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THE GREEN BAG

quences to the integrity and permanence of American industrial enterprise. But three considerations ameliorate the situation. "In the first place, it is doubtful if the United States Supreme Court will follow its decision in the Northern Securities case, for the reason that the majority of the Court which rendered it was opposed to its sweep ing terms. Perhaps the qualification sug gested by Justice Brewer will be the means of deflecting the Anti-Trust law into a com paratively innocuous channel. When brought face to face with such serious consequences to business interests, public policy may deter the court from a strict adherence to an extreme doctrine. "In the second place, the good to be accom plished' by a prosecution under the AntiTrust law is small beyond all reason compared to the vexatious and destructive results to the railway industry. If present methods of inter-railway adjustments are illegal, railway ingenuity will simply devise others. The means of avoiding internecine conflicts are many and subtle, and a victory for the govern ment will merely cause a change in form while preserving identity in substance. . . . If the government succeeds in its suit it may be necessary for.the Union Pacific to sell its holdings in competing lines, but it will by no means follow that a vigorous competition will thereupon spring up among the Pacific roads. If they are determined not to fight, they cannot be compelled to do so by all the laws that Congress, can enact. The govern ment may, therefore, forego a general and drastic attack upon the various forms of community of interest in railroad manage ment, in the belief that the game is not worth the candle. "In the third place, a really adequate means has been devised for dealing with the problem of railroad rates. The Anti-Trust act was passed eighteen years ago, in the days before Congress became convinced that an Interstate Commerce Commission might be safely entrusted with power to fix tariffs. . . . "The radical amendment to the Act to Regulate Commerce, which was passed in 1906, whereby the Interstate Commerce Commission was given power, after full hearing upon complaint made, to determine and prescribe what will be reasonable rates respecting the subject matter of the com plaint and to establish through routes and joint rates, has substantially superseded the Anti-Trust act as a preventive of excessive railroad rates. If the public can get reason able rates, together with adequate facilities, it becomes wholly immaterial whether com peting roads consolidate or combine or pool their earnings or own each other's capital stock or are operated under holding com panies. All such matters will then concern

the railroad owners and managers only. The public will get what it wants, and the rail roads will be left to their own devices in the conduct of their business. "While, therefore, the suit against the Union Pacific is one of great interest from a strictly legal standpoint and is not without significance in its bearing upon future rail road relations, it probably is not to be looked upon as involving such far-reaching conse quences as some of the justices believed would flow from the opinion of the court in the Northern Securities case. It is perhaps rather to be considered a belated attack with obsolete weapons against an abuse which can much more effectually be met with the modern instrumentality of a rate-making commission." ASSUMPSIT (Right of Beneficiary). " The Limitations of the Action of Assumpsit as Affecting the Right of Action of the Bene ficiary, by Crawford D. Hening. University of Pennsylvania Law Rei'iew and American Law Register (V. Ivi, p. 73). A scholarly paper examining the judicial reasoning which enlarged the remedy of the beneficiary of a contract, by giving him the writ of Debt, in addition to the writ of Account, and adding to these two the further alternative of an Action on the Case. These are traced from the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century. BILLS AND NOTES. An account of the origin of the so-called " Bremen Rules," a suggestion for international uniformity in the law of negotiable instruments which preceded our own Uniform Act, is given by Thomas Baty in the Journal of the Society of Com parative Legislation (V. viii, n. s. p. 229). BIOGRAPHY (Beccaria). "The Great jurists of the Vorld; VIII Caesar Bonesara, Marquis di Beccaria," by Thomas Rawling Bridgwater in the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (V. viii, n. s. p. 219). BIOGRAPHY. " Chancellor Kent at Yale," by Hon. Macgrane Coxe, Yale Laiv Journal (V. xvii, p. 311). To be concluded in April. BIOGRAPHY. " Sir Samuel Romilly," by J. A. Lovat-Fraser, Law Magazine and Review (V. xxxiii, p. 141). CAPITAL AND INCOME. " Rights of Life Tenants and Remainder-men to Dis tribution of Stock and Corporate Assets Made by Corporations to. their Stockholders," by Carroll G. Walter, American Law Review