Page 591

THE STRENGTH OF THE TRUSTS LIES IN THE
WEAKNESS OF THE PEOPLE
       HE financial buccaneers who have
       been 'holding up' the country in
 "1T    the necessities of life, keeping out
        foreign competition through the
tariff at one end and crushing home com-
petition at the other until the increase in
the cost of living is alarming, have re-
mained immune until every lawyer who
has had to deal with this big question
knows that the pretended enforcement of
the law is a huge farce. . . . We all
know that the Anti-Trust Law is being
openly flouted and violated every day by
some of the most powerful men in the land.
There are numberless secret, unlawful
pools to control prices and restrict produc-
tion operating today, many of them under
written agreements that are criminal con-
spiracies on their face . ..
  "We are told by a certain section of the
press that there has been a reaction in the
public mind against what they are pleased
to call 'attacks' on these criminal conspir-
acies.
  "For the sake of the country let us hope
these gentlemen are mistaken; for if they
are right we shall have an upheaval in this
country as compared to which the mild and
harmless experiments of the last Adminis-
tration will seem like a midsummer zephyr
alongside a cyclone."
  These words, which are quoted from an
interview with Mr. Samuel Untermyer
when embarking for a vacation in Europe,
deserve more than the passing attention
such informal utterances usually command.
Mr. Untermyer is one of America's most
famous lawyers and speaks from some-
thing more than hearsay on these matters,
Recent revelations as to its past tactics,
have fixed the American Sugar Refining
Company in the public mind as an extreme
example of the "bad trust." Yet Mr. Un-
termyer is amused at our suddenly aroused
virtuous anger against this particular trust
which "is no worse than many others in its
criminal methods, and not quite so bad as
some." But more significant even than the
state of affairs which he depicts is his
prophecy of what would follow on the
heels of a reactionary public attitude
toward these abuses. "I dread the awak-
ening," he went on to say, because "we are
an hysterical, press-ridden people, and we-
go to extremes." If we are weakly toler-
ant today we will be weakly intolerant to-
morrow.
  We are so fickle, so busy and so easily
led, he asserts, that reform movements.
directed against so shrewdly entrenched'
an  evil as corporate dishonesty  faill
through lack of sustained public support.
And without such support they must con-
tinue to fail. For the power of the meni
behind the big corporations is so great,,
says Mr. Untermyer, that "they are prac-
tically above the law except when con-
fronted with an aroused public opinion."
If their attitude is one of amused cynicism
toward the fierce but transient outbursts
of excitement with which we greet each
new letting in of light on the methods of
the "predatory corporations" it is not to
be wondered at. "We are getting," says