Company "before the transportation thereof shall be commenced."

The privilege of subscription to the capital stock of the new company was restricted to the stockholders of the Railroad Company.

The Sales Company was promptly organized and the minutes of the company show that slightly less than 97% of the stock was subscribed for by stockholders of the Railroad Company.

The Sales Company had seven directors. One of these, J. W. Skeele, who was also elected president, had been general sales agent of the Coal Company; another, W. R. Evans, had been assistant to the general sales agent of the Coal Company; another, L. D. Smith, was a director of the Railroad Company, and a fourth, Paul Moore, was a son of a large stockholder in the Railroad Company. The vice president of the company, G. N. Wilson, had been general auditor of the Railroad Company, and the treasurer, W. J. Burton, had been employed as assistant secretary of the Coal Company.

It is too plain for discussion that with a company thus organized and officered, the making of a contract by the Coal Company for the sale of all of its coal to the Sales Company was, in substance and effect, making a contract with itself, the terms of which it could determine in its discretion.

Immediately after the organization of the Sales Company, the anticipated contract between that company and the Coal Company for the purchase of all the coal which the latter might mine or purchase was entered into and bears date March 1, 1912. This contract was to continue for ten years unless terminated in the manner which it provides for, and its terms are so nearly identical with the earlier Lackawanna contract, which is considered in United States v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R. R. Co., 238 U. S. 516, that the judge who tried this case below, with

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254 U. S.

entire propriety, says that the differences between the two are "wholly unsubstantial" (225 Fed. Rep. 401). This court held that the contract in the Lackawanna Case was void because violative of the provisions of the Anti-Trust Act and the Commodities Clause of the Act to Regulate Commerce.

The discussion of the Lackawanna contract is so full and satisfactory in 238 U. S. 516, that it would not serve any useful purpose to comment in detail upon the contract which we have here. It will suffice to say that the provisions of the Lackawanna contract, which were clearly determinative of the former decision by this court, are plainly the same in substance, and almost exactly the same in form, as those in the contract we are considering, viz: The agreement (1) of the Coal Company to sell and of the Sales Company to buy all of the coal mined by the Coal Company from lands owned or leased by it, together with all coal which it might purchase; (2) that the prices to be paid for the more important grades of coal shall be sixtyfive per cent. of the New York prices-the two contracts are in precisely the same words in this respect; (3) that, with negligible exceptions, the Sales Company is to sell no other coal, for itself or for any other, than that "purchased" from the Coal Company; (4) that the Coal Company shall lease all of its facilities, structures and trestles to the Sales Company; (5) that either party shall have the right to abrogate and cancel the contract upon giving to the other six months' notice of its desire so to do; (6) that the Sales Company shall not buy coal except from the Coal Company-a provision which excludes the Sales Company, potentially a strong competitor, from the market. The Coal Company purchased 2,960,000 tons of coal in 1911 in addition to that which it mined.

These are the contract provisions which led this court, in the former case, to hold that a corporation organized and circumstanced as is the Sales Company which we have

here, subject to be stripped at the will of another of all of its business and of all its facilities for carrying on the business for which it was incorporated—was neither an “independent buyer nor a free agent."

Being entirely satisfied with the reasoning upon which the Lackawanna Case proceeds to its conclusion, we hold now, as it was there in principle held: that the purchase in form by the Sales Company did not so dissociate the Railroad Company from the transportation of coal in which it was interested as to meet the requirements of the law, that the contract, nominally of purchase, was so calculated to restrain interstate trade as to be obnoxious to the AntiTrust Act of Congress, and that for this reason it is unlawful and void.

It will be of service in determining the purposes of the defendant Railroad Company with its corporate subsidiaries in the activities thus discussed, to recall the history of the defendant Railroad Company, as it appears in the decisions of this and of other courts.

In 1892 the defendant Railroad Company and the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey leased their lines of railway for the term of 999 years to the Reading Railroad Company, a parallel competing carrier, extensively engaged in mining, marketing and selling anthracite coal. This combination, had it become operative, would have gone far toward monopolizing the interstate transportation and trade in anthracite coal of our entire country, but all operations under the lease of the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey were enjoined by the New Jersey courts, for the reason that it was deemed to be in restraint of trade, against public policy and calculated to partially destroy competition in the production and sale of anthracite coal, a staple commodity of the State. Stockton v. Central R. R. Co., 50 N. J. Eq. 52. Thereupon the lease of defendant's property was abandoned and surrendered.

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Six years later, in 1898, the defendant Railroad Company combined with the Reading and four other railway companies to contribute a large sum of money, which was successfully used to prevent the construction of a projected, competing line of railroad from the anthracite fields to tidewater. Of this enterprise this court said: "We are in entire accord with the view of the court below in holding that the transaction involved a concerted scheme and combination for the purpose of restraining commerce among the States in plain violation of the Act of Congress of July 2, 1890." United States v. Reading Co., 226 U. S. 324, 355.

Four years later, in 1902, the defendant Railroad Company united with the Reading and four other anthracite carriers in a combination to control the entire tonnage of coal produced by independent operators along the lines of their respective railways. The device this time resorted to was a contract to purchase all the coal produced by independent mines, then opened or which might thereafter be opened by the vendors, and to pay therefor sixty-five per cent. of the market price prevailing at tidewater points at New York, to be computed from month to month by an arbitrator to be selected by agreement. These contracts were elaborately considered and unsparingly condemned by this court in the case which is cited, and the conclusion reached was that the defendants in that case had unlawfully combined, by and through the instrumentality of the sixty-five per cent. contract, for the purpose of controlling the sale at tidewater of the independent output of anthracite coal. The contracts were declared to be unlawful and were ordered cancelled. 226 U. S. 370, 371, 373.

In 1911, in Meeker & Co. v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co., 21 I. C. C. 129, 154, 163, the Interstate Commerce Commission held that the only line of demarkation between the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company and the Lehigh Valley Coal Company was one of bookkeeping; that the Rail

road Company had "monopolized the coal field served by it" and that it had been guilty of unjust discrimination and of charging unreasonable rates for which reparation was awarded. 23 I. C. C. 480. This decision was sustained by this court in Meeker & Co. v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co., 236 U. S. 412.

And yet again, in 1915, the Interstate Commerce Commission, after an investigation extending over three years, in which the defendant Railroad Company and all other initial carriers of anthracite were parties, held that the rates charged by the defendant and other carriers to tidewater and to certain interior points were unreasonable; that by trackage and other arrangements they had extended advantages to their subsidiary coal companies, to the prejudice of other shippers; and that concessions as obnoxious as "direct cash rebates" had been made to such coal companies. In the Matter of Rates, Practice, Rules, and Regulations Governing the Transportation of Anthracite Coal, 35 I. C. C. 220.

This history of almost twenty-five years casts an illuminating light upon the intent and purpose with which the combination here assailed was formed and continued. Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1, 76.

Without further comment, this discussion of the record requires us to conclude that it is clearly established that prior to the enactment of the Anti-Trust Act, the Railroad Company, in combination with its coal company subsidiary, deliberately entered upon a policy of making extensive purchases of anthracite land tributary to the Railroad Company's lines, for the purpose of controlling the mining, transportation and sale of coal to be obtained therefrom and of preventing and suppressing competition, especially in the transportation and sale of such coal in interstate commerce, and that this policy was continued after the passage of the Anti-Trust Act with increasing energy and tenacity of purpose, with the result that a