Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 106, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1899 — TO FIGHT THE TRUSTS [ARTICLE]

TO FIGHT THE TRUSTS

CONFERENCE RESULTS IN FORMING NATIONAL BODY. Call for a Convention Will Be Issued '» hortly, Pending; Organization All Over the Country—Closing; of the Big; Meeting in Chicago. As the result of the trust conference in Chicago a new anti-trust organization, national in scope, has been formed. The object of the organization is the crystallization of the anti-trust spirit throughout the country, which the promoters assert has been greatly strengthened by the deliberations of the convention. The meeting was attended by many of the delegates to the conference who believe the time is ripe for the formation of a body whose strength shall eventually overthrow oppressive capitalistic combinations. With that object in view a huge anti-trust conference is to be called in the near future, the date and place of meeting to be arranged by an executive committee which has the matter in charge. Fifteen addresses were listened to by the delegates to the conference on the second day of it§ session. Many additional delegates were present at the conference, whole delegations having come from some States, and an increasing interest in the problems and the means of utilizing the suggestions made about them for the public good was manifested. After deciding in the morning to have a special committee to receive and consider resolutions concerning trusts, effects of the tariff in causing the growth of trusts were considered. In the afternoon the conference listened to several accounts of the industrial situation from the farmers’ point of view, and also to an anarchist’s solution of the truts problem. The evening meeting was the liveliest and most exciting yet held. Enemies and advocates of trusts followed each other in quick succession, making all of them strong assertions of their confidence in their positions. The day had many humorous moments, both during the debates and while the papers were being read, and the attendance on the part of the Chicago public was larger at each successive session. Bourke Cockran was the speaker at the third day’s session, whose address was most eagerly listened to. What he would say for himself, and what for the New York delegation, of which he is* perhaps the most prominent member, had been speculated upon since the opening of the convention. The evening program was changed by the omission of Mr. Bryan’s address, and a great audience which had gathered in part to hear that leader was disappointed by being informed that the Democratic leader was to talk Saturday morning. The session of the conference Friday morning was devoted in the main to the addresses of labor advocates, William J. Bryan spoke at the trust conference for nearly two hoiurs in the morning session Saturday, and the galleries, packed an hour before he spoke and attentive and enthusiastic while he talked, emptied themselves when the Nebraskan had taken his seat again among the delegates. The audience was with Mr. Bryan before he rose. The galleries went wild over his periods and shouted and stamped and applauded all his striking sentiments. .At the conclusion of the address Mr. Bryan grasped an outstretched hand here and there and made his way to a seat, only to arise twice in acknowledgment of the prolonged cheering. As Bryan had been the striking feature of the morning session, there was another and similar scene in the afternoon and final session, when he and Bourke Cockran were plunged into, a debate on the platform, where the evening before Mr. Bryan had explained that it was agreed to be not in keeping with the character of the conference for them to debate. Nevertheless that was what happened after the general discussion of the final afternoon had gotten into full swing. There was no interruption for Mr. Bryan save that which came from applause and brief and indistinct interpolations. But with Mr. Cockran it was different from beginning to end. Thomas J. Morgan and others wanted to start a mixed debate and partially succeeded. Finally the New York man was led into a continuous closing argument with a peroration that took the auditors fairly off their feet.