Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1911-09-22
Taft Strongly UphoIds Recent
Trust Decisions.
WOULD ABOLISH PATRONAGE
Warmly Endorses Sherman Law In
Speech at Detroit-Action of Su-
preme Court Interpreting Measure
''ln Light of Reason" Sustained.

DetrOlt.-PreS1dent Iaft Twice Cnal-
lenged his critics to prove the sound
ness and sincerity of their attacks
upon him and the policies of his ad-
ministration. For the first time on
the trip he struck out into political
issues and his listeners applauded his
defiance
In the first important political
speech of the trip made before the
Detroit Board of Commerce he de-
fed William Jennings Bryan and the
critics of the recent antitrust de-
cisions of the Supreme Court to bring
forth a case of trade restraint which
should be suppressed which could
not be proven a violation of the law
under those decisions. The challenge
was three times repeated and each
time cheered by the 1900 business
men to whom he spoke.
Later in an address before a con-
vention of internal revenue officers
he challenged the men who had
charged him with a misuse of patron
age to meet him in his proposal to
place every local federal officer un-
der civil service and SO wipe out
patronage and it's evils from the
government service. They won't do
it," he cried, "at least, not now"
In his trust speech, he invited his
critics to go to the limits of their
legal imagination to formulate a case
of harmful trade restraint which was
VII Of 10
as interpreted by the Supreme Court
in the Standard Oil and Tobacco
trust cases
The Sherman law, he said, should
not be amended. The law was not
made clear and the two decisions had
shown the business public that the
Supreme Court, at least, would not
listen to the claim that free compe-
tition was no longer possible.
I'VE did get along with competi-
tion," he said. I'VE can get along
with it. We did get along without
monopoly; we can get along without
it; and the business men of this coun-
try must square themselves to that
necessity. Either that, or we must
proceed to state socialism and vest
the govern .nent with power to run
every business"
Those decisions, he declared, had
stamped out an evil which would cer-
tainly have carried the country to So
cialism as reaction from the vicious
control of the few.
~,
tions that the Supreme Court had
emasculated the Sherman law in it's
recent decisions were absolutely un-
true. There was a wide difference,
he explained, between the court or
Congress placing in the law the word
reasonable so as to provide prose-
cution only for unreasonable re-
straint of trade" and the courts inter-
preting the law ''in the light of rea-
SON.
Were the word reasonable" writ
ten in the law or placed in it by the
court in it's decision, it would admit
the possibility of reasonable monop-
oily and place upon the court the bur-
den of drawing the line between a
good and bad trust. To interpret it
lin the light of reason" however, he
said, was only to place without the
pale of the law incidental or minor
restraints or cases where the intent
was not to monopolize. 1t was SIM
ply to prevent a reduction of the law
to an absurdity and excluded no case
where monopoly or restraint of trade
was the chief object of a combina-
ton. The sole restraint placed upon
the law by such an Interpretation, he
declared, was to hold it lin conform
ity with the evil sought to be
reached"