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THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[December i, 1909. 



be that in the case under review there has been no 

 violation of the federal law identified with the name 

 of the late Senator Sherman. But more than this, 

 the supreme court, when confronted by the basic ques- 

 tion in concrete form, may hold the Sherman law 

 itself to be incompatible with the constitution of the 

 United States, which is the prerogative of the court. 

 While John Sherman was among the ablest statesmen 

 America has produced, the legislation of any era is but 

 the crystallization of popular sentiment at the time, 

 and liable 1 1) to be repealed by a reversal of the voice 

 of the people, (2) to become a "dead letter" through 

 neglect, or (3) to be invalidated by a decision of the 

 supreme court. 



The India Rubber World holds no brief for the 

 Standard Oil Co. ; it confesses to not having read the 

 St. Louis decision, or the testimony and the briefs 

 upon which the decision is based. All of this will come 

 out later. But there can be no doubt that the act of 

 which the late Senator Sherman was the author had 

 for its object the prevention of such evils as were 

 aimed at by the ancient English statute of monopolies. 

 In this view, the existence of a monopoly is opposed to 

 public policy, and as we look at it the question whether 

 any existing combination in trade should be dissolved 

 depends upon whether its operation constitutes a true 

 monopoly. 



The question of combination is another matter. The 

 original thirteen English colonies in North America 

 combined for the common good ; does any publicist in 

 the world hold today that the welfare of the United 

 States would be enhanced by a dissolution of the 

 Union into its component parts? Or that, instead of 

 railway systems which permit a passenger to travel 

 direct from the Atlantic to the Pacific without change 

 of cars, it would be sounder policy for the traveler to 

 be forced to buy one railway ticket — as originally — ■ 

 from New York to Harlem (now in the same munici- 

 pality), another from Harlem to Albany, and so on 

 across the continent? The new rubber regime, to 

 which the whole industry is looking, involves the pro- 

 duction of the raw material, not in hundred-pound lots 

 by people without credit, here or there, but in hundred 

 ton lots, or thousand ton lots, by forest exploitation 

 companies on the Amazon, or by plantation companies 

 in the Far East, based upon financial arrangements 

 which will enable responsible producers to contract 

 for supplying rubber for a year in advance at a fixed 

 price. In no other way can the world's supply of rub- 

 ber ever be produced at a minimum cost and the pres- 

 ent disastrous unsettled condition of prices be done 

 away with. Don't the banking systems of today fur- 

 nish the business world with better accommodations 

 than if loans had to be made from any Tom, Dick or 

 Harry who happened to have a spare $1,000 or so to 

 let his neighbors use? And the same rule holds good 

 with manufactured wares of whatever kind, in large 

 demand, and of a standard size or cost. 



We repeat that we do not know what will be the re- 

 sult ultimately of the St. Louis decision in the oil case. 

 But courts are man made and made up of men, and as 

 the world moves the ideas upon which they are based 

 are subject to change. And otherwise the world could 

 make no progress. The world has abolished imprison- 

 ment for debt and the death penalty for stealing sheep. 

 Two successful lawyers or two rag pickers are allowed 

 today to form a partnership if they wish, and if popu- 

 lar opinion in the end shall prove favorable to co- 

 operation in the manufacture or sale of commodities 

 which are common necessities, even the courts must 

 bow to that opinion. 



"Monopoly" in the ancient sense has ceased to exist; 

 and it is a rare thing for a sane business man to work 

 for "restraint of trade." Who is there who doesn't 

 want to see his business grow every year? 



RESURRECTION OF MR. LEXOW. 



I T is now several years since the Hon. Clarence Lexow, then 

 *■ a senator of the state of New York, on reading his morning 

 newspaper one day, learned that there were trusts in the land, 

 and became horror stricken. Whereupon he moved for the 

 appointment of a legislative joint committee for investigating 

 the evils of trusts and framing laws for combating them. Ap- 

 pointed chairman of such committee, he brought his fellow in- 

 vestigators to New York, and with power to compel the 

 appearance of persons and papers, he forebore not tor many days 

 to delve into corporate wickedness ; but are not all the evidence 

 he uncovered, and his recommendations in regard thereto em- 

 bodied in Senate Report No. 40, Session of 1897? 



The text of Senator Lexow's investigation was that "combina- 

 tions of capital in the form of trusts" are "creating monopolies, 

 shutting out competition, displacing labor and driving the citi- 

 zen of moderate means out of business, with the effect that 

 production and price are not regulated by the natural laws of 

 supply and demand." 



There is no intention here to inflict upon the readers of The 

 India Rubber World a review of Senate Report No. 40, of 1897. 

 It is enough to say that corporate wickedness was uncovered 

 at every step of the investigation. What became of it all, 

 however, we fail to remember. But one paragraph in the 

 Lexow report illustrates the temper of that voluminous docu- 

 ment. It related to 



that contemporary and companion of the corporate monopoly — the 

 department store. The passage of this recent commercial invention 

 across the mercantile field is marked by the ruin of numerous previously 

 prosperous tradesmen and the desolation of an army of employes. 

 There is no need and no place for such an institution in the com- 

 mercial economy of our State. 



There is no record of the department store having gone out 

 of existence, in New York or elsewhere, since the Lexow ex- 

 plosion. But even more space in Senate Report No. 40 was 

 devoted to the American Sugar Refining Co., the wickedness of 

 which was dilated upon with great vehemence by Mr. Lexow — 

 and here is what gives point to his resurrection. 



It happens that at this time the American Sugar Refining 

 Co. also are receiving the attention of the federal courts. On 

 November 22, before a United States circuit judge sitting in New 

 York, former Senator Lexow appeared as counsel for the de- 

 fendants and pleaded for a change of venue, urging as a reason 

 the "inflamed state of public opinion" in regard to trusts. Can 

 it be that Senate Report No. 40, after twelve years, still in- 

 fluences the people against trusts? 



