Trust-Buster

Originated as a patriotic order, the Society of Tammany in Manhattan makes a great to-do over Independence Day. On that day last week the city's Democratic politicians crowded into their hall to hear New York's Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt call for a new "Declaration of Independence" against "Centralized Industrial Control" in the form of corporation mergers.

Said Governor Roosevelt: "The huge mergers and consolidations . . . are challenging in their power the very government itself. The influence of huge trusts, with their almost unlimited resources, will be felt in this country. . . . Their power will have to be combated. . . ."

To his hearers the Roosevelt warning sounded like a political war-cry for 1932, the posing of an economic, instead of moral, issue on which democracy might unite.

Tammanyites hailed their Governor as a new leader, cheered him as "our next President."