Arizona republican., 1911-09-19

preme court itself, had before indi- cated as the proper construction of the statute; but it is that it is now finally settled, by two fully cOnsid- cred decisions in respect to two of the largest and most powerful of these combinations, what their iIle- gality consists in. and how they are to be treated. in view of the findin.- that they are Illegal and do violate the provisions of the sO-called anti trust or sherman act
 Persons who do not understand the effect of these decisions and real ly do not understand the law have a great deal to say which is intended to lead the public to the belief that in some way or other the supreme court has emasculated the statute and prevented its operation against Ob- jectionable and injurious trade com binations and conspiracies. Nothing is further from the truth.
 T shall not attempt to give it a close, lawyer-like interpretation, but think it is not departing from the declaration of the court to say that they find any contract in restraint of trade. made for the purpose of excluding competition, controlling prices, or of maintaining a monopoly. in part or in whole. is contrary tO the statute and is subject to injunc- tiOn and indictment under this stat ute in the federal courts where it affects interstate trade.
 Now 1 would like to ask Mir Bryan or any of the other publicists and jurists who have been denouncing this opinion as the surrender of the rights of the people and a usurpation of ju- dicial power to tell the public what particular contract or restraint of in terstate trade he would condemn which would not be condemned with in this definition of the court. The difficulty with the literal construction of the statute is that it would de- nOunce a great many minor or inci- dental restraints of trade, which made the statute ridiculous and weakened its effect, and lent support to the criticisms and cOntemptuOus treat ment of the statute by those who were opposed to it's passage and en- fOrcement
 For instance. take the instance cited by a federal circuit judge in which he said that under the literal construction of the statute which must
 be enforced. if there were two per sons doing a wagOn-eXpre business across a state line and they united in a partnership. the union in the partnership would be a restraint of in terstate trade in violation of the statute. Such a result is really q re ductio ad absurdum, and no one who was in favor of making the statute effective for the purposes for which l it was passed, and had an intelh- gent appreciation of what the statute was intended to accomplish and what | it meant. would contend for such a construction. It is true that in one of the decisions of the supreme court | there was a statement made that the | term reasonable" could not be in | troduced into the statute because con-
 gress had not put it there, but the very same court. and the very same | judge. when a case arose presenting | a restraint of trade that must be condemned as unlawful if a literal | meaning were to be given to the statute. said in so many words that | it must be reasonably construed, and | that II must not De nelu tO lnCiuuc l contracts that were merely incident | al restraints of trade and were not made for that purpose. In spite of all | the denunciatiOns that we have heard
 of the decisions of the supreme court | in the Standard Oil and the tobacco
 cases. there is not one who has crit icized them that can formulate a con-
 tract in restraint of trade that ought 1 to come within the statute that does | not come within it under the decis- ! ion of the supreme court.
 Tt is said that the supreme court
 has read something into the statute
 that was not there before; that it has inserted the word reasonable
 before restraints of trade when the same court had said that this could not be properly done. This is not
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