Idaho to-day, they can do it here to-morrow. This power grows from that upon which it feeds. The power that is behind it is the selfish greed of corporate capital. "Onward and onward they go, determined, it seems, to drive the American people to destruction; to give their roofs to the flames and their flesh to the eagles." I see men before me who have been reared in an atmosphere of luxury who look upon these words as extravagant. My friends, you do not know the heart beats of the masses as I know them. Now, then, what is the remedy?

One of the most important remedies is national ownership of the highways of the people, the railroads. For railway discrimination has been the father of it all. But how can this great corporate conspiracy against equal rights and equal opportunities be checked and driven back? That is the question of the hour. My friends, there is not a monopoly in America to-day but has been created and maintained by railway discrimination-some system of favoritism. These trusts and combines do not have a monopoly of the brains and business capacity of the country. Under the great law of evolution, keener brains and brighter minds and men with more intense capacity for application to business are being produced. It is only when trusts and monopolies are hedged behind some condition of advantage that they can expect to monopolize. No one knows this better than the great leaders of the trust-monopolies. They know it so well that their greatest energies have been directed, not to a matter of the superiority of their goods, but as to how they can best manipulate the men who control the highways of the people so that they can go. over these highways with their goods to the practical exclusion of their competitors.

The bludgeon that has created all exporting monopolies and trusts is railway discrimination, secret rebates, manipulation of cars and a general effort on the part of the railway managers to hinder, humiliate and discourage all men whose tastes and inclinations lead them into the channel of business occupied by their favorites and co-conspirators. This power is also an important factor in maintaining manufacturing trusts that do not export. The fear of railway discrimination, the fact that all moving spirits in these great industrial combinations stand close to the men who control the highways of the country, deter men from putting their money into enterprises against such desperate odds as those created by railway favoritism.

Then what is the remedy? Take these railways away from these corporations. Let the government own and run them.

Under the power of eminent domain, take them. Pay for them just what they are truly worth. Run them under a department of government just as the postoffice is run now. Then every man can go to market with the products of his labor just as cheap as any other man. Then equal rights and equal opportunities can be reëstablished. But, says one, how can the government pay the interest on this enormous public debt which the purchase of these roads will create? My friends, the people, who are the government, are paying it now. In excessive freight rates charged by these corporations they not only pay the interest on the bonded debt of these roads, all dividends on watered stock, but they are paying hundreds of millions annually for the benefit of monopolies, trusts and favored shippers.

One great advantage of national ownership is that the bonded debt necessary to purchase all these roads could be placed by the government at from one and one-half to three per cent less interest annually than is now being paid by these corporations on their bonded indebtedness. And this great saving of interest would be an important factor in cheapening the cost of transportation. to the people. By government ownership, the people are only changing the managers of their highways. And the present managers have shown themselves unworthy to perform such a great public duty. By government ownership, only, can the equal rights of the public over these highways be guaranteed to the people.

Guarantee absolute equality over the highways of the country so that every butcher can ship a carload of cattle just as cheap as the Big Four Beef Combine, and the Big Four Beef Combine cannot hold a monopoly of the meat business of America twentyfour hours. Guarantee absolute equality over the highways of the country so that the independent oil producers and refiners of America can go to market just as cheap as the Standard Oil Company people and the wrongs of the Standard Oil Company will soon be a thing of the past.

How can this reform be brought about? How? By creating a great political force, independent of party, independent of party bosses, strong enough to drive from public life, from legislative halls, from senatorial chambers, from executive chairs and judicial benches the subservient tools of the trusts and corporations and put in their places men whose hearts beat in sympathy with God's toiling millions. When you have done this, the rest is easy.

How can this great political force be created? By all men of

all parties who are opposed to trusts and monopolies, organizing in their respective counties and townships American Anti-Trust Leagues, an organization interfering with no man's politics, an organization the religion of which is to vote against men who are controlled by trusts and corporations and to vote for men who are prompted by impulses for the public welfare. Let the old parties nominate their candidates and the men of the American AntiTrust League will elect the good ones and defeat the bad ones.

Let all men of all parties, religions and creeds, who are opposed to trusts and monopolies and who are in favor of the great basic principles of equal rights to all and special privileges to none, join in the defense and maintenance of these great fundamental principles of the American republic. This is no time for the friends of the principles to divide their forces. Let all men who love their country better than they do their party, come. Let all Democrats, all Republicans, all Populists, all Prohibitionists, come. Let all Knights of Labor men come. Let all Farmers' Alliance men come; let all American citizens come and fight for the maintenance of the great principles of equal rights for that great principle of the brotherhood of man for which the lowly Nazarene suffered upon the cross, that He might inculcate it into the hearts of men. Come and create a great power strong enough to drive from public life all men, be they Democrats or be they Republicans, who are opposed to these principles, and reestablish equal rights and equal opportunities to the American citizenship. Divided, you are but as egg shells in the hands of the enemy. United you are omnipotent. These questions are above party. They are as broad as our common country.

The weapon is in your hands. The greatest weapon in all the annals of time. It is greater than gatling guns, greater than dynamite-aye, the thirteen-inch guns may thunder from all the battlements and they are but puny compared with your weapon, the ballot. Use it, and see that it is honestly counted. He who would use dynamite and vote wrong will be damned through all eternity.

This precious weapon, it costs oceans of blood to wring it from the kings and emperors and the aristocrats of the old world. Use this weapon earnestly and prayerfully-this weapon before which legislators, congressmen, senators, presidents and judges are but as chaff in the whirlwind.

Organize the American Anti-Trust League. Stand shoulder to shoulder with all the sons of toil. Rescue our land and government from the curse of a corporate oligarchy of wealth. Rescue popular government from the grave opening to receive

it.

Carry the republic onward and upward in its mission of giving to man an equal show in the battle of life.

Do this and you will be blest of all generations of men.

A photographer was given possession of the stage and took a flash-light picture of the assemblage.

EDWARD QUINTON KEASBEY.

Member New Jersey Bar.

Edward Keasbey, of New Jersey, spoke on "New Jersey and Trusts," saying:

New Jersey has been called the mother of trusts. I have not come here to maintain or defend them, for although many of them are only a few months old, they are all big enough to take care of themselves. I have come to hear what is said about them outside of their home, and to carry back to people of my own state any suggestions you may have to offer for their regulation. and discipline. At the same time I would like to say a few words on her behalf, and to state as clearly as possible the principles upon which she is acting in dealing with the corporations for whose existence and conduct she is in a measure responsible.

It is true that many large corporations have been formed during the last few years under the laws of New Jersey, and that these are called the trusts. The names of many of them are well known. In name and in form they are merely ordinary corporations organized under an old statute in New Jersey that makes provision for the formation of manufacturing companies, but their capital stock is very large and their names will be recognized as those of some of the most notorious of the trusts. There is the Standard Oil Company, with a capital of $100,000,000; the American Sugar Refining Company, with a capital of $75,000,000; the American Woolen Company, with a capital of $65,000,000; the Amalgamated Copper Company, with a capital of $75,000,000; the Distilling Company of America, with a capital of $125,000,000; the Federal Steel Company, with a capital of $200,000,000, and many others. The whole number of corporations organized between the first of January and the first of August of the present year is 1,636, and the aggregate of their capital stock is more than two thousand million dollars.

New Jersey, indeed, is not the only state in which large corporations are formed for the purpose of carrying on business

!

throughout the whole country. West Virginia and Kentucky have for a long time afforded especial facilities for the formation of companies intending to exercise their powers in other states, and Delaware has lately offered peculiar inducements for the creation of such companies. In fact there is hardly any state in which corporations cannot be formed with capital enough and powers enough to become formidable rivals of the greatest of the companies that have been organized in New Jersey, and yet it cannot but be interesting in a conference of this kind to inquire what it is in the laws or policy of New Jersey that leads men to turn to that state for the organization and protection of the capital invested in such great enterprises.

Combinations of capital for the purpose of controlling the market are no longer made in the form of trusts. They are no longer made by means of agreements to refrain from competition, and by placing the stock of rival companies in the hands of trustees. When the courts declared that such agreements and conspiracies were invalid and the legislatures of many states declared combinations in the form of trusts or otherwise to prevent competition to be unlawful the agreements were annulled and the combinations were dissolved, and men who desired to unite their interests under one control formed corporations and transferred to them the stock or property and business of existing companies. It is these corporations that we have to deal with and not with agreements in restraint of trade or conspiracies to prevent competition and maintain prices.

The results intended and accomplished by the corporations may be the same as those intended by the trusts, but the difference is vital in its legal effect.

The corporations are in form like other corporations and they exercise the rights of property which are common to all corporations, and indeed to all individuals. They differ from other corporations only in that they are larger and more powerful, in that they have more capital, and have acquired the control of many separate enterprises under a single management, and as a consequence they do in effect prevent competition among the several enterprises under their control, and tend to monopolize, so far as is possible, the trade of those enterprises. It is in these points of difference that they resemble the combinations made in the form of trusts, and it is in these points of difference that they are regarded as dangerous, but in discussing the dangers and the remedies it is important to bear in mind, first, that it is not trusts or agreements in restraint of trade that we have to deal with, but large corporations, and secondly, that it is not corporations as such