Bills and Debates in Congress Relating to Trusts (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1903 Excerpt: ... land the wrecks of small, independent enterprises thrown in our pathway. So now the American Congress and the American people are brought face to face with this sad, this great problem: Is production, is trade, to be taken away from the great mass of the people and concentrated in the hands of a few men who, I am obliged to add, by the policies pursued by our Government, have been enabled to aggregate to themselves large, enormous fortunes? This is the evil before us. Any time within the last nine years since I have had the honor to be a member of this body I would have introduced a bill to Erevent these evils, to suppress these combinations and these trusts if I could ave found the constitutional power to enact the bill. I find myself to-dajr, with every wish to exercise every power conferred by the Constitution upon Congress to suppress these trusts, unable to find in that instrument a power under which the Senate can originate a measure that in my opinion will be efficient. The people complain; the people suffer; the people in many parts of our country, especially the agricultural people, are in greater distress than they have ever been before. They look with longing eyes, they turn their faces to us with pleading hands asking us to do something to relieve them from their trouble. I believe the sentiment that something ought to be done pervades this body almost universally. The question for us and the problem for us is how, consistently with the limited powers which the Constitution has conferred upon us, we can deal with these great evils. There is a power, a power which the learned and distinguished Senator from Ohio Mr, Sherman on the 14th day of September, 1888, declared in this body was the only power which could be efficiently used. That is the tax...