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Show A NEW "JUNGLE." High finance seems to have done its best. to conceal tho ownership of the Union Stockyards of Chicago not only from the government and other interested inter-ested parties, but even from the owners themselves. It is apparent that some of the stockholders and officials did not know who controlled the company. It is too early in the investigation to fix the blame for the pernicious secrecy of this corporation deal. But it is not too early to condemn a system by which one of the chief sources of the nation's food supply was manipulated. No one will contend that the great packing business which has grown up in Chicago Chi-cago is in any way comparable to the business of a corporation which serves only a small part of the population. The packing business can rather be compared to the railway business. Long ago the laws of the country made a distinction between commercial enterprises which were " affected with a public interest" and those which did not touch the interests of any very large part of the population. Those enterprises which were "affected with a public interest" came to be known as public utilities and were regulated by special sets of laws. And a judge in administering the laws was required to consider the element of public interest in rendering his decision. A concern whose business cannot be defined as public in any just sense is often justified in refusing to submit its books for inspection in court. But seldom sel-dom is there justification for an attempt to conceal the ownership of a corporation corpora-tion "affected with a public interest" by withholding the books. The public has a right to know who controls such a corporation and how it is being managed man-aged because the interests of the public are involved. It would be idlo to argue that a business which has grown to the proportions pro-portions of the stockyards business of Chicago, affecting as it docs the whole nation, is a private business beyond the concern of the public or tho government. govern-ment. And the financiers recognized this fact when they purposely tried to obscure the ownership of the Chicago stockyards. They thereby admitted the public interest and tried to shield them- selves from it by shameful tricks of high finance. j Although it is regrettable that a new "Jungle" has been uncovered in Chicago Chi-cago while we are confronted by so many serious problems, the government must proceed with its work of cleaning up just as it did a dozen years ago when it brought the stockyards of the fountry under a rigid system of inspection inspec-tion and thus eliminated rotten and poisonous packing products. |