"that the decree is a mere act of arbitrary power and utterly without justification or excuse." Governor Chamberlain, on the other hand, believes : (i) That the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in cludes and applies to, and must have been in tended to include and apply to, railways and railway companies; (2) That if it does so in clude and apply, the acts complained of by the United States in the Northern Securities case were forbidden by the Sherman Act, and warranted the bill in equity in that case and the decree of the court thereon; and (3) That at least three decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States absolutely dic tated and compelled the decree of the Circuit Court, now under discussion. In closing, Governor Chamberlain says: There remains but one word more to be said; a notice of Prof. Langdell's discussion of the special question of the amenability of the Northern Securities Company to the pro visions of the Sherman Act. This discussion is found on pages 546-554, and is naturally the backbone of his entire argument. He begins (p. 546), by saying, "In the Northern Securities case, on the other hand," that is, in contrast to the fact in the three cases just examined, "there is only one per son concerned, namely, the Northern Securi ties Company." Whether this fact, if con ceded, would differentiate the latter case from the former cases, in principle or effect, need not be discussed here. But what are the facts in the Northern Securities case? The briefest possible statement of the case must here suffice. Instead 'of "only one per son" being concerned in the Northern Se curities case, there were certainly three per sons, corporations, who were formal defend ants on the record, as well as real defendants in the untechnical sense, namely, the North ern Pacific Railway Company, the Great Northern Railway Company, and the North ern Securities Company. These three de fendants were as inextricably linked together as Chang and Eng. In fact, these corpora tions stood to each other in the precise rela
tions of Milton's "subtle Fiend" to Sin and Death; and between them, in view of their designs, might have passed the words put by the great poet into Satan's mouth: "I bring ye to the place where thou and Death Shall dwell at ease, and up and down, un seen. Wing silently the buxom air, embalmed With odors. There yc shall be fed and filled Immeasurably; all things shall be your prey." The first two of these three defendants were, in 1901, owners, respectively, of lines of railway extending from Minnesota to Puget Sound; being actually parallel and competing lines. Early in 1901, they united in pur chasing nearly all the stock—98 per cent.— of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Rail way Company, and made themselves joint sureties of the bonds of the last-named com pany, whereby the purchase was accom plished. Subsequently, in 1901, certain stock holders of the first two companies who prac tically controlled the two roads, agreed with each other to procure the formation of a New Jersey corporation to buy all, or the greater part, of the stock of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Companies; the promoters of this agreement agreeing with each other to exchange their respective hold ings of stock in the last-named companies for the stock of the New Jersey company, to the end that the New Jersey company might be come the owner of the major part of the stock of both companies. Accordingly the Northern Securities Company came into ex istence as a New Jersey corporation, and almost at once acquired a large majority of the stock of both companies—about 96 per cent, of all the stock of the Northern Pa cific, and about 76 per cent, of the Great Northern. The scheme thus devised and carried into effect led at least to two inevitable results: First, it placed the control of the two parallel and competing roads in the hands of a single person, to wit, the Northern Securities Com pany; second, it destroyed all motive for
