Bob Jr. vs. Butler

Republican Chairman William M. Butler counterattacked Senator La- Follette on the question of combinations and monopolies:

"He reiterates the conviction that there are gigantic conspiracies in American industry and trade by which the 'system' is sucking the blood, morals and pocketbooks of the American people.

"As a matter of fact, in the bituminous coal industry, which comprises 85% of all coal, there is no single corporation or group selling commercial coal which controls more than 5% of the output. There are 8,000 independent operators busy at the present time cutting each other's throats in competition and fully one-half of them are now selling coal for less than cost.

"The price of sugar in the United States since the tariff has averaged a little over six cents a pound for wholesale refined sugar at New York. The average for the three years before the War was a little over four and one-half cents per pound, making an increase in price now of between 30 and 35%, while the increase in wages in the United States has been 100% and the average increase in the price of all other commodities has been about 45%. It must be obvious that, if this industry were under monopoly, it would surely try to get the average price of commodities.

"Competition in the oil industry has resulted in tremendous overproduction and low prices. Senator LaFollette, with his usual knowledge of industrial conditions, prophesied a year ago that we would have $1 gasoline."

To this, Bob LaFollette, son of Senator, retorted:

"There is no coal trust, no sugar trust, no oil trust, no beef trust, or any other kind of trust, so far as Mr. Butler has ever heard. All the trusts are gone. Harry Daugherty smashed them.

"Coal, according to Mr. Butler, is selling for less than cost, Standard Oil is a philanthropic institution, and the 'Big Five' packers are dead broke. Only the tariff, says Mr. Butler, is protecting the innocent beet sugar trust from the terrible Cuban cane sugar trust, when everybody knows that both are controlled by the same bunch of American financiers.

"I challenge Mr. Butler to go anywhere west of the Mississippi and recite his farm prosperity statistics to an audience of bankrupt farmers."