Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/91

Rh plants and at closing them down, refusal to sell or to allow the customary discounts to purchasers who buy any of their supplies from a competing establishment—these and like methods which aim at excluding others from any industry by playing upon their fears were either expressly or by inference condemned. Trade agreements which bind large numbers of capable men for long periods not to compete in a specified field were also held anti-social. These methods were judged unfair not by any new code of ethics but in the light of the time-honored principles of the common law.

The extremity of the remedy sanctioned by the Circuit Court to which the American Tobacco Company was remanded for dissolution is noteworthy. Not only was the company disintegrated into four new companies, but each of the four was forbidden to control more than forty per cent, of its branch of the business, or within a period of five years to acquire any stock in one of the others. Twenty-nine individual defendants were enjoined for three years from increasing their holdings of stock in the new companies. For a term of five years, moreover, no two of the new companies shall have the same person serving as an officer or director, or employ the same agency for the purchase or sale of tobacco or other material. It is more than doubtful whether these and similar remedies approved by the court will prove adequate to restore competition. But be this as it may, we have here limitations upon ownership in the interest of the public weal that would hardly have been thought possible a generation ago. There is the possibility therefore of still more drastic restrictions in the future if those already resorted to fall short of their purpose. It is noteworthy, also, that the Chief Justice in writing the Standard Oil and the Tobacco decisions did not question the power of Congress, under the commerce clause of the constitution, to limit the quantity of property which an individual may acquire and own, or the power to interfere with the right to acquire and own stock granted a corporation by a state, though he emphasized both of these points at length in his dissenting opinion in the Northern Securities case, Chief Justice Fuller, Justice Peekham and Justice Holmes concurring. Neither did the case of the United States v. E. C. Knight Co. upon which the defendants banked much stand them in good stead. The open-mindedness of the court augurs well for the future.

The spirit of fair play is expressing itself in sundry other directions. The movements against child labor and for compulsory education are cases in point. These movements aim at starting the members of the