 
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 12  Num. 24
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                     ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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JAMES B. DILL AND THE NEW JERSEY TRUST LAWS
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[Excerpts, below, except where  indented, from *The Autobiography
of Lincoln Steffens*]

  "Amalgamated Copper was begotten in 1898, born in 1899, and
  in  the  first  five  years  of its existence plundered the
  public to the extent  of  over  $100  million.   It  was  a
  creature of that incubator of trust and corporation frauds,
  the State of New Jersey."  --  Thomas W. Lawson (qtd. in CN
  11.10)

James B. Dill was the man who put through in  the  State  of  New
Jersey the laws to enable the organization of trusts and combines
[monopolies],  to  free corporations, to free them to do whatever
they pleased.

  "On April 6, 1998, the  largest merger in history occurred:
  Citicorp  and  The   Travelers   Group   joined  to  become
  Citigroup.  (Hmmm.....  Do you think there are going to  be
  layoffs at Citigroup?)  In the April 27, 1998 issue of  The
  Nation magazine, the interesting  legal strategy behind the
  merger is noted.  It seems that the merger between Citicorp
  and Travelers =is illegal=.  But, writes Doug Henwood, 'the
  parties figure they can get the  law  changed.   If  you're
  rich enough, you can present the government  with  a  *fait
  accompli*  and  have   the   law   you'd  like  to  violate
  repealed.'" -- CN 12.07

James B. Dill was the man who brought Andrew  Carnegie  and  J.P.
Morgan  together  for the purchase and sale of the Carnegie steel
properties and so  laid  the  basis  of  the  United States Steel
Company, the biggest transaction and the biggest trust  of  those
days [ca. 1890s].

  April  13,  1998:   NationsBank  Corporation  merges   with
  BankAmerica Corporation.  "The new asset maintains accounts
  for  30  percent of the nation's households."  ("Notebook,"
  by Lewis H. Lapham.  Harper's magazine, August 1998.)

James B. Dill was always spoken  of  with awe as "James B. Dill."
No familiarity with him; Mr.  Morgan  might  be  "J.P.";  he  was
called  that,  but  James  B.  Dill was always and only a name, a
mystery,  a  wonder-worker  in   those  terrible  days  when  the
reorganization  of  the  debris  of  [the  Panic  of  1893]   was
beginning.  No one but the masters ever saw him, and I thought of
him as a silent, thinking, conspiring lawyer who sat still in the
big back room of a great suite of offices.

  May   7,   1998:    Daimler-Benz   acquires   the  Chrysler
  Corporation. (Source: Lapham; op. cit.)

For there was, at that  time,  a very general popular discontent,
the choral accompaniment of the hard times; and  the  passion  of
the  day was the anti-trust sentiment, which was a development of
the old anti-monopoly cry of the earlier period.

  May 11, 1998:   SBC  Communications  acquires the Ameritech
  Corporation  and  takes  possession  of  one-third  of  the
  nation's phone lines. (Source: Lapham; op. cit.)

One day some morning newspaper printed  a  "roast"  of  James  B.
Dill,  the  author  of  the  criminal  New Jersey trust laws.  It
showed how  that  State  had  enacted  statutes  under  which the
anti-trust laws of other States  could  be  evaded  and  American
public  opinion  defied.   The article showed what was permitted:
plain financial crimes.

  May 21, 1998:   The  Seagram  Company (Bronfman family; MCA
  records, Decca) buys PolyGram.  "The new company amounts to
  nearly 25 percent of the American popular-music  business."
  (Source: Lapham; op. cit.)

This  clipping  was handed to me, with instructions to go and see
Mr. James B.  Dill  and  get  his  denial  or correction of these
charges.  Mr. Dill met me with a smiling welcome.  "The abuses of
the Jersey Trust laws must be  exposed  and  stopped,"  he  said.
"Yes," he added, as he glanced at the clipping, "yes, all that is
true, and more, much more."  And to my amazement he opened up the
criminal   inside   of   the   practices  under  the  New  Jersey
legislation, a  picture  of  such  chicanery  and  fraud, of wild
license and wrong-doing, that I could not, I dared not,  take  it
all down; I was too confused.

  June  1,  1998:  American Home Products Corporation (Advil,
  Robitussin,  Preparation   H)   acquires  Monsanto  Company
  (NutraSweet, Daypro, Demulen) for $34.4 billion  in  stock.
  (Source: Lapham; op. cit.)

"You  are  astonished?"   Dill asked.  "And well you may be.  But
you must write what I tell you. Don't quote me."

Why had he, of all  men,  provided ammunition for the exposure of
the James B. Dill laws of New Jersey?

"Why, Dr. Innocent," he said, "I was advertising my wares and the
business of my State.  When you and  the  other  reporters  wrote
about  what  financiers  could and did actually do in Jersey, you
were advertising our business --  free.  For financiers are dubs.
They have to be told, and they have to be told plain so that they
get it, and so, as I say, while I gave you the facts to roast  us
with,  what  you  wrote as 'bad' struck business men all over the
United States as good, and they  poured  in upon us to our profit
to do business with us to their profit."

 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +

For related stories, visit:
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html

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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 




