MONDAY, FEBRUARY, 14, 1910. A TYPICAL TRUST.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 38, 14 February 1910, Page 4

MONDAY, FEBRUARY, 14, 1910. A TYPICAL TRUST.

The National Sugar Refining Company of America has just paid into the United States Treasury a further instalment of £120,000, making up, in all, a fine of £700,000, imposed as a penalty for i* systematic and wholesale evasions of the law. This item of news may possibly come as a surprise to those of us who are unfamiliar with the ways of American "high finance." But if we are to take the evidence supplied by all tho most eminent American authorities on ' the subject as reliable, there is no kind • of crime, from petty larceny to murder, that one or other of the great Trusts has hesitated to commit to secure its nefarious ends. Remembering how, during the San Francisco "graft" trials the gang of lawless millionaires who stood behind Schmitz and Ruef lent their aid and patronage and wealth to the criminals who kidnapped one of the chief ; prosecutors and shot down another in the ! open court, we need hardly be astonished to learn that the Sugar Trust has been I convicted of frauds that would have sent all its directors to gaol if they had been individually liable, and that not even the dexterity of the trust lawyers, who boast that they can evade any law that Congress can pass, has availed to shield these splendid malefactors from all the consequences of their misdeeds. The American Sugar Refining Company has long enjoyed an unenviable notoriety —even in the United States, where the standards of commercial morality are not inaccessibly high. Writing a few months ago on this subject, Mr C. Norcross, who has devoted a great deal of attention to the Trust's affairs, points out that "within a period of two years the American Sugar Refining Company has been indicted and found guilty on more than a score of counts for rebating, and has paid fines approximating 170,000 dollars; has admitted defrauding the Government by a system of false weighing, and has settled in part for over 2,000,000 dollars, with more cases to be heard; and has confessed to a criminal conspiraiy to throttle a competitor by offering to pay 750,000 dollars fur a discontinuance of the suit of the Pennsylvania Sugar Refining Company against it." At that time, six out of the seven directors stood indicted for conspiracy; and in the opinion of independent journalistic criticism, this was only the beginning of the revelations that the courts were to hear. "The methods of operation and the details of criminal deiiance of ali law and moral obligation by this Trust are enough to amaze even a public already made callous to tales of corporation corruption by the revelations in the investigations of Standard Oil." Readers of "Frenzied Finance" would hardly expect to find any other Trust surpassing the iniquitous record of "Standard Oil," but tho researches of Mr Norcross, Mr Welliver and others have certainly justified the proud pre-eminence in evil thus claimed for this huge combine. The Sugar Trust was originally the creation of Henry 0. Havemeyer, an enterprising German, who, over twenty years ago, devised a system to secure for his firm an absolute monopoly of the American sugar trade. It would take a long time to explain exactly how Havemeyer worked his way till, with his six I million dollars of capital watered down to seventy-live millions, with all the great railroads in America subservient to his will, he stood unchallenged in absolute control of tho trade and of America's sugar supply. Financial or commercial ruin was not the only risk that Htivomeyer's rivals had to face. "To be followed from your home in the morning by a detective; to be tracked to your place of business; to have your every movement reported in minutest detail , night and morning; to be driven by the . fears and tears of your family to carry a revolver ag-ainst the possibility of assassination; to be tracked by these spies from city to city; to find that a word and a nod, of your enemy prevailed i against you in the greatest money market of the world"—such was the fate of the few men intrepid enough .to resist' Havemeyer's invitation to "come in" and to make a fight for independence and the right to conduct their own business in accordance with the law : of the land. Even now, when its impudent fraud upou the Customs has been disclosed, we hear of huge "bribes" offered to dangerous witnesses to "disappear," and even of threats to assassin- ■ ate. Mr. Parr, the Treasury Official, whose courageous attack upon this monstrous monopoly has earned him the proud title of "the Nemesis of the Sugar Trust." So far as the general policy of i the Sugar Trust is concerned, it has fol- " lowed the course chosen by most of the 1 great American combines—"by strang- t ling competition, by extorting high prices, 1 by manipulating the Tariff with the aid ■ of a Oongrcss partly subservient and I«' partly incompetent, by inflating capitali- < sation, by breaking down the laws." But 1

IT , "the American national conscience has !S 'been rendered callous by long familiarity m with such abuses, and it is. only now Dr when the effect of the Sugar Trust's machinations in raising the cost of the people's food ha 3at last become manifest, that the punishment so long delayed seema at last likely to overtake this huge criminal conspiracy against the peoples' rights.