yond dispute by practical illustration known and read of all men.

Nevertheless this is the very moment when protection is running its greatest risk. It is a curious fact, in the nature of mankind, that there is no time when there is such great danger as the time of victory. After tension of muscles comes the natural reaction, and men, after victory, like to concede something to their enemies. This is all well enough when it relates to the courtesies of individual intercourse, but it has no application to business. Protection rests upon principle or it does not. If it does not then it is a mere bestowal of bounty and is no part of the business of government. If it rests upon principle, then that principle must be that the American markets belong to the Americans. You cannot maintain your system and sacrifice anything to which it is applicable.

Recent events ought to show Congress that the people are coming to understand these things. After such a victory as our system has had it can easily be understood that all attacks on the system, if made at all, must be insidious and disguised. They can not be open, for they would be resisted at sight. Hence there should be full discussion of these new attempts which are now being made in our period of victory to turn the victory into defeat.

The first attack came in the disguise of reciprocity. That sounded well. All things sound well which are merely on paper. Mr. Cleve land could talk most convincingly of

the tariff which should protect all manufacturers and yet be so nicely poised that it would suit all importers here and all manufacturers abroad. So long as the Senate was against him and he could do nothing there was no false note in the song. But when he got a Senate of his own party, and they all went to work on a real tariff, he found the product so bad that he could only cover his face as it passed by.

So with reciprocitytreaties. Framed in the mind they exchange only commodities that one of the countries produces and the other does not. This seems plain. But no real reciprocity bill or treaty ever could do any such thing, or ever really tried to.

Another insidious attack upon protection as a system has recently been made in the bill repealing more or less of the tariff for the benefit of Cuba. It does not in any way appeal to our judgments. It is not addressed to our intellects. It is only addresed to our sympathies. We are told that Cuba has been maltreated by being set free. Can that be so? Not at all. Some enterprising Americans have gone there, purchased land, and built a railroad. Are we going to reward expatriation? We have a right to wish them success, and we give them our good will. Why should they be benefited at the expense of those who stay at home and develop their own country? Why should a desire to be kind to the absent lead us to withdraw protection for our own tobacco growers and our own sugar raisers? Why should we, for the sake of good men, even, who have gone abroad to seek fortune allow such an attack upon our system of protection as will be a good beginning for a final destruction?

If you need any proof as to the character of the attack look at those who are flocking to the aid of the Cuban bounty or rebate, whatever it may be. Every journal that has ever advocated free trade is after us in a fashion which may be called brutal; all of them are attacking those who sustain protection as if it were a crime to uphold laws which have made this country prosperous beyond our utmost hopes.

If ever our system should be overturned it will be by such attempts as this and not by a battle along the whole line. Therefore it behooves us as citizens who desire to continue the prosperity of our country to take active measures to see that the true meaning of this proposed action should be fully understood.

If we propose to abandon any industries we had better not let it be the agricultural industries. Between the Atlantic and the Pacific stretch vast regions still untilled. The next victory of protection should be there.

Our system of protection is not for manufacturers alone. It is for farmers also. Whoever deprives our farmers of all the American market they can occupy is false to his principles and must meet with defeat or the

system must be surrendered which proclaims that American markets

are first of all for American citizens, who are engaged in developing the country we already have.

THE TRUST PROBLEM.

THE ADMINISTRATION POLICY.

An abstract of the recommendations of Attorney-General Knox regarding combinations represents the general attitude of the administration on this subject. It is held that the people do not desire the business of the country to be interfered with beyond the regulation necessary to control combinations where they act improperly and to correct any tendency toward monopoly. In this country, where money is cheap and abundant and within the reach of keen and capable men, monopoly will be impossible if competition is kept free. Small enterprises have certain advantages over large combinations, and will live and thrive if assured of an open and fair field. Rebates and discriminating rates constitute one of the chief restrictions on competition. They unjustly swell the earnings of favored concerns, and, supporting a vast volume of capital stock which represents nothing but unfair advantage over rivals, contribute largely to the upbuilding of monopoly.

It is recommended for immediate legislation that all discriminatory practices affecting interstate trade be made offences to be enjoined and punished.

Such legislation to be directed alike against those who give and those who receive illegal advantages, and to cover discrimnation in prices as against competitors in particular localities, resorted to for the purpose of destroying competition.

In order to reach producers guilty of these offences who are, as producers merely, beyond national control, a penalty should be imposed upon the interstate and foreign transportation of goods produced by them, and federal

dations. The five main features are publicity; power of interstate commerce commission to investigate; discrimination made a crime; creation of monopolies prohibited; interstate commerce denied trust-made goods. The bill adds to the Attorney-General's recommendations in one respect: he recommended that corporation statements should be for government officials only; the committee's bill requires their publication.

Senator Elkins has introduced a bill which covers the features of anti-trust legislation so far as it relates to railroads. It provides for the punishment of corporations by fines instead of imprisonment of the officials; also for injunctions to prevent discriminations.

OTHER MEASURES.

There are several anti-trust bills under consideration in Congress. Mr. Littlefield's bill deals mainly with the feature of "publicity." Senator Hoar's bill deals principally with corporations whose stockholders are not personally liable for their debts. One section requires the filing of a sworn statement annually in the office of the Interstate Commerce Commission by all corporations doing business with foreign countries, or among our several states, showing the amount and character of their capital, how much paid in cash, and the value that was received for other capital shares, the names of officers and managers, the amounts paid in dividends, and that authority be given the Attorney-General to procure from them statements of transactions and contracts. Another section makes it misdemeanor, punishable by fine or imprisonment or both, for such corporations to do any act for the purpose of driving out of business any other person engaged therein, or to sell any article or product in one place at less than its fair market or customary value that it receives in any other place under like conditions.

a

Although the Democrats profess to be in favor of anti-trust legislation, many of them are opposing any practical posed as a defence that they were not liable for acts of violence which they had not ordered.

The verdict of the jury was given, without leaving the box, and carried with it a judgment of $140,000 for damages inflicted on the plaintiff railway company. The facts which the jury found to be proved seemed to have been the conspiracy to molest and injure the plaintiffs in their business, and the carrying out of this design by picketing and payments of money to induce men who had been hired by the company to withdraw without performing their contracts. The strike had been marked by the usual sporadic acts of violence, and by the promiscuous abuse of all who showed any willingness to take the places of the strikers. The jury took the view that the officers of the union should be held to account for the natural consequences of their own acts, and found that they had assisted in carrying out the strike by unlawful means. One of the most powerful labor unions in Great Britain, which is said to have $1,250,000 in its treasury, has thus been mulcted in exemplary damages, and the rule has been established, in a way not likely to be ignored, that the practice of inducing workmen to break their contracts and coercing non-union men by a system of picketing is a luxury which cannot be indulged in without liability to pay for the consequences.

[From a London Special.]

To the indignation with which the decision in the Taff Vale case has been received in the trade union world is added a feeling of exasperation, due to the fact that it leaves the position of combined labor, as against the employers, as unsettled as ever. Unionist leaders complain that to the three questions put to them by Mr. Justice Wills, when the case was tried, all on matters of fact, the jury simply replied, "Yes." The defendants were not told, "We find against you on this point or on that," and, in particular, nothing has been decided as to what is or is not illegal in the conduct of a strike. One effect of the decision seems certain, all trades unions will for the future have to con

"FREE COAL AND BEEF."

have done in the past. The Taff Vale strike was decided upon by the men in violation of the rules of the Railway Servants' Society. The executive at the last hour decided to support them, and in that committed a grave error which has cost them dear. The extent to which the funds of the trade unions are imperilled by the recent decisions are unpleasantly illustrated in the present case. The society's costs are approximately $60,000, of which the solicitors were paid $50,000 on account some time ago. The railway company's costs are, say, $60,000, which may, perhaps, be reduced to $40,000. The company is ready to prove $100,000 damages, so that altogether the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants stands to part with a sum which would be an exceedingly serious loss to the societies.

Any remedy for the position in which the unions have been placed must come by way of new legislation. Already a bill having for its main objects the definition of lawful and unlawful picketing and the protection of a society's funds from attack is being drafted, and will be introduced in the course of next session of Parliament, and in the meantime every effort is to be made by the unions locally as well as in their corporate capacity to secure the support of the measure by members of Parliament. In order to guard the societies from the special danger to their funds arising out of the acts on the part of their officials or other members committed in contravention of their rules, it has been proposed to submit to Parliament a short bill providing simply that "No action shall lie against a trade union for the recovery of damage sustained by any person whatsoever by reason of the action of a member or members of a union or persons acting on his or their behalf, unless it be proved that such member or members or persons acted with the directly expressed sanction and authority of the trade union rules."

script.]

The Faneuil Hall meeting was a great success. Not that any practical result whatever will come from it. Free traders throughout the country have experienced the thrill which quickens their optimistic pulses whenever they see one Republican stepping upon the edge of their platform. At last, they feel sure, for the fortieth time, the downfall of protection is at hand. They even begin to fear that there will be so sudden a collapse of the structure that some people will be unable to "stand from under" and will be hurt. But outside the rather limited membership of the Free Trade League nothing has happened yet, and nothing is likely to happen.

And why should the question of the coal and beef duties be raised? The Faneuil Hall meeting said that those duties foster monopoly. People have had to pay more for beef, and they clamor-that is, the Free Trade League clamors for a repeal of the duty on meat, in order to break up the "beef trust." The duty on beef is two cents a pound. If the repeal of that duty would remove an obstacle to the importation of meat, how does it happen that when the price of beef at wholesale went up four or five cents a pound none came into the country? Where would beef come from if it were free of duty? From Canada? Some people seem to be unaware that Canada imports more beef than it exports. If the duty on beef were repealed and a bounty of two cents a pound were given upon beef imported, not enough could be found to bring into the country at a profit to keep Boston in meat for six months. The cause of high beef was not the tariff, nor was it a "beef trust"-many Boston speculators have lately been made aware to their cost that there is no beef trust-but it was the short crop of corn in 1901. Now corn is cheap again, and beef has "come down."