EDITORIALS
Punish the Real Offenders THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY is guilty. It is ordered by the United States Supreme Court to dissolve its present organization within six months. So flagrant has been its...
...Enormous and unreasonable profits earned by the Standard Oil Trust and Standard Oil Company as a result of the alleged monopoly...
...Stir up the Trade WHAT CHANCE would there be for the disease-carrying House Fly if every home in the country were provided with traps like those described by Professor Hodge in La Follette's a few weeks ago...
...And if this is so, what good reason can be given to a long suffering public for not bringing action against the trust officials...
...Does this look as if the public is given even "reasonable" relief from this monopoly...
...The spread of democratic ideals is bringing this about...
...Who will say that the illegal practices that enabled this corporation to become a powerful trust, with absolute power of fixing prices, are not continuing offenses...
...Why the "statute of limitations...
...Organization is their only present refuge...
...Is there any distinction to be drawn between the conduct of Standard Oil today and that of yesterday or six years ago...
...Ought not President Taft's efforts toward this end meet with general approval...
...The City of Tomorrow WHEN Frederic C. Howe wrote his book, "The City— The Hope of Democracy," he made a lasting contribution to the forward movement...
...But there is one difficulty...
...The great law breaker is convicted by the supreme court with the following offenses: Rebates, preferences, and other discriminatory practices in favor &f the combination by the railrsad companies...
...Let us all do our part by marking use of what he has given us...
...Are they not to be called to account...
...Its message met with an immediate and sincere response from the American people...
...We cannot have justice as long as the petty offender is jailed and the big law breaker allowed to go his way...
...If enough of you do that it will create Demand...
...It may be long before complete disarmament is accomplished, but meanwhile we shall see more and more of the differences that arise between nations settled by peaceful methods...
...We think it would have about as little ehance as consumption has in sunlight...
...We are sure that no one will read Mr...
...More traps must be made...
...City planning has become one of our most pressing problems...
...We are free to suggest this plan of "stimulating the trade" in these traps because Professor Hodge has refused to have them patented...
...They were the work of human hands and human brains, and the men responsible for them should be summoned to court...
...Letchworth is one of these made to order English cities...
...It will not be long before manufacturers will be found eager to provide the Supply...
...But is it punishment merely to compel the Standard Oil Company to change its form of organization...
...The Hague tribunal is a greater achievement than a dozen successful wars...
...On another page of this magazine, you will find the story of Letchworth by Mr...
...Yet the announcement is given out at the White House that no prosecution is contemplated by the administration because of the "statute of limitations...
...Plain justice demands that the men back of this Standard Oil villainy be punished...
...Weyl...
...Offenses such as these with which the Standard Oil Company stands convicted were not committed of themselves...
...This conference on city planning will unquestionably give impetus to the movement in this country...
...More particularly, the railway mail clerks, whose efforts to escape oppression inspired the President's protest—are they a privileged class...
...We quote from the Sherman act: "Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court...
...Fines they laugh at, "dissolution" weakens them not a bit, and the law is specific enough...
...Contracts with competitors in restraint of trade...
...So flagrant has been its violation of the anti-trust law, that its eminent lawyers were not able to prove it even "reasonably" innocent...
...The division of the United States into districts and the limiting of operations of the various subsidiary corporations as to such districts, so that competition in the sale of petroleum products between such corporations has been entirely eliminated and destroyed...
...We heard immediately after the decision was handed sown that there was no panic in Standard Oil headquarters...
...We think not...
...It is his contribution to the health and life and comfort of the people...
...Espionage of the business of competitors, the operation of bogus independent companies and payment of rebates en oil with tike intent...
...Restraint and monopolization by control of pipe lines and unfair practice against competing pipe lines...
...World brotherhood holds no place for bloodshed, and let us encourage every effort to arbitrate international controversies as steps toward this future day of universal peace...
...Taft's Protest PRESIDENT TAFT protests against permitting the railway mail clerks to organize and affiliate with the American Federation of Labor...
...Unwin had a hand in the making of it...
...Speaking before the convention of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen at Har-risburg, Pennsylvania, May fourteenth, he said: "I do not think that reasonably minded trades union men, who are fully alive to the necessity for rigorous means to enforce their rights in their controversies with capital and with their employers, will fail to see the broad difference that exists between their case, in which they are contending for the betterment of their livelihood against the naturally selfish motives of their employers, and that of the class of government employees, who are privileged not only in the amount of their compensation, the less number of hours of their employment, and the greater permanency of tenure, and who serve the government of all the people, the very existence of which will be threatened, should they combine together to quit the government service all at once, and paralyze the benefit, and the equal benefits, that the government is properly supposed and held to confer upon the people at large...
...Today we are setting about seriously to make our cities useful, healthful, happy and beautiful for all of the people and not only for a small class of the people...
...As long as we have our Hitchcocks, as long as we have our vicious and autocratic "gag rule," as long as employees of the whole people are made the victims of political bureaucracy—plain justice demands that there be no distinction between public employees of individuals or corporations...
...Weyl's article without wishing that his own city were made like Letchworth...
...You can help to get them made by asking your dealer, frequently and insistently, to put them in his stock...
...The tendency is toward international peace and amity...
...If guilty at all, what is there in reason or in fact to make it appear that it is not just as guilty now...
...Steps Toward World Peace ARE WE NOT nearing the day when war will be universally discredited...
...There are not nearly enough of these traps in existence to supply even the present demand...
...on the contrary this company's stock was stronger in Wall Street, and officials of the trust announced that business would be carried on as usual, with each constituent company operating under the direction of its own officers...
...Unfair methods of competition, such as local price-cutting at the point where necessary to suppress competition...
...It marks as great an advance over the time of Napoleon as our modern safeguards to life and property do over the day of the musket and the powder horn...
...But are all government employees a privileged class...
...It should not be closed to them...
...The giant corporation must change its methods of doing business...
...Are President Taft and Attorney General Wickersham to stand firmly determined to do nothing at all about it...
...When employees of the government are subjected to such treatment as that handed to the men who work in the mail cars, it is time for something more adequate than softly spoken words...
...Last week there gathered at Philadelphia a large number of renowned experts in this business of making cities "worthy places for free men to live in...
...If the heads of trusts were sent to prison for wilful law breaking, such as this, there would be fewer violations of the Sherman law...
...He has given his idea to the world...
...What about the men under whose direction these illegal practices were carried on...
...Germany's contribution toward The City of Tomorrow was described by Count von Bernstorff, German Ambassador to the United States, and what England is doing was told by Raymond Unwin, who is responsible in no small measure for the success of the model cities of England...
Vol. 3 • May 1911 • No. 21
