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 lesson, known well to every man engaged in commerce, that "competition is the life of trade." It needed just such a man as B. B. Johnson, and just such a League as he has established, to provoke the kind of public interest that now attaches to the game of Base Ball. It requires just such competition as is annually presented in the post-season contests to give zest to the sport. So long as the National League was alone upon the field it occupied a position akin to that of the Old Knickerbockers. Had that ancient organization never encountered opposition, the chances are that there would never have developed a national game. And so it needed the American League, with the Boston Americans' victory of 1903, to make the National League managers realize that they had not all the ball players on earth—that there were others. And when the Chicago White Sox in 1906 again took the national pennant from the pioneer League, it served as nothing else could have done to stimulate interest in the sport in every quarter. Since the two big Leagues are now engaged in a generous rivalry, each conceding that the other has its legitimate place in the field, both are to be congratulated that wise counsels have prevailed and that at last a Supreme Court has been established upon sound legal and business bases that promises to simplify the conduct of the game in future by guaranteeing justice in all cases where arbitration is found necessary.

The need of co-operation between Leagues was never better illustrated than during the Freedman controversy. The two Leagues were at that time engaged in a