CONTROL THE TRUSTS BY CONGRESS 211 



step which may lead to the evil is production, which must 

 have a fixed situs within a state, the states alone may deal 

 with it. 



If the states are a nation for some purposes, as Jefferson 

 said, with full legislative and executive power, and exclusive 

 regulation of interstate commerce is one of these purposes, as 

 the Supreme court has decided, it would seem monstrous to 

 urge that congress and the executive under its authority are 

 powerless and must sit idly by and see the channels of inter- 

 state commerce made use of to the injury of the people by 

 monopolistic combinations. Plainly the power must reside 

 somewhere, either in the nation or in the states' reserv ations ; 

 but the effect of present doubts is to create a dilemma under 

 which, apparently, all power vanishes, the states saying, some 

 of us do and some of us do not approve or permit monopo- 

 listic production; that is our concern, but when the products 

 cross our borders the problem passes beyond us and becomes 

 a matter of national regulation and control; and the nation 

 appearing to reply, I can deal with commerce passing beyond 

 any one state, but effective regulation here may indirectly 

 interfere with production, and that is a state matter which I 

 may not touch. And so the national and local sovereignties 

 halt and the delictum escapes. The Supreme court has char- 

 acterized the power of congress to regulate interstate com- 

 merce, like the related and sometimes auxiliary power to tax, 

 in terms broad and absolute; it has defined this commerce in 

 language which is inclusive of all phases of interstate inter- 

 course, exchange, and trade; it has merely said that produc- 

 tion, imder an initial phase of modern consolidations which 

 primarily, at least, regards production alone, is not such com- 

 merce. I do not think it can be said that the court has gone 

 beyond this point. 



Conceding that the present law is not effective through- 

 out the situation, we come to the final alternative: May not 

 congress, under the existing constitutional grants, amend and 

 extend the law, and thus remedy its defects and so effectively 

 regulate national and foreign commerce as to prevent the 

 stifling of competition, the regulating of output and price, 

 and the restraining of national and international trade? If 



