The Legal World modify or annul any changes in the rules or regulations which impose undue burdens on shippers. Another most important amend ment is a prohibition against any interstate railroad company holding stock in any com peting railroad and the further amendment that no railroad engaged in interstate com merce shall issue additional stock except with the approval of the commission, based upon a finding by the commission that the same are issued, first, for purposes authorized by law, and, second, for a price not less than par for stock and not less than the reasonable market value for bonds. By these provisions we shall gradually abolish that evil which is involved in the union of competing roads by one road owning the stock of another; and we shall prevent the over-issue of stock and bonds. "All combinations to suppress competition, or to maintain a monopoly in whole or in part of interstate trade are, and should be, in violation of the anti-trust law and should be punished as such; and there is no room for the expression reasonable or unreasonable, in this general view of the statute. If the statute were limited to combinations to restrain trade with intent to monopolize interstate trade, it would probably not include within it denunciation of the boycott against goods going into interstate trade, because such a boycott is a restraint against inter state trade not with intent to suppress com petition. "It would probably seem wise to establish an accusatory bureau in the department of justice to institute prosecutions for viola tions of the interstate commerce law and of the anti-trust law, while it would be wise to continue the bureau of corporations, en larging its scope somewhat perhaps to main tain the registration of corporations and the investigation into their operations so far as interstate trade is concerned. "It has been found most difficult to separate the administrative from the quasi-judicial functions of the Interstate Commerce Com mission; but it is thought that it would be wise to take away from them any responsibility in regard to the investigation of the validity of their orders before the Interstate Commerce Commission court and to leave the mainten ance of those orders to the Department of Justice when the appeal comes on to be heard in the court." Crime and Criminal Lou A committee of leading lawyers and busi ness men, judges and professors in the State University, all of Madison, Wis., are organiz ing a Wisconsin Conference on Criminal Law and Criminology, to be held at the University of Wisconsin November 26-27. Edward A. Ross, Professor of Sociology in the State University, and Vice-President of the Ameri can Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology organized at Chicago last June, is taking a prominent part in the preparations for the Conference. The principal subject-matter
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of the program will be the recommendations of the three sections of the National Confer ence on Criminal Law and Criminology held at Chicago. After organization and an address by Roscoe Pound, Professor of Law in the University of Chicago, the Conference will break up into several committees to which will be referred groups of related proposals. At the conclusion an address will be given by Professor J. H. Wigmore, Dean of the Northwestern University Law School and President of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. The report of C. H. McGlasson, of the de partment of prisons and prisoners, to the Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, shows con ditions at the Western Penitentiary of Penn sylvania so distressing as to demand the con sideration of the proper public authorities, and the transfer of all federal prisoners. The population of the penitentiary was reported to be 1301 by Wade Ellis, as acting head of the Department of Justice. "Of this num ber more than half are at all times idle, and more than half are confined two in a cell. The cells are unusually small, and the cots take up almost the entire length of each, the room for moving about being a space eight feet long and eighteen inches wide. There are more than three hundred prisoners suffering from tuberculosis, and seventy-nine cells are now occupied by those showing advanced stages of this disease. The prison is filled with vermin of all kinds." Miscellaneous The International Congress of Maritime Law opened at Brussels, Belgium, Sept. 28. M. Beernart, former Belgian minister of state, presided, and twenty-five countries, including the United States, were represented. The questions submitted included new rules relat ing to collisions and assistance to distressed vessels, and regulations dealing with the privi leges and liabilities of ship-owners. The majority of the countries had already signi fied their acceptance of the propositions formulated. In an investigation of the affairs of the American Sugar Refining Company under taken at the request of the Boston stock holders, it developed that a large majority of the whole capitalization of $90,000,000 was held by investors in the New England states. The report stated that the margin of profit in refining had been materially reduced by competition, but that the company's income from other sources fully offset this loss, and stockholders need feel no uneasiness regarding the earning power of the corporation. The International Tax Association at the Conference on State and Local Taxation held under its auspices at Louisville, Ky., late in September, adopted resolutions referring the corporation tax law to a meeting of Governors of all the states which the Association asked
