The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-05-17
THE PEOPLE rRrUNfPH.

It1E EEOEllE TRIUMPH.
After five long years of litigation
the supreme court of the United States
has decided that the Standard Oil
company of New Jersey is monopoly
in the restraint of trade. 1t must be
dissolved. The victory for the gov
eminent and it's people is a great one.
The authority of the law to deal with
corporations that become menacing
to the Industrial and economic ad-
vancement of the nation has been sus-
tanned
Nor has a panic in the business
world resulted. During the progress
of this suit many alarmists insisted
that should the supreme court decide
against the Standard Oil company.
the industrial progress of the nation,
brought about as 1t has been been to
a large extent by the application of
huge combinations of capital in va
rious lines of endeavor, would be
halted suddenly. 1t was contended
that these trusts and monopolies were
but natural development of business.
To declare them unlawful would mean
ruin.
But these were false prophets. Not
SO much as a ripple was caused on
Wall street, the great financial mart
of the world, by this decision of the
supreme court. And a reason for this
may be found in the fact that one of
the important details of this epoch
making decision, is that all huge ag-
gregations of capital are not necessar-
lily deemed to be trusts and mono
poles and in violation of the Sherman
antitrust law. Corporations whose
contracts are mot unreasonably re-
strictive Of competition" are not af-
fected by the decision. In other words
it does not place any ban on combina-
lions of capital that do not exercise
monopolistic functions. Such other
corporations whose acts may be ques-
tionable will be dealt with according
to the merits of their particular cases.
1t was only the other day that Col
oneI Roosevelt published an editor
ial in the Outlook in which he criti-
cized the New York state court of
appeals severely for it's reactionary de-
cision in declaring a workingman's
compensation act to be unconstitu-
tional. He quoted an eminent jurist
in a sharp rebuke of that court a0d
of American courts generally for their
policy for half a century of setting
property above human life-in other
words placing the dollar above the
man. But in this Standard Oil case
the supreme court of the United States
has decided that the dollar when it is
improperly manipulated is amenable
to the necessary regulatory laws of
man.
And on the same day that this mo-
mentous decision was rendered anoth-
err one was handed down by the court
setting aside the jail sentences for
contempt of courts against Samuel
Gompers, John Mitchell and Frank
Morrison, representatives of the Amer
lean Federation Of Labor, because
they had the temerity to criticize
judicial proceeding in the Bucks Stove
and Range company case.
To put the matter a little differently,
the court of last resort of the nation
accords to its people the widest lati-
tude of free speech.
Tuesday, May 16. 1911, was a field
day for peoples rights in the United
States of America. From time to
time it is argued that altogether too
much power is vested in the supreme
court of the United States. 1t has
been the rule, though, and not the
exception that this court has used it's
great power we'll.