CONTROL THE TRUSTS BY CONGRESS 221 



freedom and sacredness of many contracts which public policy 

 does not manifestly condemn; because the question of reason- 

 ableness, as in the common law, should be for the courts — 

 surely the safest arbiter and reliance in human disputes — and 

 because, from the economic standpoint, freer play would thus 

 be given, and perhaps "a way out" indicated, in the conflict 

 between the important principles of free competition and 

 combination. 



We have no certain knowledge of the nature and effect 

 of the natural laws which are carrying forward evolution in 

 economic and social phenomena as in all other branches of 

 biology. But we may be confident that in some sort and with 

 whatever perversions, public policies, constitutional charters 

 of government, and municipal laws roughly manifest these 

 natural laws and reflect their main tendencies. Proper free 

 play of forces might be maintained, by importing into the 

 situation the idea of "reasonableness" and judicial deter- 

 mination thereof, for the control of unnecessarily destructive 

 competition; and, for preventing the opposite danger, by de- 

 vising a system of regulation which would strike the evils of 

 combination at the heart and aid in the great object of re- 

 straining hurtful restraints and monopolies, especially as to 

 the prime necessities of life. 



The conditions of our commercial life are, as I have said, 

 the result in part of an evolution of forces of world-wide opera- 

 tion. They have developed gradually and are not, perhaps, 

 fully understood. Laws regulating and controlling their 

 operation, before they ripen into a complete system of wise 

 jurisprudence, will be of gradual growth. 



