226 JEREMIAH W. JENKS 



goods in the first place to a subordinate corporation or to a 

 co-working individual, who then transfers them to real pur- 

 chasers. This second corporation might, of course, be so 

 organized as to be perfectly ready and willing to meet any 

 conditions, that of publicity or non-discriminations or other- 

 wise, without in any way opening the gate for inspection or 

 knowledge of the workings of the really monopolistic manu- 

 facturing corporation. It would even be possible, if desirable, 

 for a separate corporation to be formed for the selling work 

 of each several state, as has often been suggested. Of course 

 it is possible that the courts might hold in individual cases 

 that this method had been adopted simply for the purpose of 

 evading the law, and that for the purpose of that case the 

 transaction should be considered one. It is scarcely prob- 

 able, however, that this would be held unless in very rare in- 

 stances where the evidence was absolutely clear; and if the 

 separate corporations were organized and managed with en- 

 tirely separate accounts, as could readily be done, it does not 

 at present appear how the United States courts would obtain 

 by compulsion the jurisdiction necessary for the effective 

 carrying out of the law. The law would be still more difficult 

 of enforcement if the intermediate selling agent were a natural 

 person and not a corporation. Similar difficulties would ap- 

 parently be encountered in the enforcement of the law sug- 

 gested in a bill just introduced by Senator Cullom which bars 

 the transportation of trust made products from one state to 

 another. 



(2) This brings us to the discussion of the second remedy. 

 The plan is to impose a tax upon corporations or individuals 

 engaged in interstate commerce, and thereby to secure a 

 supervisory control of such business. While there would 

 doubtless be difficulty in imposing a direct tax, it seems to 

 be the universal opinion among the most competent students 

 that a franchise tax, or, to use another expression, a license 

 tax, as a condition preliminary to engaging in interstate com- 

 merce, would be clearly constitutional. The act of imposing 

 a tax shows most strikingly the power of a government, and 

 the courts have been inclined, when a tax is in itself constitu- 

 tional, to give to the executive all the power needed to en- 



