One of the arguments put forward by the Robber Barons for their continued riches (and this sounds exactly like the argument put forward by the Republican's in congress and their pundits in the media) was that if the wealthy weren't protected in their wealthy, they wouldn't create jobs for laborers, and that with their spending benefits WOULD NOT TRICKLE DOWN (caps mine) to the working poor. Now where have I heard about trickle down before? Ahh Yes Ronald Reagan.
But our speaker was not buying it.
"The arrogance of this assumption is unconcealed. He mocks the people who proposes that the Government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor, it (trickle- down economics he said bluntly) is a glittering delusion.
Appropriation bills for support of the Government are defaced by items and provisions to meet private ends (sound like today does it not?), and it is freely asserted by responsible and experienced parties that a bill appropriating money for public internal improvement (education, health welfare, roads, communications) would fail to meet with favor unless it contained items more for local and private advantages than for public benefit.
(The speaker concluded that he now carried)
"The sacred trust they (the people) have confided to my charge; to heal the words of the Constitution and preserve it from further violations inflicted on it by powerful monopolies and aristocratically establishments...."
This was the speech President Cleveland gave as a State of the Union in 1888. At that time the large corporations and so-called Robber Barons were the railroads and the growing Oil industry lead by Rockefeller's standard Oil Trust (Trust was the word used instead of today's Corporation). It led to the creation of the Sherman Antitrust Act which was passed by almost unanimous vote and signed into law by President Harrison in 1890.
Yet if one reads one the act and if it was fulfilled to the letter of the law as Cleveland said it should be today's corporations would be in violation of both sections one and two. The Robber Barons like today's Corporations fought back by making large contributions to politicians and their campaigns. Then came President Roosevelt, who proposed campaign finance reform legislation in his annual address to Congress on December 3 1906, saying,
"I again recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party. Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose directly or indirectly (via forming dummy citizens for groups like the Koch broths do today).
In his December 1907 address (state of the unions was given in December then) Roosevelt said to Congress.
"The fortunes amassed through corporate organizations are now so large, and vested such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign -- that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole -- some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to ensure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct."
The law was the Tillman Act of 1907, the first law to bar (in a very limited fashion) corporate money from political campaigns. Still on the books but ignored by both parties it says:
That it shall be unlawful for any national bank, or any corporation organized by authority of any laws of Congress, to make money contributions in connection with any election to any political office. It shall also be unlawful for any corporation whatever to make a money contribution in connection with any election at which Presidential and Vice-Presidential electors or a Representative in Congress, or any election of a United States Senator."
As time went on the corporations tried to use the same law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to get unions outlawed. They argued that if it was illegal for corporate persons to conspire or form monopolies for their own befit, it should be equally illegal for HUMAN persons (caps mine) to do the same in the form of unions. Corporations were using the Sherman Act by going against the spirit of a law that was passed to protect the average person from excessive corporate power.
Many laws have been passed since Roosevelt was known as "Trustbusters", breaking up Standard Oil as well as the American Tobacco. The working people loved him, as did entrepreneurs like Edison who again had opportunities in the newly freed marketplace. The Corporations did not and when Reagan was elected finally saw through him and by controlling the media through FCC deregulation, the means to reverse the regulations on banks and corporations.
I have more but I suggest people read their history. It's not boring and we are not told of laws like the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 which among other things mandates the FTC whose original job was to control corporate wrongdoing, and it still carries that mission. Though through Republican under funding during Reagan and Bush years it has cannot do the job as was intended.
Little was done to enforce these acts by the corporate- friendly administrations of Harding and Coolidge ("the business of America is business"), and Herbert Hoover. But seven years after the onset of the Republican Great Depression, FDR again began to enforce it and it was pretty much the law of the land from then until (ONCE MORE) Ronald Reagan was elected, and he stopped enforcing it in 1981. And what happened? Where are we today? almost 3 1/2 years into the second Republican (caused) Great Depression with corporations and the new Robber Barons buying the politicians and making President Cleveland's State of The Unions Speech have more meaning today than it did in 1888.
PERSONNEL note I love retirement. The things I find and read in the Library (as long as we have them might not be long thanks to the RepubliCON's) on the net (Whose freedom is also being threatened by corporations and their RepubliCON puppets.) are as Mr. Spock would say "Fascinating".
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