Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 055.jpg

Rh place his own value on his own property; (2) that in guessing at what he should charge, the century-old method of seeking an open market, controlled only by free and untrammeled competition, was denied him; (3) that the Government, substituting no standard of guidance for the one taken away, first makes him guess, and second makes him guess with a mind so trammeled by fear that the guess of a jury will not accord with his guess, and will likely subject him to years of imprisonment and enormous fines. All of such dangers and uncertainties must so paralyze his mind, if he really believed the Courts would permit such things, as to incapacitate him from any proper use of his faculties—freedom of mind being as essential a part of liberty, as that of body; (4) that it would constitute an usurpation of the judicial power of the Government by the legislative power, making it dangerous in the extreme for citizens to appeal to the Courts for protection and for interpretation of their property rights; (5) that as the Act expressly gives these constitutional rights to citizens dealing with the Government and denies them to those dealing with each other, there would be a violation of the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the fifth amendment; (6) and that as it destroyed all standard of prices, it would constitute that criminal, and reached by guesses alone, upon which an enormous preponderance of men have always and are still guessing wrong; (7) that, as a large part of business payments are really for service, it would enslave men by compelling them to work for compensation not fixed by themselves; (8) that it creates an undefined power of confiscation; (9) that it, by legislation would terminate the freedom of trade safeguarded by the Constitution; and (10) that it really will establish in the United States. Many