Public Feeling as to Trusts. 
147 
modity, shall be adjudged guilty of conspiracy to defraud, and 
shall be subject to fine or imprisonment. It also forbids corpo¬ 
rations to issue or own trust certificates, or to enter into any 
trust agreement with intent to limit or fix the price or lessen 
the production and sale of any article of commerce. 
Under the provisions of this comprehensive act, the United 
States School Furniture Company, which was investigated in 
1893 by direction of the Illinois Senate, was recently declared 
to be an illegal combination. 
To examine the legislation and cases in each state would un¬ 
duly extend the limits of this paper without proportionately 
adding to the general conclusions that may be drawn. Few 
suits have been instituted under the various laws that have been 
enacted, because the statutes are either not enforceable or lead 
to no permanent result. It must be taken into consideration 
that the trust can easily remove its centre to some other state 
and continue to carry on its operations in the state from which 
it was driven as a foreign corporation. During the last few 
years, moreover, the public have begun to realize that chey have 
not suffered any specific injury that can be directly attributed 
to trusts, and also that the source of the general complaint and 
outcry was not the public as a whole, but that section which de¬ 
sired to compete with the members of the trust. The public has 
learned, besides, that modern trust combinations are formed not 
for the purpose of fleecing them, but for legitimate business pur¬ 
poses. “They are normal in their origin, development and 
practical workings, and therefore are to be accepted, studied 
and regulated, but not surpressed. ” 26 It is well for the people 
of this country that both the common law and special statutes 
have failed to prevent combination, otherwise all the benefits 
and economies that flow from production and communication on 
a large scale would have been lost; we would be confronted 
with all the results of a ruinous competition which have been 
escaped by this step in economic development; and we would 
be threatened not only with industrial stagnation and loss, but 
retrogation as well. 
26 “ Limits of Competition,” Clark. 
