Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 097.jpg

Rh article. Raise the price of this article without raising the purchasing power and the demand will fall off. This was true from the beginning of human barter and trade, and this will be true down to the last set of human beings who burn the last bit of fuel available upon a cold and exhausted earth. It can never be otherwise; and if it were not so, to all intents, human trade and barter would be impossible. This is the pivotal fact upon which the commerce and industry of the whole wide world, mounting now into hundreds of billions of dollars in volume, rests."

Manifestly, prices fixed by the whole world in its untrammeled and free markets have thrown about them, certainly so far as the trade and commerce of this country are involved, the protection of the Constitution of the United States, and for the Act to declare them when thus fixed unreasonable and excessive would be confiscatory. The Courts having, prior to the time of the Constitution, defined what is just and reasonable compensation, or, as the Constitution defines it, "fair compensation," now by statute to deny this meaning, so long established, must be in plain defiance of the Constitution, as well as all historical and economic precedents.

Returning from this digression to the subject under inquiry. The etymology of the word "competition" is perfectly obvious. People compete when they seek an object together. In its legal sense and significance, it is an act directed to the purpose of acquiring a common thing or end individually and as against others. It will later be shown that, so far as price fixing of commodities is concerned, this common seeking, because of the enormous difficulties of the subject, is the only practical and effective method. Indeed, not merely that the law permits it, but requires it as