The copper era., 1911-09-22

| good will and so was not, within the
 statute. This would have been the same at common law. where from ! time immemorial such a restraint as | this has been held to be reasOna ble l because limited to the necessity of preserving the good will which the
 vendor was selling, and which but for
 such au agreement would be worth
 nothing. In other words, the supreme 1 court in this case gave reasOnd ble ! construction to the statute and eli minated from it's operation those
 harmless, useful incidental restraints
 growing out of lawful contracts
 which are made for an entirely diff
 ferent purpose from that of control i ling prices or maintaining monopO- ly by supreSsing competition and
 which have always been recognized
 as properly enforceable by courts of i both law and equity. I repeat again
 that in spite of all the denunciations 1 that we have heard of the decisions
 of the supreme court in the Standard | Oil and the Tobacco cases, there is l not one who has criticised them that ! can formulate a contract in restraint | of trade that ought to come within
 it under the decision of the supreme
 court.
 | It is said that the supreme court has read something into the statute l that was not there before: that it has inserted the word "reasona ble" be- l fore restraints of trade, when the same court had said that this could
 not be properly done, because con gress had evidently not intended to include such a limiting word in the
 statute. This is not fair to the court.
 It is true that the court, in the early days of the construction of the stat
 ute, had said that it could not limit the statute in effect by excluding from its operation what was deemed
 reasona ble at common law. But, as other cases arose it found it neCes-
 sary to make exceptions to the literal operation of the words restraint of
 what was minor, or incidental, or in direct, and including only those cases where the chief object of the con tract or com bination was the re- straint.
 'Now. in what way has this in jured the public veal? What com binations or arrangements can escape under
 this interpretation that any sensible
 man would wish to have condo mned? Did the court not condemn the Stand ard Oil Company, the father of all trusts, in the history of which every form of criminal illegality was prac- ticed? Did it not. on the other hand, condemn the tobacco trust, of much later origin, and framed under the advice of cunning counsel for the very purposes of evading the Condem- na tion of the statute and at the same time securing and enjoying the mon- opoly the framerS of the statute in- tended to prevent and punish?
 "The court has exhibited a. courage lin facing the necessary results in [ enforcing the statute that, instead of prompting an attack on it, ought to make every American proud that we have such tribunal. It is now en- forcing its decree again5 the Stand
 ard Oil company and against the
 tobacco company and it is making
 those great combinations divide them-
 selves into component parts under
 such provisions in the decree that an
 in junction shall be constantly opera
 tive to prevent by contempt proceed
 ings any assumption of the old re-
 lations of monopoly. It needed those
 two great decisions to teach the
 business public that at least not in
 the supreme tribunal of this country
 would the claim be listened to, that in this day and generation we have passed beyond the possibility of free competition as consistent with proper business growth, or that we have reached a time when only regulated monopoly and the fixing of prices by governmental authority are consist | ent with future progress.
 i've did get along without mon opoly; we can get along without it: 1 and the business men of this country must square themselves to that neces- l sity. Either that, or we must pro ceed to state socialism and vest the 1 government with power to run every | business. The decision of the su- preme court is in the highest inter- est of the public and l am glad to ] think that business men who have been violating the trust law are now being made to see the necessity for putting their houses in order, chang ing their original organizations, 9iv ing up the idea that it is necessary 10 control markets in order to make profits, and reverting to the old prin- Ciple of free competition, in which all limit upon it to prevent it's being excessive must be self-impOsed by the good sense Of each connection and not by any arrangement or contract between competitors CT secret stipu- lation or wink or nod.''
 It must be borne in mind that there are two sides to every story. It may be expected that aspirants for public office will he inclined to picture be- fore the audience those phases of a question more likely to appeal to their sympathies and prejudices, but before the people come to the conclu- sion that the eight members of the court have rendered a WRONG deci- sion: a decision intended to take away from the people their RIGHTS; l decision intended to usurp the powers of Congress, it is well that they be in possession of both sides of the question.