The Commoner.
JANUARY 26, 1907
A COLORADO PROTEST
A SIMPLE TRUST STORY
THOMAS H. BENTON
Simon Guggenheim- was elected by the Colo-,
rado legislature to succeed Senator Patterson.
Guggenheim had been charged with violating the
federal law against rebating, and also with hav
ing purchased- the senatorship by paying tho
campaign expenses of members of the legisla
ture. The republican legislature refused to adopt
a resolution of investigation and Guggenheim
was elected by republican votes. One republican
member refused to be delivered; that was Merel
D. Vincent of Delta county. Mr. Vincent said
that in behalf of the rank and file of the repub
licans of the state, hej?rotested against tho "sale
of the senatorship." Commoner readers may obtain
some idea of the new senator from Colorado by
reading the following extracts from Mr. Vincent's
speech:
"And who is it that wants this man's election?
Is it you? Is it the people of Colorado? I say
to you a fact and remember that I am not
qualifying it with one word, one sentence that
five men, purporting to act for the republican
state central committee, the official organization
of the republican party, have, bargained it off to
this man in return for contributions to the party,
and they ask you to ratify it! He is absolutely
unqualified, taking the record of his business
and his sanction of it, to sit in the United States
senate!
"If you send this man Guggenheim in the
manner and by the methods he uses to the United
States senate you will not live long enough to
cease regretting that action. If, on the other
hand, you stand up here, as you have a right
to do as republican members of this assembly,
standing on the platform, both the letter and
the spirit of it, of the republican party, and ex
press in accordance with that platform your choice
for United States senator, as long as you live, to
the last day of your life, you will look back with
gratitude and say, 'When I had put up to me the
greatest question of my life I stood out and acted
like a man.'
"Mr. Speaker, .you and I and every member
of this assembly represents his district, but in
addition to that, collectively, we are the trustees
of the reputation of the men and women of Colo
rado, We are the trustees of the reputation of
Colorado itself. It seldom comes to men to do
what you and I can do today, to perform tho
service that we can perform if we will stand up
before these five men who assume to dictate to
the republican party and call themselves its or
ganization and demand tho repudiation of its
platform, and act as our consciences and our
party principles dictate.
"When you act today you are the spokesmen
of the people of Colorado. Your action will be
recorded as its voice, and if you carry out the
program you have mapped out you will make
this state and its reputation, you will make the
political reputation of the men and women of
Colorado a thing to be scorned and sneered at
in every state in the union, a thing to be scorned
and sneered at by every state that considers in-
iQgrlty ana aDMty me- best qualincations for an
iuce 01 tins Kintu
"Consider these things. This is no light or
trivial matter, and you today are electing a man
who for six long years will represent the people
Ipf this state in tho greatest legislative tribunal
on earth. In doing so you ought not to eliminate
the reasons, you ought not to eliminate the qual
ifications, yoii ought, not, to eliminate those things
hat heretofore have been considered to best equip
k.man for service Inpfoblic life. When you send
him you say to all the world that, without regard
to him personally, he is entitled to it by reason
of his campaign contributions. Upon the same
reasoning; if Rockefeller lived in this state, and
because he was a wealthier man, and would con
tribute more to the party campaign fund, you
would elect him instead of Guggenheim, and the
same reason would permit you to elect a Harri
man or a Morgan. You can not get away from
your premises after you have adopted them."
JJJ
WHO CAN ANSWER?
Charles H. Hunter, Defiance, Ohio, submits
this interesting inquiry:
"Apropos of your article on 'Popular Phrases,'
the phrase, 'A government where all power is
from the people and in the people iind for the
people,' appears in a speech by Douglas, found
on page 169 of 'The Rhetorical Reader,' by Eben
ezer Porter, published in 1831. Can you tell me
what Douglas it was?"
Can any Commoner reader answer?
The New York Press, a republican newspaper,
tells "A Simple Trust Story" in this way:
. "The interstate commerce commission has
been hearing a case in the last few days which
is a very simple story. A firm of sellers of oil
in Brooklyn, were doing a prosperous business.
They bought their supply from tho Standard Oil
company. When the business grew big enough
to be worth while to Rockefeller greed the trust
was ( not content to make its profits on the oil
sold to the firm at wholesale; it wanted both its
previous profit of wholesale and the little firm's
profit of retail. It determined thatvthe firm must
get out of business. It was bound to swallow tho
whole thing. 'Note the method, Bimple as tho
story:
"A competitor came into the field. Tho com
plainants declare that the competing outfit wns
set up by the trust to kill off the firm which was
earning the profits coveted by the Rockefellers.
At any rate, the Standard Oil began to raise its
wholesale price on the firm sentenced to be ex
terminated. This forced the victims to raise tho
retail price or lose money. .But the newly arrived
competitor did not raise prices, for the reason,
the complainants charge, that tho wholesale price
was not increased on the enterprise which was
to drive out the old concern. Obviously the
condemned firm must get cheaper oil or go out
of business, as the consumers would not pay more
to it than to the other for their oil.
"To get cheaper oil the firm which had been
marked for slaughter by tho Rockefellers went
west to independent producers and made arrange
ments to ship oil in tank cars. The price was
so favorable, the service so satisfactory, the other
benefits so striking, that the firm was able to
do more business than before. It built up a
large trade. It was shipping many tank cars'. It
not only was holding its former trade, gained
when dealing with the trust, but it was taking
trade away from the Standard Oil and its agen
cies. This was considerably more than the trust
had bargained for. It had arranged to ruin a
retailer by putting up the price of his supply on
him where he could not live in competition, but
by driving him to an independent source of sup
ply it had shown him how to make more money
and how to diminish the business and profits -of
the trust. This was also to be stopped.
"The firm, now independent and prosperous,
found that it could not get the railroads to haul
and deliver its tank cars containing the inde
pendent oil. The railway agents said the busi
ness was too dangerous. The dripping oil might
catch fire in the terminals and burn up railroad
sheds, trains of freight, whole terminals. There
was no telling what damage might not happen
to property and lives from hauling these tank
cars of oil supplied by independent producers
and to be sold by an independent firm in com
petition with the Rockefellers. The railroads
could haul cars of the Standard Oil trust; they
could take care of the shipments to dealers in
the trust's oil. No great danger here. But not
so with the independent producers and handlers.
Their oil must not be handled.
"What the independent firm vants the inter
state commerce commission to determine is
whether the Standard Oil trust has the right to
arrange that common carriers shall transport only
Standard Oil products. What the firm wants to
be Informed about is whether the United States
government sanctions conditions whereby when
the Standard Oil can't club a dealer to death
directly with its own weapon of pipe lines, prices
and delivery, it can call on a railroad to club
him to death by refusing to handle his cars.
"A very simple story of very simple methods
to kill competition and ruin men. A simple story
of what is enacted every day in the year every
where in this country. How long are the people
of the United States going to stand it?"
JJJ
LAFOLLETTE
The eminent senators who were going to
give Senator LaFollette a lesson have been com
pelled to matriculate and pay their own tuition
while the gentleman from Wisconsin gave them
a series of needed lessons.
JJJ
ANTHENf
Some one suggests that a now national anthem
is needed. The Louisville Courier-Journal ap
proves of "the suggestion and adds: "How about
'Turn the Rascals Out'?"
Tho following Is from a speech delivered by
Thomas n.' Benton at a convention of tho St.
Louis and Pacific railroad held in St. Louis In
1849:
"Wo live in extraordinary times and are called
upon to elevate ourselves to tho grandeur of tho
occasion. Three and a half centuries, ago tho
great Columbus, tho man who afterwards was
carried home in chains from tho new world which
he discovered, this great Columbus, in tho year
1492, departed from Europe to arrive in the east
by going to tho west. It was a sublime concep
tion, he was in the line of success when the in
tervention of two continents, not dreamed of be
fore, stopped his progress. Now in tho nineteenth
century mechanical genius enables his groat de
sign to be fulfilled. In the beginning and in bar
barous ages, the sea was a barrier to tho Inter
course of nations. It separated nations. Me
chanical genius invented the ship, which con
verted tho barrier into a facility. Then land
and continents became an obstruction. Tho two
Americas intervening have prevented Europe
and Asia from communicating on a straight line.
For thrco centuries and a half this obstacle has
frustrated the grand design of Columbus.
"Now in our day, mechanical genius has
triumphed over the obstacles of nature and con
verted into a facility what had so long been an
impassable obstacle. Tho steam car has worked
upon tho land among enlightened nations to a de
gree far transcending the miracle which tho ship
in barbarous ages worked upon the ocean. Tho
land has now become a facility for tho most dis
tant communication. A conveyance being in
vented which annihilated both time and space,
we hold the intervening land; we hold the
obstacle which stopped Columbus; wo are in the
line between Europe and Asia; we have it In
our power to remove that obstacle; to convert
it into a facility to carry him on to this land of
promise and of hope with a rapidity and pre
cision and a safety unknown to all ocean naviga
tion? A king and queen started him upon this
grand enterprise. It lies in tho hands of a re
public to complete it. It is in our hands, in
the hands of us, the people of the United States,
of the first half of the nineteenth century. Let
us raise ourselves up. Lot us rise to tho gran
deur of the occasion. Let us complete tho grand
design of Columbus by putting Europe and Asia
into communication, and that to our advantage,
through tho heart of our country. Let us give
to his ships a continued course unknown to all
former times. Let us make an iron road and
make it from sea to sea, states and individuals
making it east of the Mississippi and the nation
making it west. Let ub now in this convention
rise above everything sectional, personal, local.
Let us beseech the national legislature to build
a great road upon the great national line which
unites Europe and Asia, the line which will find
on our continent the bay of San Francisco on
one end, St. Louis in the middle and the great
national metropolis and emporium at the other,
and which shall be adorned with Its crowning
honor the colossal statue of the great Columbus,
whose design It accomplishes, hewn from a gran
ite mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, the
mountain itself the pedestal, and the statue a
part of the mountain, pointing with outstretched
arm to tho western horizon, and saying to tho
flying passengers: 'There Is east; there is
India!'"
December 16, 1850, in the second session- of
the Thirty-first congress, Mr. Benton introduced
in the senate of the United States a bill provid
ing for the construction of a national highway
from the city of St. Louis to the Gulf of San
Francisco, in the state of California. By the
provisions of this bill, the national government
was to dedicate a strip of land 100 miles wide
from St. Louis to San Francisco, to bo used for
the purpose of locating railroads, ordinary drive
ways, telegraph lines, etc. Branch lines were
included, running southwest from the main line
into New Mexico and Arizona, and northwest
through Wyoming and Oregon, having a width of
fifty miles.
The following year, 1851, Mr. Benton was de
feated for re-election to the senate and tho bill
he had introduced seems never to. have been
pushed, by any of his successors.
'i
