Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/155

PREVENTION OF UNFAIR COMPETITION. 139 THE PREVENTION OF UNFAIR COMPETITION IN BUSINESS. — THE RECENT OPINION OF CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER. 'TWO important events have recently taken place which are, •*■ let us hope and believe, significant as indicating a right development of thought in the United States : — (i) Congress, after a century of inconsistency, has enacted a copyright, act, and (2) the Supreme Court of the United States has spoken bravely and wisely on the subject of commercial piracy. The new copyright act might with propriety have been entitled " An Act for the promotion in the United States of the art of printing and analogous industries." It is baldly unconstitutional in spirit, and it is good to-day only because the things of yester- day were too disreputable to admit of a moment's defence. Our ill-assorted statutes open wide the doors of their privileges to the foreign vagabond who invents an attachment for hand-organs ; he may enter at the lowest price, and without let or hindrance. But Bryce with his excellent book, and Herbert Spencer, and Sir John Lubbock, and Professor Huxley, and the rest, to each of whom we owe an inestimable debt, are required to stand and pay the printers and paper-maker's tax, or else deliver without reservation or redress. Certainly the new act is better than the old, — very much better; and for the reason that some evils are very much better than others. But wholly different is the action of the Supreme Court of the United States upon a cognate subject. The highest function of that exalted tribunal is the wise direction of enlightened thought. If it shall ever lose its capacity to understand, and respond to, and promote the intellectual and ethical progress of the nation, it will fail in its largest duty. If it shall ever finally determine that the United States of the twentieth century is to be held by the duress of the rules and precedents of the England of even the eighteenth century, its judgments will be valueless except as the special verdicts of a learned and upright jury.