8
THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER.
Thursday, July 18, 1907.
B06RSSSIVE
CLARENCE H- POE,
W. F- MARSHALL,
B. W. KILGORE,
TAIT BUTLER.
C. F. KOONCE. Trav'I'gAgL
Editor and Manager.
- (Associate Editor.
Agricultural Editors.
T. B. PARKER. Sec-Trt as
"What's &e News ? 99
PROBING THE TOBACCO TRUST.
Following months of probing of the affairs and
history of the Tobacco Trust, the Government has
taken steps in the courts to effect a dissolution of
this stupendous monopoly. This is a big piece of
interesting news to The Progressive Parmer's tobacco-growing
readers. James C. McReynolds has
been appointed special Assistant Attorney-General
to prosecute the trust, and has filed a bill of com
plaint against the merger in the- United States Cir
cuit Court of New York. Following is a list of
the individuals named as defendants or witnesses:
James B. Duke, president of the American To
'bacco Company; John B. Cobb, president of the
f American ... Cigar Company; William K. Harris,
chairman of the Board of Managers of the British
American Tobacco Company, and a director of the
American Snuff Company; Percival S. Hill, vice
president of the American Tobacco Company; W.
C. Reed, agent in the United States for the Im
perial Tobacco Company of Great Britain; Thomas
F. Ryan, Pierre Lorillard, Peter A. B. Widener,
Anthony N. Brady, and practically all of the other
directors of the American Tobacco Company.
RECEIVERS TO BE ASKED FOR.
The corporations and individuals composing
what is generally known as the Tobacco Trust
against which the petition is directed, are named
as follows: The American Tobacco Company,
the Imperial Tobacco Company, the British-American
Tobacco Company, the . American Snuff Com
pany, the American Cigar Company, the United
Cigar Stores' Company, the American Stogie Com
pany, the MacAndrews & Forbes Company, the
Conley Foil Company, and fifty-six other corpora
tions and twenty-nine individuals connected with
the named companies.
The petition declares the purpose of the Govern
ment to dissolve the trust by breaking up the
agreement under which they operate together.
The action is brought under the Sherman law
which provides that the court may restrain and
prevent, the operations of a combination in re
straint of trade, and even appoint receivers if
necessary to prevent such operations. The Gov
ernment is not proceeding in a half-hearted or
velvet-footed fashion, but asks first for an injunc
tion and then, if necessary, that receivers be ap
pointed by the court "to take possession of all the
assets of the various companies, and, if necessary,
to wind them up." Of course if the Trust were
merely enjoined this might prevent the buying
and selling of tobacco, but if receivers be ap
pointed the business would be continued and no
embarrassment caused to users and growers of "the
weed. -,- : v: ' r'
SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRUST'S AFFAIRS.
The Government investigation into the Trust's
affairs brought out some astonishing facts and fig
u res. In the three years and four months from the
formation of the Consolidated Tobacco Company
in 1901, to the formation of the present American
Tobacco Company, it earned for an inner circle of
about a dozen of its manipulators $40,000,000, or
100 per cent on its real capital. The present
capitalization is ? 2 3 0,0 00,0 00, or about five times
the replacement value of the plants in the com
bine. , Its methods of destroying competition are also
set forth, one of its favorite procedures being to
cause a corporation secretly controlled to adver
tise itself as an independent company and then of
fer its goods below cost. -Even the retail tobacco
stores in the large cities have been made to feel
the death-dealing hammer. Of the 800,000,000
pounds of tobacco produced in the United States,
75 per cent is bought by the Trust at prices which
the Government believes to be -unlawfully influ
enced by the combine. "Our success," says Mr.
Duke, the president of the American Tobacco
Company, "is due to our having served the public
better than anybody else." Upon which it may
be observed that such service bears a little hard
upon the public when there isn't "anybody else."
THE RAILROADS, COURTS, AND PEOPLE.
The war precipitated by Judge Pritchard's fed
eral restraining orders against the State of North
Carolina and the Corporation Commission of Vir
ginia in favor o.f the recalcitrant railroads has its
decidedly interesting features. In Wake County
Superior Court Judge B. F. Long charged the grand
jury that it was a violation of the State law, till
the courts decided otherwise, to charge passengers
more than 2 J cents a mile, and that the agents
who sold tickets for more were amenable to arrest
and action for $500 punitive damages. Where
upon the grand jury made investigations with the
result that it has made a number of presentments
against the agents and higher officials.
Another phase of the matter, is presented in
the device for self-protection employed a day or
two ago by a passenger on the Atlantic Coast Line
near Wilson, N. C. The passenger for reasons
known to himself failed to get a ticket, and when
the conductor came along to collect the fare the
passenger refused to pay more than the 21 cent
rate. There was some parleying, but the passen
ger rode to his destination on the 2 cent fare.
The suits brought by individuals for $500 damages
where they have been overcharged by the rail
roads, the indictments by the grand juries, and
the refusal of passengers either to buy tickets or
pay illegal fares are likely to provide a vast deal
of unwelcome business for the railroads.
THE PRESS RESTRAINED, AND DEFIANT.
In Virginia the lengths to which Judge Pritch
ard has gone in issuing decrees from the Federal
Court indicates a rather perilous state of things.
h- ' - ' . ! - 1
In his injunction against the Corporation Com
mission of that State forbidding it to publish its
general order of April 27th promulgating the two
cent rate,! he included also the Richmond papers,
forbidding them to publish such order. Whether
this forbids them to print an official promulgation
offered and advertised by the Corporation Com
mission, or whether! it forbids even the insertion
of the subject matter of such an order taken from
an official copy is not clear, but in either event
it is a rarb and most unwelcome resort of the high
courts. This; cannot prevent other newspapers
from letting the people know what the order is
that has been restrained by .the court, nor can it
prevent other papers from publishing the official
order. One paper in Richmond, the Journal, has
declared that it stands "ready to publish any de
cree that the Corporation Commission may issue
regardless of any injunction forbidding us to do
so." The News-Leader of the same city, an emi
nently conservative paper, says:
The railroads will be whipped in Virginia and
throughout the country. Refusing absolutely
every suggestion or movement to reform them,
they will! be reformed ; regardless of their strug
gles and their wishes.
NEXT WEEK'S PAPER.
Yes, sir! There'll be another issue next week
a good' one. The Progressive Farmer has no
1 : i '
notion ofilayine bvlvet.
Our readers will miss Mr. French's Sunny Home
Talk this week; butj they will be greeted by him
again in -next issue.? An article on tile draining
which came too late for use this week will find a
welcome place in next week's paper. It was sug
gested by an inquiry in The Progressive Farmer
of the 11th concerning tiling.
A poem and picture about the "Old- Farm
Herd" are so pretty that we shall devote the whole
of the--fitst page of next issue to "Bess" and "Spot"
and "Dolly" and "Flo," and to telling how
Over the meadow and over the lea,
Lowing the old herd comes to me.
"The Farmer at School" is a splendid article
already received for next week from Capt. Charles
Petty, which will soon be followed by others from
him. . j - v ' '
More about fodder-saving not fodder-pulling,
mind you will appear in nexj issue under the
subject of the "Right Way to Harvest the Corn
Crop." I
And meanwhile we expect to keep our regular
features up to the .standard, at least for this lost
issue in the month of July. Watch for it.
DR. TAIT BUTLER,
Director of Farmers' Institutes for North Carolina.
PROP. J. N. -HARPER.
Dlrector of Farmers' institutes for South Carolina.
TV. r!i"a lhe. Jnstiku season is beginning,
vnu ?rn Ztn 7 V ,CUUT, '"f"e"a eFer7 institute, within reach and not only should
neifhboi To JIfl ? y uld "dye d Psh the Institute and get every farmer
oZJiossbT- L y f idfg so abound at every Institute' that even
SfflSS I"" a,id your community
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