| Show THE STANDARD OIL Without dissenting the supreme court has decided against the Standard Oil In several other important cases under the Sherman act there has been almost an even This time all were in agreement as to the guilt of the defendant But the court's a very long was sharply disapproved by Justice because it set forth a new interpretation of the It is this new and not the affirmation of the circuit court's order to the Standard Oil that has excited extraordinary interest in the Many have thought that the prohibitions of the Sherman act were too broad because indicated by decisions and opinions in the they included merely technical and harmless restraints of and combinations which are not injurious to the public Roosevelt said that of the destroy the business of the and that the effect of it was make decent men violators of the law against their In notable cases it was held that the prohibitions were limited to restraints unreasonable in In the Trans- Missouri Freight association case the prevailing opinion Justice the body of the act pronounces as illegal every contract or combination in restraint of trade or commerce among the several N the plain and ordinary meaning of such is not to that kind of control alone which is in unreasonable restraint of but all contracts are included in such and no exception or limit- can be added without placing in the act that which has been omitted by More the breadth and severity of the law were indicated by Judge in the case against the Tobacco when he said is not made a Two individuals who have been driving rival express wagons between villages in two contiguous who enter into a combination to join forces and operate a single line restrain an exist- ing This view of the was held by all the justices of the supreme In the memorable Northern Securities the late Justice whose vote broke a did not intend to reach and destroy those minor contracts in partial restrain of trade which the course of decisions at common law had affirmed were reasonable and ought to be The purpose rather was to place a statutory with prescribed penalties and upon those contracts which were in direct restrain of and against public This is substantially the interpretation which has now been approved by the entire Justice Harlan It was proposed a few years ago that the statute j should be amended by inserting the word as qualifying the prohibited restrain of Upon a bill providing for such an amendment the senate judiciary committee submitted by unanimous vote an adverse saying injects into the act the question whether an agreement or combination is reasonable or unreason- would render the act indefinite and and to that utterly nugatory and and would practically amount to a repeal of that part of the The insertion of this' qualifying word was considered and opposed by President Taft in his message of part of which was as follows and especially the business ought to rid themselves of the idea that such a distinction between trusts and trusts is practicable or can be introduced into the Certainly the present anti-trust law no such distinction It has been that the word should be made a part of the and then that it should be left to the court to say what is a reasonable restraint of what is a reasonable of what is' a reasonable I venture to think that this is to put into the hands of the court a power impossible to exercise on any con- T principle which will insure the uniformity of 1 decision essential to just It is to thrust f upon the courts a burden that they have no precedents to enable them to and to give them a power approaching the the abuse of which might involve our whole judicial system in But now the supreme court has virtually provided for such a distinction in the administration of the President Taft's as- in the following words that this has been done in the Standard Oil the reasoning by which the chief justice reaches the in which the whole court he expresses the view that only M which in any way unreasonably or unduly restrain interstate trade and or which are unreasonably restrictive of competitive are within the prohibition of the first section of the And Justice in his expressed dissenting remarks that the court this act of congress means and embraces only unreasonable restraint of in flat contradiction to what the court said fifteen years have not found in the very long and not always lucid opinion of Chief Justice White a direct expression of the court's purpose to add the word but the reasoning warrants an inference to that We quote the following passage substance the propositions by the are reducible to That the language of the statute embraces every in restraint of and rence its test leaves no room for the exercise of but simply imposes the duty of applying its prohibitions to every case its literal The error involved is in the matter to be This is true because as the acts which may come under the classes stated in the first and the restraint of trade to which that section are not specifically enumerated or defined it is obvious that judgment must in every be called into play in order to determine whether a particular act is embraced within the statutory classes and whether if the act is within these classes its nature or effect causes it to be a restrain of trade within the intendment of the hold to the contrary would require the conclusion either that every contract or combination of any kind or whether it operated as a restraint of trade or was within the and thus the statute would be destructive of all right to contract or agree or combine in any respect whatever as to embraced in interstate trade or or if this conclusion were not then the contention would require it to be held that as statute did not define the things to which it and excluded resort to the only means by which the acts to which it related could be ascertained the light of reason the enforcement of the statute was impossible because of its The acts to be repressed by law are thus to be ascertained by the light of reason guided by the principles of This interpretation of the Sherman law does not seem to weaken The law was never meant to be a menace to all business but only to those who oppress competitors and rob the Corporations that are beneficial or harmless need not be A more reasonable and more effective interpretation of the law has been No attempt will be made to exterminate or crush great but only those-that treat competitors and the public unjustly- |
