l EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT ing circumstance as that the sugar trust with ten factories can save a quarter of a cent on the price of sugar at times when the demand is slack by running nine factories full blast and shutting down one, while its independent com petitor must run one factory at 90 per cent efficiency is a sufficient refutation of any com plaint that bigness is necessarily bad. In the long run the people of the United States want the economy which results from skill and from spreading the benefits of organization as wide as the largest concern can spread them. Their country is big, big things are done in it, and they will learn in the end to prevent the evils which attend unrestrained bigness without fighting organization itself or seeking to dis member combinations like that described in this complaint." TRUST REGULATION (Suggestions). Wal ter C. Noyes writes in the February Colum bia Law Review on " Possible Federal Trust Legislation " (V. vii, p. 93). " Federal con trol of trusts," he says, " would, undoubtedly, accord with the sentiment of the people." The Sherman Act under the federal power to regu late commerce among the states fails to reach the producing trusts it was aimed at. Judge Noyes suggests that " Congress might enact legislation prohibiting corporations of such character that they are unlawful combinations under the laws of any state from shipping goods into that state. This is not only upon the principle that the corporation as an instru ment of interstate commerce is subject to fed eral regulation, but upon the underlying prin ciple that Congress may, under the commerce clause, remedy the evils caused by the opera tion of that clause. . . . "Before the adoption of the Constitution a state manifestly had power to entirely exclude foreign corporations. . . . There was a strange loss of power in transmission if Congress under the grant of power over interstate commerce cannot now in conjunction with state laws grant as effective relief. . . . "But while the powef of Congress to enact such legislation seems to exist, a conservative regard for the business interests of the countrymight prevent it from adopting such radical measures. The laws of the different states with respect to trusts vary so widely that the interests of the nation as a whole might not permit interstate trade to be made subject to
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such varying conditions. The remedy might be worse than the disease. "The adoption of a uniform anti-trust statute in all the states would solve the difficulty. A federal enactment that a trust corporation of the nature described in such uniform statute should not engage in interstate commerce would not be radical. But uniform laws re garding even uncontroverted matters are of slow growth. A uniform statute relating to trusts would be a practical impossibility. "Another way in which Congress might exercise its power over trusts employed as instruments of commerce would be through a broad declaration of a national policy coupled with appropriate legislation. Thus this rule of public policy regarding the trusts may be formulated from the decisions of the courts of the whole country. "Any trust or combination, the object of which is, or the necessary or natural consequence of the operation of which will be, the practical control of the market for a useful commodity, is against public policy and unlawful. "The rule furnishes a conservative standard. It is a test of illegality rather than of legality. Trusts not contravening the rule would prob ably be held invalid in many states. Trusts contravening it would, it is believed, be held unlawful in every state, unless it be New Jersey. Congress might, upon the principles we have considered, declare this rule of public policy the national rule of public policy, and prohibit trust corporations that violate it from engaging in interstate commerce. "Upon the same principles Congress, in stead of enacting a comprehensive statute, might adopt more restricted measures. Thus it might deny the right to engage in interstate commerce to foreign trusts discriminating in the price of their products or giving rebates or special privileges for the purpose of des troying local competition. "As auxiliary to a broad statute defining a national rule of public policy, or to statutes of limited application ' based upon the same principles, Congress might require all corpo rations engaged in interstate commerce to make public statements of their financial condition." WITNESSES. " Prepossession and Bias of Opinion Witnesses to Handwriting," by Charles C. Moore, Law Notes (V. x, p. 205).
