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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 27, 1907)
SEPTEMBER 27, 1807 The Commoner. 7 Go After the Harrimans and the Rockefellers! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO O'O ooooo o o O Tills striking answer to Messrs. O O Roosevelt, Tuft and Bonaparte appeared O O as ,u leading editorial in the New York O O lre3s, a republican newspaper. O O O ooooooooooooooooooooooo Attorney General Bonaparte said in a re cent interview: "We tried in New York not long ago in the case of the licorice trust to convict the president of the corpbration as well as the corporation, but the jury found the corpora tion guilty and acquitted the president. The presidents of these big corporations are usually excellent men of high moral stand ing in their communities and unexception able In their private life, and usually they stand high in church work. I suppose the kind-hearted jury thought it would bo cruel . to put such excellent men as these behind prison bars." A few days later Secretary Taft said in his peech at Columbus: "Again, it is difficult to induce Juries to convict individuals of a violation of the anti-trust law if imprisonment is to follow. In the case of the tobacco trust the govern ment declined to accept a plea of guilty by the individual defendants, offered on con dition that only the penalty of a fine be imposed, and the result was that the jury did not hesitate to stultify itself by finding the corporation guilty and acquitting the individual defendants, who had personally committed the acts upon which the convic tion of the corporation was based. In the - early enforcement of a statute which makes unlawful, because of its eyjl tendencies, that vVhich in the past has been regarded as legitimate, juries are not inclined by their verdicts to imprison individuals." This was followed by remarks in the same strain by President Roosevelt at Provincetown: "In a 'recent case against the licorice trust we Indicted and tried the two corpora tions and their respective presidents. The contracts and other transactions establish ing the guilt of the corporations were made through, and so far ad they were in writing were signed by, the two presidents. Yet the jury convicted the two corporations and acquitted the two men. Both verdicts could not possibly have been correct; but appar ently the average juryman wishes to see trusts broken up and is quite ready to fine the corporation itself, but is very reluctant to find the facts 'proved beyond a reason able doubt' when it comes to sending to jail a reputable member of the business com munity for doing what the business com munity had unhappily grown to recognize as well-nigh normal in business." The close relationship of these arguments and of the three gentlemen who advanced them, the similarity of their attitude, the likeness of their scarce illustrations and the sequence of their almost identical utterances, point to more than a coincidence. Apparently there has been a concert of action between President Roose velt, Secretary Taft and Attorney General Bona parte, whoso purpose was to show that the rea son for the failure of the department of justice to put the big criminals in jail was that juries of American citizens had refused to convict the malefactors and would continue to refuse to convict them. To support this apology for failure to bring prosecutions looking to imprisonment of monopolists and rebaters Messrs. Roosevelt and Bonaparte both cited the single instance of the licorice trust. This was a case so obscure that it was almost ignored by the newspapers where the trial was had. Furthermore, there was no great public de mand for the conviction of the officers of the licorice trust. Licorice Is not a necessary of life, and the existence of a monopoly in that com modity was known perhaps not to one man in a thousand. Everybody, on the other hand, knows there is a coal trust, a beef trust, an oil trust and a monopoly in sugar. For this reason the people cared little or nothing about the conviction of the licorice trust officers. Fr the same reason the writers for thld newspaper have devoted no attention to the licorice trust, being kept busy with inquiry into the facts about the corpora tions that monopolize the necessaries of life and keep the highways of the country open or closed at will. Our deliberate neglect of the licorice trust case makes It Impossible for us to say whether the jury was to blame for the escape of the cul prits or whether the department of justico had blundered its case, as it did those of the Chicago & Alton recently and of the beef trust a year ago. Possibly the jurymen may have felt that the evidence was impropor or insufficient. May bo they felt that the attorney general was be ginning with the smallest of the trust crim inals and they were unwilling to convict little licorice trust presidents whllo the Rockefellers, Baers and Armours wore permitted to go free. In any event, Messrs. Taft, Bonaparte and Roosevelt, are scarcely warranted in citing one or two cases wherein American juries havo re fused to send "reputable members of the busi ness community" (we deny that lawbreakers are reputable because they are wealthy) as proof that it is not possible to send this class of crim inals to the penitentiary. If the president and his cabinet officers are willing to form their judgment of what American jurors will do In 100 cases upon what two American juries havo done, why did they not cite the two trials at Toledo where jurors who were neighbors of the men on trial condemned several "reputable" fellow-members of the community to Imprison ment for violating the anti-trust laws of Ohio? We should say that a great deal depends on how the crooks are prosecuted. If they are not prosecuted at all It will always be easy to say that the juries would not send them to jail. If they are ,, lathered, with Immunity soap and doused in an immunity tub the jurors can not do their share. If the big lawbreakers are prosecuted in the half-hearted manner that might be expected from an attorney general who talks like Mr. Bonaparte of course the jury is not certain to convict. But the uproar ious enthusiasm with which President Roose velt's declaration of war on the trust and rail road criminals has been received by the coun try warrants the b'ellef that ho and his advisers are happily mistaken about the attitude of American citizenship toward the powerful male factors whom the president has charged with organizing a stock panic in order to protect themselves from the consequences of their crimes. , Bring the indictments against the I-farri-, mans and Rockefellers. Let the little counter feiters and the licorice trust pikers wait. Give the juries a crack at the way-up lawbreakers then see what will happen! Let the department' of justice do its duty and there need be no fear that American citizenship will not vindicate . itself from the charge that It wants its worst .enemies-to go unwhipped! New York Press. oooo WASHINGTON LETTER (Continued from Page 5) be elected because of any service he has per formed to the city. Mr. Taft says he ought to triumph so as to keep Cleveland in touch with the republican party. Burton has never served his city, ho has no knowledge whatsoever of municipal affairs, he is a candidate against a man who has made a special study of municipal government, and who Is known to the people of Cleveland as a man of large means who has consecrated his life to improving the government of their city. It will be an Interesting thing to find Tom Johnson debating municipal affairs with T. E. Burton; tho one will know what he Is talking about, the other does not. Tho one can talk about the things of which he knows, and the other can not. When Mr. Burton goes up against Tom Jbhnson, the program of the Roosevelt administration for controlling every thing from the nation down through tho states and through the cities is likely to receive a rather hard jolt. I would like to call attention to a weekly -paper edited by Louis F. Post, though as a mat- ter of fact It should call, and probably has called attention to Itself. The paper is The Public. It is printed In Chicago, and Is the truest expo nent of true democracy in the weekly field that I know. Sometimes I am tempted to quote it at length, but seldom have I space. But thero could be nothing finer than this comment of his, or of his wife, who aids In editing the paper, upon the use being made of Mrs. Russell Sage's gift of $10,000,000 to the New York School of , Philanthropy. I don't quote literally. . The money Is to be used to examine methods of the training of employes in tho charity flocletfcfi; to, study tho trcatrnont of inebriates in Greater Now York? to carofully examine 5,000 to 10,000 cases relloved by tho Charity Organization, Society; to investigate tho courso and the moth ods of burial in Now York City. Mr. Post very Justly says that It might bo better worth whllo to use this $10,000,000 to find out why conditions oxlst that make tho great nly of tho unemployed necessary today. Ho thinks It might bo hotter to Investigate tho rich drunkards at Sherry's than the poor ones in tho Bowery. Ho thinks It might bo worth while to consider the Belmont race track as much as the down-town pool rooms, nnd finally, The Public suggests it might ho qulto as well to consider a systom of taxation that keeps the poor poor, and makes the rich richer, rather thau to undertake this kind of an Inquiry. WILLIS J. ABBOT. OOOO STRAIGHT TALK Addressing a public gathering at Hamilton, Ohio, Judge Konesaw M. Landls gave young mon and old men, too, for that matter some thing worthy of serious thought when ho said: "It is easy for a man to be a good civil officer today. This talk about the courage required Is what Shorman called 'poppycock.' All a man has to do is to find out what is right and then do it. If every man In office would give ten per cent 'of the loyalty ho has to finding out' what is right and the rest to simply doing it, we should realize Lincoln's ideal of a govern ment of the people, for the people and by tho people." OOOO THI-J DREAM MAN i Easy, wheezy, soft and still Tho dream man climbs in the window sill; Slyly, blyly, dark and dim, The little shadows are hiding him. "'" Oyer the sill and In tho room ' Tho dream man comes with his bags of bloom, And rolling rivers and roaring seas, ' " And birds with their wonderful melodirs . Easy, wheezy, soft and still , He builds on tho counterpane a hill, A valley down at Its purple feet, A little river that windeth sweet, Fruit and berries and vino and rose, And a little fellow that laughing goes Winged in a heavon of wild dollrrht That tho dream man brings whon he comes' a( nignt. 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