ing the whole field, it may be with accuracy said that the dread of enhancement of prices and of other wrongs which it was thought would flow from the undue limitation on competitive conditions * * *, in view of the common law and the law in this country as to restraint of trade * * * and the illuminating effect which that history must have under the rule to which we have referred, we think it results: That the context manifests that the statute was drawn in the light of the existing practical conception of the law, * * * It indicates a consciousness that the freedom of the individual right to contract when not unduly or improperly exercised was the most efficient means for the prevention of monopoly, since the operation of the centrifugal and centripetal forces resulting from the right to freely contract was the means by which monopoly would be inevitably prevented. * * * In other words, that freedom to contract was the essence of freedom from undue restraint on the right to contract."
There could not be a clearer statement of the oft-demonstrated principle that the greatest protection possible against excessive prices was to be found in safeguarding the freedom of competition, which, of course, could not exist if its chief method of underbidding was wrested from free traders. In other words, it certainly has been the law heretofore, both statutory and common, that in accord with sound economic theories, unreasonable and excessive prices were those that were created by monopolistic restraints on trade, and which were best checked by preserving the right to engage in free competition. Since the time of King John, that has been steadily contended for, and without intermission. There has at no time been any excessive price, however high the price may be, when that price
