STRUGGLE FOB EQUALITY 87 



peting 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 exclud- 

 ing 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 serv- 

 ing as an officer or director, or employ the same agency for the purchase 

 or sale of tobacco or other material. 8 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. 9 Neither did the case of the United States v. E. C. 

 Knight Co. upon which the defendants banked much stand them in good 

 stead. 10 The open-mindedness of the court augurs well for the future. 



II 



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 



s The New YorTc Sun, November 9, 1911, pp. 1-2. 

 » William Z. Ripley, "Trusts, Pools and Corporations," p. 379. 

 10 United States Supreme Court Reports, Vol. 52, L. ed., October, 1910, 

 p. 648. 



