1900.] * HASTINGS—POLICKE POWER OF THE STATE. 030 
Fuller naturally dissented, and with him Justices Field and Brewer. 
The claim of police power in this matter becomes very slight when 
it is recalled that the act of Congress provides ample safeguards 
for the stamping of oleomargarine packages. All the state needed 
to do to guard against deception was to provide that its own citi- 
zens should not offer the substance except in such packages un- 
broken. 
To determine, with all the refined subtleties that regulate the 
intercourse of independent states, how imitation butter shall be 
offered in village markets is a distinct feature of American juris- 
prudence. ‘The real support of such determination is the sound 
one adverted to by Justice Harlan in the last paragraph of his 
opinion: the impropriety of overturning state legislation in the 
Supreme Court except in cases of real, if not of absolute, neces- 
sity. This time it saved Massachusetts from danger of eating col- 
ored oleomargarine contrary to the will of her legislature, though 
the doctrine was not applied to save the good folks of Iowa from 
imported beer. 
The police power received another earnest attempt at ‘‘ delimi- 
tation ” from another point of view in the ? United States ws. E. C. 
Knight Company. An act of Congress of July 2, 1890, provided 
that every contract, combination, in form of trust or otherwise, or 
conspiracy in restraint of trade and commerce among the several 
states, is illegal, and that persons who shall monopolize, or who 
shall attempt to monopolize, or combine, or conspire to monopo- 
lize, trade or commerce among the several states, shall be guilty of 
a misdemeanor. 
The American Sugar Refining Company, having New York and 
New Jersey named as its principal places of carrying on its busi- 
ness of making, refining and selling sugar and its products, had, 
prior to March, 1892, obtained control of all the sugar refineries of 
the country, except of four companies in Philadelphia, which 
refined about one-third of the sugar used in the United States, and 
one in Boston, refining about two per cent. of it. 
In March, 1892, the American Company bought all the stock of 
the four Philadelphia companies and increased its own capital 
stock by $25,000,000. There was no understanding or agreement 
to all sell at once on the part of the four companies. After the 
1156 U. S., 1 (Jan., 1895). 
PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIX. 162. II. PRINTED ocT. 24, 1900. 
