Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1912-01-19
TIE SHERMAN LAW.

Col Roosevelt's handling of the trust
topic in his recent editorial in the Outlook
is brutally frank bid for the support of
Wall Street. II is characterized by whole
sale denunciation of the Sherman Law
and the interpretations put on it by the
courts and blunt upholding of the bad
trust and good trust" theory. 1t is a
sweeping onslaught on litigations con-
Quoted under the present statute, and a
plea for remodeling Of conditions from the
Big Business standpoint. The Roosevelt
and the Taft positions approach each other
in the Roosevelt demand for regulation of big
business by the governmental commission
of extraordinary powers, and in the Taft
insistence on Federal Incorporation act
The Roosevelt scheme takes the form of
violent assertions that the Sherman Law
is worthless. The Taft proposal is an I'M
willing concession that something is wanted
in addition to the law as it stands today
Both are alike in their Indifference to and
apparent forgetfulness of the fact that
Federal GENERALIZATION, whether by a uni
versal incorporation act or by the grant
of arbitrary commission powers, brings the
rights Of States, and the powers of States
10 control the corporations doing business
within their own borders, on the danger
line of peril. 1t must also be observed
that President Taft expressly recommends
that requirement of Federal charters pro-
posed for interstate corporations shall be
voluntary. lat least until experience JUS
titles mandatory provisions" That is.
corporation could have a Federal char
ter or not, just as ii pleased. This i'm
plies all the dangers Of Federal incorpora-
ton without its advantages, 1t is another
example of Taftian willingness to make
corporations the judges Of their own cases.
The Sherman Law has been twenty-one
years on the statute books. The issues
raised by it have been smouldering all this
time, and have now burst into blaze.
Affairs have reached crisis. Suggestions
and theories were never before so rife as
they are today. Yet, in all these years,
and in the tense situation which is the
climax of two decades of uncertainty, the
American people have not for one instant
lost their clear-headed views of the big
essentials of the trust problem.
The public regards the Sherman Law
neither as a sacred fetch, impossible to
improve, nor as a vicious law, which should
be wiped out. The common-sense opinion
on the matter is that the Sherman Law
has the bones and muscles of a great,
constructive statute, but that it needs
stiffening. Whether the strengthening pro-
cess be called amendment, supplemental
legislation, or the building Of new law on
the foundations of the old, is neither here
nor there. Nor does the gist of the situa-
ton lie in whether the inadequacy of the
law is in its own lack of definition, or in a
wrong Interpretation of it by the courts
What is wanted is a law so specific
that no trust can hide in ambush behind
bubbles over what constitutes monopoly,
conspiracy and restraint of trade. The
framing of such law, or the amendment
of the present law until it meets such re-
quisites, is easily within the capabilities of
legislation. Solution of the Trust Problem
can be reached in one way and one only
legislative reflection of the known will of
the American people-a will unalterably
opposed TO trusts, conspiracies and mo-
nopoly in any form. National Monthly.