Going After The Trusts

GOING AFTER THE TRUSTS.

If President Roosevelt is elected next year it will be because the voters of the country believe that he is helping them in their battle with the trusts. It is not strange, then, that the President is doing all in his power to give currency to the idea that he is fighting the trusts with might and main. Let us see how he is doing this. Let us see how much he is entitled to the distinguished consideration of the people for his efforts to curb the trusts. Mr. Roosevelt started in political life as a strenuous free trader, and was a member of the New York Free Trade club, yet recently, under pressure from the Protective Tariff League, he joined the "standpatters," and thus stands opposed to the most certain way of curbing the trusts and giving relief to the people--by reducing the tariff duties. It was the President's voice that killed the Littlefield anti-trust bill in the last Congress and caused the passage of two sham anti-trust bills--the Elkins anti-rebate bill and the Department of Commerce bill with its Bureau of Corporations to give publicity to trusts. His voice could have caused his Attorney General to go after the coal trust that William Randolph Hearst had treed with his own money and solely in the interest of the people. His voice was silent. Instead of saying "Sick 'em, Knoxy," he left Mr. Hearst to guard the tree alone. The facts that are slowly coming to light in regard to the new bureau of corporations in the Department of Commerce should open the eyes of the voters of the country to the real position of the President on the trust question. In discussing the "Present Statistical Outlook in Washington," the correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, on July 27, said of this new bureau: "The work now laid out for this bureau is of a really thorough type, and if it is pursued with vigor on the lines now suggested there will be a good deal of complain in the near future when the methods now contemplated are actually applied. Pressure of the most strenuous sort will undoubtedly be brought to bear at the White House. Just how soon the Department will really begin to show its hand in the matter of trust investigation cannot be certainly predicted, but those who are in a position to know say it will not be until after the next presidential election. As a matter of fact, a good deal of time is needed for the organization of the work and for laying out special lines of investigation. All this will consume many months, and Secretary Cortelyou is too tactful a man to weaken his strategetic position by opening fire in a presidential campaign, if there would be any danger of hurting his party thereby. It will, therefore, be a good while before there are any definite results of the inquiries of the Bureau of Corporations."

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Colonel Bryan says that a bunco steerer led the democratic party into the net of Wall street in 1892, but that it cannot be done again. What is the use of his going about the country constantly belittling himself with abuse of Grover Cleveland then? Is he so angry with himself for leading the party in 1896 and 1900 into the net of the two most disastrous defeats it has ever suffered, that he must constantly rail at the only democrat who has been able to take the party and win a presidency with it since the war, even when the ex-president is conducting himself in every way as an exemplary private citizen without present or future ambitions? Mr. Bryan might serve himself and the people better.