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. Baltimore Sun.
n
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"
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