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Evidently as soon as yellow people begin to use their wits they first apply them to the yellow journals. The daily newspapers, however, both yellow and white, like natural monopolies, are public necessities. The people must have the news, and therefore, the predatory interests, whether political or financial, have been quick to get control of the people's necessity.
Equalizing of business opportunity, under full and free competition, must be a prime responsibility in the reconversion period and in the years that follow. Many leading businessmen have recognized the importance of such action both to themselves and to the economy as a whole. But we must do more than break up trusts and monopolies after they have begun to strangle competition.
Here on these sands the giant, Goliath, strode out pompously to be slain by a stun from a sling sent by David when he wuz a shepherd boy. "How I wished I had some of them stuns to slay the evil giants of 1900," sez I. "If a stun could be aimed at Intemperance and another at the big monopolies and destroy'em as dead as Goliath, what a boon it would be."
The farmers' protests against these rates had been loud; and now, when they found themselves unable to get loans at any rate whatever, their complaints naturally increased. Looking around for one cause to which to attribute all their misfortunes, they pitched upon the corporations or monopolies, as they chose to call them, and especially upon the railroads.
An act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies was passed by Congress on the 2d of July, 1890. The provisions of this statute are comprehensive and stringent. It declares every contract or combination, in the form of a trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in the restraint of trade or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations, to be unlawful.
I was at first inclined to favor the system of leasing, as it seemed to promise the largest revenue to the Government and to afford the best security against monopolies; but further reflection and our experience in leasing the lead mines and selling lands upon credit have brought my mind to the conclusion that there would be great difficulty in collecting the rents, and that the relation of debtor and creditor between the citizens and the Government would be attended with many mischievous consequences.
Frederick W. Evans is an Englishman by birth, and was a "reformer" in the old times, when men in this country strove for "land reform," the rights of labor, and against the United States Bank and other monopolies of forty or fifty years ago.
These monopolies are held by the favourites of the Government; and though generally the houses that hold them are either unwilling or unable to make more than a tithe of what the Romans would require, no other establishment can produce these articles, and they cannot be imported but at a ruinous duty. We are reminded of another grievance under which the Romans groan.
Then followed anti-trust laws which aimed at the suppression of "pools," in which many large producers or manufacturers combined to sell their staples at a uniform price, a practice which inevitably set up monopolies. The "Trusts" were to these what the elephant is to a colt.
It was in vain that the tobacco monopoly and a number of other immense monopolies were given to the new company; they could not enable it to meet the proper claims spread among the public, no matter what trouble might be taken to diminish them at all hazard and at all loss. It was now necessary to seek other expedients.
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