The Government’s Trust Policy.—
Attorney-General Wickersham made a speech at a dinner in New York, April 30, in which he uttered some things of significance and weight concerning the policy of the government with respect to the enforcement of the anti-trust law. It is asserted that his statement had been approved in manuscript by President Taft and the cabinet. He said: “You all know that the attitude of a very large part of the business community toward some of the laws enacted by Congress was prior to six or seven years ago one of indifference when not of hostility. There was a prevailing impression that many of the laws dealing with economic subjects had been passed to be pointed to with pride rather than to be enforced. “Then there came a rude awakening. The last administration set to work with vigor, with energy, which was accompanied at times with newspaper clamor, to enforce these laws. Business men, who eight years ago had not read the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, to-day know of it by heart, and railroad men and shippers alike have an intimate personal acquaintance with the Interstate Commerce Act. No American business man can to-day truthfully say that he does not know that it is a crime for a railroad to give or a shipper to accept a rebate from the established interstate rates. “The work of the present administration is none the less important than was that of the last in continuing to enforce the laws of the country and in endeavoring to effectuate the intent of the people speaking through Congress, in preventing the things which the people have come to believe to be inconsistent with the welfare of the Republic, but the methods which were necessary to awaken the business community to a recognition of the existence and vitality of these laws are no longer essential. “It may be, it probably is, true that in the movement to impress upon the whole business world the meaning and force of certain laws and the necessity of attention and obedience to them, some suits were instituted and some prosecutions commenced without sufficient consideration and without adequate cause. When such conditions are found to exist, the present administration will not hesitate to withdraw the suits or dismiss the prosecutions. Such action must not, however, be taken as any indication of an intention by the administration to abandon in the slightest degree the vigorous, impartial enforcement of the law or to undo in any degree the splendid work of the last administration.”— The Independent.