142 
Strong—The Legal Status of Trusts. 
fore denied the application and discharged the prisoner. 16 A few 
months later, in the Circuit Court of the same state, Southern 
District, another of the defendants was released from custody on 
n, writ of habeas corpus, the court holding that “Congress has 
no authority, under the commerce clause or any other provision 
of the constitution, to limit the right of a corporation created by 
a state in the acquisition, control and disposition of property in 
the several states, and it is immaterial that such property, or 
the products thereof, may become the subjects of interstate com¬ 
merce; and it is not apparent that by the Act of July, Congress 
did not intend to declare that the acquisition by a state corpo¬ 
ration of so large a part of any species of property as to enable 
the owners to control the traffic therein among the several states, 
constituted a criminal offense. 17 This decision was similar to 
that made by the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New 
York in proceedings 18 to remove another of the defendants to 
Massachusetts. The whole affair ended in the total failure of 
the government to deal with the indictments. The Act used 
terms which left everything to construction, and it was decided 
that the efforts to control the production and manufacture of 
distillery products by the enlargement and extension of the busi¬ 
ness was not an attempt to monopolize the trade and commerce 
in such products within the Federal meaning. All other per¬ 
sons who chose to engage in such distilling business were at per¬ 
fect liberty to do so. 
Equally unsuccessful was the attempt to break the combina¬ 
tion among the lumber dealers of Minneapolis, in the case of 
United States v. Nelson, 19 in which a demurrer to all the counts 
of the indictment was sustained. It was held that an agree¬ 
ment between a number of lumber dealers to raise the price of 
lumber fifty cents per 1,000 feet in advance of the market price, 
could not operate as a restriction upon trade, within the mean¬ 
ing of the Act of Congress, unless such agreement involved an 
absorption of the entire traffic, and was entered into for the pur- 
16 In re Corning, 51 Fed. Rep. 205, June 11,1892. 
17 In re Green, 52 Fed. Rep. 105, August 4,1892. 
18 In re Terrell, 51 Fed. Rep. 213, June 28,1892. 
19 District Court, District of Minn., 1892, 52 Fed. Rep. 646. 
