Trusts Quotes
Note that in the beginning of the 20th century, the Democrats were the free traders opposing protectionism while the Republicans advocated strong protectionism to protect American companies. By the end of the 20th Century, both parties had flip flopped and taken the other’s position.
The President and his new appointee were half joking but many of the large corporations were attacking the new department and its head frequently. The extreme conservatives used the technique of personally discrediting the head of the agency to discredit the agency and its activities. The President himself was so popular that they did not dare attack him.
The low rates not available to farmers and ranchers forced them to sell cattle to the trusts—Swift and other meatpackers.
Federal regulation of corporations involved in Interstate Commerce was then a “radical new notion”.
TR came from a wealthy, upper class family, and because of his position favoring regulation of corporations he was called a traitor to his class by many.
The “rebate agony” referred to a corrupt practice of the Railroads and the Large Monopolies. The railroads charged a very high rate for the transportation of important products like beef and oil. However, secretly they gave back a large percentage of the transportation rate charged to the trusts. They in turn could cut their prices and undersell all the smaller competitors who were paying “full freight” and could not afford to match the lower price. As soon as the smaller competitors were driven out of business in an area, the trust raised its rates even higher than they charged originally. The Railroad had made a small but reasonable profit on the freight of the trusts but they were guaranteed all their business. They also made huge profits on the higher rates that the small companies paid until those companies were driven out of business. Journalists like Ray Baker and Ida Tarbell had uncovered the rebate scheme which enabled the trusts to steal high amounts from the general public through unreasonably high prices. President Theodore Roosevelt was committed to try and regulate the railroads and not allow rebates but charge the same public rate to all with no rebates. Socialists like Sinclair, thought that this attempt would be hopeless—that the damage had already been done, and the trusts now had so much money that they could buy state legislatures and many in Congress to preserve their dominance.
Macdarland’s role was the equivalent of the Mayor of Washington DC. As an ally and apologist for McKinley, he felt that the President was doing the best he could to deal with the monopolies who were then keeping competitive capitalism from functioning properly. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt thought McKinley weak and vacillating especially on the “trusts”, and when he assumed the Presidency, he accomplished much more. TR however did not discover the Trust problem. As this quotation shows, there was general political awareness amongst the politicians of the day of the Trust/Monopoly problem in America. It was Roosevelt who did something about it to the distress of many of his own party leaders who had previously intimidated McKinley into inaction.
