Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 009.jpg

Rh as it always has, still remains based upon pure fallacies, fallacies which, if adhered to, will not only destroy our prosperity, but will of necessity end our Freedom!

That there may, at the very beginning, be a clear comprehension of what it is intended to explain, a single illustration may suffice. There are many indictments founded upon the Lever Act pending in our Federal Courts, in substance, on the basis that a man who has purchased a commodity at one price and sold it at a much greater, is necessarily a criminal. Suppose he bought at five cents and sold at ten, and the indictment calls the latter price "unjust," "unreasonable" and "excessive." Neither the Government nor the seller could know whether this were so at the time of the sale. This will be illustrated at large in the following chapters, but a few of the questions involved will now be mentioned. In the first place, the seller has to guess at what the taxes on his profits will be subsequently declared. They may be anywhere from one to one hundred per cent. He has also to guess what his money will be worth in the future revolutions in trade that will constitute his continuing business. , of Yale, estimates that the dollar has fallen in purchasing power, through inflation of currency and credit, to but thirty-five per cent. of its rightful value. To say, therefore, if the seller buy at five and sell at ten, that he must have had criminal intent in making his guess, and that this can be established beyond a reasonable doubt, is perfectly absurd. If we but keep in mind that all the while he was really only exchanging commodities for commodities, the absurdity becomes perfectly apparent. For the moment, let us leave money out of the question. Could any man justly be indicted, should the result of the transaction be that he had borne all the expenses and risks, and yet, had ended