THE COLVILLE EXAMINER
Issued Every Saturday by the Stevens County Publishing
Company, Inc. J. C. Harrigan, Editor and Manager
Blame the Proper Persons
The 1907 financial flurry has caused many people
to give thought to questions of economics who
heretofore have been content to draw their regular
stipends and, as they often expressed it, let
economics care for themselves. But matters of
political economy have not lately been ' 'left to
themselves." Corporate interests are not blind,
nor are they ignorant. When a people neglects or
refuses to handle a matter of direct concern,
capital has ever been eager to ' 'handle it for the
people"—and incidentally to shape matters of
public concern so that they may not conflict with
matters of private interest.
The judgment of Judge Landis rendered against
the Standard Oil Company caused many people to
awaken from their troubled slumber and find
that the incubus of Standard Oil was in truth a
threatening reality. Invective and threat were
hurled at the oil trust. Rockefeller and Rodgers
were held up to public odium. Corporate greed
was again denounced. But all this came too late.
Lamentation that the people had slept was not
heard in the land, for it was easier to lay blame
other than where it belonged.
The growth of Standard Oil and its increasing
grasp upon the country have not only been permitted
but fostered by the republican congress. Para
graph 626 of the present or Dingley tariff puts on
the free list oils of many kinds and lastly petroleum
crude or refined: ''Provided, that if there be im
ported into the United States crude petroleum, or
the products of crude petroleum, produced in any
country which imposes a duty on petroleum or its
products exported from the United States, there
shall in such cases be levied, paid, and collected a
duty on said crude petroleum or its products so im
ported equal to the duty imposed by such country.''
The only country that is able to ship petroleum
or its products into this country in any considerable
measure is Russia. Russia levies a duty on crude
petroleum and its products varying from 100 to
200 per cent. The Standard Oil Company at first
sought to get protection by direct enactment but
was refused. Easy as congress is toward trusts
and great corporations, it drew the line at
the Standard Oil as an open proposition, put oil
on the free list and then added this joker that gives
the oil trust three to five times what it would have
been happy to get openly and, as some might say,
honestly.
The Standard Oil Company is thus protected by
a duty of from 150 to 200 per cent. Why ? Because
congressman elected by the people are elected for
the trusts. Corporations are not to be blamed for
doing what the people sanction and evidently like.
When oil advances, who is the cause of it—who
allows it? Not the company, for a company can
only do as it is permitted by law. Ask your con
gressman about it. He knows. His vote perhaps
helped to pass the infamous law, and his inaction
in the people's behalf has helped to strengthen the
company's power—power to make more oil to get
more money to buy more congressman to control the
prices on more oil.
This office has received a copy of the pamphlet
of protest sent out by the directors of the Standard
Oil Company. Its statement of grievance is that
the company has been lined for acting within the
law. The president of the United States and the
department of injustice are now waging war upon
a corporation which, with the aid of congress,
backed by the voters, has grown strong. Of course
the company is grieved. If the people didn't want
this company to grow and become such as it is,
why didn't they say so before? If the people went
to sleep and congress took a vacation, should the
company now be blamed for running the country
as best it could?
The entire matter resolves itself into a question
of past inaction and future action by the
voters at the polls. Even if things have been
allowed to go by the board for years, a new genera
tion of educated voters can work wonders by united
effort. Congress can not be changed in a moment,
nor will corporate effort immediately cease to gain or
retain special privileges. Democratic platforms for
years have attempted to unite a long-suffering pop
ulace on matters of action in restraining monopo
listic growth. If the country is ready to legislate
for its own benefit, the democratic hosts will see
that this desire is fulfilled. If the people are not
sufficiently educated to their own welfare, present
conditions may continue for a time. One ray of
light just now apparent is that the moneyed in
terests are fearful of taking any unwarranted step
at present, lest too many ordinarily careless voters
be aroused to summary action and in one election
remove from congress the pliant tools and men of
steal selected by the trusts, and supplant them
with men of steel tempered only with a spirit of
justice to all the people.
Democrats are pleased to note that the wave of
thought now speeding over the county is even be
ing reflected in some of the republican papers. In
last week's issue of the Statesman-Index the state
ment was made that "it seems our financial affairs
are in the hands of a few financiers who make the
rest of us dance like puppets at their will." It is
only too true, thanks to a republican congress for
years, and if only a few more republican papers
will aid in letting this be thoroughly understood,