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‘V’
THE
November
FIIFI
Fifty-five
each acting separately, and yet working
together, even charging two or three or four
rates where one would have applied.
Thus has the United States Government
itself played into the hands of this monopoly,
for if the express-companies had consolidated,
Wickersham might have then brought an
action against the Express Trust, exactly as
he brought an action against the Standard
Oil so so
And so, while the express-companies have not
been guilty of violation of the Sherman Act,
yet they have done things a thousand times
worse, and through their interlocking and
intertwining ownership, they have been able
to evade responsibility for flagrant acts of
oppression so so
The Gathering Storm
‘ N passing, it might be well to call atten-
tion to the fact that the so-called dis-
solution of the Standard Oil Company and
the Tobacco Trust has worked no apparent
benefit to the consumer, yet Big Business has
been taught a lesson, and that is that Govem-
ment supervision and proper regulation is a
thing that the people can enforce.
Big Business has come upon us unawares so
It is a time of regulation and adjustment.
The regulation, however, must come through
trained businessmen, through economists, and
the whole thing must be freed as much as
possible from politics, passion and prejudice.
(I The rights of the small producer and the
consumer at large must be conserved. Taking
it all together, the regulation of the express-
companies, as begun by Franklin K. Lane,
under the direction of President Taft, is the
most important event of the year.
These express-companies which have made it
difficult for the necessities of life to flow from
where they are plentiful to where they are
needed have worked a robbery far greater in
volume than the piracies on the high seas
before the days of the Hanseatic League. And
that it should have been done under the pro-
tecting wing of the law of a so-called free
People makes it doubly atrocious.
The pirates of the Mediterranean and the
Adriatic of old were a law unto themselves so
But these modern pirates have legalized and
Organized piracy, making it a fine art. And
the men who were the chief instruments in
this piracy have occupied places of honor in
the State and in society. They have contrib-
uted largely to charity, education, religion,
and thus have they salved their consciences,
and pacified the public into the fond belief
that they were agents for good.
A list of one hundred of the chief stockholders
of these big express-companies reveals many
of our so-called “ First Citizens.”
Man justifies himself in everything he does.
(I These big owners of stock knew nothing of
the details of the business, and cared less so
No doubt, in many instances, these million-
aires did not have the brain to see nor the
imagination to detect the facts, which were
simply that they were, in many instances,
absolute parasites, stealing the food from
mothers and their children.
Only a lively awakening of the public has
been able to bring the offenders to book thus
far so so
And yet the managements of the big express-
companies must have foreseen the day when
they would be wiped out of existence. The
investigation has brought out the fact that
they used the equipment and the plants of
other people in their business.
The inventory asset of all of the express-
companies, as shown by Franklin K. Lane's
report, scarcely equals the receipts for a single
year so so
The policy has been, not to invest in plants
or equipment. The express-companies rent
their ollices, hire their horses, depend upon
the railroads to furnish cars and transporta-
tion. And thus the whole game has been
played “flying light,” seemingly sensing a
time when they would have to beat it.
And now, their fears are going to come true.
How soon, no one can say, but the sooner the
better. Score one for William Howard Taft,
and award a medal to Franklin K. Lane.
so
-” HAT was a foolish saying of Byron:
“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing
apart; ’tis woman's whole existence.”
Does it not all depend upon the man and the
woman ? The extent and quality of woman’s
love compared with man's have furnished the
physiologists and psychologists a great Field
for innocent speculation so And the whole
question is still unsettled, as it should be, and
is left to each new crop of poets to be used
as raw stock, just as though no one had ever
dreamed, meditated and speculated upon it
before so so
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