292 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



and the laws of most of the states, a criminal offense, subject to 

 be prosecuted by indictment or information and punishable by 

 fine or imprisonment. In the State of Missouri, by some peculiar 

 accident of legislation, we have no law by which a combination 

 in restraint of trade, no law by which a trust, no law by which 

 those who form or carry on a trust, can be punished as they can 

 for other crimes or offenses against the person or property. In- 

 deed, our present statute against conspiracy would support the 

 argument that the common law in reference to conspiracy in re- 

 straint of trade has even been repealed in this State by the legis- 

 lature. But I undertake to say that our present legislature will 

 not permit that defect to remain in our laws after it has com- 

 pleted its labors. 



But we must come to an understanding of the proposition 

 that when any man or combination of men, that when any cor- 

 poration or combination of corporations, takes from the American 

 people their money or their property, either by giving them less 

 than they should receive for that which they sell, or by charging 

 them more than they should pay for that which they buy, that 

 such men or corporations are just as clearly committing the of- 

 fense of larceny as the burglar who enters your house or the pick- 

 pocket who takes your purse. 



I say to you that the five or six men, who, sitting in a distant 

 city, can, by the formation of a combination between them, say 

 to the farmer of Missouri, "You shall receive so much and no 

 more for the cattle you sell," and those same men can say to us 

 who are consumers and not producers, "You shall pay so much 

 and no less for the meat you buy for yourselves and your families" 

 — those men, I say to you, are committing a violation of the law 

 of this country ; they are committing a violation of the principles 

 of the common law; they are taking from the American people 

 their money and their property by means that are immoral, unfair 

 and unlawful ; and when we have come to a realization of the fact 

 that men are committing a criminal offense, then have we made 

 a marked advance in the settlement of the question of the trust. 



I am not here to say that civil litigation has not been without 

 its benefits. Because it would be a mere matter of speculation 

 to undertake to say how much worse conditions might have been 

 had the officials in the past not undertaken to do that which they 

 could do by injunctions and actions in quo warranto. But whenever 

 our laws are so enacted as to meet existing conditions, by which 

 such offenses can be punished by criminal prosecution, then can 



