The Legal World Monthly Analysis of Leading Events
The Sherman anti-trust law has occu pied for the past month the position of greatest importance in the public mind. The acquiescence of the Government in the plan for the reorganization of the American Tobacco Company is inter preted as in some degree counteracting the shock of the steel prosecution, and as indicating a more moderate tone on the part of the Administration. Too great significance is not to be attributed to this circumstance, however, for it is noticeable that some advocates of a broader governmental policy in relation to monopoly, Colonel Roosevelt and Samuel Untermyer, for instance, com plained that the decree dissolving the tobacco trust was not sufficiently drastic. While evidently convinced that the tobacco trust was bad, Colonel Roose velt has declared the harvester trust to have been a good trust, yet Mr. Wickersham has rejected the International Harvester Company's plan of reorgani zation as not radical enough. The Administration cannot be said to have become moderate on the trust question, even though the tobacco decree suits it. Nor has much assurance come from President Taft's third annual message devoted to the Sherman act. He main tains, as he has ever since the Standard Oil and Tobacco decisions were pro nounced, that the Supreme Court has interpreted the act as prohibiting all monopolistic combinations, and he confidently asserts that business men are in a position to determine definitely for themselves whether they are acting in conformity to the statute. He has failed to satisfy the business interests,
for the reason that the latter will never be satisfied with an interpretation of the law which makes it an instrument of unrestricted individualism and sees in it no sanction for any legal suppression of competition. Mr. Taft, in fact, is at odds with the business world because he believes in free competition as necessary to preserve equality of opportunity among a free people. His doctrinaire position on an economic issue has its counterpart in his views of the common law, which are not those adopted in England to-day — in fact, he does not recognize the possibility of any lawful restraint of trade at common law, nor does he perceive in the Standaid Oil and Tobacco decisions that elasticity and vagueness which makes it impossible to declare in such positive terms what the Supreme Court really decided in those great liberalizing opinions. While Mr. Taft recognizes the need of more specific provisions defining wrongdoing and urges a supplementary statute permitting voluntary federal incorporation, he fails to see that such a statute, to be really useful, should be really an amplification and extension of the Sherman law, plainly making she latter no longer viewable as a drastic piece of legislation. More light is to be looked for from other quarters. The hearings given by the Senate Interstate Commerce Com mittee in Washington may result in a report recommending some palliative measures, though in view of the politi cal complexion of the committee little more, perhaps, can be expected. To assist the committee in its work, the National Civic Federation has sent out requests for suggestions to twenty thou
