22 PATTERSON—THE PROBLEM OF THE TRUSTS. [April 2, 
‘¢insufficient personal responsibility of officers and directors for 
corporate management.’’ It is enough to say as to this that the 
laws of some States do, and the laws of all States can, hold 
corporate managers to a strict responsibility for non-feasance and 
mal-feasance. 
It is also said that these trade organizations have ‘‘ a tendency to 
monopoly,’’ but except in the cases of patents and copyrights, and 
of those who control the sole and exclusive source of supply of 
a natural product, it is not possible in this day of the world’s his- 
tory to maintain and enforce more than temporarily extortionate 
prices, for the reason that there is always available a large amount 
of uninvested capital seeking profitable employment and keenly 
watching for opportunities of remunerative investment, and there- 
fore intelligent managers of a successful business do not advance 
prices to a point at which destructive competition will be invited. 
Prices of commodities are automatically regulated by the law of 
supply and demand. When, by reason of an apparent permanence 
of demand and a present inadequacy of the means of supply, prices 
rise to a level that gives a reasonable assurance of profit to pro- 
ducers, the surplus capital-of the world can always be relied upon 
to augment the means of supply. 
It would seem that there is a popular demand for industrial 
organizations sufficiently strong to overcome repressive legislation. 
Beginning with the Congressional Anti-Trust law of 2d July, 1890," 
and the Mississippi statute of the same year,? and ending at this 
time with the sixth section of the United States statute creating the 
Department of Commerce and Labor, the United States and 
twenty-nine States and Territories have legislated upon the subject, 
and two States have deemed it of sufficient importance to place an 
anti-Trust prohibition in their Constitutions. Some of these State 
statutes regulate and others of them prohibit, and all of them 
impose penalties by fine or imprisonment and forfeiture of corpo- 
rate privileges. Notwithstanding this mass of adverse legislation, 
industrial corporations have grown and flourished ; and yet there is 
a political clamor for more legislation. 
Attempts to regulate trade by legislation are not of new inven- 
tion. Whenever and wherever there has been an absolute govern- 
ment there have always been attempted restrictions upon trade. In 
1 26 Stat. 209, c. 467. 
Zc, 30: 
