Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/294

 § 300rt.] THE LAW OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. [CHAP. VII. In 1889, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire rendered a decision holding that a contract between competing railway companies, made to prevent competition, but not for the purpose of raising prices of transportation above a reasonable standard, is not void as against public policy. 1 " While, without doubt, contracts which have a direct tendency to prevent a healthy competition are detrimental to the public, and consequently against public policy, it is equally free from doubt that when such contracts prevent an unhealthy competition, and yet fur- nish the public with adequate facilities at fixed and reasonable rates, they are beneficial and in accord with sound principles of public policy. For the lessons of experience .... demon- strate that the public interest is not subserved by competition which reduces the rate of transportation below the standard of fair compensation; and the theory which formerly obtained, that the public is benefited by unrestricted competition between railroads, has been so emphatically disproved by the results which have generally followed its adoption in practice, that the hope of any permanent relief from excessive rates through the competition of a parallel or rival road may, as a rule, be justly characterized as illusory and fallacious." 2 § 309a. Notwithstanding the force of its reasoning, this de- " Trusts" cision of the New Hampshire court is out of accord oiies m ° nop " w * tn the tren d of decisions throughout the United States. Many of these are based upon recent stat- utes forbidding all contracts which prevent competition and create combinations or monopolies. 3 The Act of Congress of July 2, 1890, is of this character. It is entitled "An act to pro- tect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and mo- nopolies." By this act " every contract, combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade 1 Railroad v. Railroad, 66 N. H. 100. 2 Railroad v. Railroad, 66 N. H. 100, 127. Opinion of Court per Blod- gett, J. 8 The Illinois statute was held un- constitutional, because it exempted combinations of farmers, and so de- nied the equal protection of the laws. Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U. S. 540. The Tennessee statute 274 was sustained in People exrel. Astor v. Schlitz Brew. Co., 104 Tenn. 715, but the decision is inconsistent with the Connolly case. The New York statute was construed in Matter of Davies, 168 N. Y. 89. As to Missouri statute, see State ex rel. Crow v. Fire- men's Fund Ins. Co., 152 Mo. 1; State ex rel. Star Pub. Co. v. Associated Press, 159 Mo. 410. i