Show TB TRUSTS AND THE PEOPLE rev sam P jones gives some inside facts on trusts the standard oil trust the sugar trust the whiskey trust tobacco trust relations to prices shown up S trusts raise arices rr ices the large trusts and combinations already formed and being formed by aggregations of capital are considered hurtful to the masses and common people this Is a theory theoretically a thing may be so and practically it may be very untrue when we speak of trusts and combines we think of the standard oil trust the sugar trust the tobacco Trust etc when the standard oil trust was formed I 1 was paying forty cents a gallon tor kerosene oil I 1 am getting U now for ten cents A gallon I 1 was paying twelve and one halt cents for sugar several years ago but when the combines set in we got it at five and one quarter when the whiskey trust was organized I 1 was an hopes it would put up whiskey where the poor devils get it but they have seemed to cheapen that down to where they can pay the gov ernS nent a gallon revenue on it and yet sell it for which demon berates that they are making it and letting the public have it at about twelve and one halt cents a gallon there Is no doubt about the aggregation ot wealth with brains controlling it that they can manufacture any article cheaper than it Is or has been manufactured on a small scale the great railroad combinations many think will eat us up blood rare occasion ally I 1 get on a little jerkwater jerk water road that Is not in the combination and I 1 want to double my accident policies and be satisfied with a 15 mlle an hour galt and console myself with the idea that I 1 can ride all day for a dollar but when I 1 get on the pennsylvania or system of roads with their schedules forty miles an hour vestibule trains with parlor cars sleeping cars dining cars I 1 have a hotel on wheels carrying me towards my destination and all this for about two cents a mile give me the road that la in the combine to carry one where I 1 am going public sentiment 13 the safeguard which Is thrown around all aggregations of wealth and all combinations of interest the standard oil the railroad combinations the sugar trust are as sensitive to public sentiment aa the snowbank snow bank to the rays of the eun trusts and combines will not hurt the public but stockholders and bond holders may suffer later on when these great bulky institutions become unwieldy and fall with their own weight fifty thousand men in the united states perhaps not more are inter isted in the great trusts of the country these men know that thero an ol 01 other people in america and their wisdom teaches them where boundary lines are over which they cannot go without peril to themselves vea and disaster to their business no combination now says damn the pub lie but they have their weathercocks out on every prominent cupola watch k ing how the wind blows jt of course political capital can be K made out of such formations of wealth and social orders may raise the black flag to fight them but I 1 am a thousand limes more afraid of demagogues and politicians than I 1 am afraid of trusts and combines good government which means not only the well being of the citizen but the overthrow of all that will hurt the citizen depends up 1 on good men in office and we had better pay less attention to what we call trusts and combinations and more attention to those wham we elect to office in the municipal state and national governments mr stead in bis book it christ came to chicago speaks of the big four of chicago 1 and says of them that their methods i are clean and their transactions are honest but that in the road of their success lies the blood and bones of the victims over whom they have run to C success the successful man or comy bin atlon means the downfall of other men and other combinations one f preacher Is preaching to twenty p preachers around him consider seventy v hundred a per anve a full house and a feet jam one physician making 10 w a year and forty little doctors in the neighborhood not making their y grub A oaker selling COO a year means many little merchants r applying for clerkship in his artore it Is the survival of the fittest it may be when god made this world he made mountains towering into the clouds and valleys below the level of the aea he made lakes and oceans he spread out the prairies of the west and piled UP mountains around the little valleys ong the ranges of the and the Alleg henitte in the oceans waters we find whales and some very small fishes and when the whales come along the little fish have to chlde out I 1 have traveled ovir this country from ocean to ocean and from montreal to galves lon annually for twenty years I 1 have watched the progress of events and I 1 he professions processions process ions as they marched I 1 ve yet to know of a single instance where combines and trusts hurt the toas sea or permanently raised the price ot any product I 1 am a thousand times ore willing to deal with the trusts and combines and purchase their products than I 1 am to put my money into their institutions and imperil my hold gs conscious of their want of etabel ty and fearing their final downfall of course these great combinations k affect legislation it they do not control u in many instances but while they ay procure legislation in their own J merest yet they have one eye upon e public sentiment all the time contos that they can go just 60 far and no farther here and there they have shut down a manufactory or closed up an institution and affected some individuals divi duals but we are not looking from that standpoint when we look at the of our population we bay they are only procuring cheaper and buying for less money these products than they could have dono under other circumstances with the final disintegration of trusts and combines which will inevitably evit ably come when financial disaster and shrinkage of values shall come of course the surplus of their product will be thrown upon the market and only the stockholders in these trusts and combines will suffer As sure aa that the sun shines whenever any institution tit ution becomes unwieldy because of its size and bulk it will finally tall ot its own weight I 1 am an expansionist and I 1 believe that one of tho causes of the stringency and shrinkage of values in this country is because we have not gone out over the seas with our products as we should have done while there is a demand for our products of the farm and manufactory of this country there will always be plenty of money but wheat and corn and cotton and all kinds of manufactures are a drug on the market and no demand for thorn then we have stringency and hard times but when aba highways over the seas shall be laden with our products into foreign countries and the gold is brought back in the ships then we shall flourish peren lally these great combinations are the only powers in this country that can do this thing for us A mogro and an old mule can make corn and cotton a fellow with a two hundred dollar saw mill can make lumbar but only aggregations of wealth can build ships and open markets in foreign lands |