NO HUMAN LAW IS SO STRONG AS AN

ECONOMIC LAW.

We ask special attention to an editorial in the Chicago Evening Post, under the title of "Trusts and Legal Confusion," and to an article to which it refers in the Times-Herald, by Arthur J. Eddy, under the title of "Monopolies, Trusts and Combinations." Mr. Eddy addresses himself to lawyers, students of economics and thoughtful citizens generally rather than to politicians. We are quite sure, however, that no article on the trust question is more worthy of careful study by politicians than the one Mr. Eddy has written without regard to them. If anyone is in doubt about this we ask him to turn at once and carefully read that portion of the article under the subtitle of "Inconsistencies of the Law."

In commending Mr. Eddy's article we wish to dissent from one statement, "Each state has the power to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which it will permit the corporations of other states and countries to do business within its borders, or it may, if it sees fit, arbitrarily exclude them." While reserving the discussion of this statement for another occasion, we will say now that the power to regulate does not include the power to exclude.

With Mr. Eddy's article as a whole we are in most hearty accord. It is one of the soundest studies of the subject we have ever seen. His conclusion is that

"Combinations of capital and combinations or labor have come to stay; they are part of the superb organization which characterizes modern industry and commercial progress; they are the inevitable and legitimate successors of more primitive conditions of trade rivalry and destruction; they are part of the great scheme of co-operation, which is the principal factor in social advancement; they bring persons, localities, states and countries together; they are the foes of war and the allies of peace, and at their best they tend to make the dream of the brotherhood of man a reality."

This summing up is a wonderfully luminous exposure of the ignorance, hypocrisy and cunning with which William J. Bryan has presumed to discuss the question of "trusts" before the American people. His doctrine of annihilation for corporations and hatred for employers by employes is the antithesis of the gospel of "peace on earth and good-will for all men," taught by the Christ in whom he professes to believe. His inordinate ambition has perverted his understanding until he is incapable of distinguishing truth from error. His remedies are the poisons for which he represents them to be true antidotes.

MOTHERS AND TRUSTS.

Three great authorities (?) on the economic conditions of labor assumed to have been created by trusts are in agreement with regard to their effect on the prospects of young men.

The editor of Harper's Bazar, supposed to be a woman, in its issue for June 23, 1900, under the title of "Mothers and Trusts," wrote as follows:

"This is a woman's cause for hating trusts, for fearing monopolistic tendencies of every sort. Her boy, ours, and yours, are defrauded of their American birthright-liberty and independence-while trusts operate to create a royal descent of money kings to rule the 'common' people. Woman's enmity against trusts is not on economic grounds. It stands on the American principle of liberty and equal rights, and the strength of it is the force of a mother's pride in her son."

In some hour of feminnine association Mr. Croker must have read this article and taken from it the tip to square himself with the mothers of sons by raising the cry of "Young men being crushed by the trusts." Certain it is if every mother of a son in New York knew how the American principle of "liberty and equal rights" has been crushed out of the young men in New York by the Tammany organization, not a mother's son of them would vote the Democratic ticket. To attempt to avert such a calamity to its

prestige and to win the votes of young men by championing their cause against trusts was a master stroke of policy, or will be if it succeeds.

So good did this policy appear that it at once attracted the eagle eye of that master fisherman for votes, Bryan. He must be a reader of Harper's Bazar and regard its political wisdom as a little superior to that of the sainted Thomas Jefferson, for these times. Seizing an opportunity to address young men, at the request of a Democratic Commercial Travelers' Association, he delivered an address that should have been published under the title of "Fathers and Trusts," the text of which shows more inspiration from Harper's Bazar than it does from the Bible. But the love of the father for "My son Absalom" was a very fitting bait for sympathetic young men, uninstructed as to the facts, to bite at. The great consolidations were represented as throwing large numbers of young men out of employment and robbing them of opportunity for advancement.

A quietus is given to all this gush and misrepresentation by the following facts:

In 1890 the census reports show 322,638 reporting manufacturing concerns, employing a working force of 4,476,884 persons.

The census for 1900, it is reported, has already received reports from 528,000 manufacturing concerns and the work is far from completed. If the concerns in 1900 employ, on the average, as many persons as

they did in 1890, these 528,000 reporting concerns must be employing about 7,300,000 persons.

This seems to indicate that "Mothers' Sons" can get into business for themselves, or can get a job, if they are built that way. All they need is the American genius for adapting themselves to conditions and hustle.

The truth is the industrial conditions for labor are better now than they have been at any time since 1892. More persons are employed, there are far more manufacturing and industrial enterprises to give them employment, their wages per day are higher and the number of days they are employed in a year are greater.

If every man who knows this by personal experience will vote as he is paid and do all he can to induce all others to do so, election day will not be a national strike for a reduction in wages from McKinley to Cleveland rates.

TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE OF A STATE.

Taught by experience, the Ohio State Board of Commerce wisely proposes to conduct a campaign of education throughout the state, so that when the next Legislature convenes every member of it will be familiar with measures that will be proposed for enactment, and with the reasons why they should be enacted. More than this, each member will know that a respectable number of intelligent, thinking people,