White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1912-12-08
IS IN RESTRAINT
COMPETITION
HARTMAN RAILROAD MERGER
DECLARED ILLEGAL AND OR
DERED DISSOLVED BY THE
U. S. SUPREME COURT.


In a decision, more %far-reaching in
its effect upon common carriers than
any since the dissolution of North
ern Securities merger the United
States supreme court at Washington,
Monday. declared the Hartman COM
bine of the Union Pacific, the South
ern Pacific and the Salt Lake rail
roads in restraint of trade and in VIC
lation of the Sherman antitrust law.
AT the same time a decree was en-
tered ordering these properties dis
solved within three months. The
failure to carry out its mandate, the
court declares will throw the lines in
yolved into the hands of a receiver.
In the American Tobacco company
and in the Standard Oil company
cases the supreme court moved de-
eisiyely against corporations elassed
as "industrials." In the decision
handed down Monday that court
makes it plain that railway mergers
that result in monopoly and in the
suppression of competition are like
wise enemies of public welfare and
therefore illegal.
A futile effort was made by the de-
PENDANTS to invoke the rule of rea-
SON. clause of the Standard Oil and
Tobacco decisions, but this failed.
The court held that the present COM
bination of the Hartman lines was
unreasonable in its operation and that
it was therefore in violation of the
antitrust act.
But one bit of consolation is given
the railroads. Upon the motion of
the attorney general the court de-
creed that the Union Pacific connec
ION at ogden with the Southern Pa
cifie giving the former an outlet to
the Pacific coast might be still main
tanned. This will prevent the Union
Pacific being bottled up by its new
and and its old rivals.
Justice Day announced the unani-
nous opinion of the court. Justice
Vandeyanter took no part in the con-
sideration of the case. but his princi-
pal finding when he was a circuit
judge, to the effect that the two
roads We're not competitors and there
fore no violation of the law had re-
suited from the purchase, was re-
yersed and annulled.
BY one stroke, therefore, the work
of the railroad genius, the late Ed
ward II. Hartman, is crushed by a
court decision from which there is
no appeal, says the San Francisco
Chronicle. The great combination of
rail and steamship lines that has had
the Pacific coast and a vast area of
territory between the coast and the
Mississippi river in its grip for years,
now crumbles. Once more the trans
continental lines south of the Mis-
souri, river will become competitors.
incidentally, the Santa Fe, operating
in the same territory, and the Great
Northern and Northern Pacific roads,
operating over the northern
routes, are warned by the court
against participating in any like
merger that would interfere with in
terstate commerce or stifle COMPETE
tion. Harriman's dream of dominat-
ing the trans-Mississippi river rail-
road traffic was given its first blow
when he died. The part of the dream
which he had accomplished before
death is now pronounced illegal by
the highest court in the land.
I'VE take it in this connection"
said Justice Day, in speaking of the
Standard Oil and Tobacco cases of
last year. as the final authority on the
Interpretation of the Sherman anti
trust act, that it may be regarded as
settled that a combination which
places railroads engaged in inter
state commerce in such relation as to
create a single dominating control in
one corporation whereby natural and
existing competition in interstate
commerce is unduly restricted or
suppressed is within condemnation
of the act. While the law may not
be able to enforce competition, it
can reach combinations which render
competition impraetieable.
Nor do we think it can make any
difference that instead of reporting
to a holding company, as was done
in the Northern Securities case, the
controlling interest in the stock of
one corporation is transferred to the
other. The domination and control
and the power to suppress competi-
tion are acquired in the one case no
less than in the other, and the result