Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 085.jpg

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THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE ACT
85

conduct apart from the actualities of life, or by reference to unknowable criteria, or by speculating upon imaginary conditions, or by conjecture;—that statement seems so absolutely to dispose of the matter as clearly as well-expressed words can do it. To those who understand that continuing trade consists of a never-ending succession of half steps, that must always be largely worked out through future and unknowable conditions, there should be no difficulty.

If this need further fortification, exactly the same result was reached in the law of England by the Court of Appeals and the House of Lords in the celebrated and highly commended decision of Mogul Steamship Co. vs. McGregor.[1] The exact distinction is made in this case that our own Supreme Court enforced in the Harvester and Nash cases. It will be remembered how strongly this case has been commended by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Standard Oil case.[2] "After all," as Chief Justice White says, "this was but an instinctive recognition of the truisms that the course of trade could not be made free by obstructing it, and that an individual's right to trade could not be protected by destroying such right. * * * The scope and effect of this freedom to trade and contract is clearly shown by the decision in Mogul Steamship Co. vs. McGregor."

The ever memorable opinion of Lord Bowen, in the Mogul case, has exactly the reasoning of Mr. Justice Holmes in the Nash and Harvester cases, with the distinction between the two cases contrasted and con-


  1. Mogul Steamship Co. vs. McGregor, 23 Q. B. D. 598. Decided in the Queen's Bench Division in 1889. On appeal to the House of Lords. 1892 A. C. 25.
  2. Standard Oil Co. vs. United States, 221 U. S. 1 (see pages 55 and 56). 1911.