THE RELIGION OF TRUSTS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 20 May 1901, Page 4

THE RELIGION OF TRUSTS.

The gigantic aims of the promoters 01 the enormous American trusts has directed the attention of thinking men in the States to the real objects of the promoter* of the various "combines," i.ncl thus some little insight is obtained tts :,:) .': legality of these institutions. £u previous issues of the Stak it. was pointed out that these vast organisations were in reality a threat to the State, and every effort should be made to curb their mischievous tendency. In the March issue of " The Arona," the leading review in America, and an organ of advanced thought, there appears an article entitled " How Trusts can bo crushed," from the pen of Justice Walter Clark, one of the Supreme Court judges for North Carolina. The writer is one of the ablest judges in Carolina, having occupied that position for 12 years, and his rulings have always commanded the highest respect for their clearness, strength and ability. The real tenor of his article is that as power springs from the people, so the people should determine the matter of trusts. The opening paragraph goes to the root of the subject. , The learned Judge says : " Illegal combinations of capital known as Trusts exist, and find great profit and no molestation in continuing to exist in defiance of law. Yet the law should be supreme'in a land where the will of the people expressed through their representatives is' the law, and the greatest as well as the humblest should bow in submission to it." Mr Clark then goes on to show that they are illegal, a 3 the Statutes of Congress of the United States, 1897, known as the " Sherman Anti-Trust Law," prohibits Trusts under a penalty of 5000 dollars and one year's imprisonment, and this Act has been upheld in the decisions. In IJorth Carolina, by an Act passed in 1889, Trusts were held to be illega 1 and punishable by a fine of 10,000 dollars and ten years' imprisonment, lherefore, trusts were unlawful combinations both by Federal and State law, and yet in spite of this these combined are being formed and carried out dai'y in spite of illegality. Judge Clark, in alluding to the outcry raised against Trusts thus tersely puts it : "You complain of the evils the Trusts'inflicts upon you. You com lain that the earnings of producer and profits of the small dealer, and the opportunity of advancement to many, are all confiscated for the creation of a few multi-millionaires and why do you complain ? The remedy is in your own hands and you can do everything, and you attempt nothing. The people is all powerful when they will it." Then he goes on to say that if representatives do not do their duty get rid of them and elect bette*r men. After pointing out that Trust 3 rule everything, the Judge goes on to consider the nature and operation of these illegal combinations, and his remarks should be well studied as the power of these gigantic combinations is not only confined to America, but will reach these colonies if steps and stringent steps are not taken to prevent them gettingji foothold. The modus omrandi is as follows :—" They com-

bine vast masses of capital; then ■whenever they find an honest dealer or a competing manufacturer making a reasonable,profit on goods similar to theirs, they put an agent, or open a store, nominally in the - name of another, alongside of him and undersell him till they have broken him up or compel him to sell out to the Trust, whereupon immediately the price of the manufactured article is put up to the consumer, and the price paid to the producer for raw material is re-

duced. The monopoly having no longer any competition, the producer is forced to take an unjustly low price and the consumer is compelled to pay an unjustly high one, and the opportunity of countless thousands of men, •who would have been dealers and manufacturers to support their families is destroyed. Trusts destroy both classes alike and put the profits into , their own pockets. There is no mistake in this, and it means if measures are not taken to prevent it that such a combination as the Morgan-Carnegie combination would be able with its vast capital, its fleet of steamers to swamp the Australasian and New Zealand markets and ruin such concerns as the Dispatch Foundry, and the various small engineering establishments in this colony by underselling and underworking them, and when this is accomplished, be able to command their own prices, and ruin and cru3h the local manufacturing classes. Much capital has been made • of the liberality of Mr. Carnegie and ' of his donations to libraries and colleges, and that he has.expressed an opinion that it would be happiness'for a millionaire to die a poor man, but yet he still goes on'filling up his millions and giving donations of thousands every now and then to some educational institute (the last is a donation of £IOO,OOO to the Glasgow

University—Ma Conscience! What a guid mori! £IOO,OOO to the University, from a man that is said to be ■worth over half a hundred millions, a mere drop in the sea of money. And the Israelites set up a God in the •wilderness. Yea even a Golden Calf and worshipped it, and so do we in «• these modern times, and say "Great is the God of Plutocracy as personified in the Trusts and its High Priest Carnegie"), as if he was making a poor reparation* for the grindery and bloodshed he caused to be shed at Pittsburgh some few years since because his workmen struck for a living wage, and it must have been this liberal gentleman, Judge Clark, had in view when he writes: "To that end (protection against the penalties incurred by reason of violating the laws of the State) portions of the amounts illegally -levied upon the public by these modest Dick Turpins are set aside for the or control, of newspapers, for donations to educational institutes that shall indoctrinate our youth with sentiments of the beauty and holiness of -Trusts and the liberality of Trust magnates, and for the debauching of elections,, of the manipulation of ' Legislatures through " lobbying " and other well-known and reprehensible methods." .. The Judge recommends the strict carrying out of the law, and •that the Trusts being illegal they should not be entitled to recover in Courts of law., and'he also suggests flther measures of a, drastiQ nature.

There is no do übfc danger ahead and it will require .all the attention of the Colonial Legislatures to deal with these combines. Without discussing th" relative morns of Protection and 1« strode it seems like as if nothing less than a heavy, even a prohibitive, duty will be necessa. ry to deal with the products and operations of these " combines" and pre vent the swamping and ruin of our m . anufactones and small traders. In cont -ection with the approaching struggle between the industrial classes and capital, the following clipping from the Wellington Post is interesting :-" Kichar. d Le Gallienne, the well-known e&sayist, has fixed the time and place to the culmination of the industrial struggle. He says : -" I think I should like to be a young man in America some 20 or 28 years hence, when the great Revolu-tion-the great fight capital and labour—is likely to be on."