643 THE IMPENDING REVOLUTION. 



drive out of business the local butchers in all parts of the 

 State; and this effort, successful in some of our cities and 

 towns, has failed in others only because of the firm action 

 of our local authorities. The most stringent and far 

 reaching laws should at once be enacted to punish combi- 

 nations organized, or intended to regulate or fix the price 

 of any product of the soil, the factory and the workshop, 

 and penalties for the violation of these laws should involve 

 imprisonment as well as a heavy fine. Laws should also 

 be enacted conferring upon the municipal authorities, of 

 all towns and cities, ample authority to prevent and pun- 

 ish such combinations, and especially to protect their 

 local industries against the rapacious greed of these 

 destroying freebooters. Our Senators and Representatives 

 in Congress should also be instructed to exert all their 

 influence in urging the adoption of National laws having 

 the same object in view." 



"The Republic must annihilate the so-called 'trusts,* 

 under whatever name or guise they may be organized, or 

 the trust will sap all the sources of our national prosperity 

 and destroy the Republic. The trusts establish commer- 

 cial despotism instead of individual skill and energy, 

 destroys thousands and thousands of industries conducted 

 by men of limited means, restrict and extinguish personal 

 enterprise, and deprive the people of those fair oppor- 

 tunities for the exercise of talents, energy and skill which 

 for a century past it has been our boast were open to every 

 American citizen. The trusts invade every interest and 

 outrage every right of the citizen, and establish, whenever 

 they are successful in their aims, a despotism unequalled 

 for audacity in the history of the world's commerce." 



