Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1911-09-18
TAFT fires FIRST
CONTINUED from page l

\0o"sAAAN~N H.N'~A' pNSS
words, the supreme court in this case
gave a reasonable construction to the
statute and eliminated from it's oper-
alton those harmless useful incidental
restraints growing out of lawful con-
tracts which are made for an entirely
different purpose from that of control
ling prices or maintaining monopoly
by suppressing competition and which
have always been recognized as pro-
perly enforceable by courts OF Dotn
law and equity. repeat again that
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 IL not
one who has criticised them that can
formulate a contract in restraint OF
trade that ought to come within the
statute that does not come within 1t
under the decision of the supreme
court.
1t is said that the supreme court has
read something into the statute that
was not there before; that it has in
serted the word reasonable" before
restrainsts of trade, when the same
court had said that this could not be
properly done, because Congress had
evidently not intended to include such
a limiting word in the statute. This
is not fair to the court, in the early or
the construction of the statute, had
said that it could not limit the statute
in effect by excluding from its oper'
alton what was deemed reasonable at
common law. But as other cases arose
it found it necessary to make excep'
lions to the literal operation Of the
words RESTRAINT of trade" and 1t
did so by excepting what was minor,
or incidental, or indirect, and includ'
ing only those cases where the chief
object of the contl~ was the re-
straint In doing SO the court said
that it must give the statute a reason
able construction and not one lead
ing to absurd or ridiculous results.
In the last two cases the court did not
change the substance of the reason
ing and scope of the previous decis.
ions, but only treated the exceptions
previously termed Incidental and in.
direct" as excluded from the opera
ton of the statute in the light of rea-
son, j. e., in conformity to the evil
sought to be reached. Now, in what
way has this injured the public veal?
What combinations or arrangements
can escape under this Interpretation
that any sensible man would wish to
have condemned? Did the court not
condemn the Standard Oil company,
the father of all trusts, in the history
of which every form of criminal illeg-
atty was practiced? 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
condemnation of the statute and at '
the same time securing and enjoying
the monopoly the trainers of the stat
ute intended to prevent and punish?
Let me renew again the invitation
to any of the vOciferous critics of the
decision of the supreme court to use
their legal imaginations and state the
facts of case not condemned within
the rule of construction put upon the
statute by the Supreme court, but in
cluded within their construction of it,
which reasonable men would think 1t
wise and proper to make criminal.
Now, l desire to call attention to
a very broad distinction that many
persons have failed to draw or per-
ceive between a reasonable construc
ton of the statute which the supreme
court has insisted upon and the intro
duction of the word reasonable" in
the statute so as to lead to result
by which combinations for the pur.
pose Of restraining trade with a view