CURRENT LEGAL ARTICLES. '•THE Northern Securities Decision" is commented upon adversely by Professor George F. Canfield in an able article in the Columbia Law Review for May. Professor Canfield submits that the following proposi tions may be stated with reasonable certainty: 1. The Northern Securities decision is wrong on principle, involving a wrong inter pretation of the Anti-Trust Act and a wrong interpretation of the powers of Congress under the Constitution; and, with all defer ence, the actual decree rendered, in its full length and breadth, is absolutely indefensible and violative of fundamental principles. 2. The United States Supreme Court, as now constituted, will not carry this decision to its logical consequences. The decision will be recognized, and more and more clearly as time goes on, as a piece of judicial legisla tion, resulting from the assumed necessity of suppressing what was supposed to be a great evil, and of averting greater evils of a similar character, which it was feared this one might produce. 3. The primary practical result of the Northern Securities decision will be simply that the Northern Securities Company itself will be practically suppressed and all similar plans of merger, if there were any such, must be abandoned; but the actual concentration of power and suppression of competition which the Northern Securities Company was supposed to secure will either continue to exist in the hands of the promoters of that enterprise or of those controlling a still larger combination of railway interests. 4. The Pennsylvania Railway Company, the New York Central & Hudson River Railway Company, and other large railway companies, which have consolidated with or bought control of competing railway com panies, are safe from attack by the United States Government under the existing AntiTrust Act. 5. The large industrial combinations, such as the Standard Oil Company, United States Steel Company and others, are also safe from attack by the United States Gov ernment under existing laws.
6. Joint traffic associations between com peting railway companies are illegal, even though they provide simply for the mainte nance of reasonable rates, because the union of railway companies is supposed to consti tute a monopoly. 7. Joint selling agencies and associations for maintaining prices among competing manufacturing or trading companies are legal, if they are in all respects reasonable, and the companies are not so big as to con stitute a monopoly. If they do, however, constitute a monopoly, then they are illegal, whether reasonable or unreasonable, because the test of reasonableness does not apply to monopolies. . . . Some one has said that the Northern Se curities decision was not only good sense, but also good law, and for the public wel fare. It is respectfully submitted that the law is now good only so far as the Northern Securities Company itself is concerned and cases involving precisely similar facts, that the Government's law was bad both before the decision and since, as the court, while granting the decree asked for by the Govern ment, rejected its legal propositions. As for the public welfare, it may be that the attack upon the Northern Securities combination checked the wild speculative spirit which preceded its formation; but would not natural forces have taken care of that, as they have taken care of Mr. Sully and his cotton bubble, and in times past of all the blowers of speculative bubbles? Whether it will have the effect of preventing the sup pression of competition and the maintenance of rates between the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railway Companies is yet to be determined. So far as now appears, one of two things seems likely to happen: Either the practical concentration of power and control will re main in the hands of the promoters of the Northern Securities Company, or it will be superseded by a still more formidable con centration of power, namely, by the practical union of the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Companies.
