"today we are all of us socialists." The confusion reaches much deeper than a mere opposition between the beliefs of different classes. Let each man, according to the ad vice of preachers, look within. He will find that inconsistent social theories are battling in his own mind for victory. Lord Bramwell, the most convinced of individualists, became before his death an impressive and interest ing survival of the beliefs of a past age; yet Lord Bramwell himself writes to a friend, "I am something of a socialist." If, then, the law be confused, it all the more accurately reflects the spirit of the time. IN discussing "The Anti-Trust Act and the Merger Case," in the Harvard Law Review for June, Victor Morawitz, of the New York bar, says: In the case of the Northern Securities Company the precise question was whether a combination to acquire and hold a majority of the stocks of two railroad companies, the lines of which constituted main arteries of interstate commerce, and to create a com munity of interest in their ownership, was in restraint of commerce within the meaning of the Anti-Trust Act and could be prohib ited by Congress. The ultimate effect of the combination in this case, undoubtedly, was to destroy the possibility of true competition between the owners of the two railroad prop erties, because the combination (i. c., the Northern Securities Company) became the principal owner of both properties and ac quired full control over their management, If, as decided in previous cases, a contract or combination suppressing competition be tween railroad companies in respect of inter state commerce is in restraine of interstate commerce and illegal under the Act, the majority of the court were right in holding that the combination in the case of the Northern Securities Company was illegal. In the prior cases the restraint of competi tion was only partial, while in this case the possibility of true competition was destroyed. The case, however, cannot fairly be distin guished from the case of E. C. Knight Com
pany on the ground that the restraint of commerce in the one case was direct and in the other case indirect. The true distinction is that in the one case the combination re stricted only competition between individual shippers and did not affect the public in the transaction of interstate commerce, while, in the other case, the combination imposed a restraint upon the transaction, by the public, of interstate commerce upon railroad lines, which Congress had power to keep open, at all times, as avenues of interstate commerce. The Anti-Trust Act does not purport to prohibit acts in restraint of commerce per formed under contracts or by combinations, but it prohibits the contracts or combina tions themselves, if in restraint of commerce. It was, therefore, not necessary to show that any action was taken by the Northern Se curities Company to advance rates or other wise to hinder commerce upon the two rail way lines. Assuming that a restraint of competition among interstate railway car riers is a restraint of commerce, as was held in the case of the Joint Traffic Association, a combination to acquire absolute power over competitive rates would, properly speaking, be "in restraint of commerce though rates should not actually be advanced. Similarly, a government with autocratic powers would be said to be in restraint of liberty although it should be a benevolent autocracy and should not exercise its powers oppressively. Mr. Justice White and the three justices who concurred in his opinion, appear to have assumed that the case of the govern ment was based upon two propositions, vis.: (i) That the ownership of stock in two rail road corporations constituted interstate co'mmerce if the railroad companies them selves were engaged in interstate commerce : and (2) that the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce embraced the power to regulate the ownership of property used in interstate commerce, including power to regulate the ownership of stock in corporations whenever such corporations were engaged in interstate commerce.
