representing competitors; employing resale prices, suggested or otherwise, and enforcing a monopoly in one branch of its business to further its control of a new line, a practice which has been the policy of several defendants in suits brought within the last few years by the Government against organizations that were violators of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.

These objectionable competitive methods become still more objectionable when one competitor far outranks in size not only its nearest competitor, but all other competitors combined. Such methods are wrong, and only end in difficulties in the Courts. A clean and unrestrained business policy wins out in the long run.

The decisions of the United States Supreme Court in relation to the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, -decisions covering a period of more than ten years, were regardless of the "reasonableness" or "unreasonableness" of the restraint of trade, and a change along these lines did not take place until the decisions in the cases of the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company. The law now seems to be interpreted by the laymen, and by many lawyers, to mean that only undue restraint of trade comes within the scope of the Sherman law; furthermore, that agreements of a reasonable kind may be enforced by combinations. It is a question as to how far business combination in the form of a Trust may be permitted. The regulation of combinations in restraint of

trade is a serious one, and a difficult one to be handled by our courts. Attorneys-General of the United States Bonaparte, Knox, Wickersham, and McReynolds have, in a majority of cases, secured the results aimed at by the civil section of the Sherman Law; the full effect of the criminal section of the Act is as yet an unknown quantity and has only been effectively enforced under the Taft administration. The old system has been smashed ever since the middle of the Harrison administration, and the very possibility of criminal prosecution is accomplishing more for the reform of trust abuses than all of the other sections of the Act combined. Violators of the law do not object to the payment of a heavy fine, but object to a term in jail. No one has yet gone to jail under the penal provisions of the Sherman Act, and although guilt is personal, the punishment in the form of a jail sentence has not yet fallen upon the head that has conceived and committed a violation of the Act.

No matter by what means, if the end obtained by monopoly is to unduly restrain interstate commerce, the Sherman Law has adequately reached it and so enveloped it with a covering of illegality as to compel its dissolution and punish by fines the guilty organization and its officials. As it now stands, clarified by hundreds of court decisions, the Sherman Law has reached a period in its history when it is accomplishing the purpose of its framers by enforcing a reform in business methods that will be useful to our citizens through

out the land. The history of the Law indicates that it is repressive of bad Trusts, and harmless to good Trusts,-a law with teeth, which men can obey without ruin. For its purpose it is a statute as nearly perfect as we have,—a law as nearly perfect as any Congress ever enacted. It was drafted by great and able lawyers, who had a difficult subject to deal with, and who handled it accordingly. It needs no appendix of definitions, and any attempt to add defining clauses would plunge the business of the country,-and particularly the courts,-into endless confusion and perplexity. The courts can now determine, with all needed clearness, what constitutes a violation of the statute: "The Supreme Court of the United States in November, 1913, referred to its previous decision as having demonstrated the comprehensive and thorough character of the '(Sherman AntiTrust)' law, and its sufficiency to prevent evasions of its policy" by resort to any disguise or subterfuge of form "by any indirection." (Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company v. U. S. 191 Fed. 172)

All unreasonable restraints of trade are unlawful. All reasonable restraints of trade are lawful. In any given case there may be doubt as to whether the restraint is lawful or unlawful, but it is the facts that are doubtful, not the law. When the facts are established, the reason or unreason is established; and the law is applied according to the facts.

Without coöperation and reciprocal agreements there would be destructive competition; and that is what would exist if we were to go back to the days before the Sherman Law.

CORPORATIONS DOING A FOREIGN
BUSINESS

The changes in the development of combinations in continental Europe is of too intricate a scope to be entered into fully in this discussion; however, generally speaking, well-developed combinations, known as "cartels" or "pools," seem as plentiful there as in the United States, but are usually more highly organized.

The great increase in our exports of manufactured articles to Europe during 1913 was due to the energetic foreign policy of our Trusts, who are constantly in fierce competition with foreign manufacturers. Some of the very things that in this country are regarded as opposed to public welfare, and to be prohibited, are promoted and advocated in other countries under government regulation and influence.

Three staple products, controlled by Trusts, have accounted for more than two billion dollars in our foreign trade in 1913.

The European merchant realizes that our Trusts have perfected selling agencies abroad,—a condition that private individuals and small exporters could not maintain. Competition is keener