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indecent and immoral use from one state to another. It is the same right which was ex cluded as an element as affecting the constitu tionality of the act for the suppression of lottery traffic through national and interstate commerce. It is the right given for beneficial exercise which is attempted to be perverted to justify baneful exercise, as in the instances stated. This con stitutes the supreme fallacy of the plaintiff's error. It pervades and vitiates their contention. "Of course it will be said that women are not articles of merchandise, but this does not affect the analogy of the cases; the substance of the Congressional power is the same, only the matter of its exercise must be accommodated by the dif ferences in its objects. It is misleading to say that men and women have a right. Their rights cannot fortify or sanction their wrongs, and if they employ interstate transportation as a facility of their wrongs it may be forbidden them to the extent of the act of July 25, 1910." Marriage and Divorce. Illegitimacy of Child — Void Foreign Divorce Obtained not at Matrimonial Domicile, upon Substituted Ser vice. N. Y. It was held by the New York Court of Appeals in Baylis v. Baylis, decided Feb. 25, that a decree of divorce obtained by a wife in a state which was not the matrimonial domicile and without her husband's appearance in the suit or personal service of the summons upon him in that state is void. The statutory provision that "where it appears and the judgment determines that the subse quent marriage was contracted by at least one of the parties thereto in good faith, and with the full belief that the former husband or wife was dead or without any knowledge on the part of the innocent party of such former marriage, the issue of the subsequent marriage, born or begotten before the final judgment, are deemed for all purposes the legitimate children of the parent who at the time of the marriage was com petent to contract," was held not to include a case where the innocent party acted on the erroneous belief that the other party had been legally divorced. (Reported N. Y. Law Jour.) Monopoly. Combination of Non-Competing Groups not Unlawful — United Shoe Company Properly Organized — Sherman Anti-Trust Law. U. S. The Government suffered its first big de feat in the recent anti-trust campaign Feb. 3, when the Supreme Court of the United States
held that the officials of the United Shoe Machin ery Company did not violate the Sherman anti trust law by organizing that company. The Court, however, did not pass upon the legality of the system by which the company leases machines on terms that no "independent" machinery be used. The action of the Supreme Court grew out of the annulment by the Massachusetts federal court of one of two indictments brought against the Shoe Machinery Company officials. The lower court took the position that the indict ment did not state an offense under the Sherman law. The Government in the indictment alleged that the defendants violated the law, first by organizing the United Shoe Machinery Corporation, and second by a system of leasing their machines, whereby patrons were com pelled to promise not to use any machinery made by independents and to use only that made by the alleged combine. Mr. Justice Holmes, announcing the unani mous decision of the Court, said that the lower court regarded the indictment as merely referring to the organization of the company, not to the "tying clause" leases. That being the case, he added, the Supreme Court must accept that interpretation with out question. He said this reduced the case to a narrow compass, and pointed out that the several groups combined in the organi zation of the United Shoe Machinery were non-competitive. The Court declared that the Sherman law did not contemplate the doing of business by the smallest possible isolated units. "On the face of it, the combination," said Justice Holmes, "was simply an effort for greater efficiency. The business of the several groups that combined, as it existed before the combination, is assumed to have been legal. It is hard to see why the collective business should be any worse than its component parts. "We can see no greater objection to one corporation manufacturing seventy per cent of three non-competing groups of patented machines collectively used for making a single product, than to three corporations making the same proportion of one group each. "The disintegration aimed at by the statute does not extend to reducing all manufacture to isolated units of the lowest degree." It was announced at the Department of Justice that the Government would prosecute the Company under the remaining charge of monopoly and unfair competitive methods.
