The Penn's Grove record., 1911-09-22
TAFT Defends
rule OF REASON"
Taft Strongly UphoIds Recent
Trust Decisions.
WOULD ABOLISH PATRONAGE
Warmly Endorses Sherman Law In
Speech at Detroit-AetIos ct ST.
preme Court Interpreting Measure
ain Light of Reason" Sustained.

Detroit.-President Taft twice chai
lenged his critics to prove the sound
less and sincerity of their attacks
upon him and the policies of his adj
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 1850 business
men to whom he spoke.
Later, in an address before a on
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 I'M
der civil service and 81 wipe out
patronage and its 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
not a violation of the Sherman law
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. "We can get along
with it. We did get along without
monopoly; we can get along without
1t; 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 government with power to run
every business"
Those decisions, he declared, had
stamped out an evil which would GER.
tainly have carried the country to so
cialism as a reaction from the vicious
control of the lew.
The President said that the asser-
tons that the Supreme Court had
e~masculated the Sherman law in it's
recent decisions were absolutely I'M
true. There was a wide difference,
he explained, between the court or
Congress placing in the law the word
reasonable" 10 al 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 its decision, it would admit
the possibility of a reasonable monop-
oily and place upon the court the bur-
den of drawing the line between a
good and bad trust. To interpret it
'fn the light of reason" however, he
said, was only to place without the
pale of the law incidental or minor
restraints OF cases where the intent
was not to monopo1ize. 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, hs
declared, was to hold it "in conform
ity with the evil sought to be
reached"