The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-11-07
IMPORTANT ISSUE
RAISED IN COURTS
BY HARVESTER SUIT
McReynolds Apparently Co.
ing the Limit Provided for
in Sherman Law
PERKINS VIEW OF
LINKING COMPANIES
ENORMOUS Capital Enables Company
to Do Millions of Export Business
Which Would Otherwise
Be Impossible
BY HOLLAND

New York, November 6-(Special.)
Such extracts from the brief in which
Attorney General McReynolds embodied
the reasons for the action taken by the
government to dissolve the International
Harvester company are spoken of here as
raising precisely the issue which should
have been raised in the earlier ltigations
brought in the name of the government
for the dissolution of the Standard Oil
company and the American Tobacco com
pany.
The feeling has always been more or
less entertained in this city that the At
torney General in President Tafts cabi-
net. George w. Wickersham, was not
ready to go the fun length to which he
might have gone under a technical and
rigid Interpretation of the Sherman anti
trust law. Mr.. Wickersham was thought
by some of his friends in this city to have
entertained doubts as to the expediency
of tearing the Standard Oil company and
the American Tobacco company to pieces.
That might have been done through the
appointment of a receiver, but Mr.. Wick
ersham evidently dreaded drastic action
ceiver might result in something like con-
liscation of property. The strong sup
porters of a rigid Interpretation of the
Sherman antitrust law did not hesitate
to say that if there We're conhscation or
great depreciation in property values by
reason of the complete dissolution of the
Standard Oil and the American Tobacco
companies that was a penalty which
might properly be imposed upon men who
build up great combinations in violation
of the Sherman antitrust law.
The dissolutions with which Mr.. Wick
ersham's name as Attorney General is to
be traditionally associated were those of
the Standard Oil company and the Amer
lean Tobacco company. In the brief in
struction of the various organizations
which had been recreated after dissolu-
tion as independent organizations, there
developed appreciations of the market
able values of the securities of nearly all
these corporations and there were hand
some remunerations in the form of cash
or marketable securities. This led to
the criticism that everybody had been
benefited by the dissolution excepting the
ultimate consumers of the products of
these companies.
The Great Issue
George w. Perkins, whom Attorney
General McReynolds names as the crea-
tor and sponsor of the International Har-
vester company, has never either in pub
lie addresses or upon the witness stand
or in informal and private conversations
with his friends, lodged the issue pre-
sented by the Attorney General in his
brief. This naming of Mr.. Perkins in the
brief is unusual, perhaps unprecedented.
But it tends to focus the entire cofiten-
tion not only in what Mr.. Perkins did but
also in what the courts shall declare must
be done, If anything, with the great
structure created by Mr.. Perkins.
No doubt Mr.. Perkins himself would
rather have the issue presented to the
courts as the Attorney General has done
than to have any half way or partially
covered proceedings. such as, according
to public opinion, characterized the dis
solution plans which Attorney General
W1ekersham accepted in conference with
with representatives of the Standard Oil