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hereby declared to be contrary to public policy, illegal and void, when the same is made by or between two or more persons or corporations either of whom is engaged in importing any article from any foreign country into the United States, and when such combination, trust, conspiracy, agreement, or contract is intended to operate in restraint of lawful trade, or free competi- tion in lawful trade or commerce, or to increase the market price in any part of the United States of any article or articles intended to be imported into the United States, or in any manufacture into which such imported article enters or is intended to enter.
3. "An Act to Regulate Commerce." 1 Sec. 5 provides: That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act to enter into any contract, agreement, or combination with any other common carriers for the pooling of freights of different and competing railroads, or to divide between them the aggregate or net proceeds of the earnings of such railroads or any portion thereof.
The aim of these acts is a good one. The ultimate result sought, I take it, is not the prevention of combination as such, but of the abnormal restraint of trade. The anti-trust act of 1890, however, with its sweeping words, condemns every combination, no matter how reasonable its effect in restraining trade might be. Under this act the whisky trust was dissolved, 2 but through the organization of the Distilling Co. of America, the interests were nevertheless unified ; and similar results were produced in other lines of industry.
Probably the three most interesting, as well as instructive, cases arising under the National anti-trust legislation are United States vs. E. C. Knight Co., 3 Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. vs. United States, 4 and the recent Northern Securities case. 5 To the writer's mind, these three cases represent a gradual extension of governmental power through judicial decision. The facts in the Knight case were as follows : The American Sugar Refining Co., a New Jersey corporation, controlling a large majority of the sugar refineries in the United States, purchased a controlling interest in the stock of four Philadelphia refineries, thus obtain- ing a practical monopoly of the sugar business throughout the
1 24 Statutes at Large, 379.
- In re Corning et. al.; U. S. vs. Greenhut et. al., 51 Fed., 205.
3 156 U. S., i. 175 U. S., 211.
5 U. S. Circuit Court, eighth circuit, not yet officially reported.
