Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 126.jpg

126 terms of the rule itself. * * * While even after the standard should be determined there is such an infinite variety of facts entering into the question  * * *  that any individual shipper would in most cases be apt to abandon the effort to show the unreasonable character of a charge, sooner than hazard the great expense in time and money to prove the fact."

In the case of commodities, the difficulties are a thousandfold greater, and under this merciful Act the business man not only has the expense and trouble mentioned, but, if his business is to go on, he must make the attempt under the further inducement of knowing that if for any sales he is indicted and brought to trial and the jury should not approve his results, he might go to jail, and suffer consequent loss of business and property.

If such an interpretation of this statute is a possibility, both Liberty and business will surely die. There is unquestioned power to make and execute laws, but there is no power to do more than pretend to reverse mathematical truths or avoid the results of attempts to defy them. No man can deduct from known quantities the unknown, and, beyond any reasonable doubt, mathematically define the answer.

Let us, again, turn to the Cohen case. The whole charge was that he had bought sugar at one price and sold it at another. This fact caused the Judge to feel it necessary to guard against the indignation that he felt. But, in the first place, the rule of freedom, under which men have acted for centuries, always allowed a man to ask for his own property, or to offer as much or as little for the goods of another as he chose, and