People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1897 — Law and the Trusts. [ARTICLE]

Law and the Trusts.

It becomes more apparent every day that laws which will prove effective in suppressing the trust are impossible. Indeed it is questionable if any law against the trusts which would be constitutional would not operate against individuals at some point or other in such a way as to make them repugnant and ultimately lead to their repeal. It will be recalled, in this connection, that what was expected te be most effective of the innerstate commerce laws relating to combinations and pools by rail roads was never invoked save for the purpose of sending E. V. Debs to prison. In the famous case of Texas against the Standard Oil Trust, Judge Swayne of the federal court, sitting at Dallas on Washington’s birthday anniversary, declared the Texas anti-trust law unconstitutional. Every trust which in its operations is inimical to the public welfare gets its power directly or indirectly through possession of the land; every monopoly in existence depends in a greater or less degree upon the land for its peculiar ability to extort. To the land, then, must the people look for the means of correcting the evil. By taxing land; values to *itr full, absorbing for the us€T of society all unearned increment, thus destroying speculative values; and in the case of railways, street and gas companies, etc., placing the tax upon the right of way through and over land. When the people learn that so long as monopoly in land exists, so long will all other forms of private monopoly; when they fully comprehend that land lies at the foundation of monopoly, as it does of existence itself, then, and not till then, may we hope for such enactments as will destroy the evils of private monopoly.—Farmer’s Voice.