A Not Optimistic Report
By Editor
ATTORNEY-GENERAL WICKERSHAM has presented his annual report. The list with which his department has had to deal includes trust operations and alleged trust conspiracies, customs frauds, internal revenue frauds, land frauds, water-power frauds, rebates, bucket-shops, fraudulent use of the mails, bankruptcy frauds, and frauds against Indian tribes. The companies, persons, combines against which convictions have been secured and fines assessed during the year are: - Paper Board Trust, $57,000.
- Kentucky Night Riders, $3,500.
- Window Glass Trust, $10,000.
Since the Attorney-General's report came from the press the American Naval Stores Company, known as the Turpentine Trust, and six co-defendants, were convicted of violations of the anti-trust law. Two of the individual defendants were sentenced to three months each in jail, and fines aggregating $17,500 were imposed. Actions are progressing under the Sherman act against the following: - Tobacco Trust.
- Standard Oil Trust.
- Powder Trust.
- Terminal Railway Association of St. Louis.
- James A. Patten, Eugene G. Scales, Frank B. Hayne, William P. Brown, and Robert M. Thompson, indicted on a charge of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in available cotton.
- Towing Trust of the Great Lakes.
- Beef Trust (three separate criminal proceedings).
- Wholesale Grocers' Trust.
- Butter and Egg Trust.
- Brick Trust.
- Bath Tub Trust.
- Bituminous Coal Trust.
- Harriman Lines (suit in equity).
The sum of $3,135,363.88 was recovered from the Sugar Trust for fraudulent weighing. In this we are told there was "a wholesale system of corruption among the Government employees" in New York. Customs fraud criminals have been forced to pay immense fines, ranging from $500 to $7,500. Goods have been seized to the amount of $50,000. On imports of cheese and figs from Mediterranean ports, suits are under way to recover $700,000. Twenty-five criminal indictments are pending against railways. Actions are pending against the Oregon and California Railroad Company and forty-five other defendants to recover 2,300,000 acres of land valued at $50,000,000. Twenty-four similar actions are pending against the Central Pacific Railway Company. As the result of 38 civil and 28 criminal prosecutions more than 400,000 acres of illegally fenced land has been restored to the public domain. Within the year there have been 15,371 criminal cases in the United States courts, and fines and penalties imposed amount to $1,083,974. Surely this does not argue for the millennium or a soon reign of righteousness on this earth. Nor can we excuse this sort of crime because it was done in a large part in corporate capacity. For guilt is personal; and the fact that many men were often involved in each crime only augments the darkness of the picture. There is a striking prophecy of these conditions in Isaiah 59. Read it, and profit thereby.