A BIG FINE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 142, 13 July 1909, Page 3

A BIG FINE.

( "A Big Oil Fine Actually Paid" is a significant heading in an American weekly. The great fine of 27,000,000 dollars imposed on Standard Oil canu! to nought, but Texas fastened on the Watm-Pierce Oil Company a line of 1,023,000 dollars, which was not shaken off by appeal. When the Court of last resort had confirmed the fine, the defendants found that the fine had risen by interest to 1,808,483 dollars. Th« money was sent along in ; motor cars, and appropriately photographed on the Treasury table. No sooner was the fine ipaid than Texas editors' began wrestling "With the problem of how it ought to be ! spent. To distribute it in reduced taxes, one journal points out, would give each person in the State 40 cents, and some of it would find its way into the pockets, of offenders against the very laws that the Waters-Pierce Company-were pun-! ished for breaking. Another paper suggests that the fine be treated "as a legacy to the helpless," thus showing that the State's prosecutions of the lawJess are not actuated by motives of gain. It would devote the money to •improving ' the lot of the insane. A third, however, views the fine with something like contempt. Imprisonment, it argues, is the only true punishment, for fines simply recoil on the people. "The penalty without imprisonment of anti-trust law violation is poor punishment. If the price of the trust's products could he regulated by law, a more fine would do; hut when they a,vc left t<> prey upon the purses of the people, It U all bosh—rjust the same as the people fining themselves for the transgressions of others. Perhaps the wise heads will learn better some day/' Papers, elsewhere, however, hail the payment of the fine as a red-letter day ia .the trusts, ■,