine, the Borer and the Vhlikcr Trusts Hoe* ten. A recent dispatch from Washington says: Washington special: The interest Secretary Morton has shown in the advance of meat prices is spreading to the other members of the cabinet. The president and Mr. Morton have had several conferences on the subject. Yesterday’s cabinet meeting was devoted almost wholly to it. The question most discussed was whether the government would apply the anti-trust law to break down the price of dressed beef. Attorney General Olney expressed serious doubts whether any case made out under the anti-trust law would stand the test of the courts. In ihis opinion he was joined by Secretary Carlisle. Both these officials stated that the law was so loosely drawn as to be practically valueless for the purpose intended. Postmaster General Wilson, who was a member of the judiciary committee at the time the bill was under discussion in the house, stated that Judge Culberson then pronounced it worthless, but that owing to the fact that the session was about to close, amendment was impossible. Attorney General Olney and Mr. Carlisle, after a study of the two cases which have been brought under the law, and in which the Sugar trust, and Whisky trust, were defendants, gave it as their opinion that the same failure on the part of the government would follow if a case should be brought against the beef combine. Secretary Morton’s investigations show the combination which controls the dressed beef trade of the country practically fixes the price of cattle on the hoof, as well as the price for dressed meat sold to consumers through their own agencies in large cities. They also control to a very great extent the means of transportation through their ownership of refrigerator cars, in which the carcasses are carried from the slaughtering houses to the markets. From the statistics gathered by the secretary of agriculture there is reason to believe that gross discrimination is practiced by transportation companies against small dealers and in favor of localities and the large shippers. The question was discussed at the cabinet meeting whether proceedings to break the combination should not properly begin through the medium of the interstate commerce commission, in the nature of a suit for infractions of the interstate commerce law. It was also suggested that the state of Illinois possessed an anti-trust law much more rigid in its provision than the federal statute, and that proceedings might be brought by the state authorities against the great Chicago packers upon evidence which the government would be glad to furnish.

Telegrams from Chicago to-day indicate that the packers are becoming alarmed over the situation against their combination, and have ma'de an arbitrary reduction in the price of cattle on the hoof, giving as their excuse that an enforced reduction in the price of dressed meat, due to the action of the agricultural department, compels them to pay lower prices for cattle at the stock yards. It has been said that “trusts are private concerns,” and it might have been as appropriately said that theft was a “private enterprise.” It has been urged, all along that by combining the interests of manufacturers and those who deal in the necessities of life the cost of production and distribution could be lessened. Of course this method of reasoning deceived no one who had studied the methods of trusts and knew the avarice of those who controlled them. The recent experiences with the Whisky trust, the Sugar trust, the Standard Oil octopus and the beef combine, goes far to prove the worst fears of the enemies of these various combinations to be well grounded. The price of oil and dressed beef has gone up beyond all reason within the past few days. There is evidently no cause for this rise except in the simple fact that it is the whim of the trusts and based on their greed for gain. And worst of all is there seems to be no means of relief. These freebooters are “holding up” the public for millions, and it is now decided by the president and the cabinet, we are told, that the anti-trust law is inadequate to the case. It proved Inadequate in the cases of the Whisky and Sugar trusts; will somebody tell us what it is adequate for? It is the product of that enemy to the human race, John Sherman. It could hardly be expected to be “adequate” to the successful prosecution of the moneyed interests. Mr. Sherman can draw up a law for the sale of bonds to aid resumption of specie payments, that will stand after resumption has resumed, and that will also cover the •ale ot bonds for money to run the government, but he can't draw up a law that will protect the rights of the people, or suppress the unlawful combination of freebooters that are undermining the free institutions of this country. If congress can’t do something with these modern brigands, some of these days the people will rise up and regulate them in a way that there will be no appeal to corrupt courts that make and unmake laws to suit the nselves ________