Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/702

 The; Legal World monlhly Analysis of Leading Events The Sherman anti-trust law continues to occupy a prominent place in the public attention. There have been some

wholesome indications of a moderate

attitude toward monopoly, but this atti tude cannot yet be said to be predomi nant.

Governor

Woodrow

Wilson,

speaking at Red Bank, N. J., Oct. 11, expressed his opposition to indiscrimi nate prosecutions under the trust act, and regretted that sound business should be forced to continue in a panicky state. Governor Simeon E. Baldwin, in an address at Bridgeport, Conn., Oct. 19, declared that the Government was

collecting evidence of more supposed vio lations of the Sherman act than it could

possibly prove. The great discretion en trusted to the President, to prosecute or not to prosecute corporations, placed upon him, he said, a great responsibility.

States Circuit Court at Trenton, N. J. Another development of the month was

signiﬁcant. The plan of the American Tobacco Company for reorganization was to be fought by the Attorney-Generals of Virginia and North and South Caro lina, and also by a group of independent

tobacco men. The dissatisfaction with the plan for reorganization seemed to be due to a conviction that a legal freedom of competition is not sufficient, that economic freedom of competition also must be created by law. To turn from economic t0.govern

mental issues, there seem to be increas ing symptoms of popular impatience with constitutional restraints. Emphatic

protest against a delegated system of government has been oﬁered by the people of California, who adopted con stitutional amendments Oct.

12 pro

On the other hand, the radical tendency

viding for the initiative and referendum judicial recall, and woman suffrage.

is still in apparent control of the situa

Theodore Roosevelt, taking care that

tion.

no one should accuse him of advocating

President Taft, in his speeches

in the West, has proclaimed the old fashioned doctrine of free competition as a panacea for all ills, by saying that we have got along without monopoly in the past, and can therefore always get

along without it, notwithstanding that this does not follow, in view of changed conditions in every great country of the

the recall, vaguely asserted at Carnegie

Hall, New York, Oct. 20, that judges should be controlled by the people, because certain courts “are steeped in some outworn political or social philos

ophy and totally misapprehend their relations to the people, and to the public needs."

world. Attomey-General Wickersham has claimed that the Supreme Court de

Despite the agitation of the judicial recall, there are signs of a tendency

cisions in the Standard Oil and Tobacco

toward improvement of the adminis tration of the courts. Justice Mor schauser told lawyers in the New York Supreme Court at White Plains, Oct. 4,

cases ring the death knell of monopo lies. The activity of the Government reached a climax Oct. 26, when a suit

to dissolve the United States Steel Cor

poration was brought in the United

that if they were not ready to go to trial with their cases at once he would