The attention of the public is unpleasantly attracted to the position of Henry H. Rogers, active head of the Standard Oil trust, in relation to the testimony sought by the supreme court of Missouri. The Missouri court, in seeking the enforcement of the anti-trust law of that State, has undertaken to procure testimony upon the allegation that the Standard company is violating the law. Among the witnesses is Mr. Rogers. He dodged service of the subpoena until outwitted by an officer and in the witness chair he refuses to answer questions propounded by the attorney general of Missouri. He refuses with a supercilious air that asserts his contempt for such humble affairs as courts and officers of the law. The world’s greatest trust, the world’s richest men, tell the world that they are not amenable to the regulations to which the balance of the world is bound to conform. This is the anarchy of wealth. Recently representatives of the oil trust told Commissioner Garfield that the Standard Oil was greater than the government; that John D. Rockefeller was a bigger man than the President of the United States; that he owned the Senate and the House and was able, by the mere passing of the word, to cause the removal of Secretary Metcalf and Commissioner Garfield. A few years back in history the Standard Oil corporation defied the Supreme Court of Ohio and caused the political defeat of the presumptuous attorney who brought an action against it and won because his case was just. Now comes Henry H. Rogers, second to John D. Rockefeller, bristling with defiance because a Western court proposes to make him and his associates obey the same law that common persons have to obey. It is greatly to be feared that the oil magnates are invoking a test of strength—feared because some one is going to be roughly handled should there come a popular adjustment between the forces of wealth and government. The American people have been very patient and are still patient. But if they are called upon to pass upon certain points raised by the contumacy of Mr. Rogers and the rest, the controversy will be short, sharp and decisive.—Howard (S. Dak.) Advance.
Let those with a sense of humor laugh now, while the game is barely on, at such naïve expressions of alarm as those of Secretary Taft in a recent speech wherein he feared that the “dangerous classes,” such as populists and socialists, might succeed in arraying the masses against capitalism to the injury of the latter. Secretary Taft fears that the ninety per cent of our population are going to demand the right to rule. Awful, isn’t it?
This fat sow of the system with its nose in the trough, its distended guts groaning and still filling, sounds the warning that the razor-backs are preparing to assume control of the swill. Wough! Secretary Taft believes that this country is only safe when every bank, the House, the Senate, every State legislature, and every public office is manned and controlled by a McCall, McCurdy, Hyde, Armour or Rockefeller; that is, safe for the system. We say this country is not safe when ten millions of its inhabitants live in dire poverty and two hundred and seventy thousand people fill its jails.
We say there is something radically wrong with our educational and economic systems. We say the multi-income grafters must be hurled back to one man power, for there is not a banker nor so-called financier in America that has not for years been in collusion with Hyde, McCall and McCurdy, and consciously participated in their stealing.
Come, now, Secretary Taft, would men who have been brought up to do real work be any more dangerous in high places?—Parker H. Sercombe in To-Morrow.
And now it is announced that all three of the big life insurance presidents in New York are down with nervous prostration. Sounds from testimony as though it ought to be the policy holders.—Alma (Neb.) Record.