Legality and Illegality of Trusts. 
137 
whose business the public is interested has no right to transfer 
all of its property to another corporation. It must either use 
its property and carry on its business as contemplated by its 
charter or dissolve its corporate existence and divide its prop¬ 
erty among those entitled to it, or else consolidate with another 
corporation in due legal form. But such consolidation can only 
be made in case it is provided for by statute. This was the 
decision of Justice Miller in the case of Pennsylvania Railroad 
Co. v. St. Louis, Alton and Terre Haute Railroad, 1885, 118 U. S. 
309, and this decision was upheld in Oregon Railway Co. v. 
Oregonian Railway Co., 1888, 130 U. S. 23. 
In spite of every statute, however, railway consolidation went 
on with increasing rapidity, until at the present time the 
greater part of the railway mileage of the country is comprised 
within a relatively small number of great systems, and the same 
combining force has brought about a similar result among the 
express companies. The telegraph and telephone are now each 
controlled by a single company, while in cities there is usually 
but one gas or electric lighting company, and a few large street 
railway companies. It may be noted here that in no other class 
of businesses is the tendency to consolidation so strong as among 
the enterprises above mentioned, for each is a monopoly in its 
very nature, and does not admit of competition in the true sense 
of the term. 
An examination of the opinions rendered in the cases cited in 
these two classes of limitations on the principle of public policy 
shows that in each instance the decision turned on the fact that 
the subject matter was clearly within one of those classes. It 
follows, therefore, that there may be commercial combinations 
in the nature of trusts, to which the doctrine of trade conspir¬ 
acies, or combinations in restraint of trade, will not, in the 
absence of a special legislation, apply. So far as articles of 
necessity are concerned there have been but few decisions, but 
the following have been held not to be such articles that an 
attempt to monopolize the trade in them is illegal: Washing 
machines — Dolph v. Troy Laundry Machinery Co., 1886, U. S. 
Circuit Court, N. D. of N. Y., 28 Fed. Rep. 553; Patent Cur¬ 
tain fixtures — Curtain Roller Co. v. Cushman, 1887, 143 Mass. 
