Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1900 — ANTI-TRUST PROPOSALS. [ARTICLE]

ANTI-TRUST PROPOSALS.

Government Ownership and Free Trade the Leading; Features. The National Anti-Trust Conference at Chicago adopted a long address to the public, in which the people are urged to organize to deprive trusts of their power. It declares that the conference is not making war on business combinations to reduce cost and augment productive efficiency. It charges that oppressive trusts hamper the production of wealth. The Standard Oil, the Meat, the Anthracite Coal, the Sugar, the Paper and the Steel trusts are denounced by name. It charges that a Banking trust is threatened, which w r ould dictate the volume of paper money and reduce all bankers to servants of itself. It declares that the tendency is toward a few great trust's which w’ould become absolute masters of the American people. It declares that the only remedy is the abolition of legalized privileges of every kind, and especially those created by tariffs, by the granting of the money issuing function to private corporations and by private ownership of railroad and telegraph lines. The address holds that no one can object to the abolition of tariffs which foster trusts. It declares that the trust magnates control the banks, and. with control of the volume of the circulating medium, they would absolutely dominate the commercial life of the nation. It holds that the telegraph is a natural adjunct of the postoffice, but' in private hands it has worked vast evil. It declares that private ownership of railroads has furnished the basis of nearly every great commercial trust with which the people to-day are cursed. The coal trust is vitalized by railw r ay privileges; the oil trust' could not have acquired its power without them; the beef trusts and the grain elevator trust depend upon them; they make the steel trust flourish, and from express combinations down to newspaper agencies, from hack rights at depots to freight discriminations a host of minor trusts suck in all the vitality they have us monopolies from railway privileges. The conference udopted the following resolution introduced by Congressman Sulzer: “Kesolved, That the members of the Anti-Trust League shall give practical effect to their antagonism to trusts by refusing to purchase, so far as practicable, any goods made and controlled by a trust, and shall employ the weapon of ostracism against those who support with coercion and violence the monopolies which oppress the people.”