Government Ownership As A Solution Of The Trust Question

The trusts continue to increase and multiply. Soon all the great industries of the country will be included in a few great trust organizations. One of the things which this condition means to the people is that they will be forced to pay cash for everything they buy or go without. This might not be a bad thing for the people generally provided the cash price is what it should be. But so long as the protective tariff enables these trust organizations to force a price on the American consumer forty per cent higher than these trust made products might be sold for at a profit, and forty per cent higher than they are actually sold to the other peoples of the earth after they have been transported half way around the world, the outlook for the American consumer is not at all pleasing.

Still the combinations go on. The great agricultural implement companies have combined. The farmer will now pay the trust price for his farming implements, as he does for his coal, his steel products, his sugar, his oil and for the transportation of his products to the markets.

The transportation or railway trust is probably the greatest of all these. The transportation of the country is now practically combined in three great systems and each of these systems is worked by the will of a very few great financiers, practically at the will of one man. Nor is it probable that the end of combinations in the transportation field has yet been reached. It is probable that in the near future the three great railway systems of the present will be united into one. And this may not be an unmitigated evil to the country. If this condition becomes an actual fact, it will have been demonstrated that the State may operate the railroads, for certainly if all the railways of the country can be successfully operated under one private management, they may be successfully operated by the state. One of the objects of these combinations is the reduction of operating expenses and there is no question but that the operating expenses may be reduced thereby. And if operating expenses are reduced, then there is greater profit resulting from any given tariff. Such a railway trust may thus demonstrate to the satisfaction of all that the railway may be operated by the state to the advantage of the people.

With the railroads operated by the governments, the profits which go to stockholders could be left in the pockets of the people. State management would also mean the abolition of the rebate system and the fixing of a minimum rate per hundred per mile. Under such an arrangement the small shipper would have an equal chance with the large shipper which he does not enjoy under present conditions There appears no reason why the railroads might not be thus operated by the government just as successfully as is the post office department.

Of course this would carry the principle of state socialism a step forward, but in what other direction are the people to look for relief from the extortions of the trusts? They have become so all-powerful that they are able now to control the government and make it do their bidding. Government ownership would do away with this paramountcy of trust interest and make the government itself the one great trust, and this would be the people's trust. And certainly it will be safer for the people to have the industries of the country directed by the government than to have them concentrated in the hands of a few private trusts, which the government is unable to control.

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The appointment of Bill Judson to the chairmanship of the executive committee of the republican state central committee, thereby making him responsible for the conduct of the republican campaign in Michigan this fall, seems not to have served to allay the feelings of the antis against the republican state ticket. Two years ago they confined their operations to the county of Washtenaw with the result that they seated a democrat in every office in the county building. Since that time the man of the wink has expanded into a state boss by the grace of Gov. Bliss. It will be remembered that some of the most prominent republicans of the county after the election of Bliss made the turn down of Judson a personal matter to the extent of going to see Bliss and trying to get him to throw Judson overboard, but instead of this Bliss made him oil inspector again and broadened his sphere of pernicious activity. Now he has been placed in a position in which it will be his prerogative to formulate plans for the campaign and direct the efforts of the workers for republican success. Everyone knows what this means, for Bill Judson knows but one method of political work. Accordingly it is reported that the antis will extend their operations outside of Washtenaw county. They will aim to secure the defeat of the state ticket. They will rebuke Bliss as well as Judson, if they can. This position of the antis is entirely consistent. The very methods which they have objected to so strongly in Judson are the methods responsible for the Bliss administration. lts conception was due to shameless hire, it was brought forth by the iniquitous use of money and Judson was one of the attending physicians. This time he is to be an even more important functionary in the affair. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who were opposed two years ago are still more radical in their opposition to another state administration owing its origin to Judsonism.

Any law that gives the seller an unfair advantage over the buyer is an unjust law, and it cannot escape the reasonable protest of the people when that quality is found out. The American people are brave, and they are as just and intelligent as they are upright and brave. Their sense of justice is aroused when they discover that manufacturers here sell their products abroad at lower prices than they charge right here at home. Their intelligence will not permit them to be lulled or gulled by the duplicity of the republican party with its cheap, clap trap arguments designed to befool the voter. They have opened their eyes to the fact that the maintenance of our rate of wages does not depend on high duties- when industries can market their products abroad, where lower prices prevail, at prices that undersell the foreigner in his own market. They know that "the foreigner does not pay the tax" when they see the duty is clapped on to the home price in addition to a fair profit, and they have seen that the protected industries put their prices up just as high as it is possible and yet steer clear of foreign competition. They have learned that protection makes millionaires of the manufacturers who get it, while it makes them pay more for his products than he charges his foreign customers, and that the laborers it professes to protect have to pay higher for their living than they ever did and yet their wage show no increase.

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After a conference with Judge Durand, Chairman Justin R. Whiting has announced that the notification program will come off at Grand Rapid on Sept 9. At that time there will be a meeting of the state central committee and the candidates and the democratic eritors of the state. The plan of the campaign will probably be outlined and everything squared away for work.