Trust Operations | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 13, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 19.

Trust Operations.

A company composed of stock raisers was recently incorporated to wage war on the great beef trust. Twenty-five million dollars has been subscribed for stock in the new concern, which proposes to build a chain of packing houses across the West. The company will also do all in its power to prevent the merger of packing companies which was recently proposed by the beef trust, and which was to have been capitalized at $500,000,000. The beef trust has been enjoined by the courts from carrying out its illegal proposition, and an effort will be made by the beef trust to accomplish practically the same thing in another way. The government has won its case against the Northern Securities Company, that is, the proposed combination between the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific Railway Companies. The decision was handed down by Judge Thayer in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis, on April 9. The decision declares this $400,000,000 railway trust an illegal corporation in restraint of trade, and the parties to the merger are restrained from voting the stock of the companies. The court orders that the stock be returned to its former owners. An appeal will be taken to the Supreme Court, but as all four of the judges who heard the case are in harmony in the decision, it is not believed that the decision will be reversed. The leaders in the companies concerned are now planning to accomplish their purpose in an indirect way. A number of other railway companies were planning mergers, and it is thought this decision will retard the movement. It will not, however, retard the growth of the combine spirit, and the companies involved will be continually seeking some new way to override the law and accomplish their object.