Rock Island Argus

Belated, Not Premature.

Russell Sage, in opposing anti-trust legislation, says that the moment has not arrived for intelligent remedial action. He compares the situation with that of a sick man whose case cannot at once be diagnosed by the doctors. They must await developments before prescribing.

To the ordinary observer it would seem that the trust evil has reached a point where not only is a diagnosis easy but where the application of a remedy is imperatively necessary if the disease is to be fought at all. For what does Mr. Sage wish us to wait? For the utter collapse of the patient, which, in this instance, is the American public? Surely there is no need of further proof of the malign operation of the more evil combines. The evidence in this direction is overwhelming and of a nature to convince anyone not bound to the trust idea by ties of self-interest.

Trusts absolutely control many important manufactured products of this country. They have a monopoly that is rendered impregnable by the operation of the Dingley tariff. The American consumer is so utterly at their mercy that they make him pay more for their products than the same products are sold for in foreign markets. In the case of the beef trust the American public was brought face to face with a situation where exorbitant trust prices must be paid or those refusing to pay must go without meat. In the case of the coal trust the public is required to pay scarcity prices because the barons esteemed themselves the rulers of both property and labor by the favor of Jehovah. In the absence of genuinely remedial legislation the people have no hope of relief. The trusts are their masters.

Mr. Sage is mistaken in asserting that the movement for anti-trust legislation is premature. If anything, it is belated, because recent developments indicate that the combines have secured a grip on the United States senate which threatens to nullify all attempts at the enactment of effective anti-trust laws in the near future. The people have been too patient. They have deferred insisting upon relief from the trust evil until the national legislative body through which relief must come is dangerously subject to the dictation of the trusts. Mr. Sage wants the people to maintain this attitude of patient waiting. He is wrong. The thing for the people to do now is to demand honest legislation against the trusts, and to voice that demand in so compelling a tone that congress will be afraid to disobey, even though Rockefeller again telegraphs to United States senators ordering them to take action against the people.