GIFT OF 
 
^ JUUt^Lj * 
 
 THE 
 TRUST PROBLEM 
 
 Opinions of 16,000 Rep- 
 resentative Americans 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 DEPARTMENT ON REGULATION OF 
 
 i Madison Avenue, New York City 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CORPORATIONS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE NATIONAL CIVIC 
 FEDERATION 
 
THE 
 TRUST PROBLEM 
 
 Replies of 16,000 Representative 
 Americans to a Questionnaire 
 
 SENT OUT BY 
 
 DEPARTMENT ON REGULATION OF 
 INDUSTRIAL CORPORATIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE NATIONAL CIVIC 
 FEDERATION 
 
 New York 
 February 20, 1912 
 
M. B. BROWN PRINTING & BINDING CO. 
 49-57 PARK PLACE, NEW YORK. 
 
 .-icflJSSBBn 2 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 Chapter I. Manufacturers 9 
 
 Chapter II. Bankers, Eailway and Insurance Officials . . 172 
 
 Chapter III. Merchants 276 
 
 Chapter IV. Labor 334 
 
 Chapter V. Educators, Editors, Publicists and Others.. 361 
 
 Chapter VI. Lawyers 428 
 
 Chapter VII. Commercial, Agricultural and Other 
 
 Organizations 463 
 
 Chapter VIII. Some Extended Discussions 474 
 
 Appendix 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Law 507 
 
 Text of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States in the case of the Standard Oil 
 
 Company 508 
 
 Text of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States in the case of the American Tobacco 
 
 Company 558 
 
 Eeceived too Late for Classification 591 
 
 Index 603 
 
 234593 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 This book contains or presents the views of some sixteen 
 thousand Americans on the Sherman Act and related problems. 
 The National Civic Federation sent 30,000 questionnaires, 
 addressed to representative men in all walks of life the pro- 
 fessions, finance, organized trades, agriculture and other forms 
 of industrial, commercial and mercantile enterprise. Two series 
 of questions were used one intended for educators, editors, 
 political economists, lawyers, publicists, statisticians, and the 
 other addressed to manufacturers, merchants, bankers and the 
 officers of commercial, labor and other organizations. As intro- 
 ductory to both questionnaires it is pointed out that " the Sher- 
 man Anti-Trust Act has now been interpreted by the Supreme 
 Court to mean, as to interstate commerce, that any combina- 
 tion in restraint of trade, with the purpose of controlling prices 
 and stifling competition, is unlawful. Many evils, however, that 
 cannot be reached under the Sherman Act, have developed in 
 connection with such combinations; and, at the same time, the 
 advantages of doing business on a large scale are so great as 
 to make the concentration of capital essential to the full and 
 efficient development of modern business. The problem before 
 the country, now, is to secure the benefits of large aggregations 
 of capital in business, so far as it can be done without subject- 
 ing ourselves to the evils, most of. them wholly unnecessary, 
 which have marked the business methods of the last few years." 
 
 Evils usually charged against large combinations are enu- 
 merated as follows: Competition between the States to make 
 laws governing incorporation more and more lax; power to 
 exploit both the producer and the consumer, by depriving them 
 of a competitive market, thus making the prices of the raw 
 material unduly low and those of the finished commodity unduly 
 high; the holding company, which leads to concentration of 
 power, sometimes perilous, in a few hands, and which conceals 
 the exercise of this power by the few; unfair methods of com- 
 petition, as illustrated by the selling of goods in a given locality, 
 where a competitor is operating, at prices below cost of produc- 
 tion until the local competitor is ruined, and by the selling of 
 one variety of goods at less than cost for the purpose of driv- 
 ing from the field a rival who produces chiefly this variety; 
 restraint of trade, as illustrated by refusing to furnish goods 
 at prevalent trade rates to merchants who buy anything from 
 rival producers, or who refuse to maintain list prices, as 
 required by " sellers 7 agreements," by control of sources of raw 
 
material and by use of patents to protect what is not patented; 
 overcapitalization; inadequate protection of minority stockhold- 
 ers and of subsidiary interests, and exploitation of investors by 
 manipulation of stocks and securities; the checking of improve- 
 ments in methods of production, if monopoly is successfully 
 assured. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are likewise indicated, for approval or disapproval, as fol- 
 lows: Economies in production; economies in distribution; 
 greater use of by-products; steadier employment of labor and 
 at better wages; better protection against industrial accidents; 
 more command of international trade; command of the best 
 ability; assurance of a steady market, and avoidance of those 
 fluctuations which, under old competitive conditions, so often 
 brought disaster alike to employer and employe, and the stand- 
 ardization of products, so that dealer and ultimate consumer 
 know exactly what they are purchasing. 
 
 Suggestions of reputed evils and reputed advantages not 
 enumerated are asked for, and a space is set apart for " Gen- 
 eral Remarks." The replies under this heading show the 
 breadth, depth and earnestness of thought which the average 
 American applies to great national issues. Equally interesting 
 and equally varied are replies to the query touching the 
 causes of business disturbance. 
 
 The proposed remedies for reputed evils, regarding which 
 opinions are asked, are : " National incorporation and Federal 
 license for companies doing interstate commerce ; legislation 
 additional to the Sherman Act, to prevent the exploitation of 
 producers and consumers; laws to suppress holding companies; 
 specific statutes to deal with unfair competition and restraint 
 of trade; government regulation of capitalization, and laws 
 applying publicity to commercial corporations through an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers." It is suggested, for approval or disapproval, 
 that the proposed Interstate Trade Commission should have 
 power "(a) to permit large aggregations of capital under single 
 control, and for the merger from time to time of smaller cor- 
 porations; or (b) to permit agreements which regulate pro- 
 duction, prices and the like, under suitable public control." 
 
 The questions addressed to " Manufacturers, Merchants, 
 Bankers and the Presidents of Commercial, Labor and 'Other 
 Organizations" are as follows: 
 
 "1. Do you believe that the Sherman Law, as now inter- 
 preted, is made clear and workable? 2. Do you consider it 
 feasible to attempt to return to what are commonly known as 
 old competitive methods in business? 3. Do you favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law ? 4. Do you favor amending the Sherman 
 Law in any way? If so, in what particulars? 5. Should rail- 
 roads be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject 
 
to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Coin- 
 mission? 6. Should trade unions be excepted from the opera- 
 tion of the Sherman Act? 7. Should combinations of farmers, 
 either to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher prices, 
 be rendered lawful under the Sherman Act? 8. Do you favor 
 a national incorporation law? 9. Do you favor a Federal license 
 law? 10. Do you favor an Interstate Trade Commission,, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers? 11. In your 
 judgment what caused or causes the present disturbed business 
 conditions ? " 
 
 Individuals, firms, corporations and associations are classi- 
 fied, as near as may be, according to their respective trades, 
 professions or other pursuits. The classification includes 
 "'Manufacturers," "Bankers," "Merchants," "Lawyers," "La- 
 bor," "Educators," "Editors." Many secretaries and other 
 officers of boards of trade, commercial clubs, etc., replied, some- 
 times in behalf of their organizations; sometimes with the ex- 
 plicit statement that they were expressing only personal opinions. 
 In all instances where the official of an organization added to 
 his reply that he was not speaking in behalf of the organiza- 
 tion, that averment has been set forth in his answer. All replies 
 from organizations except trade unions and educational asso- 
 ciations are included under the heading, "Boards of Trade 
 and Other Commercial Bodies." 
 
 The financial group includes not only bankers, but all whose 
 business relates to finance, such as insurance and high railway 
 officials, who cannot be classified readily under any other head- 
 ing. Under the heading of " Educators " are included not only 
 professors, publicists and economists, but also civil engineers 
 and others whose training has been highly educational and who, 
 from the standpoint of scientific achievement, are as much edu- 
 cators as the university president or the teacher of a class in 
 college. 
 
 Leading trade unionists, men of national and international 
 repute, are represented in these pages, some speaking their own 
 views, and others in behalf of union labor bodies, with member- 
 ship as extensive as the continent. Under the heading, " Edit- 
 ors," are writers of metropolitan fame and the owners of small 
 country weeklies. Polished periods and rugged sentences offer 
 picturesque contrast and carry perhaps equal conviction. " Law- 
 yers " are represented by distinguished members of the bar in 
 leading cities and less prominent localities North, South, East 
 and West. Their contributions are well worthy of study by 
 bench and bar, as well as laity. " Merchants " are of all sorts 
 millionaire wholesale houses and cross-roads stores; the former 
 prompted by the best abilities that money can command; the 
 latter interpreting the homely but forceful debates of custom- 
 ers and loiterers, such as Lincoln used to join in before he 
 emerged from his chrysalis of homespun into the study of law. 
 
The sum of these replies is absolutely convincing on two 
 points that the principle embodied in the Sherman Law is in 
 accord with almost universal popular sentiment and that the 
 people are determined that " big business " shall be controlled 
 and regulated. That general business is disturbed nearly every- 
 one admits, although many and various reasons are given as the 
 causes of disturbance. A considerable majority of manufactur- 
 ers, merchants, bankers, lawyers, educators and editors, and a 
 large proportion of labor representatives favor, as a remedial 
 measure, Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce, with national incorporation as an alternative. An Inter- 
 state Trade Commission is approved by a large percentage of 
 the replies, but comparatively few express themselves in favor 
 of control of prices by the commission. A " return to old com- 
 petitive methods in business " is overwhelmingly rejected as not 
 feasible practically an acknowledgment that combination has 
 come to stay. 
 
 This collection of signed opinions from all classes and every 
 part of the nation is without precedent or parallel as an X-ray 
 exposition of American thought and purpose in relation to the 
 Sherman Act and the problems the Sherman Act was meant to 
 grapple with. It is replete with information fresh from the 
 people on subjects which are compelling the attention of capital 
 and labor alike, and which will never be settled until they are 
 settled right. 
 
Chapter I. 
 MANUFACTURERS. 
 
 E. A. S. Clarke, President, Lackawanna Steel Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to lack of certainty 
 as to what is or is not legal under the Sherman Law, with the 
 administration forcing it so drastically. Also fear of political 
 activity and legislation disturbing to business, including reduc- 
 tion of tariff. I am in sympathy with Col. Roosevelt's attitude 
 as expressed in the " Outlook " of November 18th last. I think 
 we might utilize the experience of European nations who seem 
 to have found unlimited competition unhealthy, and who permit 
 reasonable trade agreements, under proper control and regula- 
 tion. I do not fear State Socialism. I believe in entire pub- 
 licity, as one of the surest methods of control. 
 
 J. B. White, Lumberman and Farmer, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 Industrial corporations have proved to be the fortunate op- 
 portunity to thousands of men. Look at them in every village 
 and city, especially in the Middle and Eastern States. Hun- 
 dreds of thousands of men of little means have been enabled 
 to club together and unite their savings in an industrial cor- 
 poration, where their money and labor are employed, with the 
 result that they have made and are making a financial success 
 and own their own homes. 
 
 I am told that in Jamestown, N. Y., where there are 143 
 industrial corporations, there are hundreds of small prosperous 
 stockholders, but not a millionaire amongst them. And there 
 are thousands of similar examples. We require competition, 
 but not that kind "with the red tooth and the bloody claw/" 
 We want co-operation, and not merciless unrestrained competi- 
 tion, where only the luckiest or the strongest survive at the ex- 
 pense of the weak and the unfortunate. A living wage should 
 be the first cornerstone of every industrial enterprise. 
 
 The endeavor to create a condition of enforced and unre- 
 strained competition, causing the overproduction, low wages 
 and enforced idleness among the laborers, has caused much 
 trouble. The Sherman Law should be repealed or amended so 
 that manufacturers may be able to legally ascertain the supply 
 and demand and be enabled to avoid committing waste by ex- 
 ceeding the demand and by selling their products under the 
 price of production. 
 
 9 
 
10 
 
 A. B. Farquhar, President, A. B. Farquhar Company, Ltd., 
 York, Pa. 
 
 We will not have a genuine and permanent revival in busi- 
 ness until Congress gives the President legislation to carry out 
 his wishes in regard to the Sherman Law and trust regulation. 
 We favor a national license or incorporation, regulating them 
 somewhat on the plan of national banks and railroads, not de- 
 stroying them, as the present law requires. Sooner or later this 
 will be done, since we cannot economically do the business of 
 the country without corporations and large collections of capi- 
 tal. The corporations, however, should be regulated, in other 
 words, they should be made serviceable to the community. Im- 
 position should not be allowed. They should be encouraged, as 
 in Germany. The plan pursued there of regulation is wise. 
 
 It is not so much the high cost of living as the cost of 
 high living that oppresses the people. The hundreds of millions 
 of dollars spent annually in buying automobiles and running 
 them is a factor in trade depression ; the vulgar display of wealth 
 and extravagance generally is a leading factor; the waste of 
 natural resources, carelessness of health, and above all, the 
 waste of a thousand million dollars a year in liquor is another. 
 The only wonder is that we do not suffer more. We deserve it. 
 Were we as economical as the people of France we would have 
 no occasion to borrow money from Europe for our railroads 
 and other enterprises. We would have money to lend over the 
 world, as the French have. If Congress were honest in its de- 
 sire to remove all danger from trusts they would abolish the 
 protective tariff, which, as the late Mr. Havemeyer remarked, 
 is the wet nurse of trusts. 
 
 S. J. Black, Beaumont Iron Works Company, Beaumont, 
 Texas. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the tendencies of 
 all classes to want to live beyond their income, and to unrest- 
 caused by political agitators and office-holders who persist in 
 saving the dear people to keep their fingers from being busy 
 with real honest work. Give us political peace! The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so that the things a corporation 
 or association may do shall be known to them beyond a reason- 
 able doubt, so that what cannot be done shall also be made 
 known in language so simple and plain that the person of 
 average intelligence can understand it. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. We favor a national incor- 
 poration law, but we do not favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion, because conditions are so different in different States 
 that such a commission would probably prove inefficient, so far 
 as accomplishing any real good. 
 
11 
 
 The President of Lane Cotton Mills Company, New 
 Orleans, La. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the prosecution, 
 or rather persecution,, of large business organizations (so-called 
 Trusts) by men who may have the interests of all the people 
 at heart, but who are entirely impracticable, and are not aware 
 that established business conditions and business customs can 
 no more be changed in a few days, or in a few years, than 
 c-an savage and illiterate people be expected to live and prosper 
 under a representative government such as ours. 
 
 And again, about 95 per cent, of all the newspapers and 
 periodicals in the United States are constantly muckraking, 
 are constantly agitating the minds of the people about their 
 imaginary serfdom. 
 
 If we believe in government such as we have it, and not 
 in Socialism, it is high time that our statesmen and our news- 
 papers change their tactics. 
 
 Business never prospers when confidence is destroyed, as 
 capital is withdrawn, and every line of trade restricts itself to 
 the least possible expenditure, and not only expansion in busi- 
 ness ceases, but everyone tries to reduce his obligations. 
 
 C. W. Shoemaker, Treasurer, The Cumberland Glass Manu- 
 facturing Company, Bridgeton, N. J. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in a measure, to 
 too great an extension of credits; ease in obtaining money 
 from banks, and undue credit extensions. These tend to ex- 
 travagance and offer temptation to do a large business . on the 
 other fellow's money. Pay day comes around and there may 
 ])e no money to pay with. The merchant gets pressed and 
 his credit impaired. He becomes terribly frightened and vows 
 he will never be caught owing so much money again. He re- 
 duces stock, curtails his credits, pays his bills and thereafter 
 buys only as legitimate trade demands. With these curtail- 
 ments consumption decreases and there is a general cry of 
 dull times. So much for the causes of disturbance. Speak- 
 ing for ourselves we find trade improving, but are proceed- 
 ing cautiously and meeting the demands and no more. 
 
 W. J. Olcott, President, Oliver Iron Mining Company, Du- 
 luth, Minn. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are due to errors of 
 both labor and capital; the uncertainty as to the exact mean- 
 ing of the Sherman Law; the apparent unfavorable attitude 
 of government officials towards large corporations and their 
 efforts to return to destructive competition; too much legisla- 
 tion by incompetent representatives; too much cheap politics 
 and too little statesmanship; too little encouragement towards 
 developing our great national industries, and the uncertainty 
 as to an adequate return on legitimate investments. 
 
12 
 
 Jeremiah Dwyer, President, The Michigan Stove Company, 
 Detroit, Mich. 
 
 I sincerely hope that the Interstate Commerce Committee 
 of the United States Senate, at its meeting on the 15th inst., 
 will devise some wise measure for removing the restrictions 
 which obtain at present with reference to business and corpora- 
 tion regulations that are proving so annoying and disastrous 
 in their consequences. Whether the repeal of the Sherman Law 
 would be a move in the right direction I do not know. 
 
 It would be impossible for me to state my views regarding 
 what should be done any more clearly than to cite you the posi- 
 tion that Mr. Geo. W. Perkins has taken in his public utter- 
 ances of late. In my opinion, Mr. Perkins's recommendations 
 cover the situation very fully and, if adopted, would bring 
 about almost immediate relief of existing conditions. 
 
 A man whose interests and activities are centered in his 
 daily business life, knows but comparatively little in regard to 
 the phrasing of legislation affecting his interests; but he does 
 know and all business men at this time realize that the unreason- 
 able restrictions that have been imposed upon commerce in this 
 country are very disastrous in their consequences, but the work- 
 ing out of these problems will, of course, have to be left to men 
 who are trained for work of that character. I sincerely hope 
 that something will be done, and done quickly, to relieve the 
 present conditions. 
 
 Chas. H. Jones, President, Commonwealth Shoe and 
 Leather Company, Boston. 
 
 The Sherman Act was wisely directed at an obvious and 
 growing evil, but as no steps were taken to enforce it, corpora- 
 tions were encouraged to take chances and ignore it. They could 
 make more money by conducting their business by methods in 
 violation of its provisions, and they hoped to escape the penal- 
 ties. The acceptance by the government of the dissolution plan 
 proposed by the American Tobacco Co., looks as if they were 
 right in expecting to " get away with the goods." 
 
 W. B. Campbell, The Perkins-Campbell Company, Manu- 
 facturers of Saddlery, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 There is no doubt that agitation is going to continue, which 
 must affect business, until the anti-corporation, or rather anti- 
 trust laws, are decided, as the best people of the country be- 
 lieve to be right. I am not in sympathy with the apparent 
 wish of many people to quiet the people by the use of seda- 
 tives instead of remedies. If combinations are wrong, then let 
 us get rid of them. If they are right, let us try to so convince 
 the public by argument, and not by the simple statement, " What 
 are you going to do about it?" 
 
13 
 
 R. S. Crawford, Manager, St. Louis Branch, Acme White 
 Lead and Color Works, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 I traveled recently over several States in the South and 
 Southwest, talking with wholesale merchants, manufacturers 
 and retail merchants, and I have not been able to find any one 
 who attempts to explain or understand the causes of business 
 depression throughout this particular section. 
 
 In my opinion, it is possibly due to three causes: the lack 
 of confidence in the present administration of the government 
 in many details; the continued investigations and suits against 
 large corporations of various kinds, which have not up to the 
 present time produced anything definite in the way of satis- 
 factory results or benefits to the average citizen; the revela- 
 tions that have been made in these investigations of profits taken 
 by promoters who have developed the corporations which are 
 now being investigated. These conditions come as something 
 of a surprise to the average farmer and merchant throughout 
 the Southwest, and they are all waiting to see what the final 
 results will show. This causes a continued hesitancy on the part 
 of all dealers to buy goods in a very large way. A large part of 
 the consuming trade are fearful of more or less financial depres- 
 sion, causing them to exercise economv in every way possible. 
 
 John J. Glessner, Vice-President, International Harvester 
 Company, Chicago. 
 
 I think that a considerable reduction of tariff duties and 
 an enforced publicity in certain directions in the conduct of 
 large corporations, and the enforcement of the common law 
 will remove and prevent most of the evils now complained of. 
 These chiefly are of unfair discrimination fostered by monopo- 
 listic control. In my opinion, there can be no monopoly in any 
 business where the conditions are such that any man may enter 
 it if he desires. The common law is sufficient to deal with un- 
 fair monopoly, and supplemented by enforced publicity in con- 
 duct of large corporations, will be effective to prevent unjust dis- 
 criminations. Large aggregations of capital and of great com- 
 mercial abilities are necessary to provide means to supply our 
 own people and compete with the outside world, and all trade 
 should be as free from restriction by government as possible. 
 
 Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company, Manufacturers, Auto- 
 mobiles, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Federal incorporation is desirable if it will give companies' 
 holding Federal charters access unimpeded to all States and 
 State courts without annual reports to various States or taxa- 
 tion on earnings, etc. Supervision of security issues to insure 
 true values for the security of the public; the power to pre- 
 vent oppression; the power to prevent unnecessary combination 
 or conspiracy; the power to prevent unreasonable advances in 
 prices; these powers should be conferred upon a Cabinet officer. 
 
14 
 
 E. B. Linsley, Manager, Sheffield Car Company, Three 
 Rivers, Mich. 
 
 I certainly feel that a law aiming at the points which the 
 Sherman Law was designed to cover, is a desirable thing, but 
 I am not prepared to say whether it is clear and workable as 
 it is, nor whether it should be amended materially. I feel that 
 while there is something to be said on both sides of the ques- 
 tion, the power that is placed in the hands of a few men, if it 
 is possible to carry out combinations as has been the case in the 
 last eight or ten years, is undesirable in its general results. 
 
 I feel that if the authority of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission is clearly recognized as governing such matters, there 
 should be no serious objection to agreement as to rates between 
 railroads. 
 
 I do not think a trade union should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, or any other act designed to reg- 
 ulate or suppress unwise combinations, whether of capital, labor 
 or anything else that affects public interests. I do not feel that 
 combinations even of farmers, to hold crops for higher prices, 
 are wise, nor should be sanctioned by law. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and a Federal license law. So far as an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission is concerned, speaking generally, I 
 should favor such a commission. As to the benefits to be de- 
 rived, this would largely depend upon the way in which it was 
 carried out. 
 
 As to causes of the present disturbed business conditions. 
 The answer seems to be very clear in that while crops have 
 been good, and therefore the basis for good conditions existed, 
 the action of the leading railroads in endeavoring to support 
 their application for higher freight rates by the statement that 
 they were unable to earn sufficient dividends upon their stock 
 under existing conditions, started a movement which under- 
 mined public confidence and undoubtedly went very much far- 
 ther than they expected. The public generally felt that if the 
 railroad situation was so grave as indicated by the testimony 
 of various officials, their holdings of stocks and bonds were not 
 of as stable a nature- as thev had supposed, and hence a selling 
 movement was inaugurated, which affected first Wall street 
 and then the country at large, through various channels of trade, 
 which is easily understood. There doubtless are other con- 
 tributing causes, but these matters certainly had something to 
 do with it. 
 
 Wesley M. Oler, President, Knickerbocker Ice Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 Greatest good to the greatest number should govern in all 
 these matters. A corporation that improves quality and names 
 prices should have different consideration from one that takes 
 all it can and gives nothing to the people in return for its cor- 
 porate privileges. 
 
15 
 
 W. W. Salmon, President, General Railway Signal Com- 
 pany, Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 Many of the widely read, cheap, daily papers and monthly 
 magazines of the country have for years been publishing articles 
 misrepresenting and defaming certain of our great corporate en- 
 terprises. Great numbers of our citizens have thus been led to 
 form false opinions as to the conduct of " Big Business " and to 
 entertain feelings of hostility thereto. Ignorant, unscrupulous 
 and ambitious politicians, feeling that they could promote their 
 fortunes by making appeal to the prejudices of these misguided 
 people, have therefore sought to enact laws that, while promis- 
 ing to redress wrongs, real or imaginary, cannot, in the honest 
 judgment of well informed, experienced men, fail to disas- 
 trously affect the wages of workmen and the legitimate profits 
 of investors. The National Civic Federation, all other repre- 
 sentative bodies and all individuals who have a fair understand- 
 ing of the situation should co-operate to bring about a more 
 general knowledge of the truth regarding the actual industrial 
 situation, and to restrain our political representatives from fur- 
 ther ill-advised, discriminatory legislation, and from further 
 strained and unequal enforcement of existing laws. 
 
 William M. Wood, President, American Woolen Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. It is not 
 desirable to return to old competitive methods in business. I 
 favor repeal of the Sherman Law. If it can't be repealed, then 
 perhaps a Federal incorporation law, carefully guarded against 
 unnecessary espionage, might be desirable. Trade unions should 
 not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and 
 combinations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold 
 a crop for higher prices, should not be rendered lawful. I do 
 not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions, in my opinion, are due, in the first place, to 
 agitation regarding the tariff and, in the second place, to un- 
 certainty of corporations as to what is and what is not lawful. 
 
 A. J. Meier, Manufacturer, Liggett Building, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Of the several conditions operating against the general busi- 
 ness prosperity of the country, I believe the principal causes 
 at present are political in their inception, but feel, however, 
 that aggregations of capital have permitted this license, which 
 they should not have assumed. What we need more than any- 
 thing else is a National Incorporation Law to eliminate petty 
 annoyances and legal requirements of Interstate business, mak- 
 ing this law cover service by registered mail, or service in some 
 equally satisfactory manner, so that a resident in any State 
 can demand a hearing in his own State in the Federal Courts, 
 providing the company seeking the service is doing, or has 
 done, business in that State. 
 
16 
 
 H. L. Kramer, Kramer, Ind. 
 
 The Sherman Act has been in existence for twenty years 
 and it don't look right from any viewpoint that these great 
 industries owned by tens of thousands of innocent, stockholders 
 should now be slaughtered and the whole business confidence 
 of our country brought to a stand still on the brink of panic 
 because a law is pulled out of its musty old pigeon-hole and 
 used as a basis for a political issue. I don't hear a word of hope 
 or sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of stockholders who 
 in good faith have invested their money in shares of the great 
 industrial enterprises of this country that to-day are threatened 
 with annihilation by the Sherman Law. Property is being de- 
 stroyed. The ordinary everyday business rule and right of in- 
 dividuals is ignored, business customs that are centuries old 
 set aside by business reformers who God knows never had the 
 nerve to look a wood pile squarely in the face,, so far as ever 
 rendering real labor in exchange for a big round dollar. If 
 you go down the line and take the majority of these men who 
 want to reform the business of the country you will find that 
 very few ever did any real work in their lives I mean to create 
 an industry, run a mercantile establishment, a saw mill, or, 
 in fact, any of the little things that are incidental to a fairly 
 decent business success. No, far from it, but they can, under 
 political necessity, declare that an unwise law should be en- 
 forced, right or wrong, and they will keep it up as long as the 
 85 per cent, yell their approval. 
 
 We had one panic start with a cow-boy yell from the Presi- 
 dential chair in 1907. If we had not been arranging for the 
 last two years for the shock that followed the attack upon the 
 United States Steel Company, we would have had a panic that 
 would have rattled the doors of the United States Treasury 
 off their hinges. 
 
 I believe the days of old time cut-throat competition are 
 gone. At least, I hope so. If they ever return, Gold help the 
 laboring man. 
 
 I have been a Eepublican and supported the party by work 
 all my life so was my father before me but I believe in con- 
 struction, not destruction, and I further believe that the trust 
 issue can be settled in a decent business kind of a way with- 
 out forcing the country to take monetary loss involving bil- 
 lions of dollars, the destruction of business confidence, and our 
 having to assume a second or third rate position in the com- 
 merce of the world. If the Eepublican party don't change its 
 attitude from a destructive to a constructive side, I will have 
 to be chloroformed before I will a<zairt vote the Eepublican 
 ticket. 
 
 The working men of this country may be able to eat some 
 of the political speeches that have lately emanated from high 
 places they may ho able to do it: I can't use them for pay- 
 rolls. 
 
17 
 
 J. W. Busiel & Co. (The Granite Hosiery Mills), Laconia, 
 N. H. 
 
 Two things above all others are causing business disturb- 
 ance; the threatened return to power of a government un- 
 friendly to the principle of protection to home industries and 
 fear of an unfriendly attack on our tariff; the insane idea that 
 government by a pure democracy is better than government by 
 representatives; that the mob canMecide more wisely than the 
 educated trained thinking portion of the community; that pas- 
 sion is better able to govern than common sense; that laws 
 can substitute a remedy for poor citizenship, for a diluted smat- 
 tering of education of our boys and for an electorate diluted 
 by immigration far in excess of our ability to -absorb as good 
 citizens. 
 
 Modern politics are moving on insane lines. The whim 
 of the modern child of politics pure democracy is to. 
 govern instead of the parents, with the inevitable 
 trouble that comes when the child rules the family. The idea 
 is abroad that the people must have what they want, meaning 
 that any whim must be gratified. This threatens all stability 
 in business. 
 
 Another thing that is disturbing business is the enormous 
 diversion from business of capital into extravagant gratifica- 
 tion of the appetite for pleasure, as evinced by the tremendous 
 expenditure for automobiles and their maintenance. 
 
 Most emphatically, business needs peace; laws so clear that 
 men who run may read; sure punishment for robbery of the 
 people by dishonest devices, whether of the corporation, the 
 lawyer, the politician, the stock jobber, by all, in short, who 
 simply seem to plan to get rich quickly at any cost, and by 
 any dishonest device to get the money of the public. 
 
 E. D. Johnston, P. H. & F. M. Roots Company, Conners- 
 ville, Ind. 
 
 I hope our next Congress will either change the Sherman 
 Law so as to make it specific and clear, or give us a new Federal 
 Corporation Law that is absolutely indispensable to our present 
 needs, then create an Interstate Trade Commission, with similar 
 powers to that of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the 
 new laws to include not only business corporations, partner- 
 ships and all sorts of business organizations, but all labor unions, 
 and thus, once and for all, get this great question out of poli- 
 tics, and then we can settle down in peace and quiet to the 
 prosecution of legitimate trade. To-day everything is "up in 
 the air," and we are not going to prosper until this great ques- 
 tion is settled. Nobody nor an organization of any kind should 
 be exempt from this law. Labor and capital should both be 
 brought to the same plane, as far as our laws are concerned. 
 
18 
 
 L. P. Rexford, President, American Paper Products Com- 
 pany, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 To create fair and equitable competition it is natural to 
 reason that to produce the same results organizations, like the 
 products, must be started and built from the same formulas. 
 Equity in competition cannot possibly exist where a corpora- 
 tion organized in an eastern State with large capital is per- 
 mitted to enter a western State and employ a small amount 
 of capital far below that actually required in its western plant, 
 and by making shipments to the western plant of a certain 
 partly finished product, taking practically the raw material 
 rate of freight, to the western plant, to be finished in the west- 
 ern plant and sold in the same market against the smaller com- 
 petitor, who is governed and controlled exclusively by the west- 
 ern State law and subject to many additional expenses to that 
 of the larger eastern competitor. 
 
 I believe in large corporations haying branch plants located 
 so as to produce in the most economical manner. I believe this 
 to be an economical fact, but, due to the present State corporate 
 laws, the above is taken advantage of in many grossly unfair 
 ways. Whether incorporation laws can be made to govern and 
 control competition is the important question, but it is certain 
 that corporate abuses can be controlled and should be. 
 
 I believe that unless we, as American people, wish to enter 
 a state of Socialism or government ownership, it is necessary 
 for laws to govern and control the corporation. 
 
 I believe the national banking laws are understood by the 
 people to be for the good of the people, and if the same ideas 
 could be developed and govern the corporation, I think it 
 would go far in solving the present commercial conditions and 
 result in general good. 
 
 W. A. Garrigues, Levering & Garrigues Company, Struc- 
 tural Steel, New York. 
 
 In so far as business conditions are disturbed, I think it is 
 largely owing to political reasons. We have too many laws 
 and too many sessions of both Congress and the State legisla- 
 tures. It is very doubtful whether the Sherman Law is adapted 
 to present-day conditions, but we have gone so far in the effort 
 to enforce it that it would be better to follow out for the pres- 
 ent the plan of the present administration than to change the 
 policy for an Interstate Trade Commission, which would be 
 sure to prolong such disturbance as exists. 
 
 R. H. Jeffrey, Manufacturer, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 The popular clamor to restrain trusts has been bluntly and 
 not scientifically acceded to. There has been too little rational 
 interpretation of la\v as it affects social and industrial progress. 
 
19 
 
 Nelson E. Harris, President, Rodney, Hunt Machine Com- 
 pany, Orange, Mass. 
 
 Consider the old competitive methods sufficiently feasible 
 for conducting modern business. The few excessively large 
 manufacturing concerns, like the United States Steel Corpora- 
 tion, American Woolen Company, International Paper Company 
 and other large concerns we might mention, have not demon- 
 strated in our opinion that their facilities and methods are of 
 any benefit to the people, but are positively detrimental to small 
 manufacturing concerns that want a fair share of the market 
 for similar product, or want to purchase supplies such as the 
 largest merger corporations manufacture. For instance, we use 
 considerable material such as the United States Steel Corpora- 
 tion manufacture, but we avoid dealings with them because 
 of their arbitrary methods and requirements. 
 
 Before the merger of a large number of mills in the Amer- 
 ican Woolen Company and International Paper Company we 
 could readily sell our machinery to a majority of these mills, 
 not to all of them, because purchasing agents are notional. 
 
 All the purchasing for these two combinations of mills is 
 now entirely in the hands of one purchasing agent for each 
 lot of mills, and if he happens to favor our competitors' ma- 
 chines, we are entirely " out " with the whole lot of mills. For- 
 merly we could always depend on selling to most of these mills 
 because we could have a fair opportunity to talk directly with 
 the mill owner or agent and explain the merits of our ma- 
 chines. 
 
 The Sherman Law was all right when we have had Presi- 
 dents wise enough to let it alone, but it is a dangerous law, 
 as has been demonstrated, and ought to be repealed, or amended 
 so as to have some constructive features. 
 
 We believe a commission of non-partisan experts might 
 draft a bill that would operate when enacted into law, so as 
 to control the present existing merger corporations witnin rea- 
 sonable and safe limits for themselves and the people, and, at 
 the same time, be sufficiently drastic to prevent more mergers 
 of manufacturing and other concerns. 
 
 We think uniformity in a national law governing the word- 
 ing and recording of a manufacturer's bill of sale or contract 
 containing " Title to Property," which would be absolutely safe 
 for the manufacturer against foreclosure, mortgage or bonds, 
 and would preserve to the manufacturer full rights for removal 
 of the machinery without recourse to law in the event of non- 
 oayment by purchaser, would be of great benefit to all manu- 
 facturers of machinery, and in fairness to them such laws 
 should be enacted. 
 
 Chas. E. Brower, Manufacturer's Agent, Memphis, Tenn. 
 
 Let us have a law in accordance with commerce, not a com- 
 merce in accordance with law. Let business be made honor- 
 able, not a construed act of piracy. 
 
20 
 
 A. Alexander, National Gum and Mica Company, New 
 York City. 
 
 Sherman Law as now interpreted is not clear and work- 
 able. If this law is incapable of a clear interpretation, it should 
 be repealed, and a new law should be passed embodying the 
 principles which the Sherman Law was supposed to interpret. 
 The new law should be drawn so clearly that every intelligent 
 person who reads it can understand it. 
 
 We want laws which will enable merchants to do business 
 knowing that their competitors will not receive favors from 
 transportation companies, or from any other public or quasi 
 public company or institution. It is our opinion that most 
 of the laws on the statute books of the State or Nation are too 
 complicated. The construction of these laws by the different 
 judges would tend to show that the judges have different opin- 
 ions as to what the laws really mean. 
 
 We ought to have clearer laws, and especially when they 
 relate to subjects of importance. Trades unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of any law. We cannot see 
 why they should be favored. They ought to have a square deal 
 and get the same treatment as any other corporate body, or 
 body of people combined, receives. 
 
 Farmers ought not have any more protection under our laws 
 tban any other class of citizens, and we must have in mind 
 that the farmers have expanded. There are a great number 
 of farmers who conduct their business on business principles, 
 and who market their goods in the best markets of the day, 
 and the small farmer who was, and is perhaps a prey to two 
 or three middlemen, is fast nearing his end. Competition and 
 advancement is going on among farmers, the same as among 
 the merchants and manufacturers. 
 
 We favor the national corporation law. We do not know 
 enough about the Federal license law to give an opinion. We 
 do not favor the Interstate Trade Commission. There are hun- 
 dreds of thousands of merchants, where there are only hundreds 
 of common carriers. 
 
 Business is disturbed the world over. All eatables are high. 
 
 Perhaps the workingman has not been advanced in his pro- 
 portion in some lines and some countries, but in other lines, and 
 in some countries, he may be getting more than his sharp. We 
 believe that the purchasing power of a dollar is growing less 
 not alone here, but in all .countries, and we believe that this 
 will continue. 
 
 Business conditions in this country are always disturbed in 
 anticipation of a change in the tariff, and now they are dis- 
 turbed more than they should be, because the average business 
 man has no confidence in the administration. 
 
 It is quite evident that in the case of the Tobacco Com- 
 pany, the interpretation by tho jndgps dpsignatpd to decido this 
 
21 
 
 matter meant that the Supreme Court's decision was of no 
 effect. 
 
 We do not wish to criticize the judiciary as a whole, but in 
 some cases it would appear that they deserve not alone criticism 
 but condemnation. People are reading and thinking, and they 
 recognize justice and injustice a little clearer than they did 
 ten years ago, and they perhaps will recognize it more clearly 
 ten years hence. One could write a volume on small matters 
 which make up the business life of the average merchant, but 
 summed up into a short sentence what we need is a square 
 deal for all. The more intelligement the man, the better should 
 he recognize what that means, and even those of inferior educa- 
 tion and experience can recognize some of the unjust actions 
 of the authorities. Great business conducted by aggregations 
 of capital is here to stay. 
 
 John G. Dunbar, L.L.B., International Silver Company, 
 New York. 
 
 Certain novel evils incidental to unprecedented modern 
 business development must be coped with for the first time. 
 The dilemma of the urgency of checking such evils on the one 
 side, and on the other the possibility of working financial disas- 
 ter, is the problem confronting the people to-day. Business is 
 not greatly disturbed from this cause alone. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, as commerce requires uniformity and power- 
 ful control at the danger points of illegal advantage; and to 
 the above end I also favor a Federal license law. I would con- 
 sider it proper to attempt to return to what are commonly 
 known as old competitive methods, if necessary, to destroy 
 monopoly. I regard it as an economic axiom that the gains 
 of monopoly in the main go to the few the Morgans and 
 Rockefellers. They are entitled to a large but not grossly 
 inequitable return when it is remembered that trust wealth 
 is largely the product of manual toil. With recent interpreta- 
 tion the Sherman Law is a good law and should not be repealed 
 or changed. Supplemental legislation is preferable. 
 
 W. S. Benson, Vice-President, Tide Water Oil Company, n 
 Broadway, New York. 
 
 The constant menace of new legislation and government 
 interference has caused the impression that the government is 
 against the business man, and this is made evident by the ex- 
 pressed intentions and overt acts of government officials in at- 
 tempts to destroy business. The arguments, motions and re- 
 quests on the part of the Department of Justice evince a desire 
 in that department to destroy every business interest they have 
 prosecuted. This department has always asked for extreme 
 penalties and destructive decrees and most drastic remedies, 
 in most cases far beyond what the law would sanction and far 
 beyond what the courts have ever been induced to carry out. 
 
22 
 
 Chas. F. Brooker, President, The Coe Brass Manufacturing 
 Company, Ansonia, Conn. 
 
 It seems to me the present disturbed business conditions are 
 largely due to the tainted, vicious, public sentiment against 
 people who have, by industry and brains acquired property, 
 and especially against corporate aggregations which the "hoi 
 polloi" have been educated to believe were conceived in sin, 
 born in iniquity, and have lived in unrighteousness, and that 
 something in the way of national legislation is -needed to cor- 
 rect everything. The desire of politicians to retain their places, 
 or to substitute the "outs" for the "ins" has led them to 
 cater to this sentiment to such an extent that it has found ex- 
 pression in the newspapers of the country, and to a very con- 
 siderable extent has affected legislation as well as the decisions 
 of the courts. This has produced an uneasiness and lack of 
 confidence which has, in turn, resulted in a halting of enter- 
 prise and fear of the future, which is always detrimental to 
 business and to progress. People are afraid of unjust persecu- 
 tion, and their inability to determine whether their business 
 will be allowed to continue on present lines, or even to ascer- 
 tain what course to pursue, is retarding the growth of the 
 country, and puts us at a disadvantage compared with the rest 
 of the world. 
 
 John J. Carter, Oil Producer, Titusville, Pa. 
 
 The policy of the Law Department of the government, in 
 its attempt to enforce the Sherman Act, has been to disorgan- 
 ize business, insure agitation and destroy industrial peace. If 
 carried on, as it has been so far, with the prospect of criminal 
 prosecutions, the integrity of the business men of the United 
 States will be injured, if not destroyed, for years in the mar- 
 kets of the world. 
 
 There is no way for honest men to carry on the business 
 of the country, through the instrumentality of corporations, 
 with any certainty that their judgment is right. When the 
 courts are called upon to say what is right, the riddle of the 
 Sphinx is given for an answer. Under these conditions men 
 hesitate, enterprise halts, capital hides, and patriotism sickens. 
 
 Peninsular Portland Cement Company, Jackson, Mich. 
 
 Government interference with corporations is one of the 
 principal causes of business disturbance. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, all working under one general law, to be 
 executed by a sub-committee from each State, and to be called 
 only when matters pertaining to that State should arise. The 
 Sherman Law should be either repealed or amended in any 
 particular that makes it a misdemeanor to combine capital to 
 carry on any legitimate business. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law. 
 
23 
 
 John C. Bridgeman, General Manager, Hazard Manufactur- 
 ing Company, Wilkes Barre, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law as aimed against monopoly is right, sim- 
 ply embodying in a new statute the old common law against 
 monopoly. The Sherman Law, however, is wrong in making 
 any restriction of competition of necessity a restraint of trade, 
 therefore a criminal offense. The business world of to-day 
 cannot be conducted without some restraint of competition to 
 prevent trade warfare to maintain units of moderate size against 
 greater units, and to safeguard capital invested in manufac- 
 turing as well as labor employed. In my judgment some whole- 
 some restraint of competition brought about by reasonable co- 
 operation among manufacturers without in any way violating 
 the law against monopoly and with the least intention of hold- 
 ing the people up in connection with prices, is not only a 
 necessary thing in business, but it tends to the greatest good 
 of the greatest number in making manufacturing conditions 
 more stable and prices more unvariable. Whether this rea- 
 sonable co-operation I speak of is best secured through National 
 supervision or Federal license, or under the supervision of a 
 Labor and Commerce Bureau, I am free to say I don't know. 
 In my judgment business should be allowed to be free, and 
 should suffer the least possible interference from government 
 control and supervision as long as the law against monopoly 
 is not violated. I understand this state of things to exist in 
 England. We are in a bad state in this country when the 
 Sherman Law and the United States government make a crime 
 of the entirely reasonable co-operation of manufacturers to safe- 
 guard their investments and the labor dependent upon them. 
 
 Robert Bentley, President, Carbon Limestone Company, 
 Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 The hesitancy in the minds of investors caused by po- 
 litical agitation, making the future very uncertain as to where 
 companies, both large and small, stand, is at least one of the 
 causes of business disturbance, which can be summed up in 
 one word uncertainty. I believe, when the Supreme Court has 
 rendered its decisions and the country knows on what basis 
 and along what lines operations can be carried on, and when 
 all the methods of reform have been threshed out, that business 
 will improve and the country at large " nourish like a green 
 bay tree." 
 
 Samuel Woolner, Jr., Distilling and Distribution of Liquors, 
 Peoria, 111. 
 
 If the President and Congress were non-political, think a 
 bill could be passed quickly, covering everything and making 
 matters clear, as the questions at issue are economic, not po- 
 Htical. 
 
24. 
 
 H. C. Morrow, White Hall Sewer Pipe and Stone Ware 
 Company, White Hall, 111. 
 
 The causes of the present disturbed business conditions are 
 due to the attacks made on the industries and the fear that they 
 will be prosecuted for violating a law which no one seems to 
 understand. By many it is construed that manufacturers pro- 
 ducing a like commodity are not permitted to co-operate to the 
 extent of maintaining a profit on their manufactured product. 
 
 It is a well-known fact among the heads of departments and 
 sales managers that it is a natural law that without co-operation 
 the manufactured products must sell at cost or below; hence the 
 impression is abroad that every manufacturer who is not pro- 
 tected by a patent, or who is not by some means enjoying a 
 monopoly of the product which he manufactures, must either 
 be co-operating with his competitor, in violation of the Sherman 
 Act, or he is selling his manufactured products at or near cost 
 of production. 
 
 Manufacturers producing a like commodity and disposing 
 of same through salesmen are wholly at the mercy of deceptive 
 .buyers. Without co-operation between the manufacturers the 
 buyer is often enabled to beat the seller down and by falsifying 
 the conditions often get him to cut his own price to cost or 
 below. This is obviated when the salesman knows to a certainty 
 that his competitor can make no lower price than he, and by 
 such means only can like commodities be sold at a reasonable 
 profit, unless the prices are fixed by the government or some 
 other means. 
 
 A repeal of the Sherman Law would not remedy the condi- 
 tions, however, for the reason that all commodities are not of 
 equal grade or value, and neither are business men of equal in- 
 tegrity. Frequently the sales manager or business head of a 
 concern may produce an inferior product and he may be com- 
 pelled to cut the price in order to dispose of that product. This 
 is often cultivated and kept up until this producer becomes a 
 professional trickster, and there is no such thing as maintain- 
 ing a reasonable profit and paying a reasonable wage within 
 the territory in which he operates under the present law. If 
 he should send his goods to Canada, he is very careful to not cut 
 the price, for the reason if he should his goods may be confis- 
 cated. This country needs a similar law, absolutely regulating 
 the selling prices of the commodities, such that the weak manu- 
 facturer can dispose of- his products without seriously interfer- 
 ing with the manufacturer who may have a like or superior 
 product, and yet when products are so nearly alike there can be 
 no great difference in the market price. 
 
 I have heard it estimated that in the particular line of indus- 
 tries to which I refer, there are $80,000,000 invested in the 
 business in the United States, comprising perhaps 200 factories, 
 disposing of manufactured articles of approximately $80,000,000 
 per annum. This particular line of industries during the past 
 
25 
 
 four years has not averaged 3 per cent, on its actual capitaliza- 
 tion, and yet it is a commodity that is almost a necessity. 
 
 The removal of the Sherman Law would not altogether 
 remedy the evil. Congress owes it to these industries that it so 
 frames a law that these factories can continue to operate at a 
 reasonable profit and at the same time pay a reasonable wage. 
 As it is, they pay wages as small as they can, and would gladly 
 pay more if their earnings would permit. 
 
 Charles H. Zehnder, Coal Operator and Iron Manufacturer, 
 New York City. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to too much yellow 
 journalism and agitation on the part of demagogues who would 
 like to be regarded as statesmen. The trouble is deep rooted 
 'and begins with the selfishness of human nature. It is not 
 new; we have had it in all ages of the world. It began in 
 Egypt and later in Rome and Paris. The wealthy were not 
 willing to allow the laborer his fair reward. Then came legis- 
 lation to make them give up. Here the movement has perhaps 
 gone too far. To deal with any problem successfully we have 
 got first to be fair. The Sherman Law should be amended to 
 permit under Federal supervision working agreements between 
 competitors. 
 
 J. H. McMillan, President, Cargill Elevator Company, Min- 
 neapolis, Minn. 
 
 First cause of business disturbances defective currency sys- 
 tem. This precipitated the panic of 1907, and liquidation as 
 the effect of the panic. It is not yet complete. 
 
 Second, over-rjroduction manufacturing has been increased 
 to take care of the enormous demand during prosperous times 
 prior to the panic. Competition is excessive because of over- 
 production. Third, tariff legislation buyers are convinced that 
 there will be another readjustment of the tariff. This accounts 
 somewhat for the lack of buying power. Fourth the prosecu- 
 tions under the Sherman Law. Business men are completely 
 in the dark as to how they can legally conduct their business 
 on a basis of assured profits. Fifth poor crops over large 
 areas. Sixth radical tendencies in politics. 
 
 A. Henley, President, The American Cement Plaster Com- 
 pany, Lawrence, Kan. 
 
 Uneasiness in regard to the policies now being urged before 
 Congress is a leading cause of uncertainty and a detriment 
 to prosperity. The Sherman Law should be amended so as to 
 have a commission created that would have the same powers 
 in regard to trade as the Interstate Commerce Commission 
 has in regard to railways. I am in favor of a national incor- 
 poration law. 
 
26 
 
 R. R. Hammond, President, Dering Coal Company, Chicago. 
 
 il. A trade commission, composed of a suitable number of 
 members, to be appointed by the President, under the terms 
 of a statute separate and distinct from the Sherman Act, pro- 
 viding for such commission, and prescribing its powers, which 
 shall include the powers now exercised by the Bureau of Cor- 
 porations. 
 
 2. The Sherman Act to be amended so as to eliminate the 
 prohibition of " restraint of trade " and substitute therefor 
 prohibition of agreements or combinations by either buyers or 
 sellers, the purpose or necessary effect of which shall be to 
 iix or control prices or limit output. The prohibition of mon- 
 opoly or attempted monopoly to remain as at present. Agree- 
 ments or combinations to "stifle" or "strangle" or "throttle" 
 competition are now punishable under the criminal conspiracy 
 acts. There is no need for inserting such matter in a law 
 forbidding monopoly, regulating prices or limiting output. To 
 forbid by law one competitor from underselling another or 
 others, would merely be forbidding competition. That is what 
 competition is. 
 
 3. All persons, firms and corporations to be subject to the 
 jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission with respect to any 
 interstate trade or commerce carried on by them. Intra-state 
 trade or commerce is referred to later herein. 
 
 4. The trade commission to have power to investigate all 
 contracts and combinations which tend to or do create a monopoly 
 or regulate or restrain interstate trade or commerce; and to 
 make findings determining whether the same are in violation 
 of the Sherman Act as amended. 
 
 5. Appeals to be provided from the decision of the Corn- 
 mission to the present Commerce Court or another special court 
 created for the express purpose. 
 
 6. A requirement that makers of such contracts or com- 
 binations shall submit the same to the commission ; and if they 
 shall obey an order of dissolution by the commission or by final 
 order of court upon appeal, they shall be subject to no penalty 
 by reason of the contract or combination. This will insure 
 publicity. 
 
 7. Provision that the commission may hear and investi- 
 gate without complaint from third parties, and shall do so upon 
 such complaint; but there shall be no penalty unless it shall 
 be found that the defendants intended the purpose and neces- 
 sary effect to be to fix or control prices or limit output or 
 create a monopoly. 
 
 8. Jurisdiction of agreements or combinations operating 
 only in intra-state trade or commerce must necessarily rest with 
 the respective states; and the state laws should be formed so 
 as to supplement the Federal laws. 
 
 9. A national incorporation act is not essential to a just 
 treatment of this subject; but it might be the means of better 
 
27 
 
 administrative relations and should be favored rather than 
 opposed. However, it should be the subject of a separate act. 
 
 If it shall prove practicable to secure the enactment of a 
 really constructive Federal law upon this subject, probably it 
 will not be so difficult as is now feared to bring about con- 
 formity in the principal industrial and commercial states. 
 
 The business men of the country should be aroused to enter 
 at once upon an aggressive and persistent campaign to secure 
 the modification of these laws, upon a basis of sanity, practical 
 justice and efficiency. Where the various lines of business now 
 have organized associations they should take this up as a special 
 work. Where there are no such regular organizations, special 
 ones should be created immediately for this purpose. The co- 
 operation of national organizations such as the Civic Federa- 
 tion and National Business League should be welcomed if prof- 
 fered; but the work should not be left to them. The inter- 
 est and assistance of every sensible and fair minded man 
 should be enlisted. 
 
 Hugo Bilgram, the Bilgram Machine Works, Philadelphia, 
 Pa. 
 
 The one cause of present and past disturbances of business 
 is the restriction which government places on the right to 
 exchange the products of labor, by forbidding the use of credit 
 however sound as a medium of exchange, except within 
 certain arbitrary restrictions, whereby money obtains the power 
 to exact a toll from the industrial world through excessively 
 high interest rates. Every symptom of the industrial disorder 
 points to an inadequacy of the volume of sound currency and 
 an increased issue, similar to national bank notes, redeemable 
 in gold and amply secured by wealth; limited in quantity only 
 by the amount of security offered, and at a tax that is but little 
 more than an insurance against a possible depreciation of some 
 of the security, will effectively put a stop to all the abuses of 
 wealth which neither the Sherman Law nor other half-way 
 measures can remedy. 
 
 Geo. D. Barnard, Manufacturing Stationer, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, and consider that an 
 Interstate Trade Commission would be an improvement over 
 present conditions. In my judgment, disturbed business condi- 
 tions are due to the Sherman Act and newspapers magnifying 
 and many times, in my judgment, lying trying to set one 
 class of people against another because the managers often 
 think they are increasing the circulation of their papers in order 
 to get more advertising patronage. And the hypocrites don't 
 care if any man goes to the wall if they only gain by it. I em- 
 ploy over five hundred people, all in unions, and who have the 
 right under State laws to combine, while if I should do the 
 same, I would go to jail. Tough, isn't it? 
 
28 
 
 Patrick Cudahy, Cudahy Brothers Company, Packers, Mil- 
 waukee, Wis. 
 
 To begin with, as everybody knows, the harm was done when 
 the trusts were allowed to form. If the leaders or promoters 
 of those trusts, when they went about a few years ago coercing, 
 intimidating and tyrannizing over their weaker competitors, 
 thereby forcing unwilling men into combinations, were dealt 
 with by the government and punished as they should have 
 been, we would not now be struggling with the trust question, 
 for I believe the government had the Sherman Law then as a 
 weapon the same as it has to-day, and I believe some of the 
 men who are making a lot of noise now were in office then. 
 An ounce of preventative in this case would have been worth 
 a great many pounds of cure, but now that the trusts are in 
 existence the only thing to do is to compel them to be law- 
 abiding trusts, for, in my way of thinking, it is impossible to 
 break them up in any kind of a way that will insure old time 
 competition, for no matter how many parts you may make of 
 a trust, it will remain a trust just the same. 
 
 I think that if the government will see to it that the in- 
 dependent concerns are allowed an equal chance in the open 
 market to buy their raw material and sell their goods in com- 
 petition with the trusts, the matter will adjust itself in time. 
 
 There are plenty of bright young business men coming up 
 every day, who, if given a fair chance, can cut the ground from 
 under any trust, and, as I have said, if they are properly pro- 
 tected they will prove a better trust buster than the Attorney 
 General with all his force of lawyers. 
 
 W. W. Case, Branch Manager, Anderson Electric Car Com- 
 pany, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. The railroads should most decidedly be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. We need prosperous roads. The present 
 disturbed business conditions are due to the uncertain element 
 in politics. This upsets the country every four years. We 
 should have a ten-year term for president, subject, if possible, 
 to a recall if policies are distinctly dangerous to the country. The 
 national government should issue all articles of incorporation 
 of $500,000 and up, so that all big businesses could be under 
 its supervision. One trouble with corporations is due to a State 
 issuing charters which permit the corporation to do business 
 throughout the union with no restrictions. It is radically wrong 
 for a State to usurp such power. Hence my statement that 
 the national government should be responsible for and control 
 big corporations. Let the States issue charters for under 
 $500,000 for intrastate business. 
 
29 
 
 E. W. Hake, Vice-President, The Monitor Stove and Range 
 Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 To my mind, one of the greatest causes of. our present dis- 
 turbed business conditions, is the unsatisfactory condition un- 
 der which the labor organizations are now operated. No man- 
 ufacturer is exempt from the radical influences of labor organ- 
 izations, and the walking delegate, and until labor organiza- 
 tions are managed upon a different basis, which will permit the 
 skilled mechanic to obtain higher wages than the .unskilled 
 mechanic just so long will conditions continue to be disturbed 
 in the manufacturing world. 
 
 A vast amount of matter has been written and said in re- 
 gard to the high cost of living. One of plain factors in the 
 increased cost of every product that is made or consumed, is 
 the increased demand (which has covered a period of the last 
 twelve years), of the number of labor organizations for their 
 service. Some one must pay this increased wage which they 
 earn, and it has had a tendency to increase the price of all 
 products in every line of business. No manufacturer or con- 
 tractor is able to take on a large contract and feel sure that, 
 at the end of six or twelve months, labor conditions will be 
 such that he will not have to pay more wages to such mechanics 
 as may be required to do the work for which he has made an 
 agreement to make or produce. 
 
 Does this not in itself lead to disturbed business condi- 
 tions? 
 
 Charles J. Lynn, General Manager, Eli Lilly & Co., Phar- 
 maceutical Chemists, Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 The fear aroused in the minds of honest business men fol- 
 lowing the attempts to punish dishonest men under a law whose 
 meaning is not clear, and which might be construed in a way 
 to punish men of honorable motives engaged in conducting 
 large, honest enterprises, has, in my judgment, caused the exist- 
 ing disturbance in business. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended so as to definitely define what constitutes restraint of 
 trade, keeping in mind the fact that large combinations of capi- 
 tal are a necessity, and simply a result of modern demands and 
 conditions. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license, 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The Hamilton Manufacturing Company, Two Rivers, Wis. 
 
 Uncertainty as to action by the government and as to the 
 opinions that have been or may be delivered by the courts in 
 regard to the laws bearing upon business interests, are the chief 
 causes of any uneasiness that now exists. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to meet the requirements of business. Some 
 action is undoubtedly required to protect the public against 
 wild cat corporations organized to fleece the people, and a 
 national incorporation law might possibly answer that; purpose. 
 
30 
 
 W. L. Ratcliffe, Thomas G. Plant Company, Shoe Manu- 
 facturers, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the real meaning of the Sherman Law, 
 the fact that many of our best informed men are divided in 
 their opinion as to its real meaning and application, as they 
 realize that if construed literally, it would put back our prog- 
 ress for years; and the added fact that the present adminis- 
 tration seems to be playing politics with our industries, offer- 
 ing no suggestions for improvement along constructive lines 
 demonstrating how little they apparently know about real busi- 
 ness conditions, and proceeding on the theory that old-time 
 competition can be restored, when, as a matter of fact, old- 
 time competition is impossible, forgetting that it is not al- 
 ways what you do, but the manner in which you do it. To 
 these conditions and to tariff agitation, which should be settled 
 as soon as possible, business disturbances are due. 
 
 If we are going to broaden out and go ahead, and hold 
 our proper place in the world's markets and trade, it is only 
 possible to do so through the means of modern corporate form 
 of doing business. 
 
 If the results in the recent decision in the Tobacco Trust 
 are all that can be accomplished, it apparently has not been 
 worth the effort. The Sherman Law should be amended along 
 the lines and from the viewpoint of twentieth-century methods, 
 not nineteenth. 
 
 Being a Republican, I feel I am entitled to say the above. 
 
 William A. Rogers, Iron Manufacturer, Tonawanda Iron 
 and Steel Company, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 The less government interferes with business the better. An 
 Interstate Commission is only suitable for dealing with public 
 service corporations and natural monopolies. 
 
 Politics. Both parties have been trying to outdo each other 
 in playing to the "galleries" of the shallow thinking people 
 who in large numbers have been led afield bv demaofo^ues and 
 cranks. ;</ '" *!*" 
 
 The class of men we elect to represent us in Congress are 
 not fitted to deal with the problems appertaining to the large 
 business interests of this country. 
 
 Nor dyke & Marmon Company, Founders and Machinists, 
 Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions are the outgrowth 
 of the panic of 1907, which was brought about by the usual 
 cause, namely, inflation. Whatever may be the cause of panics, 
 there is but one known cure that is to say, liquidation. We 
 can never completely recover from the panic of 1907 until we 
 have more complete liquidation than has yet taken place. Two 
 notable items which have not liquidated sufficiently are steel 
 and labor. Other material items need more liquidation, but 
 not so much as those mentioned. 
 
31 
 
 H. J. Wade, Secretary and Treasurer, United States Wind 
 Engine and Pump Company, Batavia, 111. 
 
 People who have been disobeying or evading the laws of 
 the country have suddenly arrived at the conclusion that the 
 laws are made for all of us, and they are very much disturbed 
 about it. I think we are all more scared than hurt, and the 
 best thing we can do is to obey the laws and be good citizens. 
 The interpretation of the Sherman Law by the Supreme Court 
 is, I think, all right. A law based on that idea is a necessity, 
 but I do not feel competent to say that in all its provision it 
 is " clear and workable." The Sherman Law should not be 
 repealed, unless some good, strong law embodying the same 
 underlying idea is substituted. Trade unions and combinations 
 of farmers should not be excepted from the Sherman Act. I 
 believe that a combination of farmers to restrict production 
 or hold a crop for higher prices is the most vicious form of 
 combination. It is the most direct form of keeping the bread 
 from the hungry. I favor a national incororation law, if it 
 will put a stop to the various States trying to hold us up when 
 we do business with the residents in their particular State. 
 
 W. B. Dennis, Vice-President and Manager, Carlton and 
 Coast R. R. Company; Secretary-Treasurer, Carlton 
 Consolidated Lumber Company, Carlton, Ore. 
 
 In my judgment no laws passed by the Federal government 
 will be entirely efficient, unless harmonious laws are passed by 
 each State. State laws governing corporations doing interstate 
 business should be uniform throughout the United States. In 
 my judgment this could be brought about if a campaign were 
 properly organized and conducted for that purpose. With uni- 
 form State laws the " trusts " could then conduct their business 
 under one incorporation, instead of a combination of subsidiary 
 separate State corporations. This would remove a big part of 
 the " sting " of the so-called " trust " from the minds of the 
 people, as well as remove other objections. The business of the 
 trusts in the various States would then be conducted as "de- 
 partments," on the plan of the big department stores of our 
 cities, all under one name and one corporation. I favor Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Philip S. Tuley, President and Treasurer, Louisville Cotton 
 Mills, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are largely due to excessive 
 prolongation of excessive tariff. It should have been reduced 
 to reasonable levels long ago. We believe in the continuance of 
 reasonable protection, but not in useless favoritism. Then, too, 
 extravagance of living is responsible for present depression. 
 Restriction of production by labor unions and their unreason- 
 able demands are also contributory. 
 
32 
 
 Herman Ellis, President, The Wilson Distilling Company, 
 New York. 
 
 The technical enforcement of the Sherman Law for political 
 ends is responsible for business disturbance. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to give it a broader, less technical construc- 
 tion. I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
 Thomas A. Kirkham, Berkshire Fertilizer Company, Bridge- 
 port, Conn. 
 
 Farmers should, of course, be permitted to hold their crops 
 for higher prices, and railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to approval by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 R. B. Lowe (Parkhill Manufacturing Company), Cotton 
 Manufacturers, Fitchburg, Mass. 
 
 Make the Sherman Law clear. The present disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions are due to selfishness. Some big corporations 
 went too far. I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal 
 license law, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 A. M. Chaffee, President, Chaffee Bros. Company, Box 
 Manufacturers, etc., Oxford, Mass. 
 
 Lack of confidence and a need to be let alone is causing 
 the trouble with business. We favor a national incorporation 
 law, a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 D. Woodward, President, Woodward Lumber Company, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a national incorporation law, a Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 C. L. Hunter, Hampden Watch Company, Canton, Ohio. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, the enactment of a 
 national incorporation law and the creation of an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. 
 
 M. Cochrane Armour, President, Iroquois Iron Company, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The government attitude toward large interests is all 
 wrong. Such are here to stay, but should be suitably restricted. 
 While we are at it, let us change our banking laws. 
 
 The Harter Milling Company, Toledo, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable, and I regard a 
 return to old competitive methods as feasible. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
33 
 
 Charles Pfaff, President, Massachusetts Breweries Com- 
 pany, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and believe that the 
 intemperate enforcement of that law is a disturbing factor in 
 business. We ought to have a national incorporation law. 
 
 Taft-Peirce Manufacturing Company, Machinery Manufac- 
 turers, Woonsocket, R. I. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to unwarranted at- 
 tacks by the Attorney-General on corporations, and playing 
 politics. 
 
 George G. Coffin, Manager, Lalance & Grosjean Manufac- 
 turing Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, the enactment of a 
 national incorporation law and a Federal license law. Disturbed 
 business conditions are due to political agitation. 
 
 G. L. Becker, President, Becker Brewing and Malting Com- 
 pany, Ogden, Utah. 
 
 Too much investigation and agitation are troubling busi- 
 ness. We ought to have a national incorporation law, a Fed- 
 eral license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. Arthur Dunlavy, Manager, Broderick & Bascom Rope 
 Company, New York. 
 
 Fear and uncertainty brought about by apprehension of 
 drastic and unreasonable application of the Sherman Law are 
 the trouble with business. 
 
 H. Fellowes (Springfield Wagon Company), Springfield, 
 Mo. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and am opposed to 
 allowing railways to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 Norman Carmichael, Arizona Copper Company, Clifton, 
 Ariz. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be amended in such a way as 
 to regulate competition for the protection of both producer and 
 consumer. 
 
 Charles A. Howard, President, Aberdeen Gas Company, 
 Aberdeen, S. D. 
 
 Principally rampant demagogism is responsible for business 
 anxiety. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 H. Clay Evans, Manufacturer, Chattanooga, Tenn. 
 
 Unrest is due to labor agitation by labor agitators who seek 
 by combination to destroy the capital that employs them. 
 
34 
 
 The National Lime and Stone Company, Carey, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be repealed and a national in- 
 corporation law enacted in its place. Too much agitation 
 against trusts and combinations is the cause of disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. 
 
 Illinois Brick Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Political agitation principally is responsible for disturbed 
 business conditions. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed 
 and a national incorporation law enacted, along with an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 The Farist Steel Company, Bridgeport, Conn. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. .Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. Political agitation is 
 causing whatever disturbance there is in business. 
 
 Marshall Oil Company, Marshalltown, Iowa. 
 
 Agitation against capital is the cause of disturbance in 
 business. We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, the enact- 
 ment of a national incorporation law, and the creation of an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. A. Lamy Manufacturing Company, Sedalia, Mo. 
 
 The lack of a strong, positive, quick acting administration 
 is the chief cause of any business disturbance now existing. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that all can under- 
 stand it, or else it should be repealed. 
 
 G. Bartol, Otis Steel Company, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Substitute for the Sherman Law a law for supervision and 
 regulation. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. 
 
 W. H. Luden, Manufacturing Confectioner, Reading, Pa. 
 
 Dishonesty in business is the chief cause of any trouble in 
 business. The Sherman Law is clear and workable. I favor 
 a national incorporation law, a Federal license law and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. C. Rounseville, Treasurer, Shove Mills, Fall River, Mass. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, which has not been 
 made either clear or workable. Trade unions and combinations 
 of farmers should not be excepted from the Sherman Act. 
 
 Pankow Bros., Foundry and Machine Works, Sioux Falls, 
 S. D. 
 
 Too much trusts and too much labor unions. 
 
36 
 
 Headley & Farmer Company, Trunk, etc., Manufacturers, 
 Newark, N. J. 
 
 Political agitation against corporations, with the Sherman - 
 Law as a club, is hurting business. We favor a national in- 
 corporation law and a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
 C. W. Parker, Manufacturer of Amusement Devices, 
 Leavenworth, Kan. 
 
 Present conditions are due partly to an unnecessarily high 
 protective tariff and partly to the warfare being waged against 
 organized capital. Crop conditions also have had some effect. 
 
 F. A. Brainerd, Treasurer, Rendrock Powder Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business con- 
 ditions? Yellow journalism. 
 
 Standard Lumber Company, Manufacturers, Yellow Pine 
 Lumber, Alton, Fla. 
 
 Political demagogy. Business retrenchment naturally fol- 
 lowing, and which will continue until the final action is taken 
 and decision made. 
 
 A. F. Houston, President, Lukens' Iron and Steel Company, 
 Coatesville, Pa. 
 
 Incessant agitation started prior to 1908 by the President 
 then in office is responsible for business disturbance. 
 
 E. W. Handlan (Handlan-Buck Manufacturing Company), 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Less laws but what we have enforced on everybody and 
 everything, or have them cancelled. We want a business ad- 
 ministration and not one conducted for politics and lawyers. 
 
 L. D. Kellogg, President, Kellogg Switchboard and Supply 
 Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions are due to bad 
 conscience of some heavily watered combinations, to crops, Wall 
 street, and probably some over-production holding on since 1907. 
 
 I. B. Williams & Sons, Leather Belting, etc., Dover, N. H. 
 
 We favor amending the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a national incorporation law. The Sherman Law and po- 
 litical agitation do more than anything else to hamper business. 
 
 L. B. Darling Fertilizer Company, per Manager, Pawtucket, 
 R. I. 
 
 Trade unions may do more damage than any of the so-called 
 trusts. 
 
J. G. Woodruff, President, W. L. Gilbert Clock Company, 
 Winsted, Conn. 
 
 In the main we do not believe in tinkering the Sherman 
 Law in any important point. I fear that to do so would harm 
 rather than improve it. There is no room for old-time method 
 of competition. The efficiency management of business hns 
 come to stay. The Sherman Law should be amended in no 
 important part, except that perhaps the matter of reasonable- 
 ness might be injected to advantage; also the safeguarding of 
 every man and party equally for instance, the right of injunc- 
 tion should apply fairly to all alike, whether it be as to a labor 
 strike or anything else. Railroads should be allowed to arrange 
 their rates for profit but not extortion; being public corpora- 
 tions, they should be amenable to the authority that gives them 
 the right of way. Trade unions should have no exception from 
 the Sherman Act. They compose a small percentage of the 
 laboring men of the country. Why should they be entitled to 
 privileges denied to others? Xo, they are the biggest kind of 
 trusts and should be regulated. Farmers should not be allowed 
 to combine either to restrict production or to hold a crop for 
 higher prices. Anything that is a restriction of trade is wrong ; 
 but here the question of reasonableness comes in. No indi- 
 vidual should be compelled to sell his wheat or cotton until 
 he elects to do so. The formation of pools or trusts by moneyed 
 men is where the trouble comes in. The cold storage is another 
 matter that needs the injection of reasonableness to a large 
 extent. Uncertainty as to tariff legislation and as to what the 
 government will do in the enforcement of laws bearing upon 
 business ; the unreasonableness of labor's demand, and the tend- 
 ency to speculate with other people's money, are all of them 
 causes of business disturbance. 
 
 I think the Canadian Reciprocity Act was wrong, and T' 
 am glad it failed, although in favor of it at first. The matter 
 of free pulp and paper is all wrong and should be cut out. 
 Note the demands of many foreign countries for a share in the 
 free admission of those articles. This could have been fore- 
 seen easily, in our opinion. A general cutting down of the tarilT 
 will lay this country flat, as it was in 1893 to 1896. A reason- 
 able correction of some schedules might be well. 
 
 E. H. Archibald, Treasurer, Archibald Wheel Company, 
 Lawrence, Mass. 
 
 Fear resulting from the Sherman Act is the cause of busi- 
 ness disturbance. I believe in a restriction of trusts and regula- 
 tion of all corporations, but I want a fair law and that law 
 fully understood. I see no reason why a national incorpora- 
 tion law could not be carried out. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
37 
 
 J. L. Mauldin, President and Treasurer, Cleveland Armature 
 Works, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is re- 
 sponsible for disturbed business conditions. There are a few 
 men whose combined wealth enables them to bring forth a panic 
 or prosperity at will. 
 
 The Sherman Law seems to have the power to disintegrate 
 the trusts, but apparently it does not prevent the congealing 
 together of the parts into a stronger union than that which 
 before existed. Competition is the life of trade, and I believe 
 in competition. The Sherman Law should not be repealed 
 until something better is put in its place. A small switch is 
 better than nothing. It should be amended in such a way 
 as to have not only the power of attacking the trust or ob- 
 jectionable corporation, and causing them to dissolve, but 
 should have the power of dissolving them so that they cannot 
 patch up the pieces. 
 
 liailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. The 
 Interstate Commerce Commissioners are the people's represen- 
 tatives and should be able to control railroad freight agree- 
 ments, so as properly to protect the interests of us all. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from- the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act when the union in any way affects the employer in 
 the operation of his business. If for purposes social or educa- 
 tional, it should be excepted. Farmers should be permitted 
 to combine to restrict production or hold a crop for higher 
 prices, if they are forced to form such combinations in order 
 to protect themselves from the vultures which infest the market 
 places, and whose object is to force the farmer to sell his 
 products below the cost of production. If the vultures are 
 driven out, there should be no further need for such combina- 
 tion. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. Such a commission 
 should have the power to prevent capital, or combinations of 
 capital, from closing the avenues for conducting business to 
 those who possess less capital. 
 
 Milburn Wagon Company, Toledo, Ohio. 
 
 We believe the energies of the President and government 
 officials should be used in drafting and passing a better law 
 than the Sherman Law rather than persecuting capital by en- 
 forcing the unjust Sherman Law, and that the new law should 
 positively control organizations of labor as well as capital. Tho 
 new law should allow the consolidation of capital for economic 
 purposes, with restrictions and regulations as to competition. 
 The Federal incorporation law should take away from States 
 the powers which they now have to harass and overtax foreign 
 corporations. 
 
38 
 
 Connellsville Central Coke Company, Coke Manufacturers, 
 Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Amendments to the Sherman Law should depend on how 
 the Tobacco and Oil decisions work out. We favor a national 
 incorporation law, but not an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The excessive high cost level of all materials and bad finan- 
 cial practices made a readjustment imperative. It is the dis- 
 satisfaction caused by the effects of this readjustment that is 
 affecting business men's minds to-day, and this condition will 
 not be cured until the consumptive capacity of the country is 
 shown to be equal to the producing capacity, when employment 
 can be given to the laboring man now out of employment and 
 the manufacturing interests receive an adequate return on their 
 investment. We think that railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, and that trade unions should be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 
 Livingston Fargo, Iron Ore Mines, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law is sufficiently clear; but it is not ap- 
 plicable to present understanding of business, and should ^be 
 repealed. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Law, spiritual or ultimate, is a statement of fact. Human 
 law is an effort to fix by rule the understanding of principle 
 and its usage. Understanding or consciousness is progressive. 
 Human law must, therefore, be adjusted from time to time, to 
 change consciousness or understanding. The Sherman Law 
 does not express the new understanding of the principle which 
 underlies so-called business. Being unexpressed, there is dis- 
 cord between the fact and the rule, which obviously makes the 
 disturbance in business as such. Competition is without prin- 
 ciple. Principle is expressed in co-operation. 
 
 The Van Brunt Manufacturing Company, Manufacturers 
 of Grain Drills, F. H. Clausen, Attorney, Horicon, 
 Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to make the 
 criminal provisions more effective and to compel the govern- 
 ment to proceed criminally against officers or corporations found 
 " unreasonable." Disintegration in name only is none at all. 
 (See Northern Securities Co.) Disturbed business conditions 
 are due to selfish and unfair methods of both Radicals and Con- 
 servatives. Radicals assume that anything corporations favor 
 is wrong, and Conservatives assume that any opposition to their 
 plan arises from a motive to destroy. When matters are ad- 
 justed on a basis of full rights to capital and to the people, 
 then conditions will settle into steady prosperity. 
 
39 
 
 George H. Holt, President, Holt Lumber Company, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The disturbed business condition is worldwide; aggravated 
 legally in this and other countries by political and social condi- 
 tions. This country cannot of itself control international con- 
 ditions, but no more can it control its national and intrastate 
 conditions, so long as it remains ignorant or neglectful of its 
 international function and responsibility, and deludes itself with 
 a false perspective of it? own powers and importance, and inde- 
 pendence of the rest of the world. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law for interstate business. 
 A Federal license law would be of doubtful value, because with- 
 out standardized accounting and definition of its rights and 
 duties and power to enforce compliance with some standard by 
 some authority, it would soon become simply another tax-eaters' 
 mow. If repealed, something else should be substituted in place 
 of the Sherman Law. Regulation must be effective for the 
 public good, or give place to government administration or 
 socialism. If the law cannot be administered in such a manner 
 as to correct the evils aimed at, without at the same time killing 
 and maiming and paralyzing the "public" whose interest it is 
 designed to foster and maintain, then it should be repealed or 
 amended. The recent administration of the law could not have 
 been surpassed in inhumanity and anti-social quality and lack 
 of perspective, if it had been administered by its worst enemy, 
 and he in a drunken rage. 
 
 As trade unions are the most compelling factor in cost of 
 product, no scheme of regulating trade and commerce, which 
 leaves them out of the calculation, can be final. 
 
 Sheldon J. Glass, Vice-President and General Manager, Mil- 
 waukee Gas Light Company, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 I do not favor repeal of the Sherman Law if the term 
 " reasonable," as read into it by the Supreme Court, can be 
 made understandable and different attorneys-general will not put 
 different meanings on it. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and 
 regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Should 
 think this might be of advantage to the public. I do not see 
 any reason for a national incorporation law, provided the Sher- 
 man Law is kept on the books and is made understandable. 
 See no objection to it, provided it is not made compulsory upon 
 a concern doing an interstate commerce business to accept under 
 it. Possibly a Federal license law, not compulsory, would be 
 productive of good if by accepting under it a corporation might 
 have some privileges to compensate for what it otherwise might 
 be called upon to give up. I attribute disturbed business con- 
 ditions to politics. 
 
40 
 
 George W. Sisson, President, The A. Sherman Lumber 
 Company, and President, Racquette River Paper 
 Company, Potsdam, N. Y. 
 
 President Taft says he proposes to accept and act upon the 
 findings and report of the Tariff Commission. Yet, notwith- 
 standing their investigation of paper manufacture in the United 
 States and in Canada and their report that the cost to produce 
 news paper was $5.35 per ton less in Canada than in the United 
 States, Congress passes and the President signs the law admit- 
 ting paper under value of four cents a pound duty free, and now 
 other nations, having treaties with the most favored nation 
 clause, are claiming under those treaties the right to free entry 
 of paper to our markets. I cite this as a sample of the causes 
 of the present disturbed condition of the business interests of 
 our country. The act mentioned with reference to the paper 
 schedule was believed to be at the demand of the American 
 Newspaper Publishers' Association (John Norris, secretary), 
 an organization apparently in restraint of trade and having 
 influence with the law-making power. The tampering by the 
 executive and government with the business operations of pri- 
 vate enterprise; the uncertainty as to future tariff tinkering, and 
 the President's reciprocity measure, with the effect of section 2 
 of that act in evidence, have been the most prominent factors 
 in disturbing business interests. 
 
 AVe need national incorporation laws operative and uniform 
 in all the States, if they can be made to supplant the diverse 
 laws of incorporation of the separate States. Such a change 
 would be beneficial to business interests. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. It is more 
 reasonable that farmers be permitted to hold their crops for 
 higher prices by understanding among themselves than that 
 speculators should be permitted to buy up grain, produce or 
 cotton and withhold from the market for the purpose of advanc- 
 ing prices and controlling the market. 
 
 W. T. Hildrup, Jr., Secretary and Treasurer, Harrisburg 
 Pipe and Pipe Bending Company, Harrisburg, Pa. 
 
 Business can adapt its methods to almost all definite condi- 
 tions, but not to political and judicial uncertainty, like that 
 existing during the past five years. Time is an element of great- 
 est value in business, and the waste of 'time and delay in reach- 
 ing definite conclusions is the greatest objection, in our opinion, 
 to the commission form of regulation of commerce and manufac- 
 ture. The uncertain action of the Interstate Commerce Coin- 
 mission and Commerce Court; the continual delays in reaching 
 definite decisions on freight rates ; the lack of definite and clear 
 understanding of the Sherman Act, have caused and are causing 
 incalculable trouble to business enterprise. The Sherman Law 
 should be repealed, and amended if not repealed. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
41 
 
 Glenn W. Traer, Traer Coal Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Agreements or combinations which (a) lessen the number of 
 competitors in any given situation, or (6) regulate production 
 and distribution, unless they are carried to the point where they 
 have power to or do actually " fix or arbitrarily control prices or 
 limit output," or create monopoly, should not be forbidden. The 
 number of competitors is lessened and prices perhaps incidentally 
 affected every time a partnership or corporation is formed. I 
 would favor an Interstate Trade Commission with original juris- 
 diction to determine whether agreements or combinations are 
 in violation of the Sherman Act as amended, but not with power 
 to fix maximum prices. The Sherman Act should be amended 
 by eliminating the vague description of results called " restraint 
 of trade " and inserting prohibition of " agreements or combi- 
 nations between buyers or sellers," "the purpose or necessary 
 effect of which shall be to fix or arbitrarily control prices or 
 limit output." " Stifling," " strangling " or " throttling " 
 competition by agreement comes under the conspiracy laws now. 
 
 N. O. Nelson, President, N. O. Nelson Manufacturing Com- 
 pany, Co-operative, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Law and the courts have in the last ten years greatly im- 
 proved business methods. They can do much more, eliminating 
 the evils that remain, protecting the public and investors alike. 
 The largest of capital combinations are economical; they can 
 easily be regulated with simple laws, thoroughly enforced by 
 courts and commissions. The old-fashioned competition was in 
 all respects worse than the combination, as a whole; worse than 
 the trusts at their worst. Regulate, orderly, fairly, and without 
 prejudice. I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed, to be replaced by a substitute dictated 
 by experience. This law should regulate, with a view to prohibit 
 ruinous or excessive or unequal prices i. e., high in one place, 
 low in another and the law should provide by definite statute 
 for publicity, as in banking. 
 
 L. D. Harkins, Faribault Furniture Company, Faribault, 
 Minn. 
 
 Big business has had its way too long. Now when it is 
 being checked it is like an overgrown boy who has been petted. 
 It rebels or reaches for more, as the case may be and opportunity 
 offers. Had Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland and William 
 iMcKinley enforced the Sherman Law as Theodore Eoosevelt 
 and Mr. Taft have done, and had men who were violators of 
 this and other laws been punished, as they should have been, 
 with fine and imprisonment all alike and no favors for the 
 "big guns," we would not now have the experiences we are 
 having. 
 
42 
 
 Grange Sard, President Union Trust Co., and President 
 Rathbone, Sard & Co., Rathbone Stove Works, 
 Albany, N. Y. 
 
 A moderate reduction of the tariff, allowing the foreign 
 manufacturer to compete for American business, will restore 
 competitive conditions and reduce the cost of living. Doubt and 
 uncertainty as to what the Sherman Law may do; how much 
 further the administration may go in destroying business indus- 
 tries and the fear that politicians may play politics with those 
 industries are the causes of disturbance in business. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed or amended so that law-abiding 
 manufacturers should know if they are violating it, without the 
 intervention of the courts. Trade unions should be excepted 
 from the Sherman Act in so far as to agreements as to wages, 
 but they should not be allowed to drive workmen or employers 
 out of business who disagree with them. I favor a Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Armstrong & Graham, Manufacturers of Harness and Sad- 
 dlery, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 Poor crops, and lower prices for ihe same; also bad financial 
 condition of the railroads, owing to low rates; and farm-land 
 speculation, are the causes of any disturbance in present busi- 
 ness conditions. We believe in full and free competition and 
 full and free liberty of employment. We believe that any de- 
 parture from these principles would be injurious to the com- 
 mon people and would finally lead them back to serfdom, such 
 as prevailed in feudal times. As to returning to old competi- 
 tive methods, most trades are still engaged in full and free com- 
 petition, and those who have departed from it should return. 
 The Sherman Law should be made stronger, if possible. Com- 
 petition between railroads not being possible, they should be 
 allowed to agree on rates. As to national incorporation and 
 Federal license, we favor the method that will produce the best 
 results in the way of encouraging competition. 
 
 J. D. Hawkins, President, United States Reduction and Re- 
 fining Company, Colorado Springs, Colo. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business condi- 
 tions? Primarily the Democratic House with their threats of 
 tariff reductions. Such a body, swayed by local sectional preju- 
 dices, demonstrated in the passage of the Payne bill, by their 
 " trading," their willingness to have practically everything free, 
 provided their own particular local manufactures, whether in 
 Mississippi or Pennsylvania, were protected. The tariff is a 
 matter of business and not politics, and should be handled as 
 such entirely outside of Congress. When the tariff question 
 is settled for a number of years, then we will have business 
 prosperity. The Sherman Law should be repealed, and another 
 measure, effective and not harmful, enacted in its place. 
 
43 
 
 The M. Garland Company, Manufacturers of Saw Mill and 
 Conveying Machinery, Bay City, Mich. 
 
 Competition in our line of saw-mill machinery has been so 
 strong that 40 per cent, of all the companies have failed or are 
 second credit, and the best designers have been driven to other 
 lines. There are too many companies now for the amount of 
 business. The Sherman Law should be amended or a new law 
 enacted, allowing combinations for the purpose of reducing costs 
 and expenses, also same control over individuals and partner- 
 ships. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act. Combinations of farmers, either to restrict pro- 
 duction or to bold a crop for higher prices, should not be lawful. 
 The farmers of this district of Michigan have combined on 
 prices for sugar beets and practically control the operation of 
 these factories. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law, if individuals and 
 partnerships are included; also Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions are: (1) Tariff 
 tinkering, resulting in a lack of confidence; (2) government 
 persecution of corporations; (3) the automobile has had a great 
 influence in several ways; the inflated or excessive selling price 
 has caused excessively high wages for ordinary workmen in 
 the auto shops, thus taking them away from manufactories 
 that cannot afford the wage, causing a big loss to the manufac- 
 turer of standard machinery. The craze for cars has also had 
 its influence on the furniture, clothing, household and realty 
 business, and hundreds of instances may be cited when the 
 home is neglected for the joy ride. The desire for luxuries is 
 traveling at a much faster gait than the income. 
 
 If the idea of the government is to prevent monopolies. 
 they have to amend the patent law, as this is a 17-year govern- 
 ment-granted monopoly, or would be if the government would 
 stand back of it, which they don't. 
 
 We believe that the United States Steel Company have been 
 a great factor for the general good in our line. Since their 
 incorporation prices have been steady and could be depended on 
 for a while, but under the old competition it was up one day 
 and down the next: and instability of prices helps panics along 
 in disastrous shape. We believe the national elections are very 
 disturbing factors, and that the President and Congress should 
 be elected for six- or eight-year periods; also that a tariff com- 
 mission should be formed that will have absolute power, except 
 under veto of the President. 
 
 Flambeau Lumber Company, Lac du Flambeau, Wis. 
 
 As soon as the Dollar knows it will be safe it will come out 
 from hiding. 
 
44 
 
 R. N. Day, Secretary of Day Brothers Lumber Company, 
 New Orleans, La. 
 
 Natural readjustment following a panic; conflicting legisla- 
 tion by various States; and national legislation, intended to 
 aggrandize individual statesmen (or politicians), rather than 
 to really place business on a solid foundation, all contribute to 
 business disturbance. 
 
 The Sherman Law is an antiquated piece of legislation, un- 
 fitted for the conditions of to-day. It must be interpreted for 
 every corporation in the country. I think we need a law less 
 general in its terms and more specific; and all laws governing 
 corporations should be Federal laws. The present babel of 
 State and national laws is absurd; the attendant litigation, an 
 economic waste. Instead of punishing corporations for what 
 they have done in the past, the government should frame a 
 law suited to conditions as they exist to-day, and enforce it. 
 The punishment of corporations under the Sherman Law does 
 the public no good does no one any good. The Standard Oil 
 Company has been duly" punished for being bad, but there will 
 be no drop in the price of oil in my opinion. Instead of disor- 
 ganizing business, we want to organize it properly. Under the 
 present system of prosecutions and u unscrambling," it seems 
 to me that we are due to swap places with China if the process 
 is continued a while longer. I favor national incorporation, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 M. L. Blackburn, President Novelty Stamping Company, 
 Bellaire, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor national 
 incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Tariff agitation and assaults on business interests by polit- 
 ical theorists are responsible for business uncertainty. Only 
 by a stable market can our country prosper. The application 
 of the same rules to the large business interests that govern 
 railroad rates will give all the restrictions .necessary to protect 
 the consumer. Unlimited competition has long been proven to be 
 the death of trade. Since 90 odd per cent, of all manufacturers 
 have failed under that condition, would it not be wise to con- 
 sider the virtues and benefits of combinations and to be really 
 progressive in fostering them as does Germany ? 
 
 W. A. Blair, President, The Blair Milling Company, Atchi- 
 son, Kan. 
 
 Business is disturbed by two causes the watering of stocks, 
 \vhich decreases value of stocks already watered too much. Capi- 
 tal refuses to invest under these conditions. 
 
 The tendency of centralizing capital to operate corporations 
 in many different lines of trade opposing the individual man- 
 agement and ownership of business throughout the country. 
 
-15 
 
 John Stephen Sewell, V. P. & G. M., Alabama Marble Co., 
 Gantts Quarry, Ala. 
 
 All the causes that have contributed to previous depres- 
 sions are probably in operation now to some extent; but the 
 evils developed by unregulated companies have produced a state 
 of mind in the people at large which will be a disturbing factor 
 until it is corrected. The average man is not satisfied with the 
 "rules of the game." They leave too little for simple, honest 
 and loyal effort,- and yield too much to extraordinary commercial 
 acumen and unscrupulous greed. Men of unusual commercial 
 ability need to be taught that moral as well as legal restric- 
 tions must be observed, and that they owe a greater return to 
 the social scheme which affords opportunities for the exercise 
 of their powers of acquisition and security in the possession of 
 their gains. Until this is done the people will continue to harass 
 big business. Properly regulated combination is at least one 
 powerful remedy for this chief of existing evils. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law, but there should be a law recogniz- 
 ing the advantages and necessity of combination, while provid- 
 ing for suitable control and regulation. If this can be accom- 
 plished by amendment of the Sherman Law, amend it; other- 
 wise, repeal it. I favor a national incorporation law, obligatory 
 on all corporations doing interstate business. The cost should 
 be moderate. I also favor Federal license for all interstate busi- 
 ness; the license should be moderate in amount. I also approve 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Bloom Bros. & Co., Wholesale Clothing Manufacturers, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The money trusts don't know where they are at; hence they 
 are diminishing and restricting loans. Therefore there is less 
 of so-called enterprise, expansion, trade, etc., which, of course, 
 is felt in every channel of business. Business enterprises have 
 been overextended by reason of the money trusts' operations, 
 and when they reduce their operations, business enterprises get 
 back to their 'normal proportions. Business is normal at pres- 
 fiil and where it naturally belongs. Business can be boomed 
 up to the skies, but that isn't where it belongs. It must get back- 
 to earth some time, and that is where we are getting now. The 
 so-called disturbed business conditions are simply the getting 
 back to the normal. 
 
 A. C. Phelps, Manager, German-American Company, 
 Draper, N. C. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to want of confidence, tariff 
 agitation and political unrest. 
 
 Think fundamentally conditions are sound, and general im- 
 provement will be steady but slow. Do not expect a boom, nor 
 does the country want it. A final adjustment of the tariff will 
 improve conditions greatly. 
 
46 
 
 Edward L. Buchwalter, President The American Seeding 
 Machine Company, Springfield, Ohio. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 It should be repealed, or else it should be radically changed to 
 make it possible for large business enterprises to exist. If 
 amended it should permit corporations to organize with large 
 financial resources, whether entirely new or consolidating two 
 or more existing corporations, but subject to national power to 
 prevent a monopoly, and free from unjust State laws. I see no 
 objections to railroads being allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, providing the rates are reasonable and don't show 
 any favors. As to trade unions and farmers' combinations, fair 
 play and honesty demand that laws show no favors to any indi- 
 vidual, organization or corporation. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law for all organizations 
 of every kind that do an interstate business, and such corpora- 
 tions should be under the control of and be protected by the 
 national government. As to an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 industrial corporations are so much more numerous than those 
 classed as common carriers, and the business so different that I 
 don't believe an Industrial Trade Commission is necessary. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are largely the result of unwise, 
 unjust talk and charges against large business enterprises and of 
 continued threats of prosecution and more radical legislation 
 against corporations. Business men, largely interested in public 
 service and industrial enterprises, have lost confidence in receiv- 
 ing justice at the hands of our legislators, and they are not dis- 
 posed to risk more capital in their enterprises. The general 
 conditions of the country are favorable for business prosperity, 
 and prosperity would come, employment would be given to the 
 unemployed, if the hearts and minds of our lawmakers pos- 
 sessed a reasonable degree of fairness and business sense and 
 the courage to render justice to all interests. 
 
 James Logan, General Manager United States Envelope 
 Company, Worcester, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, in my judg- 
 ment, but I do not favor its repeal, nor am I prepared to sug- 
 gest amendments. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. and combinations of 
 farmers, to restrict production or hold a crop for higher prices, 
 should not be rendered lawful. It is not feasible, in my judg- 
 ment, to return to old competitive methods in business. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license, if 
 the former would not make the latter unnecessary. Disturbed 
 business conditions are due to the fact that we were running 
 wild, and men were doing things under the names of -finance 
 nnrl business which needed to be described bv another word. 
 
47 
 
 R. M. Owen, R. M. Owen & Co., Automobiles, New York 
 City. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. It is not 
 feasible, in my judgment, to return to old competitive methods. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it clear to the 
 business community and allow us to run our affairs, knowing just 
 what the law allows and what it will punish. It is impossible 
 for us to operate successfully while a lot of lawyers are making 
 laws and a lot of other lawyers are trying to upset them. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 Trade unions and farmers 'combinations should not be excepted 
 from the Sherman Act. Why should farmers or labor unions 
 be allowed to combine to force up prices and a similar privilege 
 not be extended to manufacturers who may form a combination 
 in order to save themselves from bankruptcy? 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, if it is submitted to 
 representative business men for approval, and is not a farce 
 such as the Corporation Tax Law is. I favor a Federal license 
 law, if it is not possible 'to pass a good national incorporation 
 law. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission only if business 
 men are appointed instead of lawyers. Disturbed business con- 
 ditions are due, in my judgment, to uncertainty as to the laws 
 and who is going to try to upset them next. 
 
 Reference is made in the above answers of my feeling with 
 respect to the part which lawyers have played in the recent 
 business disturbance. As a matter of fact, they do not know 
 how to draw up laws which govern business relations, and the 
 result is a grand mix-up. If representative business men can be 
 persuaded to take some interest in legislation, the business 
 affairs of the country will prosper and not until then. 
 
 A. C. Blinn, Treasurer and General Manager Evansville 
 Gas & Electric Light Company, Evansville, Ind. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as 
 clear and workable, and I favor its repeal. Congress should 
 substitute therefor a law under which it would be possible for 
 large corporations to operate which are doing an interstate 
 business. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 In my opinion, the present disturbance in business condi- 
 tions is due to activity on the part of the government in seeking 
 to dissolve by means of the Sherman Law so-called trusts. I 
 believe this has been very unwise, as under present day methods 
 large corporations are a necessity, and should under proper 
 supervision be permitted to conduct their businesses on a rea- 
 sonable basis; and instead of lawsuits, instituted under what is 
 almost universally considered an act unsuited to conditions as 
 now existing, we should have new and reasonable laws, more in 
 harmony with present day methods. 
 
48 
 
 O. G. Stark, President and Secretary Stark Distillery Com- 
 pany, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 We are in receipt of yours, with questions relating to the 
 Sherman Law thereon. This matter seems to us to be the most 
 vital one affecting business interests that has ever come before 
 the people of this country for solution. We are opposed to this 
 unrest, but we do not see that the Federal government is the 
 final recourse. All corporation matters inherently come under 
 State jurisdiction, and in our opinion the national law should 
 be abolished entirely and uniform State laws passed. 
 
 We appreciate the unrest prevalent in business circles. It 
 is not all based on fancy. There is some reason for real con- 
 cern on both sides, and we believe that if there was a proper 
 enlightenment of the masses of the people this vexatious ques- 
 tion could be settled at once to the satisfaction of all, without 
 the destruction of property, in such a manner that all vested 
 interests would be protected and which would inure to the benefit 
 of the entire people, employees and employers. 
 
 Business interests are not afraid of large corporation?, nor 
 are they in favor of hampering them; but they are afraid of 
 continued concentration in narrowing circles of the capital of 
 the country, arising from the growth of surplus funds in the 
 treasuries of corporations with perpetual charters necessitating 
 reinvestment all the time. They are opposed to holding corpora- 
 tions with unlimited duration and continuing augmenting sur- 
 plus accounts, because in the end it means the absorption of one 
 business after another by the larger corporations, if unrestricted, 
 and the ultimate control of all resources in concentrated hands. 
 
 To avoid this, and also to maintain property rights and to 
 meet the development of a marvelous age, there should be, in 
 our opinion, uniform State laws which would limit the amount 
 of surplus of any corporation to a percentage of its capital (say, 
 50 per cent.), after which it should be compulsory for all cor- 
 porations to pay out all net earnings in dividends, so that the 
 money may be kept in circulation and go into the hands of indi- 
 viduals in the form of dividends and be subject eventually to 
 a Probate Court and to the natural laws of distribution. The 
 size of the corporation would not then be a menace, because the 
 capital stock would expand and increase as warranted, and tho 
 surplus would remain in the same ratio. This would mean 
 wider distribution of the stock or really more partners. Tt would 
 also necessitate careful and honest management. 
 
 This is merely an outline of what will ultimately be neces- 
 sary to avoid continual unrest and to enable co-operative enter- 
 prises to succeed. 
 
 American Pad and Textile Company, Greenfield, Ohio. 
 
 Business disturbance? Probably being a case of sulks on 
 the part of " Big Business " and some timidity on the part of 
 capital. 
 
49 
 
 Arthur T. Lyman, Manufacturer, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor neither national incorporation nor Federal license 
 for corporations engaged in interstate commerce, unless the 
 oppressive and unfair legislation by States cannot be otherwise 
 avoided. Let the States allow free trade between them, which 
 the Constitution, by the regulation of interstate commerce, 
 intended to secure, doing away with the interstate tariffs of 
 earlier times. Unfair competition and restraint of trade are 
 both dealt with unreasonably by the express terms of the Sher- 
 man Law, and the Supreme Court decision leaves the question 
 as to " reasonableness " to be tried and determined in every case. 
 I am decidedly opposed to the suggestion that minority stock- 
 holders and investors are in need of additional protection. In- 
 vestors will be fooled and seem to like it, as they like quack 
 medicines ; and minority stockholders often have now more than 
 adequate protection. I am opposed to an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission and regard it as an unnecessary nuisance. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale are the reduction in cost to consumers and 
 the avoidance of the great waste of small-scale production and 
 distribution. I favor either a repeal of the Sherman Law or 
 its amendment. If it does not apply to labor unions and cotton 
 and grain " trusts," it should be repealed. Railroads should 
 certainly be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 Eoosevelt and the scare he started, with the general unrest, 
 are mainly responsible for disturbed business conditions. He 
 availed himself of the unrest, and set and fanned a fire that 
 has not been put out. It is seriously obstructing business activity 
 and development. 
 
 W. J. Strassburger, Secretary and Treasurer, Allegheny 
 Plate Glass Company, Glassmere, Pa. 
 
 For years past foreign manufacturers have been able to co- 
 operate under government supervision, to the extent of assur- 
 ing reasonable profits. This country would do well to study the 
 foreign plan, which is working successfully, and copy it. Every 
 American laborer deserves fair remuneration and American liv- 
 ing conditions. The farmers are entitled to like treatment, as 
 are the common carriers, manufacturers and merchants entitled 
 to a fair return on their investments. This country would pro- 
 gress under the foreign system. 
 
 Too many demagogues and too much worship of them and 
 their activities, which seem to have for their purpose primarily 
 self-advancement, are causing business disturbance. We favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. The Sherman Law should be amended in so far as indus- 
 tries may co-operate under government supervision, as they do 
 abroad. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 nffecting rates. 
 
50 
 
 W. B. Hill, President Ash Grove Lime & Portland Cement 
 Co., Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is not made clear 
 and workable. I have spent considerable money with attorneys 
 of standing, reputation and ability, and they are unanimously 
 of the opinion that even the men who made the law could not 
 interpret its meaning. 
 
 I am not prepared to say the Sherman Law as a whole 
 should be repealed. There is no question, however, but what 
 it should be amended and its meaning made very plain. I don't 
 believe it is possible to do a business of any magnitude to-day 
 and keep within the law. 
 
 My position as to a national incorporation law would depend 
 somewhat upon the restrictions it contained. The development 
 of the United States would have been very slow had it not been 
 for the "watered stock." I can see no serious objection to 
 " watered stock " if it was labeled as such and the buyer knew 
 exactly what he was getting when he buys it. (Possibly a pic- 
 ture of Niagara Falls on the stock certificate would indicate the 
 character of the stock.) The plain facts should be stated on 
 all stock certificates, so that it would not be possible to practice 
 deception, and this, in my opinion, would overcome the objec- 
 tion to "watered stock." 
 
 I favor a Federal license law ; also an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. I will say, however, this commission should be selected 
 from men who have had practical experience in general business, 
 as well as manufacturing, etc. In substance, they should not be 
 politicians who have nothing but the theoretical knowledge of 
 business and no practical experience. 
 
 Our present financial system is admittedly a bad one and 
 must be remedied. The recommendations made by Senator 
 Aldrich of a Central Eeserve Bank is certainly a step in the 
 right direction. It should, however, be broad enough in its 
 scope to take in all classes of banking, and should not be re- 
 stricted to national banks, but should include State banks and 
 trust companies as well, and should permit currency to be issued 
 against high-class government, State, municipal and railroad 
 bonds. These, of course, should be graded to a point of absolute 
 security, and the currency issued against such collaterals taxed 
 to such an extent that it would automatically be retired when 
 the rates of interest drop down to, or below, 6 per cent., and in 
 this way prevent inflation, but always have sufficient collaterals 
 at hand to furnish the necessary currency when needed. The 
 details of such a plan is a long story which I will not burden 
 you with. 
 
 This, in effect, would probably cause many banks to put their 
 reserve into bonds, instead of carrying large balances at reserve 
 centers, and I can imagine that 'banks at the reserve centers 
 would object to this, but as a matter of protection it would 
 place the smaller banks where they would be absolutely inde- 
 
51 
 
 pendent and would get larger returns on their reserve funds 
 and not be in a position where the reserve centers could shut 
 them off from currency when it is needed, as they did in 1907. 
 Under such a plan the West can take care of itself and help the 
 East occasionally if necessary. 
 
 I wish also to suggest that railroads should be prohibited 
 from paying dividends on "watered stock" until such time as 
 their road is in proper condition to serve the public or to prop- 
 erly take care of the traffic offered them. There are roads in 
 the West to-day paying dividends on their common stock, whose 
 tracks are dangerous to ride over, and they have not sufficient 
 equipment to take care of the traffic offered them even under 
 normal conditions, and it would seem that there should be some 
 law prohibiting them from handling their properties in this 
 way. 
 
 I believe we should have a permanent tariff commission, 
 composed of men who are skilled in that particular line. We 
 should also have an industrial commission in charge of cor- 
 porations. Also a labor commission. I want to emphasize the 
 fact that these commissions, to be efficient and of any service, 
 must necessarily be composed of men skilled in the particular 
 line of work to which they have been appointed, and that while 
 one should not be disqualified for such a position because he 
 has been active in politics or had filled prominent political posi- 
 tions, that should be one of the very last considerations. 
 
 L. N. Gross, Ladies' Waists and Dresses, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 The fundamental cause of the disturbed business conditions 
 is the depreciating standard of value. The Sherman Anti-Trust 
 Law is an obsolete method of procedure for the present condi- 
 tion of American business. There is no possible way to progress 
 by disorganizing the corporate methods of business. 
 
 Railroads should be permitted to agree as to the proper rates 
 for railway services, subject to Federal control. I favor a Fed- 
 eral congress of commercial States to adjust the prices of com- 
 modities and services on the market. 
 
 I do not favor a Federal license law for the operation of 
 corporations in their interstate business. 
 
 John Reid, Manager, J. L. Mott Iron Works, New York 
 City. 
 
 The Sherman Law and the attitude and action of the gov- 
 ernment in relation thereto has, in my judgment, caused hesi- 
 tation and uncertainty on the part of business men. The 
 business of manufacturing, of buying and selling is as old as 
 the hills and, unless hampered by artificial conditions created 
 by Sherman laws, tariffs and such like, will go along, as it 
 has always done, in a perfectly natural way, guided and gov- 
 erned by universally recognized and well-established commercial 
 laws. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
52 
 
 A. N. Barren, Factory Manager, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 I consider the question at issue to-day, due to the decision 
 of the Supreme Court on the Standard Oil Company and To- 
 bacco Company, the most important one in the country. 
 
 I do not believe in unrestricted competition, nor in unre- 
 stricted restraint of trade. One is as harmful in one direction 
 as the other is in another. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not dissolved either the Standard 
 Oil Company or the American Tobacco Company, except in 
 form, so that it will now cost these companies several million 
 more per year to do business, and their efficiency will be less, 
 especially in the Standard Oil Company, due to the numerous 
 subdivisions. In my opinion it would have been far better to 
 have punished by fine or some other way those two corporations 
 for whatever they have done in the past that was wrong. 
 
 It is not fair now to rake people over the coals for doing 
 things which have been recognized right along as ordinary good 
 business, but it is fair to say now that those things are wrong 
 and that similar offences in the future will be punished. 
 
 The law should be made extremely strict in railroad rebate 
 cases. I do not think a penitentiary sentence is too much for 
 the man who give or takes railroad rebates when the case is 
 perfectly' clear. 
 
 Any harm which some of the big companies may have done 
 is but a small thing compared with what the medium and small 
 companies have done when they have felt that their small size 
 would give them an opportunity to escape notice. I feel that 
 the big companies now and for the past several years have been 
 doing all they possibly can to keep within the letter and spirit 
 of the law as they see it, and, of course, no one really does know 
 what the law means until his particular case has been heard 
 by the Supreme Court, which method of trying a man when 
 he is right and when he is wrong is a farce. The law should 
 be so plain that any man of common sense would know what it 
 meant, and certainly a man should be able to go to his legal 
 advisor and find out what he can and cannot do. 
 
 I have just read the Missouri Court's action in the Harvester 
 case, and there the Supreme Court judge states that the Har- 
 vester Company has really been a benefit to the State of Mis- 
 souri; that it has given competition; that it has improved the 
 quality of its manufactured product, and the price has not been 
 raised, and that on the whole the Harvester Company has been 
 a benefit to the community, and yet fines it so many dollars 
 because technically it is a foreign corporation organized to 
 "gobble" business. 
 
 In my judgment it is perfectly foolish to call a company 
 a monopoly and accuse it of . all the crimes in the calendar 
 simply because of its size, or to say that a company shall not do 
 more than 40 per cent, of the business in its line. 
 
Suppose there are six companies in one line of business. 
 One is doing 35 per cent., and the other five have practically 
 an equal division, that is, 13 per cent., and one company is so 
 disadvantageous^ situated on account of freight or has had 
 bad management, so that it cannot compete on reasonable mar- 
 ket prices and decides to go into some other line of manufac- 
 ture, with which its managers are better acquainted, and sup- 
 pose that the bulk of its business were taken by the larger 
 company, it would immediately have over 40 per cent, and then 
 become a monopoly. That is foolishness ! By limiting the size 
 of a company's business you limit honest endeavor on the part 
 of honest and intelligent people to do their best. 
 
 The only suggestion I see for the problem is a national incor- 
 poration act, with publicity and regulation and control, and that 
 regulation and control should not be by the Supreme Court, 
 but by an Interstate Trade Commission, similar to the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission for the railroads. 
 
 The newspapers, especially the yellow press, and some parts 
 of the general public are insisting on the government getting 
 after the business people. They do not seem to realize that it 
 is business which brings in the bread and butter, makes wealth 
 and happiness when properly handled. There is more harm 
 being done right now, in my opinion, by the farmers and labor- 
 ing men than by the combinations among the. business men. 
 One is as justifiable as the other. I have always looked upon 
 the Steel Trust as a -good thing, and there is only one objection 
 that I can see that anyone can raise against it, and that is the 
 influence wielded by the interlocking of the board of directors. 
 
 It is very difficult to pass laws which will fit all situations, 
 and I feel that our courts are for the purpose of handling those 
 situations for right and justice which the law cannot always 
 be made in advance to meet. Take the Missouri State Supreme 
 Court's decision on the Harvester case. In my judgment, that 
 court made an incorrect decision. Its findings show that the 
 Harvester Company benefited the community, and yet the court 
 follows the exact letter of the law and penalizes the company. 
 I do not believe the framers of the law ever intended to penalize 
 a company when the court found its action such as in this case. 
 It was intended to punish the corporation which abused its 
 powers, attempted to raise prices and drive competitors out 
 of business by unfair means, and the courts, in my opinion, 
 ought to recognize the intent of the law and act accordingly. 
 
 H. D. Fletcher, Texas Strainer Company, Beaumont, Texas. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to allow any size 
 combination, but regulated as to prices, through some commis- 
 sion, as the railroads are regulated by the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal 
 license law, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
54 
 
 H. E. Choate, Treasurer, J. K. Orr Shoe Company, Atlanta, 
 Ga. 
 
 The word " reasonable " as written into the Sherman Law 
 by the judiciary, while affording relief from an inflexible appli- 
 cation, creates a condition that seems to me would bring about 
 interminable litigation as between the government and the cor- 
 porations, it appearing that each case must be settled upon its 
 particular merits, involving a judicial decision as to what is 
 " reasonable " in each specific case. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended in such particulars 
 as will give a square deal to big business, as well as to protect 
 the interests of the smaller operator. Where a corporation 
 secures control of any commodity necessary to the comfort and 
 welfare of the people, that corporation should be under closer 
 surveillance and more direct control of the government. 
 
 It seems to me that national incorporation is part of the 
 logical development of big business, and that soon or late a 
 national incorporation law will be indispensable. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission in connection with a national 
 incorporation law. 
 
 The tariff; changes in political alignment in both parties, 
 in process or threatened; the uncertain status of big business 
 in the light of the government's inquisitorial attitude, and the 
 reflex influence -of disturbances, either industrial or political, in 
 other countries, are a few of the causes, in my judgment, for 
 the present disturbed business conditions. 
 
 Z. G. Simmons, President, The Simmons Manufacturing 
 Company, Brass and Iron Beds, Kenosha, Wis* 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, with the powers of the commission clearly 
 stated, and the law so framed that people doing business may 
 know what is the law and what is not the law, without spend- 
 ing their entire income hiring lawyers who cannot now tell us 
 what is the law and whether we are criminals or good citizens. 
 
 In our judgment, the present disturbed business condition 
 is due entirely to too many lawyers making too many laws, 
 which no lawyers can interpret, whether they be justices of the 
 Supreme Court or in lesser positions. What we require is to 
 stop and take an inventory of the laws we have passed and throw 
 out about 75 per cent, of them; then go to work and make the 
 other 25 per cent, clear, so that they are understandable, and 
 then enforce them. 
 
 The Locomobile Company of America, Bridgeport, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed or amended. Capital 
 and business men cannot tell what will happen next regarding 
 legislation and enforcement of anti-trust laws. We should have 
 a national incorporation law. 
 
D. L. Huntington, President The Washington Water 
 Power Company, Spokane, Wash. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, 
 for the reason that no act which requires a specific interpreta- 
 tion of the law for each individual corporation is a sufficiently 
 clear act to permit business to be done with sufficient freedom. 
 J would not amend the Sherman Law, but repeal it and sub- 
 stitute a new law, based on broad business principles, such as 
 are in effect in Germany and other countries, permitting the 
 consolidation of large interests in a practical manner, and so 
 simple that the law can be understood by -laymen as well as 
 lawyers. The large business interests of the United States should 
 have a voice in the framing of such a law. 
 
 With a suitable act passed in place of the Sherman Act, I do 
 not see the necessity of a compulsory national incorporation 
 law. There might be advantages in such a law for certain busi- 
 nesses, and a non-compulsory act might be advisable. I consider 
 that the principal causes of disturbed business conditions arc 
 the hammering which the railway companies have had within 
 the last few years and are still receiving; the literal interpreta- 
 tion of the Sherman Act and the great uncertainty which 
 remains in the mind of everyone as to what ma}^ or may not be 
 legally done; the alarm created among millions of investors in 
 railroad, manufacturing and other securities which have been 
 and are being persistently attacked by the government under 
 the Sherman Law and by other means. 
 
 F. R. Still, Secretary and Chief Engineer, American Blower 
 Company, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and replaced by some- 
 thing else. There should be an act creating an industrial com- 
 mission to prevent such evils as concerns going into business 
 with inadequate capital, the issuing of stock beyond reasonable 
 assets and other forms of crookedness. Combinations are not 
 harmful to the greatest number, if compelled to deal fairly and 
 honestly. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. A fair and broad Federal incorporation law 
 would be a good thing for all corporations doing an interstate 
 business. I also favor a Federal license law. Prosecution under 
 the Sherman Act is the principal cause of business disturbance. 
 
 South Bend Chilled Plow Company, South Bend, Ind. 
 
 Trust agitation and the automobile have much to do with 
 causing the present disturbing business conditions. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so as to make it possible for capi- 
 tal to combine for the purpose of effecting the largest possible 
 saving in placing with the people a commodity used by the 
 masses. A little increased profit to a few may mean a ^ large 
 saving for thousands of people. We favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
56 
 
 A. R. L. Dohme, Vice-President, Sharp & Dohme, Manu 
 facturing Chemists, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it more spe- 
 cific and concrete, so that the courts will not have to read some- 
 thing into it, or interpret it specially for practically every case 
 that comes before them. The judiciary should not have to legis- 
 late in order to make a law effective or possible of execution. 
 Kailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, provided it will super- 
 sede all State incorporation laws for corporations doing an inter- 
 state business. I favor a Federal license law, provided it super- 
 sedes all State license laws for corporations or firms doing inter- 
 state business. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to fear of tariff tink- 
 ering; to government attacks on corporations, as well as hold- 
 ing the railroads between the upper millstone of reduced rates 
 and the lower millstone of increased taxes and labor troubles, 
 especially higher wages and strikes. 
 
 The tariff should be taken out of politics and placed in the 
 hands of a permanent non-partisan board of acknowledged ex- 
 perts, and its provisions and operation should be continuous 
 and automatic, based on cold facts and business sense. 
 
 The Interstate Trade Commission should be authorized by 
 law to keep full records of all corporations doing interstate busi- 
 ness, and every such corporation should be compelled to make 
 sworn complete reports of all its year's business and financing- 
 annually; and the commission should first warn violating cor- 
 porations, and if the warning is unheeded, then bring them to 
 the bar of justice, and compel them to undo the illegal acts 
 they may have done, and keep them under surveillance in future. 
 
 John S. Clark, "A Small Manufacturer," Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to permit large cor- 
 porations to conduct business, even though they do produce a 
 considerable part say, up to 60 per cent., or even more of 
 the product, and to enable them to regulate the amount of their 
 product according to demand, without being charged with re- 
 straint of trade. When a condition of overproduction or under- 
 consumption exists, it should be lawful to shut down plants 
 without being accused of restraining trade. I favor national 
 incorporation or Federal license, if in no other way pernicious 
 activity upon the part of the. Federal government can be ob- 
 viated. If, however, governmental prosecutions could be re- 
 stricted to actual wrongdoing, rather than to enterprises of 
 magnitude and success, merely because of their size and prosper- 
 ity, then I answer, No. 
 
57 
 
 Joseph H. Garaghty, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I do not consider the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as 
 clear and workable. There is also great possibility of heavy 
 loss to bona fide holders of securities involved. I do not favor 
 mi unconditional repeal of the Sherman Law. Some changes 
 in the present law are certainly indicated, but any change will 
 be fruitless until many other laws are repealed, especially those 
 of a "special privilege" character. 
 
 I favor either a national incorporation law or a Federal 
 license law or both, incidentally, in' combination with an 
 amended act to control unfair combination. I do not favor an 
 interstate Trade Commission to fix prices. It should be em- 
 powered to ascertain facts and give such publicity as will serve 
 a more useful purpose. 
 
 Primarily, disturbed business conditions are caused by a 
 generation of " special privilege " legislation and the continued 
 trend in the same direction. Incidentally, no banking system, 
 except one facilitating public plunder; an unjust and excessive 
 expansion of debt; high tariff; corrupt and wilful extravagance 
 in public expenditure, and a general contempt for all, are other 
 causes. The burdens created and growing under these abuses 
 are beginning to bear heavily on the masses; hence the unrest, 
 discontent and distrust, higher cost of living and reduced sav- 
 ings drive the people to the government for relief, as history 
 shows has been the case in the past. Result, all sorts of party 
 agitation, quack laws, regulations, special privileges, etc. A 
 golden opportunity for demagogues and so-called " saviors of 
 their country.'' That they have not overlooked this is quite 
 evident. 
 
 Martin A. Marks, Secretary and Treasurer, Cleveland 
 Worsted Mills Company, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 There should be a permanent tariff commission that, with- 
 out regard to influence,- could make changes gradual on each 
 item, having full power to investigate and examine books, plants 
 and all interested. This would restore confidence and would 
 l)e just to all. Disturbed business conditions are caused by tink- 
 ering with legislation, especially with the tariff, without having 
 knowledge of the facts; also by the fear of radical legislation 
 that might have a sudden and serious effect on the business 
 interested. 
 
 The Sherman Law- should be amended by more clearly defin- 
 ing its provisions and by appointing a commission similar to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission to govern such corpora- 
 tions, the Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor 
 to act as chairman. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor national incorporation, Fed- 
 oral license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
58 
 
 Allegheny Steel Company, by R. D. Campbell, Treasurer, 
 Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 The country is in a condition of uneasiness and apprehension. 
 Unfortunately, the average politician is costing the country 
 enormously at present. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. It is not 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods in business. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended, but we have not space enough 
 here to go into particulars. Kailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. Combina- 
 tions of farmers, to secure good prices for their products, should 
 be rendered lawful. We favor a national incorporation law, but 
 are undecided as to Federal license. We do not favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. Business disturbance is due to too 
 rapid a pace, followed by natural reaction, and the recovery de- 
 layed by unwise and selfish politics. 
 
 Judson G. Rosebush, President, Patten Paper Company, 
 Ltd., etc., also Professor of Economics, Laurence 
 College, Appleton, Wis. 
 
 Production has temporarily outrun consumption. Thus in 
 the lumber and paper businesses the construction of new plants 
 has anticipated demand. I understand the same thing is true 
 of other lines of business. Another cause of business disturb- 
 ance is a diversion of consumption from old lines and channels 
 into new fields; for example, the immense amounts of money 
 now spent on automobiles have changed the direction of national 
 expenditure to the injury of the old customary lines. A third 
 cause of business disturbance is timidity in the business world 
 due to the trust cases, tariff discussion, etc. Doubtless also, to 
 some extent, a lessened power of consumption due to the shorter 
 crops, as against two years since, has added to the unsettled 
 condition of business. 
 
 W. B. Ayers, President, Eastern & Western Lumber Co., 
 Portland, Ore. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended (1) by prohibiting 
 corporations engaged in interstate commerce from holding se- 
 curities (i. e., stocks or bonds) in other corporations doing an 
 interstate business; (2) by prohibiting corporations doing an 
 interstate business from issuing securities in excess of the actual 
 capital invested; (3) by compelling those industrial corpora- 
 tions whose securities are traded in on the open market, or 
 whose business is of trust proportions, to make public their 
 business through the Department of Commerce and Labor; (4) 
 by endowing the Department of Commerce and Labor with 
 police powers to enforce its provisions in the same manner as 
 the internal revenue laws are enforced. 
 
59 
 
 James R. Keiser, President, James R. Keiser, Inc., Manu- 
 facturer of Neckwear and Handkerchiefs, New York 
 City. 
 
 Lack of consistent and uniform policy on the part of the 
 government; the fear on the part of the business community 
 of radical and ill-advised legislation bearing on industrial and 
 tariff matters are the chief causes of business disquietude. T 
 favor Federal license for interstate business. The Sherman Law 
 should define clearly what is illegal and otherwise. 
 
 Although not bearing directly on the subject of this circular, 
 I believe there is no work the Federation and other bodies can 
 favor, more important than an adjustment of the tax laws into 
 something like justice and reason. If we had a stamp tax, 
 this combined with a levy on real estate would work equitably 
 and honestly in the distribution of tax burdens, whereas income 
 taxes, incorporation taxes and personal taxes never have worked 
 justly and never will, but, on the contrary, have been an incentive 
 to fraud. 
 
 Frank C. Henderson, President, F. C. Henderson Company, 
 Sewing Machines, Pianos, etc., Member of the Boston 
 Chamber of Commerce, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The corrupt machine politician, his power and his purpose, 
 are now pretty well understood. Eepresentatives of the people 
 who do not represent them; the acceptance by the Senate of 
 such as Lorimer of Illinois; the nomination of men for office 
 who are not business men; the helping into office of politicians 
 of questionable character ; the widespread understanding of what 
 is " senatorial courtesy " ; the tremendous expenses of the gov- 
 ernment all largely contribute to the general distrust. Other 
 causes are, unenforced law, particularly the criminal clause of 
 the anti-trust law, creating lack of confidence in our government 
 and distrust in lawmakers and in the courts. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
 W. S. Poling, President, Spring Steel Fence and Wire Com- 
 pany, Anderson, Ind. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to permit trade com- 
 binations that -will embrace all conditions and protect against 
 unnecessary, unprofitable, unlawful competition. 
 
 My business is affected by the United States Steel Corpora- 
 tion, by its ability to make a profit on the production from raw 
 material enabling it to sell wire fence, for instance, without 
 profit on wire products. There is great danger in having any 
 one corporation given such powers in the commercial world as 
 the United States Steel Corporation is now assuming. The time 
 may come when this power will fall into the hands of those 
 who are not even as kindly disposed as the Steel Corporation. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
60 
 
 M. S. Shaw, President and Treasurer Boyne City Tanning 
 Company, Boyne City, Mich. 
 
 Are business relations disturbed? Capital is getting fair 
 interest; labor gets comparatively good wages; the middleman 
 and the grafter get too much, as they always do. The pendu- 
 lum always swings both ways and a slight touch will allow it to 
 swing too far on either side. The adjustment of laws governing 
 our social and commercial life (under the competitive system) 
 are delicate and the pendulum should not be touched, but every 
 effort used to give to each the result of his efforts. Neither 
 the competitive nor the co-operative system will do this, the 
 problem is deeper and simpler. Very few of our laws are based 
 on giving each citizen the reward of effort, although the Con- 
 stitution proclaims the intention. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. As to an Interstate Trade Commission, my 
 preference would depend entirely on the powers given to the 
 commission. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. 
 
 S. Barnard, Clothing Manufacturer, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license. I 
 regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. It should be 
 amended by giving the large combinations reasonable time for 
 reorganization or readjustment. 
 
 In regard to farmers' combinations I have to say that one of 
 the potato dealers in Aroostook County, Maine, informs me 
 that last year he bought potatoes in Maine for 60 cents a barrel 
 and sold them in New York for $2. This year the crop is so 
 large that the farmers have burned up half of the crop, in 
 order to maintain the high prices. Is it any wonder that the 
 cost of living is high? What chance is there for the great 
 middle class, with the trust on one side getting the highest 
 prices possible, and the farmers on the other side deliberately- 
 destroying their crops to maintain the high prices? 
 
 E. T. Weir, President, Phillips Sheet & Tin Plate Co., 
 Weirton, W. Va. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so thaif it can be more 
 clearly determined what combinations are unlawful, and to what 
 extent competitors can work in trade harmony without com- 
 mitting illegal acts. I favor national incorporation, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions are due to change from co-operation to open 
 competition in many lines of trade; overproduction caused 
 by too rapid construction, and to a general and insistent de- 
 mand for reduced costs of living; also to uncertainty on the 
 part of large interests as to the outcome of the movement to 
 make them more susceptible to Federal control and supervision. 
 
61 
 
 H. E. Bullock. President, Illinois Malleable Iron Company, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 I believe the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, to be clear 
 and workable. I consider it feasible to return to old competi- 
 tive methods in business. I do not favor repeal of the Sherman 
 Law. It should be amended, if President Taft and his Cabinet 
 wish it. As to railroads being allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, this seems to be the condition now. It should 
 be lawful for farmers to combine to secure fair prices for their 
 products, unless you allow finished goods to come in free, and 
 with the further proviso that when farm products get above 
 certain predetermined figures, like products be admitted free 
 from other countries. Foreign prices largely determine the price 
 a farmer can obtain for his wheat and cotton ; hence, protection 
 does not protect him and he has to pay for manufactured goods 
 higher prices because of protection. Farmers should be allowed 
 to hold their whole products as long as they like, but should 
 be punished for interfering with their neighbors who wish to 
 sell, and when prices rise above the predetermined price, farm 
 products of like kind should come in free from abroad. 
 
 To enable me to answer intelligently the question relating 
 to an Interstate Trade Commission, I should like to see an out- 
 line of the duties and powers of such a commission. I think 
 that disturbed business conditions have been principally caused 
 by the railroads holding off purchases to try to compel the coun- 
 try to allow further advance in their already too heavy freight 
 rates. 
 
 D. S. Chamberlain, Ex-President, Proprietary Association 
 of America, Des Moines, la. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable, 
 but I do not favor its repeal. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended so as to protect capital, labor and consumer alike. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I favor national incorporation, and am undecided as to 
 Federal license. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 power to prevent advances in prices, both of labor and product, 
 and to provide against extortion labor, capital and the consum- 
 ers to be protected. Enforcing the present unfair and imperfect 
 Sherman Act is the cause of business disturbance. 
 
 It requires great combinations of capital to successfully com- 
 pete in foreign markets. Once we destroy combinations of capi- 
 tal the United States would lose its influence and a great por- 
 tion of its trade. The United States would be contracting, not 
 expanding. 
 
 I also favor giving the Interstate Trade Commission power 
 to dissolve a corporation when it is legally shown that it 
 lowor prices so as to destroy a competitor's business. 
 
62 
 
 The Haydenville Company (A. S. Hills, Treasurer), Manu- 
 facturers of Brass and Iron Goods, Haydenville, 
 Mass. 
 
 We do not regard the Sherman Law as at all clear and work- 
 able. The Sherman Law should be either repealed or amended. 
 Either by amendment or through a new law it should be pro- 
 vided that where any manufacturer cuts prices below reason- 
 able cost to cover maintenance of plant, to pay full wages and 
 to obtain reasonable return on capital invested, the government 
 can interfere to stop selling at a sacrifice, for the reason that 
 the aggregate capital of competitors who are pursuing no such 
 dishonorable course is being jeopardized, and the branch of 
 trade that is thus imperilled is likely to pass largely into for- 
 eign hands. 
 
 A trade union should be regarded the same as a corpora- 
 tion, and combinations of farmers should be subject to regu- 
 lation. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law for concerns of over 
 one million dollars capital. We also favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Disturbed business conditions are due, in our 
 judgment, to running business by law when that law was not 
 clear and had not been interpreted correctly by an authorized 
 tribunal. 
 
 William Glattly (Glattly Lumber Company), Afton, Iowa. 
 
 Both organized capital and organized labor have much to do 
 with business disturbance. The Sherman Law, or some other 
 law, ought to be so framed that common carriers could not 
 charge more for a short than for a long haul. There ought to 
 be a law passed declaring it prima facie evidence of an under- 
 standing in restraint of trade when manufacturers of any given 
 commodity, located at various point? and distances, are all 
 charging the same delivery price for their product at any 
 point which they may cover, no matter what the distance or 
 the cost of shipping to said point. T favor a national incorpo- 
 ration law. Federal license and nn Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Abiel J. Abbott, Treasurer, Abbott Worsted Company, 
 Graniteville, Mass. 
 
 Over-production and fear of the Sherman Act are causes 
 of business disturbance. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, 
 and in its place the enactment of a Federal incorporation law, 
 with supervision. As to trade unions and combinations of 
 farmers, I understand that industrial legislation is intended to 
 enhance the welfare of all the people. Therefore no classes 
 should have special privileges or exemption from the operation 
 of any law. It would be much preferable to make a better 
 law that would not require any exception. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
63 
 
 J. D. Forrest, Economist, and General Manager Citizens 
 Gas Company, Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 I prefer Federal license covering interstate features of busi- 
 ness only for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I be- 
 lieve in holding companies. In themselves, no harm has re- 
 sulted from them. Such evils as exist could and do exist under 
 .single corporate control, as well as un'der holding companies. 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with 
 by statutes forbidding specific practices, so far as common-law 
 remedies are inadequate. Full publicity renders the question 
 of capital immaterial. The only evil consists in false representa- 
 tions in selling securities. While publicity for commercial cor- 
 porations is very desirable, I fail to see how a commission to 
 regulate prices, etc., has anything to do with the protection of 
 minority interests. A commission to enforce publicity is wholly 
 desirable; one to control business is dangerous and should be 
 avoided. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale should be added that large concerns are 
 more likely to avoid the wastes of foolish and excessive competi- 
 tion. Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, 
 to the attempted enforcement of the Sherman Law and to pop- 
 ular opposition to large business enterprises. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed, unless further court decisions 
 show that large corporations are permitted under it. 
 
 George M. Paine (Paine Lumber Company, Ltd.), Oshkosh, 
 Wis, 
 
 We most certainly approve of returning to the old methods 
 of competitive business. A trail of losses and disaster in the 
 way of business has followed wherever the older methods have 
 been interfered with. We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 We favor a national incorporation law if it would permit of 
 doing business in any or all of the States without special licenses. 
 We favor a Federal license law in some form that will avoid the 
 necessity of securing forty or more licenses covering all the 
 States of the Union. We do not favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. We are already burdened to death with commissions. 
 It must be a wonder to sensible men how the business of the 
 country can stand up under the various forms of persecution 
 that the legislative branches of the government have wasted 
 valuable time in formulating. 
 
 We consider that present disturbed conditions are largely, if 
 not entirely, due to the agitation and uncertainty caused by the 
 political disturbances provoked and fostered by the "outs"" to 
 get the fat and honorable places of the "ins'." Some of the 
 disturbed conditions are to be accounted for by the unnecessary 
 pursuing of combinations of capital called "trusts." 
 
64 
 
 F. W. Pilsbry, Vice-President and General Manager Santa 
 Fe Car Icing Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that business men 
 will know what they can do. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should cer- 
 tainly not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act; 
 it is of the greatest importance to the entire business interests 
 of the country that unions be amenable to the same laws as other 
 business combinations. We favor national incorporation and 
 Federal license. 
 
 The principal cause of business disturbance is the uncer- 
 tainty of the business world as to the attitude of the United 
 States government toward large corporations and as to the out- 
 come of the suits brought and to be brought against corporations. 
 There are other causes, such as the coming presidential elec- 
 tion and the uncertainty regarding a tariff policy. "With the 
 Sherman Law so amended so that the corporations would know 
 what is legal and proper for them to do, and with a fixed tariff 
 revision policy, the business of the country will go ahead. 
 
 George A. Laughlin, President Cleveland Axle Manufactur- 
 ing Company, and President Cleveland-Canton Spring 
 Company, Canton, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law, in my judgment, is clear and workable. 
 I regard it as feasible to return to old competitive methods in 
 business, but between larger competitive units. Eailroads should 
 not be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and com- 
 binations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a 
 crop for higher prices, should not be rendered lawful. Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act. I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. In my judgment, disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions are due to inflation, to production, excepting 
 farm product?, in excess of consumption. 
 
 H. R. Kingman, Manager Yakima Branch, Pacific Power 
 & Light Company, North Yakima, Wash. 
 
 I believe the flagrant exhibition of avaricious greed by some 
 large corporations and those in control of great wealth has 
 aroused in the general public the primeval instinct to smash 
 and destroy, and as soon as they can be shown the better way, 
 by such illustrious examples as afforded by the methods being 
 used in the State of Wisconsin (that pioneer that is blazing the 
 way), reason and judgment will be used in solving the problem, 
 and stable and prosperous conditions will return. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be modified to recognize regulated 
 natural monopolies and efficient combination for economical pro- 
 duction. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor national incorporation, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
(55 
 
 Fenton Lawson, President The F. H. Lawson Company, 
 Sheet Metal Goods, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law is a fake pure and simple, passed by a 
 protectionist Congress to shield trusts from free-trade agitation. 
 We favor unconditionally repealing it. 
 
 Pending unconditional repeal of the act, trade unions cer- 
 tainly should be exempt from its operation. Members of trade 
 unions, unlike members of monopolistic trust organizations, have 
 no special privilege conferred by government. There is, conse- 
 quently, a fundamental difference between labor organizations 
 and trusts. Farmers' combinations should be rendered lawful 
 under the Sherman Act. There will be business disturbance as 
 long as a favored few enjoy the legalized privilege of looting 
 the rest. Protective tariffs, private monopoly of highways, mo* 
 nopolization of natural resources, patent monopolies, special 
 privilege given national banks to issue money and all taxes on 
 labor and labor products all enable some to appropriate the 
 earnings of others without adequate return. While these evils 
 are allowed to last, there will be disturbance and depression 
 periodically occurring. 
 
 Delos A. Chappell, President The Nevada California Power 
 Company, Los Angeles, Cal. 
 
 T favor a national incorporation law if properly restricted to 
 constitutional rights and not permeated with the idea that Fed- 
 eral bureau control should be paramount to the law. 
 
 The present disturbed conditions are caused by the efforts 
 which have been made and are still being made by certain de- 
 partments and bureaus of the national government to control 
 national affairs by "rules and regulations'' which, in a great 
 measure, transgress and override the law. By false and fanatical 
 theories the masses have been led to believe that their rights 
 have been trampled upon and that corporations per se are crim- 
 inals. Capital and labor must be brought into harmony, and 
 the strength of the nation, through its departments and bureaus, 
 should uphold the law and not cater to the clamor of public 
 opinion, which may endanger the lives and property of law- 
 abiding citizens. 
 
 H. R. Morrow, President Morrow, Thomas Hardware Com- 
 pany, Amarillo, Tex. 
 
 The views voiced by Colonel Roosevelt in his recent article 
 on the regulation of trusts coincide with my views exactly. Let 
 them exist, but regulate them. I think the management of the 
 United States Steel Corporation is a good illustration of a good 
 trust, This does not apply to their organization, however. The 
 Sherman Law should be repealed by substituting a new law 
 giving greater control of corporations. I favor national incor- 
 poration, Federal license and an Inter.state Trade Commission, 
 
66 
 
 Ira Dimock, President, The Nonotuck Silk Company, Flor- 
 ence, Mass. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law in its present form. 
 I am not prepared to express an opinion as to national incor- 
 poration, Federal license, or an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused, in my judgment, 
 partially by the prosecution or threatened prosecution of cor- 
 porations that have built up a large and prosperous business, 
 together with the desire of manufacturers and merchants to 
 reduce their stock, fearing a change in the tariff may necessitate 
 lowering the wages of employes, thus causing strikes and the 
 upsetting of business. We believe that, as a rule, consumers 
 have benefited by the ability of large corporations to produce 
 and market commodities at lower rates than small manufac- 
 turers, with antiquated tools and methods, are able to. Nothing- 
 can, in our opinion, reconcile progressive people to go back to 
 wheelbarrows and tallow dips. 
 
 Pike Manufacturing Company, Pike, N. H. 
 
 We favor repeal of the Sherman Law, or such amendment as 
 will permit combinations and consolidations that will result in 
 increased efficiency and economy of operation under such Fed- 
 eral regulation as will give the widest and most equitable dis- 
 tribution of the resulting benefits. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 We prefer uniform State incorporation laws, with the privi- 
 lege of taking out a Federal license at option of incorporate!'. 
 We favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. 
 
 In our judgment business disturbance is caused by an exag- 
 gerated apprehension of highly improbable results from troubles 
 that are largely imaginary, due to the confused state of political, 
 social and financial conditions. 
 
 E. A. Pettersen (Potlatch Lumber Company), Pomeroy, 
 Wash. 
 
 Make the Sherman Anti-Trust Law explicit by stipulating 
 beyond doubt what is lawful and what is not. The "rule of 
 reason " idea will be the football of unscrupulous lawyers on 
 which they will climb to riches, while legitimate business is 
 paralyzed and groping in darkness and despair, trying to reach 
 the harbor of safety through constant litigation. I favor a 
 Federal license law, provided it is added to State license, but 
 in no case unless a corporation controls fifty per cent, of the 
 total product in which it is engaged. I also favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, but it should not bar the States from exer- 
 (i-ini: thoir power within their own boundaries. 
 
87 
 
 The F. E. Kohler Company, Manufacturers of Hardware 
 Specialties, Canton, Ohio. 
 
 A law along the Hues of the Sherman Act would appear 
 necessary to curb greedy corporations from using any sort of 
 method to ruin competitors; to prevent the advancing of prices 
 on any commodity beyond a reasonable, profitable market price ; 
 also to prevent the reduction of prices by combination, pur- 
 posely and manifestly to crush a competitor. It should be made 
 to apply to any corporation (whether for profit or not) or body 
 of men who combine to raise wages beyond the law of supply 
 and demand, and who carry out their aims by force, annoyance, 
 ostracism, boycott, shotgun and dynamite. 
 
 Corporations like the Steel Trust (so called) are beneficial 
 rather than harmful. In this case, while prices have been kept 
 uniform they have not been excessive; neither have they been 
 cut to drive competitors out of business; on the contrary, com- 
 petitors (or independents) have been able to prosper. TJnless 
 the corporation receives a reasonable profit on its output, it 
 cannot pay fair wages, which in turn affects the merchants. 
 Cut-throat competition benefits no one in the long run. 
 
 Frank J. Enger, Enger Motor Car Company, Cincinnati, 
 Ohio. 
 
 I believe the trusts and combinations are the cause of the 
 present disturbed conditions. I do not believe in trusts, and 
 think that the people in Washington have also learned this and 
 are trying to put a stop to them. If some of the heads of those 
 great organizations were sent to prison, instead of being fined 
 (if fined, the common people pay in the end anyhow), it would 
 put an end to this long-drawn-out litigation and make them 
 obey the law. If they violate the laws of this country they 
 should be sent to prison the same as other common citizens of 
 this country, and if they are not breaking any laws they should 
 be left alone and not have Washington create a disturbance, 
 resulting in nothing but ruination. It is conclusions that we all 
 want, and putting an end to uncertainty as quickly as possible, 
 and not delaying the matter in the courts three or four years, 
 will settle the conditions of this country and let the people know 
 where they stand. If the trusts are violating the laws, imprison- 
 ment will stop it mighty quickly. Fines have no effect. 
 
 W. H. McCurdy, President, Hercules Buggy Company, 
 Evansville, Ind. 
 
 I am President of the Hercules Buggy Company and am 
 considered a successful business man. My volume is $2,500,000 
 per annum, and want to say: If Congress would convene, pass 
 reasonable appropriation measures, then adjourn and permit the 
 country to catch up with the laws already passed, business 
 would soon reach a normal condition. 
 
68 
 
 A. H. Gaffney, President, American Plate Glass Company, 
 Kane, Penn. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the attitude of the 
 Department of Justice rigidly enforcing the Sherman Act, which 
 is not amenable to present business conditions and, in my judg- 
 ment, is obsolete at this present day and date. If the Sherman 
 Act cannot be repealed I would favor a modification of same 
 to the extent that a commission be appointed, either under the 
 Treasury Department, or making a new department for same, 
 which would allow the industries to consolidate, if necessary 
 having inspectors the same as our present bank examiners, with 
 full power to examine the books of the different corporations 
 and allowing said corporations to have sufficient leeway, par- 
 ticularly in the manufacturing lines, to make a profit, say, not 
 to exceed 25 per cent, on the money invested. I should be 
 pleased to go before a committee, representing our interests, 
 and at least think that we should, for the amount of money 
 invested in the plate-glass business, have a representative at 
 said hearing. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. D. Mitchell, President, Chattanooga Plow Company, 
 Chattanooga, Tenn. 
 
 Our country has fought out the question of patriotism and 
 won. As against segregation and human slavery the nation 
 decided for unity and liberty. But the battle is now on between 
 capital and labor. We call it commercialism. It is to decide 
 whether men or money shall rule. In the struggle we are nearly 
 forgetting that God rules. 
 
 We could find valuable lessons and precedents by studying 
 the history of empires that had the same experiences long ago 
 and have passed away, but we probably will not heed them. 
 History is repeating itself. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and a change from 
 politics to business. The Sherman Law should be made so 
 plain that a violator will know when he violates it. 
 
 S. D. Jones, President, Atlanta Stove Works, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the ruthless man- 
 ner in which trusts and combinations have handled commerce. 
 Remedial legislation is now well nigh impossible to be enforced 
 against 25 billions of trusts and combinations. The proper 
 thing to do is to remove the cause, which is the high tariff, and 
 then enforce the remedies. 
 
 It was said that in a certain institution for the insane they 
 had a large tank into which they turned a spigot of water and 
 set the patient to bailing it dry. The evidence of retuminjr 
 reason was that the patient would first turn off the spigot of 
 water flowing in. Now, the government should first turn off 
 the spigot and then bail the tank dry. 
 
69 
 
 G. D. Crabbs, President, The Philip Carey Manufacturing 
 Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 I favor repeal of the Sherman Law ; or, if it is to be amended, 
 it should permit the maintaining of reasonable prices, with 
 government regulation, by companies engaged in interstate 
 business. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, providing manufacturers and other industries 
 are given the same privilege of entering into agreements affect- 
 ing prices on their products, so as to permit the paying of a 
 reasonable interest on investment. I favor by all means a 
 national incorporation law, and a Federal license law, if there 
 is any way under a Federal incorporation law to prevent unjust 
 license fees and taxes among the several States. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not .unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. Disturbed business conditions are due, in 
 my judgment, to continual political agitation against railroads, 
 corporations, and big business interests. 
 
 United States Safe Company (E. P. Kennedy, Secretary), 
 Elizabeth, Pa. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions, in our opinion, 
 are caused by circumstances of long standing; which we believe 
 have resulted in too much to the few and too little to the many, 
 and we believe that the tendency is to rectify this situation. 
 
 We consider that the Sherman Law can remain as at present, 
 but that a Federal License Law should be enacted, and that all 
 corporations doing an interstate business should be required to 
 incorporate under a Federal law, and be subject to a department 
 at Washington similar to, or incorporated in, the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, or a Bureau of Corporations; that these 
 corporations should be under the immediate supervision of the 
 national government, the same as the railroads are as regards the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission; that all corporations, when 
 taking out a Federal license, should be required to show value, 
 and that no increase of indebtedness of any kind should be 
 made without the consent of the Supervising Bureau. 
 
 Edmund H. Sears, American Felt Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the tariff, corporation prosecutions, etc.. 
 have made everyone timid. All speculative buying of mer- 
 chandise for future requirements has stopped, and manufacturers 
 and distributors have been liquidating stocks without replenish- 
 ing. This has not been forced liquidation from over-expansion, 
 but slow liquidation from timidity. It has resulted in lowering 
 prices, and in reality has probably saved us from later forced 
 liquidation. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be replaced by an altogether new 
 law laying down clearly what is illegal. I favor national incor- 
 poration. 
 
70 
 
 McCrum-Howell Company, Manufacturers Boilers, Radiat- 
 ors, etc., and Vacuum Cleaning System, New York 
 City. 
 
 Too much political haranguing by those who don't know; 
 loo much muckraking for six years past; too much magazine 
 poison from the pens of those who don't know; too much envy 
 and jealousy aroused thereby; too much suspicion and distrust 
 of public men; too much "hanging back" to see what is going 
 to happen; too much prosecution under the Sherman Law; 
 not enough confidence in the present or future to lead one to 
 undertake anything, big or little all tend to cause business 
 disturbance. There has been an attempted national and State 
 moral housecleaning, and the dust from the vigorous sweeping 
 has not yet settled. Judge Gary has the best ideas and shows 
 the highest type of good sense, good business morals and good 
 business statesmanship. He is hampered by the present agita- 
 tion which is kept up by those who don't know and could not 
 improve on his ways. 
 
 The Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company, New York. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the tariff, uncertainty as to the effect of 
 changed political control in Congress, approach of the Presi- 
 dential election, uncertainty of the ultimate application of the 
 Sherman Law, especially as affecting minor trade associations 
 as distinguished from large holding companies and mergers 
 all tend to disturb business conditions. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to define with reason- 
 able clearness, either the things forbidden, the things permitted, 
 or both ; preferably by a new act defining the intent of the Sher- 
 man Law, leaving the original act untouched. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, within 
 reasonable limits. 
 
 We are ready to give serious and careful consideration to a 
 national incorporation law, and to the plan for an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, when formulated. 
 
 W. A. B. Dalzell, President, Fostoria Glass Company, 
 Moundsville, W. Va. 
 
 Business this year is in good condition, except where it has 
 been disturbed by tariff agitation, or upset by threatened prose- 
 cution or actual prosecution by the Federal authorities. We do 
 business in every State of the Union. It has been excellent 
 and would continue all right if left alone. 
 
 Change the tariff, and values will be changed to meet the 
 change in tariff, The period of unrest while this change is being 
 effected is usually called a panic and blamed on the shortage of 
 money, etc. Merchants won't buy on a falling market. Manu- 
 facturers can't operate long unless they sell their goods. When 
 they quit manufacturing }^ou have an army of idle workmen 
 with no purchasing power. Consequently everybody liquidates 
 nothing else to do. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
G. W. Caswell, Treasurer, N. W. Manufacturing Company, 
 Manufacturers of Wagons, etc., Fort Atkinson, Wis. 
 
 The country is disgusted with political agitation. It is the 
 contention for office by too many of those who are unworthy to 
 hold office that is largely the cause of present disturbed condi- 
 tions in business. If Congress and the legislatures could adjourn 
 for a year or two, conditions would change for the better. The 
 fear of radical legislation, fostered and promoted by some cheap 
 politicians, is keeping the whole country unsettled. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, in order to have legitimate corpora- 
 tions. Why should Wisconsin have an obnoxious incorporation 
 law which can be avoided in our individual case by going a few 
 miles south to Illinois? 
 
 The intent and purpose of the Sherman Law seems clear, 
 and we believe the government is trying to maintain it. It 
 should not be repealed entirely, but should be amended so as 
 to provide that if a trust in any commodity does exist and is so 
 proven, let it alone as long as the prices are reasonable. Steel 
 and oil have never been so cheap and staple as to-day, and be- 
 cause the corporations controlling did not dare to ask high prices, 
 fearing legislation. 
 
 C. G. Freck, General Manager, The Pennsylvania Lumber 
 Company, Sheffield, Pa. 
 
 When the American Tobacco Company is restrained from 
 selling its own products direct to consumers and retail lumber 
 men are indicted for trying to prevent the manufacturers from 
 doing the same thing; when the governors of five States meet 
 with legislators and farmers to take action towards holding for 
 15-cent cotton, and objection is taken to " Gary dinners " for 
 the promotion of the steel trade, and lumbermen and other pro- 
 ducers are afraid to be seen in any numbers in the same city, 
 for fear of suits in "restraint of trade," the absurdity of the 
 whole thing is apparent. General uncertainty as to who will 
 be the next and other lack of knowledge as to what for, are the 
 causes just now of disturbed conditions. 
 
 My first choice is an Interstate Trade Commission; my 
 second, a national incorporation law, and my third, Federal 
 license. The Sherman Law should be repealed, or amended so 
 that it will specifically show what is or what is not criminal or 
 detrimental. 
 
 Meriden Cutlery Company, Manufacturers of Table Cutlery, 
 .Meriden, Conn. 
 
 We never can return to old methods. We fail to see where 
 the United Steel Co. or Standard Oil Co., or like combination, 
 have ever hurt the trade or the ultimate consumer. We think 
 it should be possible foi manufacturers to legally combine to 
 i*piilatp prices. 
 
72 
 
 Robert Chapman, President, Marlboro Cotton Mills, 
 McColl, S. C. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are the aftermath of the busi- 
 ness collapse of 1907, which, through the efforts of large capi- 
 talists, was remedied on a fictitious basis and not a sound one; 
 but the chief reason is the higher and consequently more ex- 
 pensive standard of living, as now desired by people in every 
 walk of life, from the poorest to the highest. Behind this, 
 again, is our now feeling with no uncertain effect the drift of 
 the past years of population from country to town, thus reduc- 
 ing the supply of food and clothing raw materials; the pass- 
 ing of our country from an agricultural to a manufacturing one. 
 
 The present unrest is world-wide and is based on the same 
 foundation, the stern fight of the common people for improve- 
 ment in their living every-day condition, the effect of the diffu- 
 sion of general knowledge. In time, by efforts wisely adopted, 
 affairs will finally right themselves, just as in the emerging of 
 the peoples of Europe from the dark ages into that of the 
 renaissance, the Elizabethan and Napoleonic. 
 
 The governments of the world must realize that they are the 
 instruments of humanity, and not humanity of them. AYe need 
 more righteousness and less greed. 
 
 I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 C. J. Felber, President, The E. R. Barron Company, La 
 Crosse, Wis. 
 
 The uncertainty of what each new Congress is going to do 
 and the fact that our present laws are liable to be changed 
 with every new Congress has much to do with disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. If Congress would adjourn for ten years we 
 would be the greatest business country in the world; we would 
 be a happy people; and even the politicians would then see 
 that we have too many laws and would insist on Congress ad- 
 journing ten years more. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable. Make it the law 
 for thirty years more ; then business interests would adapt them- 
 selves to it, and we would get rid of the continual unrest. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 I favor a national incorporation law. As to the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale, we endorse 
 the claims, for we know, the more a commodity is handled 
 the more the ultimate cost to the consumer who, after all, must 
 pay the increased expenses. I prefer Federal license for cor- 
 porations doing an interstate business, and government regula- 
 tion of capitalization; also publicity, to be applied to commer- 
 cial corporations. As to the Interstate Trade Commission, I 
 sometimes think we are getting too* many commissions which 
 are more an added expense than a benefit. 
 
73 
 
 Clinton Crane (C. Crane & Co., Manufacturers and Dealers 
 in Hardwood Lumber), Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 It is simply a mockery of good business sense the way things 
 have been handled in Washington in the last few years. We 
 have a committee of men up there spending lots of money try- 
 ing to find out why it costs more to live in this country than 
 in other countries, and there is only one answer to that, and it 
 is tariff. They add 35 per cent, and 40 per cent, to goods just 
 to keep out foreign goods; while on the other hand we should 
 be making goods for the world, as we can make twice the amount 
 of goods, or articles, than any other country can per man. Take 
 off the tariff and let the old competitive methods of business 
 return, and we shall have a glorious and prosperous country. 
 
 We are hardwood lumber dealers, and have been in the busi- 
 ness for forty years, and I think that the tariff has cost us 
 not less than $25,000 or $30,000 a year. For instance, we want 
 to buy some rope, we use a very large amount of that for 
 handling our timber in the river, now we pay about double the 
 amount the rope is worth, which would not be the case if there 
 was no tariff. Twenty years ago we could load and stock our 
 lumber at $5 per thousand, and to-day it costs about $12, over 
 half of that difference is caused by high wages and high living, 
 and I contribute that solely to tariff. Take off the tariff and 
 give us the world for our markets. The tariff on woolen goods 
 is simply outrageous and should be taken off, as well as on 
 steel and iron, which are the foundation of this country, also 
 on raw materials and manufactured goods. It would do no 
 good to take it off raw materials, if they do not take it off manu- 
 factured articles. The tariff on manufactured materials sup- 
 ports the trust; take that off and the trusts will not hurt us. 
 
 C. F. Bragg, President, N. A. Bragg & Sons, Iron and 
 Steel Merchants, and Irons Pulp and Paper Com- 
 pany, Bangor, Me. 
 
 I do not see why combinations should be prohibited to mer- 
 chants and manufacturers and allowed to farmers and trade 
 unions. Disturbed business conditions are due, in my opinion, 
 to a certain extent to supply and demand, and to a limited 
 extent to the uncertainties in regard to the interpretation of the 
 Sherman Law. The "reasonable" interpretation of the Sher- 
 man Law seems to be vague. The law ought to be amended only 
 so far as to make clear what is reasonable and unreasonable 
 restraint of trade. I am not in favor of attempting to return 
 to old competitive methods to the extent of preventing large 
 combinations, honestly capitalized and conducted. I favor na- 
 tional incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation, and publicity should be applied to commercial corpora- 
 lions. 
 
74 
 
 T. J. Breslin, Farmer, Manufacturer, Salesman and Member 
 of the Firm of A. & M. Karagheusian, Freehold, 
 N.J. 
 
 The high tariff is greatly to blame for the periodical depres- 
 sions in business. The high duties overstimulate business, and 
 consequently, when times are good, too much machinery is put 
 to work, and soon there is overproduction. The immediate 
 cause of the dulness now prevailing is the uncertainty as to what 
 is going to be done with the tariff. Everybody is waiting to see 
 what is going to happen in Washington. The States can and 
 should regulate matters of incorporation. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to permit combinations of business interests, 
 providing such combine makes for economy in production and 
 distribution, but not to create monopolies. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 Farmers should be permitted to combine to hold their crops for 
 higher prices, but they should not be permitted to combine to 
 restrict production. We will always have competition in farm 
 products. Ours being such a large country, there is no danger 
 of all the farmers combining. 
 
 E. O. Smith, Director in a Manufacturing and Jobbing 
 Corporation, Storrs, Conn. 
 
 The present situation is intolerable; but the way out is to go 
 forward. It is often better to push the arrow through than to 
 pull it out. The whole question is that of the capacity of the 
 people at large to control. If consolidated industry cannot be 
 made to serve American ideas, it must be replaced by some- 
 thing that will. But the next thing will be a new thing: So- 
 cialism more probably than a return to the day of small things. 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce; also constitutional changes, if necessary, to 
 permit the practically absolute control by the Federal govern- 
 ment of the organization and conduct of any corporation which 
 does interstate business. To deal with the exploitation of pro- 
 ducers and consumers, I favor the creation of administrative 
 bodies to restrain excesses, with restrictive right of appeal to 
 the courts. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 publicity should be applied to commercial corporations through 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Sieg Iron Company, Davenport, Iowa. 
 
 We favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. We believe in holding companies. We regard 
 the Sherman Act as sufficient to deal with unfair competition 
 and restraint of trade. Overcapitalization should be prohibited 
 by law, as the cause of a great deal of trouble. We favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
75 
 
 Edward E. Hughes, Vice-President and General Manager of 
 the Franklin Steel Company, Franklin, Pa. 
 
 To the repeal of the Sherman Law I say No. Add to it 
 government supervision the old common law visitation and 
 compelled publicity. If it would bring the proper results, let 
 us have an industrial commission. Except trade unions from 
 the Sherman Act? Most certainly not,, unless the party in 
 power wishes to tie up the labor vote, and make the law un- 
 constitutional by favoring a special interest. I am not pre- 
 pared to say that a national incorporation law is necessary for 
 all corporations, but I think it would solve the difficulties of 
 the great combinations. 
 
 What causes disturbed business conditions? The continued 
 menace of political parties. Both parties have been playing 
 football with our industrial business in an effort to make a 
 "touchdown" for party advantage. Neither party seems to 
 care about the effect its kicking has on the ball (industrial 
 business) . 
 
 Personally speaking, I am glad to see the National Civic 
 Federation taking a hand in the great business issue. It's time 
 you did. I don't believe the populistic, radical, so-called 
 Progressives, have all the brains there is, or any monopoly of 
 virtue. I don't believe they have all the courage, although at 
 times it looks like it. I am prepared to help and to assist in the 
 trial of the case that will forever divorce business from politics, 
 and I think it time for all business interests to get together 
 and, figuratively speaking, take clubs, and every time they see 
 a La Follette head, smash it. 
 
 While we are waiting for your Federation to do something, 
 we each dav are taking into prayerful consideration what a 
 day may bring forth. 
 
 Geo. W. Tiedemann, Charles Tiedemann Milling Company, 
 O'Fallon, 111. 
 
 I think present disturbed conditions are due principally 
 to uncertainty as to tariff revision and as to the standing of 
 our larger corporations, the first unavoidable, the latter de- 
 plorable. The revision of the tariff and the regulation of busi- 
 ness that has been defying the law are always serious prob- 
 lems. When you add to the usual difficulties fche additional 
 handicap of mistrust of public officials due to -some unprin- 
 cipled public servants, it is not to be wondered that business 
 is thoroughly disturbed. I do not believe in muckraking as a 
 rule, but if we must rake, let us rake clean and restore pub- 
 lic confidence in our government, and let it be done as quickly 
 as possible. 
 
 In my opinion fche administration is handling the " trust " 
 and " tariff " question? satisfactorily. 
 
76 
 
 C. E. Van Zandt, Manufacturer of Collars and Cuffs, Troy, 
 N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law clear and workable? No! No! A 
 return to old competitive methods feasible ? No ! No ! Do 
 you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law ? Yes ; yes. If amended, 
 make it include without question the worst combination in ex- 
 istence, " The Labor Trust." Then make it plain what con- 
 stitutes a restraint of trade. Should trade unions be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act? . No. No. No. 
 Should combinations of farmers be rendered lawful? No. No. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. The trouble with business is, too much 
 Wickersham and his like; too many lawyers in Congress; not 
 enough business men; too much catering to popular favor by 
 politicians; too much muckraking for magazine circulation; too 
 much leaning to labor legislation; too much tariff tinkering. 
 Any new laws, or interpretation of laws now on the statute 
 books and not clear, should not be retroactive. 
 
 H. A. Holder, Sales Manager, The Turner Tanning Ma- 
 chinery Company, Peabody, Mass. 
 
 Lack of appreciation of the intent of the Government in 
 its efforts to enforce the Sherman Law, and panic on the part 
 of stockholders in combinations which depend upon monopoly 
 to maintain their position, are the more evident causes of busi- 
 ness disturbance. 
 
 The greatest fundamental cause both of trusts and the dis- 
 turbed business conditions at present is the fact that the bank- 
 ing business in this country is in the hands of inexperienced 
 people, incapable of properly protecting their clients. I regard 
 the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and that it does not 
 need amendment; but I think a national incorporation law, 
 if not intended as a limitation to the Sherman Law, but simply 
 as a convenience for the operation of corporations, might be 
 beneficial. 
 
 William B. Wialker, President, American Thermos Bottle 
 Company, New York. 
 
 I do not believe the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, to 
 be clear and workable. Return to old competitive methods is 
 not feasible. Failing of repeal, the Sherman Law should be 
 amended so as to encourage business interests to continue their 
 efforts to compete with low-labor-cost countries. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Per- 
 mit farmers and laborers the use of combination, within certain 
 limitations. 
 
 I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inte- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now en- 
 joyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. 
 
77 
 
 O. W. Robertson, President, Union Lime Company, Mil- 
 waukee, Wis. 
 
 The fear on the part of the investor that if he parts with 
 his money he parts with all control of it, is the chief cause 
 of business disturbance. 
 
 A great abuse that seems to be continually increasing is 
 the time and expense imposed upon corporations, especially 
 of preparing innumerable statistical reports covering all sorts 
 of subjects for all sorts of boards and commissions, both Fed- 
 eral and State. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made clear and definite as to 
 what is lawful and what is unlawful, so that one may invest 
 or not, as his judgment dictates. The railroads should be. 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions and combina- 
 tions of farmers should be treated precisely the same as other 
 combinations, but I doubt that politicians will have the cour- 
 age to so treat them. 
 
 Thos. L. Sturtevant, President Sturtevant Mill Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission with powers reaching only 
 corporations of a specified large capital. Mackraking and the 
 fear of radical legislation and the possibility of tariff changes 
 that cannot be foreseen and provided against are disturbing 
 business. The Sherman Law should be amended only to make 
 officers of corporations violating the law more clearly responsible 
 criminally. We must have equal rights for all; punishment 
 for all law-breakers; laws made clear and understandable; and 
 trials thereunder conducted promptly. Prompt justice is more 
 needed than more laws. Crime has caused less suffering than 
 lawyers; suits at law are more dreaded by those who know 
 than trusts or tariff. Law reform is more needed than busi- 
 ness. 
 
 William L. Lyall, Treasurer, Brighton Mills, Passaic, N. J. 
 
 I would consider it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods in business if legislation can be framed to prevent 
 destructive competition. I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 Law, and I don't know that it is necessary to amend it. Bail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 I think a national incorporation law might be well to meet cer- 
 tain conditions. An Interstate Trade Commission might be an 
 excellent thing if it did not interfere with proper competition. 
 
 There seem to be various causes for the present business con- 
 dition political, social, financial and industrial. While I think 
 a higher conception of their duties on the part of all, and proper 
 education on those lines, would remove most of our troubles. 
 
78 
 
 Theodore F. Thieme, President Wayne Knitting Mills, Fort 
 Wayne, Ind. 
 
 The tariff should be taken out of politics and put in the 
 hands of a permanent tariff commission. It is strictly a busi- 
 ness proposition and should be put under a business system. 
 The trusts must be regulated, not obliterated. The present 
 Sherman Law is wholly inadequate for accomplishing this. It 
 is a crying injustice to the people of the United States to allow 
 individuals, through favoritism or lack of control, to form a 
 monopoly, issue enormous amounts of watered stock, and force 
 the people to pay dividends and interest on it. On account 
 of the enormous amount of capital invested in such unfair 
 and illegal organizations throughout the country, any attempt 
 on the part of the government which threatens their existence 
 produces immediate and widespread disturbance, and affects 
 legitimate business as well; therefore it should be stopped. 
 I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 M. A. Wertheimer, President, Thilmany Pulp and Paper 
 Company, Kaukauna, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, and a national incor- 
 poration law, with proper regulation, enacted. Business dis- 
 turbance is due to the enforcement of antiquated laws which 
 will ultimately only be repealed to make way for laws fitting 
 the present conditions. The same time or less spent in mak- 
 ing proper new laws now would remedy present disturbed con- 
 ditions largely. 
 
 With a trade commission appointed I see no need for a 
 Federal license law; the same if with national incorporation 
 law. I cannot answer concerning an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission until its principal duties are outlined. It could hardly 
 work as the present Interstate Commerce Commission works, 
 as the character of work is different. With national incorpora- 
 tion and the important things to be regulated made a part of 
 the charter, I think a commission or a bureau would be 
 necessary to enforce the law and give advice. 
 
 C. W. Dumont, President, American Law Book Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 I regard the disturbance of business caused by the suits 
 against the trusts as a necessary evil, which will ultimately 
 work to the benefit of the public. I believe the Sherman Law 
 to be clear and workable, and I also consider it feasible to return 
 to competitive methods in business. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, and combinations of 
 farmers to secure reasonable prices for their crops should be 
 lawful. Trade unions should not be oxcepted from the opera- 
 lion of the Sherman Act. 
 
79 
 
 Frederic B. Hawes, Treasurer, Acushnet Saw Mills Com- 
 pany, New Bedford, Mass. 
 
 It would seem the height of folly to continue the present 
 destructive methods,, with no apparent good constructive ends in 
 sight. It would seem that anyone could perceive that indus- 
 tries can be more cheaply and advantageously handled by con- 
 solidation than by hundreds of small competing concerns dupli- 
 cating expenses. The only thing that should be stopped is the 
 unjust methods of some combinations and small individuals as 
 well. It is useless to expect the only people who have the money 
 and the ability to handle the industries of the country to proceed 
 under the present uncertainty and hostility of the government, 
 whose unreasonable interference with the class of people who can 
 manage and foster the industries of the country is the cause 
 of present disturbance. The Sherman Law ought to be re- 
 pealed. 
 
 Allen Merrill Rogers, Chairman, H. A. Rogers Company, 
 Railway, Mill and Mining Supplies, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, but if it is to be 
 amended, the conspiracy clauses in reference to combinations 
 should be wiped out. Let combinations be governed by a Gov- 
 ernment Commission or Commissioner, in the same way that 
 national banks are governed by the Treasury Department. Rail- 
 roads should be permitted to make agreements affecting rates, 
 but the Interstate Commerce Commission should not be allowed 
 to lower any of the present freight rates. Trade unions should 
 not be excepted from the Sherman Act, as they are the worst 
 trust in the world. Combinations of farmers should not be 
 allowed to in any way impede the laws of supply and demand, 
 as we consider corners in food products or in growing crops to 
 bo detrimental to the welfare of the general public. 
 
 Charles K. Eagle, J. H. & C. K. Eagle, Silk Manufacturers, 
 New York. 
 
 Stock jobbers dealing in Avatered securities versus muck- 
 rakers; our unfortunate monetary system, and the mixing up 
 done by so many lawyers in public affairs, all tend to create 
 confusion in business. Railroads, express companies and tele- 
 graph companies should be made to compete and stop their 
 speculating in stocks. " Should railroads be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission ? " No I Make them compete openly. 
 " Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act ? " No ! ! ! " Should combinations of farmers to 
 restrict production or to hold a crop for higher prices be ren- 
 dered lawful ? " No. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 1-V< loral license and an Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
80 
 
 P. A. Brown, Manager, Lynn Wood Heel Company, Lynn, 
 Mass. 
 
 Organized labor wanting too much for their services is 
 largely responsible for the trouble in business. The middle- 
 men should be cut out. Some corporations appear to control 
 prices which are higher than necessary to insure a reasonable 
 profit. Too much protection to cotton and woolen industries 
 is also a disturbing element. In New England farms are not 
 worked near anything like their capacity. Farm life is not 
 attractive to the young. Finally, we are all living too high, 
 but no one seems to wish to live more economically. The sen- 
 timent seems to be that it is all right for the other fellow, but 
 not for me. The Sherman Law should be amended. There 
 should be a plan to license or regulate in some way large cor- 
 porations and, at the same time, to prevent them from oppress- 
 ing the people. A jail sentence for violators of this law ought 
 to" be included. Cut out the fines; they can too well afford 
 to pay for that form of license. Combinations of farmers 
 should not be rendered lawful under the Sherman Act, but the 
 farmers should operate co-operative markets in every city. They 
 are robbed by the commission men. The farmer doesn't get 
 what he should, and the consumers pay too much. I favor a 
 Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commission, but 
 we are not yet ready for a national incorporation law. 
 
 John Foster Company, Manufacturers of Shoes, Beloit, Wis. 
 
 The constant crowding up of labor prices by trade unions 
 is the first cause of business disturbance. Excessive advertis- 
 ing has had a very marked effect on cost of production. The 
 exacting demand of the public that every kind of merchandise 
 shall be expensively prepared is hard on the manufacturer. 
 Laws lessening the hours of day labor by all classes of labor 
 weigh heavily on employers. The continual agitation by poli- 
 ticians inciting employes to demand more of their employers 
 and give less has helped to bring about high prices and con- 
 sequent dissatisfaction. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 W. T. Lewis, Mitchell-Lewis Motor Company, Racine, Wis. 
 
 If the tariff and finances were eliminated from political 
 influences and placed in the hands of a non-political commis- 
 sion, made up of practical and able business men, lawyers 
 and bankers, whose duties should be to investigate cost of pro- 
 duction of all articles made abroad, as compared with the 
 domestic, as the present commission have done, we trust, and 
 recommend a protective tariff based thereon, to Congress, and 
 likewise a banking system such as Aldrich plans, in our judg- 
 ment the disturbance of business would be reduced to a mini- 
 mum. I am for a national incorporation law. 
 
81 
 
 William Gammell, Cotton Manufacturer, Providence, R. I. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. It is not 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods in business. I 
 should favor a repeal of the Sherman Law if the political situa- 
 tion made that action possible. I favor amending the Sherman 
 Law, making it less ambiguous as to what is monopoly and 
 what acts constitute restraint of trade. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 " Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act? ".I should prefer not, but politics may 
 require it in order to secure a passage of any bill. 
 
 " Should combinations of farmers, either to restrict produc- 
 tion or to hold a crop for higher prices, be rendered lawful un- 
 der the Sherman Act?" I see no reason why farmers should 
 be treated differently from manufacturers. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license 
 law. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission in a general way, 
 but the question admits too wide a construction for me to 
 answer positively. 
 
 Among the causes of disturbed business conditions might 
 be named fear of too radical a revision of the tariff, uncertainty 
 as to meaning of Sherman Law and the general tone of the 
 speeches in both houses of Congress during the extra session. 
 The cotton manufacturing business during the past year has 
 been further complicated by the wide fluctuations in the price 
 of the raw material. 
 
 Newport Rolling Mill Company, Newport, Ky. 
 
 Make the Sherman Law clear to all manufacturers, so that 
 they can operate without political interference. We would 
 prefer, however, that it should be repealed. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act 
 most emphatically not ; neither should combinations of farm- 
 ers. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 Overproduction principally and political interference are the 
 disturbing elements in business. We favor a Federal license 
 law. 
 
 Albert N. Chambers, Walker & Chambers, Heating Contrac- 
 tors, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended, making it lawful 
 and possible for combinations of capital and manufacturers to 
 arrange business so as to earn and return a fair profit. Present 
 disturbed conditions are brought about by politics and by too 
 many people trying to do too much business on too little capi- 
 tal. I favor a national incorporation, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
S. W. Utley, Vice-President, Detroit Steel Casting Com- 
 pany, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 It is no more feasible to return to old competitive methods 
 in business than it is to return to old-time methods of manu- 
 facturing without the use of machines. The Sherman Law 
 should be repealed and a law substituted in accord with modern 
 conditions. The railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. So-called competing lines should be abolished and 
 combinations effected to reduce operating expenses. As to trade 
 unions and combinations of farmers, if it is unlawful for cor- 
 porations to unite into trust and to control prices, it is unlaw- 
 ful for laborers to unite to control the labor market and for 
 farmers to unite to control the price of wheat by controlling 
 the marketing of the supply. I favor a national incorporation 
 law. Disturbance in business is due, first, to an attempt by the 
 railroads to influence public opinion and decrease adverse agi- 
 tation by refraining from buying. After this came the feeling 
 that no man knows just how business can legally be done so 
 far as the large corporations are concerned. 
 
 John J. Amory, Gas Engine and Power Company, Morris 
 Heights, N. Y. 
 
 The jolt of realization following universal extravagance, 
 State and civic: the unrest of labor, due to the high cost of 
 living and comparatively low wages, and political agitation are 
 the causes of disturbed business conditions. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, if one could be drawn for interstate busi- 
 ness. The Sherman Law should be amended if it can be made 
 " clear and workable." Kailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, and the Attorney- General should 
 be requested to make " recommendations." To permit combina- 
 tions of farmers would be " class legislation," 
 
 S. H. McVitty, General Manager, Leas & McVitty, Inc., 
 Tanners, Salem, Va. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable and should be 
 repealed or amended only to give place to a national incorpora- 
 tion law. I regard it as feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods if the trust officers are willing. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, my next choice being Federal license. I do 
 not believe an Interstate Trade Commission necessary, provided 
 fines and imprisonment are imposed for violations of the exist- 
 ing law. The supply and demand sufficiently account for any 
 business disturbance. 
 
S3 
 
 Ashley & Bailey Company, Silk Manufacturers, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, or amended to de- 
 termine whether a trust is a conspirator or a legitimate factor, 
 void of absolute monopoly. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act; they are the violators and stop at nothing to elimi- 
 nate competition, even to death. 
 
 What we need to-day is education along the lines in which 
 your questions are drawn. Personally, I might say that I am 
 not a believer in competition, neither am I a believer in con- 
 spiracy that will make life a hardship to any class. I am a 
 believer in accommodation and trusts. They have come to stay, 
 just the same as labor organizations, and will stop at nothing 
 to eliminate competition, as you can see by the evidence of trials 
 that are going on from day to day. The country needs a prac- 
 tical law one that can be understood and that can draw the 
 line between trust and conspiracy. 
 
 The P. Hayden Saddlery Hardware Company, Columbus, 
 Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to allow certain 
 agreements to be entered into between producers, so as to main- 
 tain prices on a paying basis and do away with ruinous com- 
 petition, all agreements to be subject to inspection and to 
 revision by the government if the prices are exorbitant. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the future of business, largely brought 
 about by the hostile attitude of the government relative to all 
 combinations of business, whether in restraint of trade or not, 
 has caused a deeply unsettled feeling in business. Combina- 
 tions should be fostered by the government under proper super- 
 vision, and price agreements allowed (as in other countries). 
 An effort should be made by the government to build up profit- 
 able manufacturing, rather than encourage ruinous competition, 
 which seems to be the aim at present. We favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 A. Spies Lumber and Cedar Company, Menominee, Mich. 
 
 We do not want any overlarge aggregations of capital con- 
 trolling any line of business, Some of the advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large scale exist; and some, do 
 not. Overlarge corporations prevent others from going int<* 
 business. The Sherman Law is clear and workable. We con- 
 sider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. We 
 favor a national incorporation law. The L T nited States Steel 
 Company and trusts generally arc the causes of disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. 
 
84 
 
 E. R. Darlington, President, E. R. Darlington Lumber Com- 
 pany, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The unsettled feeling in business is due to the fact that we 
 have on our statute books, both State and national, drastic laws 
 that neither prevent nor cure the so-called trust evil, but which 
 give the power to our different State and Federal authorities 
 to attack most any group or line of business they may deter- 
 mine on. Our anti-trust laws should be modified to meet mod- 
 ern conditions. Business men must be permitted a reasonable 
 amount of agreement among themselves, otherwise competition 
 becomes a fierce warfare, and the entire country suffers. Under 
 a free government a system of espionage, such as has grown up 
 in our executive and administrative departments, is repugnant. 
 The demand for an investigation should come from the parties 
 who are supposed to be injured, and the proceedings should be 
 conducted on lines similar to the law recently passed by Canada. 
 This eliminates politics and personal influence and gives every- 
 one a square deal. 
 
 James Harrison Wilson (ex-Officer, Army), Engineer, Con- 
 tractor and Railroad Manager, Wilmington, Del. 
 
 An Interstate Trade Commission would perhaps be a fail- 
 solution of existing difficulties. The present disturbed business 
 conditions are due to the too frequent interference of the gov- 
 ernment with the machinery of business, combined with the 
 gabble and intrigue of the common politicians and demagogues. 
 I regard the so-called trust as a natural and necessary evolu- 
 tion from the private individual and family group, which for- 
 merly carried on all business of production and distribution, 
 through the corporation, to the combination of corporations, 
 into larger ones or trusts. The great corporation or trust seems 
 to be necessary for the control of sufficient capital to carry on 
 the great business of the world in these days of steamships, 
 railroads, telegraphs, telephones and peace. They should be 
 regulated, not destroyed. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
 William W. McAlpin, Paul Smith's, New York. 
 
 The socialistic attitude of those looking for public notice, 
 and the tendency to destroy those industries which built up the 
 country; the unreasonable demands of labor unions, to which 
 the American laborer is more of a slave than the negro was 
 previous to 1860, are the causes of disturbed business condi- 
 tions. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. A return to old 
 competitive methods is not feasible. Too many incompetent 
 men start in business with insufficient capital, which leads to 
 over-extended credit and a sacrificing of stocks, which is dis- 
 astrous and in no sense competitive. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission, with modifi- 
 cations. 
 
W. T. Archer, President Sheffield Steel Range & Stove 
 Company, Sheffield, Ala. 
 
 Political agitation and destructive legislation are chiefly 
 responsible for disturbed business conditions. Eegulation is 
 necessary, but is not accomplished by " playing-to-the-gallery " 
 methods, and at present the cure is worse than the disease. A 
 presidential election every seven years, with no chance of re- 
 election, and a better representation of business men in the 
 legislative bodies would help to attain stability in business. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended in the way of eliminating 
 some of the bad features which have become apparent to the 
 government and public, but particularly in wording it so that a 
 definite, clear, fixed law, clear of interpretation, is had. Kail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 I favor a national incorporation law, but cannot reply as to an 
 Interstate Trade Commission without more details as to pro- 
 posed workings. 
 
 Lovell & Buffington Tobacco Company, Covington, Ky. 
 
 Combinations of capital are necessary to do things that indi- 
 vidual capital cannot do. The trouble with too many of our 
 combinations is that they are incorporated under improper 
 lines and given powers no corporations should have. Disturbed 
 business conditions are due to the habit the American people 
 have of overdoing things. Stock gambling and speculation, 
 we think, have also had a good deal to do with it. An Inter- 
 state Trade Commission might be a good thing. We favor a 
 national incorporation law and a Federal license law. The 
 Sherman Law did not seem to work in the case of the American 
 Tobacco Company. We do not favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 Law, however, and are not prepared to suggest how it should 
 be amended. As to old competitive methods, when we have 
 no competition at all we will have socialism or revolution. 
 
 Bissell's, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be so plain and understandable 
 that an honest man engaged in business could keep within its 
 limits. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law, if it is sane and fair ; 
 a Federal license law also, if it is equitably drawn. 
 
 The apprehension occasioned by the government's prosecution 
 of the trusts and the fear of just what will happen next are, in 
 our opinion, chiefly responsible for the present disturbed condi- 
 tions of business. So too, in our judgment, to subject the coun- 
 try and its great commercial interests to a political scramble 
 every four years is a colossal economic mistake. We believe it 
 would be much better for the country if the President were 
 elected for six or eight years, limiting his incumbency to one 
 term. 
 
86 
 
 W. Smith Grubber Company, Manufacturers of Stump Pul- 
 lers, La Crescent, Minn. 
 
 Business is disturbed, so far as there is any disturbance,, 
 by perfectly natural causes, the same being apparent in all na- 
 tions which are working out the problem of industrial develop- 
 ment. And while these disturbances seem to follow periods 
 of great progress, the fact remains that they are growing less 
 disastrous a sign filled with hope for the future. The Sher- 
 man Law has not been made clear and workable. The devil 
 himself, if he could read, could not understand it. It is not 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods. The growth of 
 civilization has been from individual to collective effort. The 
 Sherman Law ought to be repealed, as it is a restraint on 
 progress and has no plaec in this age. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, but not an Interstate Trade Commission. We 
 have too many commissions now. 
 
 A. J. Murray, Treasurer, Cortland Carriage Goods Com- 
 pany, Cortland, N. Y. 
 
 Present business conditions are the after-results of too great 
 prosperit}^, which has brought along with it excesses in politics, 
 labor organizations, business organizations and individual habits. 
 It seems necessary to have a national incorporation law that 
 might be used when desired, but would not be compulsory. 
 We do not favor a compulsory Federal license law, but should 
 be in favor of a law so advantageous as to be desired rather 
 than forced. An Interstate Trade Commission is the logical 
 solution of our present business troubles. 
 
 The Sherman Law is susceptible of being interpreted very 
 differently for different purposes, and should be repealed. It 
 would not be feasible to return to old competitive methods 
 without great hardship to labor and capital. 
 
 J. T. Howard, President, Dallas Cotton Mills, Dallas, Texas. 
 
 This is a period of readjustment both as to ideas and prices. 
 The old manner of doing business in small units and with 
 fierce competition has been outgrown, but the public generally 
 and the legislators have not yet been able to adjust themselves 
 to the new basis. 
 
 Prices have grown steadily higher for most commodities, 
 mainly due to increase in stock of gold, and salaries and 
 incomes have not yet been adjusted to the new standard. 
 
 I think a national incorporation law defining illegal prac- 
 tices, as permitting agreements when not unreasonable, requir- 
 ing a copy of all such agreements to be filed at Washington 
 and forbidding watering of stock, would help the present situa- 
 tion immensely, especially if coupled with a judicious and fair 
 revision downward of the tariff. 
 
87 
 
 John Sherwin, President, E. P. Sedgwick, Secretary and 
 Treasurer, Chicago Hardware Foundry Company, 
 North Chicago, 111. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions are, first, the 
 railroads' policy of resistance to government control; second, 
 unbusinesslike administration of the government; third, un- 
 certainty of corporations and association's, caused largely by 
 that unbusinesslike administration of the government. We 
 favor a national incorporation law. As to an Interstate Trade 
 Commission, we would say yes, if properly organized and em- 
 powered. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed, or else it 
 ought to be amended; but we doubt whether lawyers and poli- 
 ticians, seeking only their own advancement now in Congress, 
 are capable of or willing to enact a clear law. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 C. H. Draper, Manufacturer, Hopedale, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Act should be repealed, or amended so as to 
 point out definitely what is lawful, at the same time leaving 
 it so that the advantages of great capital and complete organi- 
 zation shall not be lost. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission if they 
 do not have the power to make prices. I believe that prices 
 even of trust-made goods are determined by conditions more 
 than })j men. That a given article will make the most profit 
 for its seller at one definite price, and that if this price is either 
 raised or lowered, the market for it will be narrowed or ex- 
 tended, and in either case the profit will be less. 
 
 Present disturbance in business is caused, first, by the tariff 
 agitation and, second, by government prosecution of "big busi- 
 ness." 
 
 D. A. Gregg, Manufacturer, Nashua, N. H. 
 
 A national incorporation law would seem to be what is 
 needed. As to an Interstate Trade Commission, my view is that 
 common carriers should be under some other supervision than 
 State commissions. In my judgment, the high tariff and ex- 
 cessive protection long continued; politics and a monetary sys- 
 tem that is not adapted to the times, are responsible for present 
 business disturbance. 
 
 Farmers in the near future cannot combine to get more for 
 their crops than they ought to have. I cannot see why they 
 should not be allowed to restrict production. If they don't care 
 to raise potatoes, why should they be made to do it? The farm- 
 ers are spread over too much territory and their interests are 
 so varied that a combination would be short-lived. Keep the 
 middleman, the real combiner, out of the way. and supply and 
 production will properly regulate the market. 
 
88 
 
 The Peck-Williamson Heating and Ventilating Company, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Agitation against successful corporations is the chief cause 
 of business disturbance. Politics is at the bottom of it all. 
 Those in office are trjdng to make themselves popular enough to 
 be re-elected by tearing down any concern that has been success- 
 ful. Those out of office are pledging themselves to a similar 
 course if elected. These conditions have caused and are caus- 
 ing large corporations of all kinds not to go forward until the 
 agitation stops, so they can determine whether betterments and 
 extensions will offer reasonable returns for money thus expended. 
 We regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. We favor 
 a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 C. C. Smith, Union Steel Casting Company, Pittsburg, Pa. 
 
 Too much of a disposition on the part of politicians to curry 
 favor with voters, first, by sacrificing anything in which they 
 are not interested, in order to secure popular support, and, sec- 
 ond, by favoring conditions which are detrimental, because they 
 believe such a course will advance their selfish interests, are the 
 causes of such agitation and uncertainty as exists in business 
 circles. The Sherman Law is clear, but not workable. It should 
 be amended to permit combinations, subject to government 
 supervision. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. H. Worcester, President, Worcester Lumber Company, 
 Chassell, Mich. 
 
 Too much prosperity and exaggerated " get-rich-quickly " 
 methods, pursued by a few in the limelight, are the trouble with 
 business. We do not believe that the government should fix 
 prices for producers or manufacturers, but we do believe that 
 a national incorporation law, which will admit co-operation be- 
 tween parties in the same line of trade, subject tr. the regulation 
 of an industrial commission similar in powers to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, would allow trades to work without ruin- 
 ing themselves, but at the same time be controlled from squeez- 
 ing the public. 
 
 J. R. Watkins (Medical Company), Winona, Minnesota. 
 
 Political unrest and agitation; recent Supreme Court deci- 
 sions and pending cases; the fact that the crops of cereals are 
 below the average; also fear of unfavorable legislation on the 
 part of large interests all these causes tend to disturb business. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license law, 
 but not an Interstate Trade Commission. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. The Sherman 
 Law should be let alone. 
 
89 
 
 Anti-Kalsomine Company, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to prevent combina- 
 tions from restricting production and controlling prices. The 
 law should be so plainly worded that it could be easily inter- 
 preted. We favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Disturbed business conditions are largely due to 
 the hostile feeling expressed toward corporations or aggregations 
 of capita], in which no discrimination is made between those 
 doing a legitimate and those doing an illegitimate business. 
 The possible result of this may be legislation that will seriously 
 interfere with business and lead to considerable curtailment of 
 trade. 
 
 Alabastine Company, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 There seems to be much uncertainty and difference of opinion 
 in regard to the Sherman Law, as interpreted by the Supreme 
 Court; but it should not be repealed unless something better 
 can be substituted in its place. We favor amending the Sher- 
 man Law by making its provisions perfectly plain and impos- 
 ing no restrictions on account of large capitalization, except 
 those that would assure equal and fair treatment for all. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law. We pay a corpora- 
 tion tax and should have a national incorporation law that gives 
 the same advantages or inflicts the same hardships in one State 
 that it does in another. 
 
 Henry Goldwater, H. Goldwater & Co., Manufacturers 
 Children's Garments, New York City. 
 
 If a public service law were passed (as in many States) by 
 the general government,, so that the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission should have control of the issuance of stock of all cor- 
 porations, carriers and manufacturers, to prevent over-issue of 
 stock, there would be no trusts, and railroads would have to pay 
 dividends on actual cost, not on "water," consequently rates 
 could be lower, etc. In my opinion, every trust was formed 
 not to reduce cost, not to raise prices, but to sell a lot of wa- 
 tered stock. I favor a national incorporation law and Federal 
 license. 
 
 Charles H. Williams, President United States Rapid-Fire 
 Gun & Powder Co., Derby, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor a national 
 incorporation law. It might be possible for a carefully selected 
 committee of business men to frame laws that, while allowing 
 for economic combinations, would provide againsf oppressive 
 monopoly, such laws applying relatively alike to manufacturer, 
 merchant, common carrier and labor. The term " business " 
 men is applied in its broadest sense as against those not in touch 
 with actual conditions. 
 
90 
 
 John Calvin, Treasurer, Bonniwell- Calvin Iron Company, 
 Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable. 
 However, it should not be repealed, unless some better method 
 can be devised to control the evils it is intended to reach. The 
 Sherman Law, if amended, should be made so plain that it will 
 not take a Supreme Court to interpret its meaning. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor Federal license for companies doing an interstate busi- 
 ness, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The aggressiveness of the government in enforcing the laws 
 controlling corporations and the uncertainty of the larger cor- 
 porations as to what constitutes a violation of existing laws are 
 chiefly responsible for present disturbed business conditions. 
 
 F. B. W. Folsom, Manager, Charles L. Richardson & Co., 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable 
 and ought to be amended. I consider it feasible to return to old 
 competitive methods in business. Trade unions should be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the consolidation 
 of public service and other corporations, being merely another 
 name for stock watering. Prohibit the lease, sale, consolidation, 
 etc., of any and all corporations and dissolve into its units all 
 existing monopolies, especially railroads. 
 
 H. S. Abbott, Spencer & Abbott, Lumber, Stamford, Texas. 
 
 Until we learn that fewer laws and better laws is what we 
 need, just so long will we have this trouble with business. Rail- 
 roads should be left open to make their own rates, as long as 
 they do not discriminate. A farmer should have a right to fix 
 the price of his own product just the same as a merchant and 
 to put it at a price over the cost of production, so that he can 
 make a respectable living and pay his debts. I favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law. 
 
 C. F. Morse, President Kansas City Stockyards, Kansas 
 City, Mo. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused, partly at least, by 
 the uncertainty in the minds of business men as to what busi- 
 ness would be considered legal and what illegal, if prosecuted 
 as violating the Sherman Law. The effect of this uncertainty 
 on the large business concerns has, without doubt, affected all 
 business to some extent. A plain and explicit law in the place 
 of the Sherman Law and the adoption of a National Reserve 
 Association would go a long way toward restoring confidence. 
 
91 
 
 The Peerless Motor Car Company, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that we may know 
 by the. law itself what is lawful and unlawful, without the neces- 
 sity of a judicial inquiry. We favor a national incorporation 
 law, if optional. Interstate business conducted by corporations 
 organized under State laws should be possible, and should not 
 be made burdensome. We favor a Federal license law. As to 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, we do not favor such a body 
 if its powers are to be inquisitorial, and the right given to it to 
 fix prices. 
 
 Business lacks confidence in the honesty and intelligence of 
 our legislative bodies. We have too much ill-digested legisla- 
 tion; too much playing to the galleries. Business is threatened 
 by men who are lacking in judgment and experience, and who 
 are more interested in continuing themselves in office than in 
 serving the country. 
 
 H. F. Luetge, Sales Manager, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended only so far as to 
 simplify and make possible a uniform interpretation of the law. 
 Railroads should be permitted to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, with due regard to the short and long haul clauses. I 
 favor national incorporation, and Federal license only as a tax 
 in connection with national incorporation. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are due to a complete 
 absence of stamina and backbone of many public officials and to 
 an inordinate desire of those same public officials to play to the 
 gallery of so-called public opinion; also to an entire lack, seem- 
 ingly, of sane, clear and cool-headed thinking and action when 
 large business has been under discussion. 
 
 John B. Adt, Machine Manufacturer, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 '**- 
 
 Gambling in stocks and produce should be unlawful; fre- 
 quent agitation and demands in too short intervals by union 
 labor, increasing the cost of production and making cost un- 
 stable, and giving too short a notice after agreements are made 
 before changes go into effect, so that contracts under old con- 
 ditions could be completed all tend to disturbance in business. 
 It should be added that trusts and combinations are allowed 
 too short a time to readjust their conditions in accordance with 
 decrees of courts and the requirements of law, and this also has 
 an unsettling influence on business transactions. 
 
 W. M. Whaley, Roanoke Railroad & Lumber Company, 
 Norfolk, Va. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license for 
 a million or more of capital. I also favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The Sherman Law should be amended so that it 
 would be unnecessary for business men to consult lawyers as to 
 their responsibilities under that law. 
 
92 
 
 Jas. D. Hammett, President and Treasurer of Cotton Mills, 
 Anderson, S. C. 
 
 The country needs a long rest from agitators. When the 
 public comes to realize the motives of that class of men who 
 do not care what injury they cause, provided they are able to 
 grab the offices, less attention will be paid to the efforts of such 
 persons to climb to success over the ruin and disaster which 
 they have caused. We need and must have a large export busi- 
 ness in order to make the use of our resources which ought to 
 be made. As for the Sherman Law, I do not believe in jump- 
 ing from the frying pan into the fire. Therefore, I do not 
 believe in its repeal. We are gradually finding out what the 
 Sherman Law means and do not want to be started on the 
 same exploration again. 
 
 L. N. Littauer (Littauer Bros., Glove Manufacturers), New 
 York. 
 
 As to the causes of disturbed business conditions, extrava- 
 gance is one of them. Wages are too high living is too high. 
 1 do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, and I consider 
 it feasible to attempt to return to what are commonly known 
 as old competitive methods in business. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to provide Federal control of interstate 
 business with power to limit and determine competitive meth- 
 ods in business. I am for either a national incorporation law 
 or a Federal license law as can best meet requirements. I also 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 John H. Kirby, President Kirby Lumber Company, Hous- 
 ton, Tex. 
 
 I favor amending the Sherman Law so as to define and pun- 
 ish monopoly, but leaving the men who are managing productive 
 industry in this republic free to take the necessary steps for 
 the maintenance of fair prices for their products such prices 
 as will maintain a fair wage-scale and give some guarantee of 
 returns upon the capital invested. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the vagueness and 
 uncertainty of existing laws and to public fear of the politicians 
 who are construing them. 
 
 N. S. Everhard, President Ohio Match Company, etc., 
 Wadsworth, Ohio. 
 
 Uncertainty as to tariff legislation, uncertainty as to the 
 application of the Sherman Law and, most of all, persistent 
 newspaper misrepresentation are responsible for disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. The Sherman Law should be made definite 
 and clear, so that any business man can understand it. I favor 
 national incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 
93 
 
 Richard Hardy, Secretary, Dixie Portland Cement Com- 
 pany, Chattanooga, Tenn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should not be repealed entirely. My 
 ideas as to amendment are well put by ex-President Eoosevelt 
 in his recent " Outlook " article. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to trie Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission, and combinations of farmers 
 should be held lawful. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Dis- 
 turbed business conditions are due to uncertainty regarding the 
 interpretation of the Sherman Law and, also, to fear of un- 
 bridled competition, which is worse than restricted competi- 
 tion. 
 
 Henry D. Turney, President, The Columbus Gas and Fuel 
 Company, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 In my judgment present unsatisfactory conditions are due 
 to the provisions of a law unsuited to business conditions as 
 they at present exist. I favor incorporation under the laws of 
 the States in which business is carried on, and a Federal license 
 issued by an Interstate Trade Commission, which commission 
 shall regulate the volume and extent of the business of a cor- 
 poration without in any way controlling prices for its products. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 G. Heileman Brewing Company, Brewers, La Crosse, Wis. 
 
 The present unsatisfactory conditions in business are due to 
 too much monopoly. All business should be limited as to its 
 capacity; all speculation in food stuffs prohibited. The gov- 
 ernment should fix a price on all important commodities used 
 by the masses. How is it possible by honest means for a few 
 men to accumulate $100,000,000 to $150,000,000 in a life- 
 time? This is the cause of general depression. If continued, 
 there will be but two classes rich and paupers. We favor a 
 national incorporation law. Speaking of monopolies, we wish 
 to ask how it is possible that all bonding companies ask the 
 same rate unless they have an understanding? 
 
 R. T. Jones, The R. T. Jones Lumber Company, North; 
 Tonawanda, N. Y. 
 
 I believe that the Sherman Act has been sufficiently defined 
 to enable large corporations and business men to understand 
 its meaning, and that as soon as they begin to obey the law, 
 instead of evading it, conditions will adjust themselves. T 
 regard the Sherman. Law as clear and workable and that it is 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
94 
 
 J. B. Livingston, The Bridgeport By-Products Company; 
 also Manufacturers of Machinery, New Haven, Conn. 
 
 The " Interests " affected by the enforcement of the Sher- 
 man Law the same interests that caused the panic of 1907 
 are disturbing business. I favor the enforcement of the Sher- 
 man Law, regardless of whom it "hits." I also believe the 
 charges made by the government against the Steel Trust. I 
 believe in legislating against just such " watered stock " com- 
 binations as was formed in the organization of the Steel Trust. 
 I also believe in legislating against the bonding of properties 
 to their full value, and selling the stock to innocent persons 
 by banks and trust companies, knowing these persons depend 
 upon them for sound advice as to investments. I am most 
 decidedly in favor of a national incorporation law. 
 
 C. E. Collins, Cotton Mill Superintendent, Methuen, Mass. 
 
 Elections, of which we have too many, both State and na- 
 tional; tinkering with the tariff (a Tariff Commission is all 
 right if carried out honestly) ; wholesale attack by the govern- 
 ment on business; too many irons in the fire; long waits for 
 decisions; high cost of everything, largely due to the retailer 
 with unreasonable profits and labor unions with unreasonable 
 hours of labor, are the causes of business disturbance. I favor 
 a national incorporation law and a Federal license, if drawn up 
 by a commission of capable business men. A common-sense law 
 of some kind is needed in place of the Sherman Law as it is 
 now. 
 
 O. B. Oberstadt, Vice-President, The P. Schoenhofen Brew- 
 ing Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, on condition that State 
 laws be repealed and be superseded by national incorporation. 
 I also approve a Federal license law, provided all State license 
 laws be repealed. Business is at present almost panicky a con- 
 dition wholly due to the effort to enforce the Sherman Law. 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 approval and regulation of Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Lucien Wulsin, President, The Baldwin Company, Pianos, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The general business of the country is not in bad condition. 
 The people of the United States will benefit by a quiet and 
 steady recovery which is now in operation. The Sherman Law 
 appears to be clear and workable, and a return to old com- 
 petitive methods is feasible. The Sherman Law should not be 
 amended at this time. I see no objections at present to rail- 
 roads entering into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
95 
 
 R. R. Hammond, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed or radically amended. 
 An amendment should provide for fixing maximum prices by 
 a Government Commission of any corporation controlling over 
 60 per cent, of any necessity of life. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, but combina- 
 tions of farmers to restrict production or to hold a crop for 
 higher prices should not be lawful. The way for any individual 
 or set of individuals to engage in any lawful business should 
 always be left open and protected against coercive methods on 
 the part of competitors. 
 
 J. E. Corlett, Secretary and Manager Moresby Island Lum- 
 ber Company, Ltd., Seattle, Wash. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. It should 
 be amended so as to make violation, as interpreted by the Su- 
 preme Court, criminal and punishable by imprisonment. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 Farmers should be allowed to combine to secure fair prices for 
 their crops ; but trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act. Laws should be enacted provid- 
 ing for severe punishment by imprisonment for interference by 
 the organization, or individually, with any individual desiring 
 to work. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and Federal license. 
 
 
 
 W. B. Townsend, Little River Lumber Company, Towns- 
 end, Tenn. 
 
 We cannot expect to return to a lower plane with respect to 
 high cost of living, but must adjust economic conditions to 
 treat as necessities that which a short time ago were regarded 
 as extravagance or luxuries. The uncertainty as to what cor- 
 porations can legally do and the fact that justice in jury trials 
 is practically impossible are among the causes of disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. The Sherman Law should be amended to regu- 
 late corporations without destroying them. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Rumsey W. Scott, Local Manager, Otis Elevator Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 At present laws are not suitable for the conduct of business 
 as carried on to-day. The interpretation of these laws is too 
 indefinite, and there is naturally an unrest. I think we require 
 laws based on modern conditions and that are definite and under- 
 standable. We also require a change in the currency laws. 
 
96 
 
 A. M. Marshall, President, Marshall-Wells Hardware Com- 
 pany, Duluth, Minn. 
 
 The greatest menace to business at present is the possibility 
 of conditions similar to 1907, and we heartily approve of the 
 Aldrich plan, believing it reasonable and safe. 
 
 We believe in the general tariff board, and that any changes 
 made on their recommendations will be much less disturbing 
 to business than under the old way. which has caused, in our 
 opinion, many of our troubles. We think that the disposition 
 on the part of legislators to restrict and interfere with legitimate 
 business is the cause of much of the general unrest. 
 
 Speaking of our own northwestern section, all conditions for 
 prosperity seem to be good, yet it is qualified and held back by 
 the general conditions of the country. We favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles A. Russell, Irons & Russell Company, Manufac- 
 turing Jewelers, Providence, R. I. 
 
 I do not know of any business, no matter how small, but 
 aims, as far as it can, to do just the things that the Sherman 
 Law says are criminal. It seems to me the whole matter is a 
 question of degree. We all aim as near as we can to control, 
 and if we are well balanced, we are fair and just; if not, we are 
 exacting. I believe that the questions we have to meet can be 
 solved better by better enforcement of reasonable laws rather than 
 by more law and lack of enforcement. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law, the enactment of a national incorporation law 
 
 and the creation of an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 
 
 Edgar Woelfel, President, Woelfel Leather Company, 
 Morris, 111. 
 
 I favor the control of all corporations by commission or 
 comptroller, along the lines that govern national banks. I favor 
 the enactment of a national law restricting any corporation from 
 issuing stock for more than its intrinsic or physical value, so 
 that individuals buying such stock knoAV that it represents actual 
 value. In fact, I am in full accord with ex-President Roose- 
 velt's ideas as to control of corporations and trusts. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 C. E. Sheldon, President, The Whitman & Barnes Manu- 
 facturing Company, Akron, Ohio. 
 
 From the president down, no information can be had how 
 and in what way business can be legally handled, and this I 
 regard the main cause of business disturbance. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed and a new law enacted in accord with 
 modern conditions. I favor a national incorporation law and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
97 
 
 J. M. Taylor, President, Taylor Instrument Companies, 
 Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 The sudden attack upon certain highly organized industries 
 has thrown a cloud over all American industry. Managers are 
 preparing for the strain that may come. Magnitude seems to 
 be a great question. Are two teamsters one on each side of a 
 State line illegal if in combination to control the neighborhood 
 teaming? I favor national incorporation and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. I do not absolutely favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. It should be amended to make it clear that labor 
 is excepted and to state the size of the combination that is 
 illegal. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. Combinations of farmers, either to restrict pro- 
 duction or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not be lawful. 
 
 W. A. Crawford, Secretary, The Griffin Manufacturing 
 Company, Erie, Pa. 
 
 There is about as much competition in interstate commerce 
 now as there ever was, and therefore I do not consider it neces- 
 sary to reply further to the question as to old competitive meth- 
 ods. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, which has not been 
 made either clear or workable. As to railroads, present laws 
 compel them to maintain rates which beat any agreements they 
 could hope to make. Part of the present business disturbance 
 is due to the political agitation, but most of it is natural reac- 
 tion. I regard further legislation as unnecessary. There are 
 too many laws now. The Sherman Act works to the disadvan- 
 tage of small producers rather than of large combinations. 
 
 J. B. Finley, President, Colonial Steel Company, Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa. 
 
 I do not favor repeal of the Sherman Law, nor its amend- 
 ment at present. The Sherman Law is reasonably clear and 
 workable. As to railroads entering into agreements affecting 
 rates, they do so now. I do not favor national incorporation at 
 present, if at all ; nor Federal license, at present. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions are, lack of con- 
 fidence in values, occasioned by unreasonable interference with 
 business for political purposes, together with an increase of 
 productive capacity beyond the normal wants of the country, 
 and the possibility, if not probability, of tariff legislation in the 
 direction of free trade. 
 
 H. W. Corning, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made definite, as to what is 
 illegal or criminal, so that it will not interfere with conducting 
 a legitimate business, however large. We favor Federal license, 
 if it is optional, and if it negatives the laws of the various States 
 which hamper business. 
 
E. C. Roberts, Manufacturer, Davenport, Iowa. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused by (1) extrava- 
 gance, national and individual; (2) speculation in land; (3) 
 mediocre crops in 1911; (4) emigration of thousands of Amer- 
 ican farmers to Canada; (5) fanatical conservation policy, tying 
 up millions of acres of agricultural land in the United States, 
 and (6) too much legislation, national and State. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, if we can get a sane 
 and reasonable one, suited to modern conditions. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended to define what is and what is not 
 reasonable and unreasonable restraint. Trade unions should 
 possibly be executed from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 Combinations of farmers should be lawful if there is no " un- 
 reasonable restraint" or extortion. 
 
 Paul Wessinger, President, Henry Weinhard Brewery, 
 Portland, Ore. 
 
 Business disquietude is due to too much hysterical " re- 
 form"; also the uncertainty in which a number of honest and 
 successful business men found themselves in regard to what 
 they were permitted or expected to do under the " Sherman 
 Law," as recently interpreted by the courts. No doubt, also, a 
 number of illegal combinations and trusts were broken up and 
 deservedly so, but necessarily general business was somewhat 
 affected by the consequence of this. I am for a national 
 incorporation law. A way should be found, if possible, to per- 
 mit the formation of large corporations or combinations, with 
 the view to economy in production and distribution. 
 
 W. J. Snyder, Coal Operator and Manufacturer, Zeller, Me- 
 Clellan & Co., Brazil, Ind. 
 
 The times require some kind of combination as an economic 
 necessity. Such combination should protect the consumer 
 against unreasonable prices and, likewise, secure a reasonable 
 distribution of profits, in order that primarily a proper distribu- 
 tion of wealth may be secured, which is necessary if our country 
 shall endure. By legislation Congress should definitely out- 
 line the method, the details to be subject to the consideration 
 of some commission created for that purpose. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission for interstate business. 
 
 D. M. Cain, President, The Cain Mill Company, Atchison, 
 Kan. 
 
 Business uncertainty is due to the concentration of the 'bank- 
 ing interests into too few hands and a lack of confidence aris- 
 ing from panics in the past these panics being due to an 
 unstable currency, and as that trouble is still with us the busi- 
 ness world remains continually nervous, 
 
Edgar S. Cook, Warwick Iron and Steel Company, Makers 
 of Pig Iron for Sale in Open Market, Pottstown, Pa. 
 
 Distrust and uncertainty, fear of governmental interference 
 and possibly tariff changes make the trouble with business. 
 On the subjects of national incorporation and Federal license, 
 we are in line with the views expressed by President Roosevelt 
 in "The Outlook" of November 11, this year. We favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should be 
 repealed or amended along the lines indicated by the editorial 
 contained in "The Outlook," November 11, 1911, headed, 
 "' Wanted A Constitutional Policy." Railroads should be al- 
 lowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 B. G. Follansbee, President, Follansbee Brothers Company, 
 Tin Plate and Metals, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 If you amend the Sherman Law, you weaken it. I would 
 not amend the commandment : " Thou shalt not steal." If it 
 were amended, some prohibitions might be omitted just so if 
 the Sherman Law were amended. Delay in enforcing the Sher- 
 man Act is the chief cause of any business disturbance. That 
 act is becoming clearer and more workable every day. We 
 should have a national incorporation law, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. Railroads shoiild be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 Thomas J. Aycock, General Manager, Aycock Lumber Com- 
 pany, Aycock, Fla. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. I do not con- 
 sider it feasible to return to old methods of business. Poli- 
 ticians in the legislative halls who devote their time to petty 
 politics, instead of aiding the real statesmen to work in the 
 interests of the people, are chiefly responsible for business dis- 
 turbance. Trade unions and farmers should have the same treat- 
 ment as other organizations. It is to the public interest that 
 railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. 
 
 Samuel F. Haserot, The Haserot Canneries Company, 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the fact that busi- 
 ness men and business organizations are not able to plan for 
 3^ears ahead on account of tariff agitation, and the presentation 
 constantly of propositions due to political expediency. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended in order that there may be 
 no question about its proper construction. We favor national 
 incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
100 
 
 Julius F. Kurtz, Chairman and Treasurer, Emerson, Smith 
 & Co., Ltd., Emerson Saw Works, Beaver Falls, 
 Beaver County, Pa. 
 
 Whether the Sherman Law is or is not clear and workable, 
 as it has taken the courts twenty years to guess at it, a lay- 
 man's opinion would not be worth much. As to a return to 
 old competitive methods, we believe in fair competition, but not 
 in suppression. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. Trade unions should not be excepted from the opera- 
 tion of the Sherman Act. What is sauce for the goose should 
 be sauce for the gander. Farmers should be allowed to act 
 individual^ within the law, but not in combinations. 
 
 W. T. Turner, Secretary, Emporium Lumber Company, 
 Keating Summit, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to determine, if pos- 
 sible, what "in light of reason" means. The law is not now 
 clear and workable. We favor a national incorporation law 
 ;is to utility corporations, but are not so sure as to others. 
 The desirability of an Interstate Trade Commission depends 
 altogether on the personnel of the commissioners and their 
 powers. L T ncertainty as to what would come next in the way 
 of so-called progressive legislation has done much to unsettle 
 business. 
 
 Levi Smith, Oil Refining, etc., Warren, Pa. 
 
 The gang of monopolistic pickpockets has caused the pres- 
 ent disturbed business conditions. All the Sherman Law 
 lacks, in my judgment, is an imprisonment clause for offend- 
 ers. I would favor an imprisonment amendment. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act, for I consider them the most pernicious combination-mo- 
 nopolies on the face of the earth in some respects. I favor a 
 national incorporation law as I understand it; also Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission as I understand it. 
 
 Lucius W. Robinson, President, The Rochester and Pitts- 
 burgh Coal and Iron Company, Punxsutawney, Pa. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. If not repealed, 
 it should be amended so that business can be protected in a 
 proper organization and proper combination to insure free effort 
 to get proper returns on fair capitalization. I favor a Federal 
 license law. The present disturbed business conditions are due 
 to want of confidence as to getting fair returns under exist- 
 ing laws,, under which there has been a very serious overproduc- 
 tion. 
 
101 
 
 S. Isaacs & Co., Alfred F. Isaacs, Manufacturers and Im- 
 porters, Glues and Gelatines, 100 William street, New 
 York City. 
 
 Too much political agitation; too much interference with 
 business, particularly by self-advertising politicians, entirely un- 
 familiar with this subject, is causing such business disturbance 
 as exists. This country has thrived particularly in the last 
 fifteen or twenty years under the theory and practice of com- 
 binations and centralization, and despite agitators and ill-con- 
 sidered legislation, in business it will be as it has always heen 
 ' a survival of the fittest/' The Sherman Law should be 
 amended, so that business, large and small, would know what 
 is legitimate and what is not. 
 
 S. Bent & Bros., Inc., Manufacturers of Chairs, by C. L. 
 Bent, President, Gardner, Mass. 
 
 I believe that the general business is much better than our 
 public press indicates; that a great deal of the disturbance at 
 the present time is on Wall Street, caused by the speculators 
 taking advantage of the uncertainty of business caused by tariff 
 agitation. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to provide that corporations 
 exceeding a certain amount (say a million) should be under 
 national control and examination, similar to the control and 
 examination provided in the laws relating to national banks. 
 
 J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, Racine, Wis. 
 
 The government did not enforce the laws early enough to 
 prevent combinations that the Supreme Court has declared were 
 illegal combinations, resulting in the present agitation that is 
 affecting many lines of general business. 
 
 We believe large combinations can be formed and operated 
 legally, equitably and profitably under the Sherman Law. We 
 favor a national incorporation law. Our opinion as to an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission would depend largely upon the scope 
 of their authority. We have never gotten away from competi- 
 tive conditions. 
 
 Union Starch and Refining Company, Edinburg, Ind. 
 
 Business conditions are sound. The only real sufferers from 
 anti-trust agitation are the stock exchange speculators. Dull- 
 ness in many lines is caused by individuals who cannot afford 
 them, spending money for automobiles and sacrificing in other 
 directions. I favor a national incorporation law, regulating- 
 all corporations doing an interstate business, and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 making companies which do not establish monopolies lawful, 
 but subject to government regulation and supervision, and mak- 
 ing monopolies unlawful under any circumstance. 
 
102 
 
 Stephen Moore, President, Leatheroid Manufacturing Com- 
 pany; Treasurer, National Fibre Board Company, 
 and Treasurer, Mousam Manufacturing Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The tariff should not be tinkered, except once in ten years 
 (census years). Then we would know "where we were at/' 
 Uncertainty as to the tariff and the application of the Sherman 
 Law to business are chiefly disturbing business conditions. The 
 government should correct abuses, but should not attempt to 
 do business for the public. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, if properly framed. A Federal license law might interfere 
 too much with trade. The Sherman Law should define what 
 constitutes infringement, so that every corporation could know 
 just what is law. 
 
 H. L. Jackman, Manager of Western States Gas & Electric 
 Company, Eureka, Cal. 
 
 The trust question could be easily settled by throwing off 
 the tariff on all goods' whose prices are artificially stimulated by 
 a trust. Persistent meddling by government officials who do not 
 understand business -conditions is responsible for such disturb- 
 ance as now exists. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act. Neither should combinations of farmers. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Wakefield Baker (Pacific Portland Cement Company, Con.), 
 San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed; but if amended it 
 should be made specific, so that you will know what you can 
 and what you cannot do. Don't use general terms as, for 
 example, restraint of trade which even the courts do not know 
 the definite meaning of. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. If a national incorporation 
 law or a Federal license law would eliminate the Sherman Act 
 I would be in favor of either that will accomplish that object. 
 
 Albert Krell, President, The Krell Piano Company, Cin- 
 cinnati, Ohio. 
 
 I do not believe that the Sherman Act, as it is now inter- 
 preted, is made clear and workable, and I favor repeal of same 
 or amending same. If this continued agitation keeps up it will 
 end in ultimate disaster for the manufacturer, for the whole- 
 sale and retail merchant and everybody connected with busi- 
 ness. The farming interest should come under the head of the 
 Sherman Act, as it is as much a trade as manufacturing pianos 
 or any other article. 
 
103 
 
 H. H. King, President Sheffield-King Milling Company, 
 Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 Overproduction and natural reaction are the causes of busi- 
 ness disturbance. We have always had such reactions and always 
 will. Legislation might modify but never can eradicate causes 
 of that nature. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, but 
 I would want all cases decided by the entire commission and not 
 by one member. I also favor a national incorporation law and 
 Federal license. The Sherman Law should be amended to allow 
 combinations on prices that will give a fair return on capital, 
 subject to supervision by the government. So far as competitive 
 methods are concerned, we are there now in our business. 
 
 The Salt Lake City Brewing Company, Salt Lake City, 
 Utah. 
 
 What causes the present disturbed business conditions? Too 
 frequent presidental election. The President should have one 
 eight-year term, and not be eligible for a second term. We 
 have too many political grafters, too few men being in politics 
 for the good of their country, and too many for selfish motives 
 and the almighty dollar. The trust investigations cause much 
 fear and uneasiness, though made necessary by existing condi- 
 tions. The many dishonest men in business fear prosecution; 
 the honest men suffer with them as an inevitable result. 
 
 G. E. Crafts, Treasurer, Orono Pulp and Paper Company, 
 Bangor, Maine. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. Amendments should be made to the Sherman Law 
 that would make it lawful for manufacturers and people en- 
 gaged in general business to combine in protection of interests, 
 but not in such a way that any particular business which might 
 so combine could become a monopoly, in restraint of trade or 
 control of prices. Just how it would be possible to accomplish 
 is a great question. Do not feel capable of attempting an 
 answer. 
 
 C. K. Spaulding (The Charles K. Spaulding Logging Com- 
 pany), Portland, Ore. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, unless the government 
 shall come out strong and say what is wrong for large corpora- 
 tions to do. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law and 
 also an Interstate Trade Commission in case the Sherman Law 
 is repealed; otherwise not. The uncertainty as to the meaning 
 and results of the Sherman Law is in part the cause of disturbed 
 business conditions. 
 
104 
 
 C. F. Huhlein, President, B. F. Avery & Sons, Manufac- 
 turers Plows, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Unbridled competition, while theoretically advisable in this 
 country of wonderful incentive to operations on a tremendous 
 scale, means ultimately great waste, loss and confusion. We 
 have seen that following an era of fierce competition during 
 which the motto was " Competition is the life of trade/' the 
 competitors found themselves impoverished, weakened, or -worn 
 out to such a degree that they were naturally led to get to- 
 gether, so that the era of trusts and combinations was the reflex 
 wave that succeeded naturally the wave of unbridled competi- 
 tion. However repugnant it may be to the long cherished views 
 of many, it would seem now that the only solution of the 
 problem is to permit combinations of capital, and to put a 
 bridle upon the greed of persons and corporations alike by con- 
 fiscating for the Federal and State treasuries all profits earned 
 in any business beyond a reasonable or ordinarily liberal re- 
 turn on the investment. 
 
 Justus Collins, President, The Superior Portland Cement 
 Company ; Smokeless Fuel Company ; Superior Poca- 
 hontas Coal Company; Winding Gulf Colliery Com- 
 pany; Collins & Mayo Collieries Company, Cincin- 
 nati, Ohio. 
 
 If the country is to progress the demagogic lawyer-politician 
 who knows nothing of practical business must be relegated to 
 the rear. This class of politicians care nothing apparently 
 for the real good of the country, and are for any and every- 
 thing that will put them into office or notoriety. The ordinary 
 business of the country is now hampered by so many fool and 
 various laws in the different States, it is very difficult to al- 
 ways know whether you are within the law or not, if you are 
 doing a large interstate business. 
 
 Inman-Poulsen Lumber Company, Manufacturers, Port- 
 land, Ore. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to our antedeluvian 
 banking system, too many artificial or unnatural conditions, too 
 many combinations of capital as well as labor, the benefits of 
 which, if any, are entirely overestimated our "protective" 
 policy, too many people trying to live by their wits alone, too 
 many political quacks with their expensive cure-alls for the vari- 
 ous and sundry ailings that should be left to the rest cure, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 J. E. Friend, President, Nordberg Manufacturing Company, 
 Engines, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law if not repealed should be amended, so 
 as to give us a law similar to the laws of the great commercial 
 nations of Europe. 
 
105 
 
 Jacob Elsas, President, Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, 
 Atlanta, New York City, St. Louis, New Orleans and 
 Dallas. 
 
 Too much politics into which business has been needlessly 
 injected; fear of loss incident to attack on corporations having 
 numerous stockholders; over-production in this country and 
 neglect to secure an outlet in the foreign markets; disturbed 
 conditions, politically and otherwise, in Europe and Asia, all 
 contribute to unsettle the business conditions here. The Sher- 
 man Law should be made clearer and should permit reason- 
 able trade agreements so as to avoid such competition that 
 finally eliminates the small OBerator and results in monopoly. 
 I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 The Queen City Printing Ink Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 We have too many threats of investigation, without the same 
 interest being shown to find a way to help, and make possible 
 the things which would aid the country at large to progress 
 and prosperity, and which would protect legitimate corpora- 
 tions., however large, in doing business that is of advantage to 
 the masses of people. I never owned any Standard Oil Com- 
 pany's stock, yet I feel that they did more good to the country 
 at large than harm. This is a large country, and we need large 
 concerns and large combinations, with the capital which they 
 ran command, to do the things which the country needs. 
 
 James P. Gardner, President Morgan-Gardner Electric 
 Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Return to old competitive methods is absolutely impossible. 
 The Sherman Law should provide for government regulation. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor 
 a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. Uncertainty in regard to the government position relat- 
 ing to business agreements is the chief cause of business dis- 
 turbance. 
 
 J. J. Spalding, Secretary, Atlanta Water and Electric Power 
 Company, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 In all interstate corporations of a public service nature or 
 like corporations where favoritism or discrimination in treat- 
 ment of the public is possible, I favor relying upon regulation 
 of charges and service and permitting combination; in all other 
 interstate corporations I favor limiting the amount of capital- 
 ization and preventing combination. The right of individuals 
 to own property without restriction is wholly different from 
 the right to get from the law corporate existence for such a 
 purpose. I am in favor of substituting a clear and reasonable 
 statute for the Sherman Law. 
 
106 
 
 Thomas Devlin, President, The Thomas Devlin Manufactur- 
 ing Company, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to make their own rates or services to the public, 
 as they are the best fitted, providing there be no discrimination. 
 I am not a stockholder, but am a large shipper. In regard to 
 farmers' combinations, I have a farm and I know that the 
 farmer can do little harm by combining. Their necessities 
 compel them to market their products. Trade unions should 
 not be exempt from the Sherman Law. Exempt none or all. 
 
 J. J. Donovan, President and Manager, Lake Whatcom 
 Logging Company, Bellingham, Wash. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to define the word 
 "reasonable." Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I favor national incorporation, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Yellow journalism and professional muckrakers working on 
 material like that furnished by the Sugar frauds, etc., have 
 inflamed the people to a point where the work of the demagogue 
 is easy. 
 
 Morton Ramsdell, Manager Seattle-Tacoma Power Com- 
 pany, Seattle, Wash. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. Disturbed business conditions are due 
 to the inability of the majority to distinguish the difference 
 between good intentions and good judgment, resulting in freak 
 legislation throughout the country and the election of incompe- 
 tents and demagogues to responsible official positions. 
 
 Charles W. Hubbard (Ludlow Manufacturing Associa- 
 tion), Boston, Mass. 
 
 In view of the trend of business and of public feeling with 
 regard to it, it seems to us that the logical result will be some 
 form of Federal control for large corporations doing an inter- 
 state business either by Federal incorporation or license all 
 under control of some Federal body for administration. 
 
 We favor amendment of the Sherman Law. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 William H. Taylor, President and Coal Operator, New York. 
 
 The effort to right radical wrongs has led to a sense of 
 uncertainty which still exists. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to such an extent as will make it determine what is 
 " reasonable." Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments, subject to Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor 
 a national incorporation law. 
 
107 
 
 William Nelson Page, President, The Gauley Mountain Coal 
 Company, Ansted, Fayette County, W. Va. 
 
 I believe in the regulation of corporations by the States 
 rather than by the national government, with the exception 
 of transportation; though it might be advisable for Congress 
 to enact a statute giving the United States Courts a larger jur- 
 isdiction and additional powers to enforce the common law. 
 In which event every object aimed at by the Sherman Law 
 can be accomplished under well established regulations,, with- 
 out friction and uncertainty. I am opposed to government 
 by Commission, and especially from one central power, which 
 must necessarily become corrupt and burdensome in time. 
 
 Olive & Myers Manufacturing Company, Furniture, etc., 
 Dallas, Texas. 
 
 Speculation, inflated values, our system of living and doing 
 business on anticipation, which is contrary to natural laws; in 
 other words, selfishness and its consequent dishonesty in our 
 whole national life, from high officials in Washington down 
 to the humblest family, have been potent causes of unsettled 
 business conditions. The Sherman Law ought to be amended 
 to the end that capital may combine and deliver products to 
 the people at the lowest possible prices with a. fair profit, but 
 regulated by law to prevent abuses. 
 
 W. L. Yule, Treasurer, The Badger Brass Manufacturing 
 Company, and President The Manufacturers Asso- 
 ciation of Kenosha, Kenosha, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be modified to make it clear as to 
 so-called trusts and definite as to corporations, so that the con- 
 fidence of business may not be constantly shaken. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission with powers not unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. 
 
 Paul Beer, Manager, Barber Asphalt Paving Company, Des 
 Moines, Iowa. 
 
 Non-uniform and, in certain instances, unwise State laws 
 have operated to make interstate business more or less hazard- 
 ous. Uncertainty, first, over the probable interpretation of the 
 Sherman Act, and, second, since its recent interpretation by 
 the Supreme Court, uncertainty as to what does or does not 
 constitute a violation of said act, have caused disturbance. 
 
 George A. Hormel & Co., Pork Packers, Austin, Minn. 
 
 There is no disturbance in business out here. We do not 
 want an Interstate Trade Commission, as there are too many 
 courts and commissions now. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to reconcile it, if possible, with the recent Supreme 
 Court opinions. 
 
108 
 
 Henry Diegel, The Atchison Saddlery Company, Atchison, 
 Kan. 
 
 Extravagance for several years caused a general impairment 
 of capital invested in business enterprises. A reckoning day is 
 inevitable, and merchants as well as consumers are buying to 
 meet the requirements of impaired capital. 
 
 If class legislation is avoided, the laws as they now exist 
 enforced, and our legislators will give more attention to legisla- 
 tion pertaining to foreign relations rather than domestic 
 affairs, improved conditions will prevail. The Sherman Law 
 is clear and workable. 
 
 Sedgwick Kistler, Kistler, Lesh & Co., Manufacturers, Lock 
 Haven, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make its intent 
 perfectly plain and clear. Railroads should be regulated with 
 justice to them and to the public. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, if it is a good one. An Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission is unnecessary in free open business. Attempts to set 
 aside basic economic principles, over-capitalism, monopoly, 
 centralization of power, all these are responsible for disturbed 
 business conditions. 
 
 Andrew H. Noah, Treasurer, The Diamond Rubber Com- 
 pany, Akron, Ohio. 
 
 Make the Sherman Law clear, so as to state just how com- 
 binations can be legally formed and carried on. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 Combinations of farmers should be permitted. The law of 
 supply and demand will regulate their course. Railways should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. Politics are causing 
 the present business disturbance. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and Federal license. 
 
 Lewis V. Brown, Manager, Canaan Coal Company, Athens, 
 Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the fact that we 
 have not recovered from the panic of 1907, which was caused 
 by our bad currency system. I regard the Sherman Law as 
 clear and workable, and I believe it feasible to return to old 
 competitive methods. 
 
 E. H. Boehnken, Crane Company, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The continued investigation of corporations by the Federal 
 Government and the unwarranted attacks and articles now ap- 
 pearing in current magazines, written by would-be reformers 
 who are not sufficiently conversant with their subject, have much 
 to do with unsettling business stability. 
 
109 
 
 Frank Hamilton Maynard, President and General Manager, 
 General Fire Extinguisher Company, Providence, 
 R. I. 
 
 The lack of knowledge as to what one may or may not 
 legally do so far as corporations doing an interstate business 
 are concerned, is one of the great causes of industrial unrest 
 and disturbance at the present time. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. which has not been made clear and workable, 
 and the enactment of a better law defining clearly what busi- 
 ness may and may not do. 
 
 Edward J. Muller, Treasurer, The Fuchs & Lang Manuf ac 
 turing Company, New York City. 
 
 Too much legislation bordering on class legislation and the 
 indefiniteness of laws that the government is seeking to en- 
 force, have much to do with business disturbance. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so that competitors may freely 
 discuss their business amongst themselves and make trade agree- 
 ments legal under proper governmental control. 
 
 Isaac W. Frank, President of the United Engineering and 
 Foundry Company, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to admit reasonable 
 co-operation of competitors under government supervision. Re- 
 cent and present prosecutions under the Sherman Law, dicta- 
 tion by labor of an arbitrary wage rate, restriction of output 
 and restriction of apprentices, along with an unsettled banking 
 policy, all tend to cause and to maintain undesirable business 
 conditions. 
 
 Builders Iron Foundry, Providence, R. I. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to provide for pub- 
 licity and for capitalization not exceeding the replacement values 
 of the property. Disturbed business conditions have been caused 
 by general extravagance, and. on the part of managers of 
 large corporations, too much water and too little regard for the 
 law. This has occasioned dissatisfaction and distrust and has 
 stimulated hostile legislation and court proceedings. 
 
 The Davis Sewing Machine Company, Dayton, Ohio. 
 
 Repeal the Sherman Law and enact a national incorpora- 
 tion law. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission with other railroads, 
 but not with individuals or corporations. We emphatically 
 favor a national incorporation law. Tariff agitation and en- 
 forcement of the Sherman Law are, in our view, the causes of 
 existing business disturbance. 
 
110 
 
 C. H. Duncker, President, Trorlicht-Duncker Carpet Com- 
 pany, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Uncertainty of the interpretation of the Sherman Law 
 which has kept capital from being invested in new ventures; 
 the proposed reduction of the tariff which has deterred mer- 
 chants from buying any more than they had to carry, and 
 which has kept manufacturers from running their mills on 
 full time, have created an unsettled feeling in business gen- 
 erally. The Sherman Law should be amended in keeping with 
 modern methods of business. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 R. H. Stockton, Manufacturer Cooking Ranges, St. Louis, 
 Mo. 
 
 Trade cannot expect to be continuously good. Were it so, 
 we would be in the same fix as a horse going down hill with 
 a load too heavy to hold back. It would push him a little 
 hard at first, but soon get him on the run, and he and his 
 wagon and load would be crushed. Excessive wealth, with its 
 inroads on morals, and the high tariff which has enabled trusts 
 to build up, are in no small degree responsible for any unfor- 
 tunate conditions that exist. 
 
 E. R. Fish, Secretary, Heine Safety Boiler Company, St. 
 Louis, Mo. 
 
 The approach of the country's productive capacity to the 
 limit of consumption, plus exports, coupled with the general 
 uncertainty due to government activity in prosecutions under 
 the Sherman Law, is undoubedly the chief cause of disturbed 
 business conditions. The Sherman Law should be amended so 
 as to permit the existence of large combinations under govern- 
 ment supervision, and I favor, also, a national incorporation 
 law. 
 
 M. I. Arms, Manufacturer, Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 Constant agitation of the trust and tariff questions, which 
 are largely business questions, has much to do with the un- 
 settled conditions in business. The Sherman Law, should be 
 amended to provide for Federal regulation through the medium 
 of an Interstate Trade Commission, thereby preventing mo- 
 nopoly and oppression on the part of the more powerful com- 
 binations. 
 
 Henry Gund, President, John Gund Brewing Company, La 
 Crosse, Wis. 
 
 The unrest and discontent of the people has been mainly 
 engendered by the muckraker and political demagogue. I 
 believe also that labor unionism is overreaching itself and is 
 a factor in the present unsatisfactory state of affairs. 
 
Ill 
 
 Henry C. Dexter, The Greene & Daniels Manufacturing 
 Company, Textiles, Pawtucket, R. I. 
 
 Tariff tinkering, with decided fears of serious tariff reduc- 
 tions in our line which is textile that is only one industry 
 this along with half a dozen other reasons have brought about 
 the existing deplorable conditions in the business world. It 
 would be manifestly unfair, as well as absurd, to except trade 
 unions from the operation of the Sherman Act. There should 
 be no discrimination whatever, otherwise the law is unfair and 
 consequently not a good law. We favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and Federal license. 
 
 V. F. Dewey, Vice-President and General Manager, Grand 
 Rapids Gas Light Company, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions are, in my opin- 
 ion, (1, general economic law of supply and demand; (2) 
 the continued attack on railroad corporations through State 
 legislation and taxation; (3) narrow and socialistic attitude 
 of the people toward all forms of corporate bodies; and (4) 
 uncertainty of tariff conditions. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and a new law enacted 
 that would more definitely state the powers and limitations 
 of so-called trusts, both commercial and labor. 
 
 Ferdinand L. Loeb, President, Coplay Cement Manufactur- 
 ing Company, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended making selling agree- 
 ments to prevent ruinous competition and agreements to limit 
 output for the same purpose permissible under broad national 
 government supervision. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission for the purpose of carry- 
 ing out the suggestions already made for amendment of the 
 Sherman Law. 
 
 The Midvale Steel Company, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Extravagance corporate, social, civic, individual is the 
 cause of disturbed business conditions. We consider the Sher- 
 man Law, as now intepreted, clear and workable. Railroads 
 should be permitted to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. We favor a 
 national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Chas. L. Beall, Secretary, Beall Bros., Manufacturers of 
 Tools and Shovels, East Alton, 111. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to incompetency of professional 
 politicians, mostly lawyers, short-term presidency, antagonism 
 of labor unions to manufacturers and railroads, etc., and greedi- 
 ness of manufacturers and railroads. We are all it! 
 
112 
 
 Alex. W. Hartman, President, Northern Shoe Company, 
 Duluth, Minn. 
 
 As to disturbed business conditions, I believe they will pre- 
 vail periodically until we have our finances better regulated 
 under a law similar to that proposed by former Senator 
 Aldrich. I believe our present condition is caused partly by 
 overproduction and partly by reason of the probable change in 
 our tariff laws. As to returning to old competitive methods, I 
 say, no, a thousand times no. By all means let us have an 
 Interstate Trade Commission with the strictest power of regula- 
 tion. , 
 
 J. E. Fuller, Vice-President George A. Fuller Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The government attack on corporations is a leading cause 
 of the present uncertainty in business. Coupled with this is 
 the prevalent doubt as to what will be done in the way of 
 tariff legislation. An existing difficulty which ought to be re- 
 moved is the absence of certainty as to what corporations can 
 and cannot do under the Sherman Law. It would seem to 
 be a first duty of Congress to make that law clear, so that it 
 will not be a stumbling block to business. 
 
 W. P. Gallaher, The Northwestern Consolidated Milling 
 Company, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that it will meet 
 the emergencies for which it was devised. An Interstate Trade 
 Commission would meet my approval if it can be made opera- 
 tive and free from political influences. Apprehension, due to 
 inefficient Federal protection to the consumer against the greed. 
 Avarice and unfairness of " pooled " corporations and producers 
 has caused the present disturbed conditions. 
 
 The Transue & Williams Company, Manufacturers of Drop 
 Forgings, Alliance, Ohio. 
 
 Too much uncertainty in interpreting laws affecting busi- 
 ness organization, and probability of radical tariff changes, are 
 causes of business disturbance. The Sherman Law should bo 
 amended to make it clear as to what is reasonable and unrea- 
 sonable by classifying. We favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Thomas Hunter, Hunter Arms Company, Fulton, N. Y. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Disturbance in busi- 
 ness has been caused by too much investigation and the lack 
 of instructions to corporations as to what they can and cannot 
 do, also a lack of good business men in the government. We 
 want fewer lawyers and more business men in the direction of 
 public affairs. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
113 
 
 George McMaster, Secretary and Treasurer of the Mutual 
 Wheel Company, Moline, 111. 
 
 Business is disturbed by too much dishonesty on the part 
 of some politicians,, and also by too much control of politics 
 on the part of some who are directly interested in certain 
 branches of business. Also by the after effects of too much 
 " Trying to keep up with Lizzie." Business affairs should be 
 taken out of politics and controlled by boards of disinterested 
 men who understand business conditions, and politics should 
 be entirely eliminated from business affairs. 
 
 James C. Woodsome, Tampa Electric Company, Tampa, 
 Fla. 
 
 The public cry to attack the trusts under the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Law has had much to do with causing business uncer- 
 tainty. Having gotten into the investigations and obtained 
 the interpretation of the Sherman Law by the Supreme Court, 
 the government now finds that practically all large corpora- 
 tions are subject to investigation, and cannot gracefully stop 
 the game. 
 
 Cheboygan Paper Company, Cheboygan, Mich. 
 
 We are in favor of amending the Sherman Law so that it 
 would not be ambiguous, but would be well defined and would 
 permit manufacturers to regulate their product according to the 
 needs and requirements of the trade, subject to the National 
 Civic Federation, the same as the railroads are subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, to prevent any abuse of incor- 
 porated power. 
 
 James Couzens, Secretary and Treasurer, Ford Motor Com- 
 pany, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 Unfair methods used by combinations of capital in their 
 plans to control prices, and the flagrant violations of existing 
 laws intended to govern such combinations, are largely respons- 
 ible for lack of confidence in business. The Sherman Law 
 should be more specific as to what constitutes a violation, and 
 we should have a national incorporation law or else a Fe'deral 
 license law. 
 
 J. F. Wigginton, Vice-President, Bowie Lumber Company, 
 Ltd., Bowie, La. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the effect of the government's attitude 
 toward the corporations, which seems to be hostile, tends to 
 disturb business. Also politicians seeking personal preferment 
 and appealing to the people on grounds of prejudice and class 
 antagonism, rather than trying to find the solution for present 
 perplexities incident to the enforcement of the Sherman Act, 
 and other problems of the day. 
 
114 
 
 Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended by removing unneces- 
 sary restrictions, and denning clearly what rules must be fol- 
 lowed by manufacturers and merchants. Otherwise it should 
 be repealed. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. We favor a national incorporation law. 
 most decidedly. Uncertainty, resulting from pernicious legis- 
 lation and constant agitation, is the cause of business disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 W. C. Runyon, President, The Struthers Furnace Company, 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be strengthened by supplemental 
 legislation. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, and combinations of farmers to secure 
 reasonable prices for their crops should be lawful. I favor 
 national incorporation, Federal license, and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Lack of understanding of the Sherman Act has 
 caused uncertainty and consequent business disturbance. 
 
 Pacific Coast Borax Company, Oakland, Cal. 
 
 We favor not necessarily a repeal but an amendment of the 
 Sherman Act, making the whole an understandable, workable 
 scheme with sufficient leeway to enable all corporations to even- 
 tually get into line. Conditions should be taken as they exist 
 to-day, and the Commerce Commission should see that the law 
 is observed from now on. A law so enacted twenty-three years 
 ago (and until now inoperative) should not necessarily make 
 us guilty for the sins of our fathers. The combination of 
 capital must be encouraged and controlled. 
 
 D. E. Manson, Second Vice-President, Maiden Electric 
 Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The attitude of the Federal government toward large busi- 
 ness enterprises has stopped the financing of legitimate proposi- 
 tions of a constructive nature. Our unsatisfactory banking sys- 
 tem is also responsible for disturbed business conditions. We 
 favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, and enactment of a national 
 incorporation law, unless some other and better plan can be 
 advanced. 
 
 John C. Atwood, General Manager, The National Ammonia 
 Company, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 We most decidedly favor national incorporation. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed or amended to remove unnecessary 
 restrictions, and define clearly the rules to be followed by manu- 
 facturers and merchants. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. 
 
115 
 
 H. E. Tredway, President John Ernsdorff Iron Company, 
 Dubuque, Iowa. 
 
 The Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company 
 and the United States Steel Company, while they have trans- 
 gressed the laws, have accomplished more for good than they 
 have taken in profits, and economies possible to them have made 
 profits impossible to smaller aggregations of capital. While 
 marketing products at lower prices than ever before, the manu- 
 facturers have earned an ample return on their investments and 
 the laborer a high wage. 
 
 C. J. Miles, General Manager, Doud Stock Car Company, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. We should have Fed- 
 eral legislation requiring national incorporation for companies 
 doing interstate business. If the Sherman Law is to remain in 
 effect, its purport should be made clear and intelligible. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. Business disturbance is due 
 to too much political agitation in connection with business in- 
 terests and to uncertainty regarding future legislation affecting 
 large enterprises. 
 
 Haas Brothers, Cigar Manufacturers and Packers of Leaf 
 Tobacco, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 F favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. The Sherman Law is not clear and 
 workable, and should be amended to make it more explicit, defin- 
 ing its provisions more clearly, or rather its intent, so that it 
 will not need court interpretation. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. In my opinion, agi- 
 tation and readjustment are the causes of such disturbance as 
 exists in business. 
 
 North Star Lumber Company, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 Business is disturbed largely on account of business men 
 being unable to interpret or procure reliable information per- 
 taining to the Sherman Law. We favor national incorporation. 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions and com- 
 binations of farmers should be treated on the same footing as 
 business corporations. 
 
 E. H. Foote, Grand Rapids Chair Company, Grand Rapids, 
 Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and should be 
 amended so as to make it clearer and stronger. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, 
 nor should combinations of farmers, either to restrict produc- 
 tion or to hold a crop for higher prices, be lawful. 
 
116 
 
 E. J. Stewart, Secretary, United Cork and Seal Company. 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to prevent control of 
 interstate business through patented machines, i. e., products 
 and materials used in patented machines, themselves not 
 patented. The uncertainty as to the Sherman Act and J. P. 
 Morgan's uncertainty as to whether he can deliver the goods 
 are the causes of business disturbance. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Wilson Kistler (Kistler, Lesh & Co., Tanners), Lock 
 Haven, Pa. 
 
 Laws not suited to properly regulated business are the cause 
 of any business uncertainty now existing. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act ; 
 neither should combinations of farmers, either to restrict pro- 
 duction or to hold a crop for higher prices. I favor national 
 incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Hook-Hastings Company, Pipe Organ Manufacturers, 
 Kendal Green, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the exact intent of the law is the chief 
 cause of unsettlement in business. The Sherman Law is clear 
 and workable so far as we can see its application in our inter- 
 ests. It needs amendment, however, to make its meaning and 
 application quite clear. "We favor a national incorporation law 
 under wise restrictions, and we also favor a Federal license law 
 with the same qualification. 
 
 F. W. Williams, Secretary-Treasurer, California Glove 
 
 Company, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 We favor an income tax, so that all may share equally in 
 government expense in proportion to their earning capacity, 
 whether corporation, copartnership or individual. We think 
 a Federal license law manifestly unfair and unjust, and favor 
 a national incorporation law. We believe in treating a corpora- 
 tion exactly as an individual, so far as taxation and trade 
 restriction is concerned. 
 
 F. M. Hodge, President, The Kalamazoo Paper Company, 
 Kalamazoo, Mich. 
 
 Uncertainty as to court rulings and tariff tinkering is dis- 
 turbing business. The Sherman Law should be amended so as 
 to make it unmistakably plain and to allow some agreements 
 that would not be restraint of trade, as far as cost to consumer 
 is concerned. 
 
117 
 
 Follmer, Clogg & Co., Umbrella and Parasol Manufac- 
 turers, Lancaster, Pa. 
 
 J. favor a national incorporation law in preference to a 
 Federal license law. I also favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. The Sherman Law should be amended to permit cor- 
 porations to do a large business on good business principles. 
 Farmers should not be permitted to make combinations in 
 restraint of trade any more than labor unions or manufactur- 
 ers. "What is fair for the goose ought to be fair for the 
 gander." 
 
 Henry B. Smith, The Michigan Pipe Company, Bay City, 
 Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. It was the best at 
 the time to fit the cases that it was intended to reach,, but is 
 now neiher clear nor workable. We favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission to deal with companies engaged in interstate com- 
 merce. Disturbed business conditions are due to political in- 
 stability; fear of radical changes in the tariff; and uncertainty 
 as to the action of government officials toward large corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 C. Parker Holt (The Holt Manufacturing Company), San 
 Francisco, Cal. 
 
 It is not feasible to return to old competitive methods in 
 business if we are to keep up our present export trade. The 
 Sherman Law should be revised. Eailroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should 
 not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and 
 combinations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold 
 a crop for higher prices, should not be permitted. 
 
 Mead-Morrison Manufacturing Company, Coal Handling 
 Machinery and Hoisting Engines, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to clearly define its 
 relations and liberalize its scope. Eailroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. We favor a Federal 
 license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. The attitude 
 of the government and its attacks upon large aggregations of 
 capital have caused such disturbance as exists in business. 
 
 Calvin Fentress, Treasurer, Stearns & Culver Lumber Com- 
 pany, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Act, high prices of labor, politics and the 
 tariff are the causes of disturbed business conditions. The 
 Sherman Law should be made* more definite and clear. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
118 
 
 John L. Inglis, President, Dunnellon Phosphate Company, 
 Dunnellon, Fla. 
 
 The uncertainty oi' just what the Sherman Act means 
 capital does not clearly know what is and what is not legal 
 chiefly tends to business disquietude. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended so that business men would know what to do with- 
 out having to seek a construction by the United States courts. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and that railroads should 
 be allowed to make agreements affecting rates, subject to Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 George W. Thurston, Treasurer of American Screw Com- 
 pany, Providence, R. I. 
 
 Prosecutions under the Sherman Act are chiefly the cause 
 of disturbed business conditions. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed, unless properly amended to permit reasonable co- 
 operation and consolidation. I do not favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license, or an Interstate Trade Coin mi-- 
 sion, as I believe that, with the Sherman Act properly amended 
 and interpreted, the existing court should be sufficient. 
 
 A. G. Southworth, Buick Motor Company, New York. 
 
 Trying to make the archaic Sherman Law effective against 
 modern business and the administration policy of too main 
 threats against business, issued in the form of pronouncements 
 and interviews, are causing business uncertainty. We favor 
 a national incorporation law. An Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion would possibly be a good solution of the business problem. 
 The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. A new law can he 
 drafted to better meet conditions of the present day. 
 
 John B. Herreshoff, President Herreshoff Manufacturing 
 Company, Manufacturer and Builder, Bristol, R. I. 
 
 National laws, largely made by incompetent men, not suited 
 for present conditions and the course pursued by trade unions 
 are chiefly responsible for the unsettled conditions of business. 
 As to trade unions being excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act, we are not supporters of trade unions in any 
 form. 
 
 A. F. Rockwell, President, The New Departure Manufactur- 
 . ing Company, Bristol, Conn. 
 
 Business is in an unsettled condition partly owing to con- 
 servatism on account of the legal status of many large corpora- 
 tions, but mostly on account of timidity posing under the guise 
 of conservatism. Natural laws only should govern competition. 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment of a 
 national incorporation law. I do not favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The less commissions we have the better. 
 
119 
 
 The Bagley & Sewall Company, C. D. Bingham, Treasurer, 
 Watertown, N. Y. 
 
 All the thing's which constitute " good times " are and have 
 for a long time been fully present good crops, good prices and 
 high wages. Buyers want the stuff and have the money to pay 
 for it. Sellers have the stuff and want to sell it. But there 
 is the uncertainty on the part of the buyer as to whether the 
 tiling he buys may not be some unanticipated action on the part 
 of the government, be worth less to-morrow than he pays for it 
 to-day? So he only buys "from hand to 
 
 Leo Ernst, President, Independent Brewing Association, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to corrupt politics, 
 corrupt business, corrupt and inefficient churches, artificially 
 stimulated expansion and development of the country, creating 
 ostentatious wealth, inciting everybody to get rick quick, and 
 engendering the spirit of high living, bringing in the high cost 
 of living. The climax is reached, with its natural discontents 
 and disappointments. 
 
 The J. Miller Company, Shoe Manufacturers, Racine, Wis. 
 
 Business is disturbed by the attack on capital, but the dis- 
 ease needed the attack, and in time when things get running 
 along again under the new system, trade will resume its regular 
 course. In our business leather combinations and trusts make 
 us a great deal of trouble, as does also the United Shoe Machin- 
 ery Company. We believe the Sherman Law to be clear and 
 workable. We favor a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 E. K. Wood Lumber Company, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to two causes: (1) 
 The uncertainty of the present anti-trust laws; (2) the timidity 
 of manufacturers over the attitude of labor leaders, as soon 
 as capital is invested in industries. The iron industry in San 
 Francisco has virtually been driven out by the oppression of 
 labor leaders, through strikes and boycotts, and unless some 
 solution is found to harmonize capital and labor I look for no 
 improvement in the near future. 
 
 Ethan Allen Doty, Kings County Refrigerating Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be amended to the extent of 
 making possible the control of corporations doing interstate 
 business, so that their activities may be curbed when they .try 
 to choke fair and healthy competition. So far the law is only 
 partially workable. 
 
120 
 
 A. H. Sweet & Son, Manufacturers of Wood and Paper 
 Boxes, Norton, Mass. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the trouble over 
 the Sherman Act and also the unrest among the working class. 
 Nothing satisfies them. We never will get on a good footing 
 until such time as these labor troubles are put under some 
 restraint. 
 
 A law to let the employer know where he stands would 
 do more to further the business of the country than any one 
 thing we can think of. 
 
 Russell, Burdsall & Ward, Manufacturers of Bolts and 
 Nuts, Port Chester, N. Y. 
 
 We do not believe that the Sherman Law has been made 
 as yet clear and workable. At the same time, we do not favor 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law, but it ought to be improved 
 by amendment. We should have a national incorporation law, 
 also a Federal license law. We also favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to approval and regulation by 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 William B. Melish, President, The Bromwell Brush and 
 Wire Goods Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Existing troubles in business are due to too much tariff dis- 
 turbance, too many attacks on corporations, too much "bun- 
 combe" on the part of leaders of both political parties who 
 seek to serve their own selfish ends by stirring up the people 
 of the country, arraying class against class, and creating lack 
 of confidence and fear on the part of the average citizen en- 
 gaged in business who " doesn't know where he is at." 
 
 L. J. Hopkins, Lumber Manufacturer and Iron Mining, 
 Exchange Building, Duluth, Minn. 
 
 Overproduction from 1896 to 1906, aggravated somewhat 
 by the effort to make the large interests honest and decent, have 
 had much to do with an unsettled feeling in business. The 
 Sherman Law is clear and. workable and should neither be re- 
 pealed nor amended. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, anrl we should have a national incor- 
 poration law. 
 
 Wallace L. Pierce, Merchant and Manufacturer, S. S. Pierce 
 Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and an enactment of 
 a new law in its place which will make satisfactory provision 
 for modern business conditions. Political agitation is the cause 
 of the present business troubles. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
121 
 
 Frank Jay Saxe, Secretary and Manager, 42 Broadway, New 
 York City. 
 
 We have become the wealthiest and most powerful nation 
 in the world. In my opinion this is caused by our great energy 
 and freedom of credits. This has produced ability which, in 
 connection with our climate, has caused us to grow in wealth 
 and power. Our so-called trusts are a necessity. Our great 
 wealth finds aggregations of capital a necessity. We must have 
 laws to keep out evils, but the laws should be simple, not am- 
 biguous. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 George G. Wheeler, Manager Jewelry Factory, North Attle- 
 boro, Mass. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due very largely to the 
 too high tariff on necessities, thereby increasing cost of living 
 to a point where the average workingman can barely buy food, 
 fuel and clothing. Large sums invested in automobiles by 
 those who can and who cannot afford them have temporarily 
 diverted money from customary channels, though it is gravitat- 
 ing back through new channels. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Plainville Stock Company, Manufacturing Jewelers, Plain- 
 ville, Mass. 
 
 Too much politics; tariff regulation; war upon the railroads 
 and great industries of the country; too much money spent by 
 the people for pleasure, and general extravagant living beyond 
 their means; too many champagne appetites and beer pocket- 
 hooks are causes of business disturbance. There is no such 
 word as economy these days. Too large a part of the money 
 is spent for pleasure, and the industries get too little. We 
 favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 The J. B. Williams Company, Manufacturers of Soaps, 
 Glastonbury, Conn. 
 
 Uncertainty as to meaning of Sherman Law is causing busi- 
 ness disturbance. The Sherman Law should be repealed. We 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 There should be regulation for accomplishment of two ob- 
 jects: (1) A fair field for anyone to go into the manufactur- 
 ing or mercantile business in any line; (2) impossibility of a 
 monopoly. 
 
 The Sefton Manufacturing Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Enforce present laws when wilfully violated. Stop agita- 
 tion get to work and work hard ! Stop worrying about some- 
 thing that may never come. That's the remedy for business 
 disturbance, which is due only to fear. 
 
122 
 
 Ernest E. Tobias, Secretary, Michigan Wire Fence Com- 
 pany, Adrian, Mich. 
 
 The primary cause of business disturbance is the greed of 
 k big business." The immediate causes are the attempts to 
 regulate " big business/ 7 I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law is 
 not clear and workable, but its amendment is going to be a 
 most difficult job. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Farmers should be allowed to combine, subject 
 to the same rule of " unreasonable restraint of trade." 
 
 C. F. Burroughs, Vice-President, F. S. Royster Guano Com- 
 pany, Norfolk, Va. 
 
 We believe that the present disturbed business condition is 
 clue to the general lack of confidence created by the continual 
 threats of prosecution of the large corporations. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended so as to make clear what the law is. 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Law, but combinations of farmers should be treated 
 as lawful. We favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 John C. Jay, Jr., The Pennsylvania Steel Company and 
 Maryland Steel Company, New York City. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due principally to uncer- 
 tainty. After years of inaction under the Sherman Law, the 
 government suddenly enforces it in a retroactive way. 
 
 I commend to your attention an article in October " World's 
 Work/' called " The New Competition," by a man named Eddy. 
 I believe the Sherman Law ought to be repealed. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Augustus Veghte, President Troy Malleable Iron Company. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, or its amendment so 
 that a corporation can do business without interference by the 
 courts. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreement? 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. The uncertainty of the attitude of the Federal authori- 
 ties is the cause of business disturbance. 
 
 James B. Wharton, Richmond Light, Heat and Power Com- 
 pany, Richmond, Ind. 
 
 High tariff, loss of confidence in the administration and 
 rooting up of unlawful combinations, together with an absolute 
 lack of economy, are the causes of disturbance in business. The 
 Sherman Law is clear and workable and does not need amend- 
 ment. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
123 
 
 Asher Miner, President, Miner-Hillard Milling Company, 
 Wilkes Barre, Pa. 
 
 Over-capitalization and the effort to earn dividends on 
 watered stock, thus necessitating government interference with 
 business, have had an unfortunate influence on business in gen- 
 eral. The Sherman Law should not be repealed until some- 
 1 1 1 i tig better is found to replace it, as it is evident that some 
 restraint is necessary on the great corporations. While the 
 Sherman Law might be amended, it is probable that a national 
 incorporation law, giving the government full power to super- 
 vise, to limit profits, salaries, capitalization, etc.. would be 
 better. 
 
 R. M. Richter, President and General Manager, Carthage 
 Superior Marble & Limestone Co., Carthage, Mo. 
 
 All legitimate business is being made to suffer because some 
 enterprises are unquestionably guilty of breach of law, statutory 
 and economic. We have been, and are, passing through a period 
 of destructive internal administration. We need constructive 
 activity. A patient suffering from malaria, carbuncles, ingrown 
 toe-nails, and threatened with locomotor ataxia, would not have 
 his spine removed as a first step toward robust health. Let our 
 business doctors be scientific. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to legalize combina- 
 tions controlling all or part of a commodity, under government 
 surveillance. I favor national incorporation. Federal license, 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. S. Brace (Brace & Hergert Mill Company, Lumber), 
 Seattle, Wash. 
 
 The impression thai the government will not let capital earn 
 a fair amount on the investment, especially in railway stocks, 
 has much to do with disturbed conditions in business. I regard 
 the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and I believe that 
 railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I favor a national incorporation law. Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Weston Dodson & Co., Coal Mining, Bethlehem, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and should be 
 made more concise and clear. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. We favor national incor- 
 paration, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 The New Jersey Terra Cotta Company, New York City. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a national incorporation law, and a Federal license law, and 
 the creation of an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
124 
 
 Frederick L. Cranford, Contractor, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Dishonest business methods; the exploitation of the public, 
 of labor, and of investors are the causes of such business dis- 
 turbance as exists. Avarice and greed demand the right to 
 pay dividends on water and to capitalize profits. 
 
 The complete combination of both railroads and industrial 
 enterprises is economically proper and advisable, but if the 
 government is to permit the elimination of competition and risk 
 the reason and excuse for big profits such combinations 
 should earn limited profits, pay limited dividends, and be hon- 
 estly capitalized. 
 
 The Globe-Wernicke Company, Manufacturers Office and 
 Library Furniture, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Eeaction from too much " boom " and the throes of readjust- 
 ment to changing conditions are responsible for business dis- 
 turbance. We favor a national incorporation law. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended by providing for Federal incor- 
 poration and supervision, somewhat like national banks and 
 railroad companies, also providing for publicity. Should trade 
 unions be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act? 
 By no means. They are the worst of all. 
 
 Meridian Fertilizer Factory, Meridian, Miss. 
 
 Real business is not much disturbed. Those interests de- 
 pending on protecting tariffs, of course, are uneasy. The power 
 of combinations is abused. Unlimited competition is ruinous. 
 It seems the only chance is for the government to take entire 
 control of business. We favor a national incorporation law and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. We favor also a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law and absolute control by the government until 
 the " Golden Rule " is the law of business. 
 
 E. F. Underbill, The American Laundry Machinery Com- 
 pany, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I most emphatically favor a national incorporation law. 
 Uncertainty as to legislation and the vague utterances of the 
 government cause business disturbance. Constructive action 
 should prevail with the destructive action against those not will- 
 ing to follow the constructive policy when laid down by the 
 government. An interstate Trade Commission should be sub- 
 ject to appeal to the Commerce Court. 
 
 V. A. Wallin, Tanner, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not sufficiently clear and should be 
 amended so as to make it more definite. The present disturb- 
 ance in business is caused chiefly by indecision as to what can 
 or cannot be done under the Sherman Law. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
125 
 
 Geo. S. Hage, Secretary of S. Hage Lumber Company, 
 Madelia, Minn. 
 
 Overproduction of almost all lines of manufactured goods 
 is one cause of business disturbance. I am in favor of a 
 sweeping reduction of the present tariff. 
 
 The present high cost of living is causing a great deal of 
 discontent. The only solution is to get more people on the 
 land as actual producers. If anything can be done to get poor 
 men with families out of the city and on to a piece of land, it 
 ought to be done. There are thousands of acres of highlv pro- 
 ductive land in Minnestota and other northwestern States that 
 can be bought from the State on 40 years' time at 4 per cent, 
 interest. Get those who are willing to work in touch with the 
 land. 
 
 B. W. Sutcliff, Manager, Carstens Packing Company, Aber- 
 deen, Wash. 
 
 The tendency of too many of our prominent men in poli- 
 tics to wantonly and unjustly cry down all railroad companies 
 and large corporations for political effect has a tendency to 
 make capital timid. Industrial and railroad bonds at the pres- 
 ent time show plainly how investors shrink from safe invest- 
 ments. I am for a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 B. V. M. La Rue, Manager, Southwestern States Portland 
 Cement Company, Dallas, Texas. 
 
 Overproduction in so many lines and the general uncer- 
 tainty regarding possible political changes; extravagance of 
 both individuals and corporations are causing business unrest. 
 Give us a respite from excessive legislation, choke the <e yellow " 
 newspapers, "live and let live," and we will all be happy and 
 prosperous. I am for national incorporation and Federal license 
 laws. 
 
 The New River Lumber Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The reaction from too much " boom " and the readjustment 
 to changing conditions are causes of business disturbance. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended by providing for Federal 
 incorporation and supervision, somewhat like national banks 
 and railroad companies; also providing for publicity. Should 
 trade unions be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act? By no means. They are the worst of all. 
 
 Kalamazoo Corset Company, Kalamazoo, Mich. 
 
 To some extent the tariff, but largely politics, are causing 
 unrest. We need a little vacation. 
 
 We favor Federal incorporation for interstate business, with 
 periodical examination of condition, or report to the government. 
 Do not favor any control of prices by government. 
 
126 
 
 Robert Rogers, Wire Cloth Manufacturer, New York City. 
 
 What business needs is a good banking system in the in- 
 terest of trade and commerce. Our present system seems chiefly 
 of benefit to speculators. I think an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission might possibly do more good than the big stick trade 
 has been trying to keep clear of for the last four or five years. 
 I cannot see the need of a national incorporation law. As for 
 a Federal license law, it might possibly do good for the liquor 
 business. The Sherman Law ought to be so construed as not 
 to interfere with reasonable ways of doing business. People 
 are not in business for the fun of competing with one another 
 without profit to themselves. 
 
 Otis N. Pierce, President of Grinnell Manufacturing Cor- 
 poration, Spinning and Weaving Fine Cotton Yarns, 
 New Bedford, Mass. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to (1) tariff agita- 
 tion; (2) distrust of the Sherman Law; (3) politics. The 
 present outlook is that politicians will be the ruination of this 
 country. I favor a national incorporation law, if same as cor- 
 poration law of Massachusetts. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended so as to make it workable. 
 
 M. C. Butler, Mine Superintendent, Fairfax, Wash. 
 
 The cost of " living high " and general tendency to do as 
 little work as possible and to ask continually for higher wages 
 is the trouble with business. Government supervision and sta- 
 bility is what we want. Favors to none what is best for the 
 majority. The Sherman Law should be repealed, and a new 
 law requiring more publicity in affairs of corporations should 
 take its place. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 E. A. Wurster, The Falk Company, Steel Castings, Mil- 
 waukee, Wis. 
 
 Too many " reformers " being listened to, in the first place, 
 and too much legislation antagonistic to corporations, so that 
 business knows not where it is at, are the causes of disturbance 
 in business. I favor a national incorporation law and repeal 
 of the Sherman Law, or else its amendment to provide for com- 
 binations under regulation. 
 
 A. Albert Sack, President, Lymansville Company, North 
 Providence, R. I. 
 
 Agitation for tariff reduction and the apparent impossibility 
 of bringing the Sherman Law into harmony with business con- 
 ditions are the chief causes of existing uncertainty and hesita- 
 tion in business enterprises. The Sherman Law should be re- 
 pealed. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
127 
 
 T. H. Letson, Sales Manager, American Hoist and Derrick 
 Company, New York City. 
 
 Any present disturbance in business is due to natural evolu- 
 tion and therefore unavoidable. Whatever unnecessary disturb- 
 ance there is or may be finds its origin in dumb and thoughtless 
 or prejudiced opposition to natural forces. We must cease to 
 compete and learn to combine and co-operate, so that both, 
 each and all shall benefit from the wealth produced and the 
 advancement made. If there is any question who is to stand 
 the greatest chance of loss it must be those who are most able 
 to lose not those who are least; but this leads to Socialism! 
 Yes. Do not get scared, natural laws are obeyed or destroy! 
 
 T. J. Elton, Secretary, Manistee Land and Timber Com- 
 pany, Concordia Land and Timber Company, Manis- 
 tee Board of Water Commissioners, Manistee, Mich. 
 
 Many causes have disturbed business conditions. It is hard 
 to tell what. The tariff benefits one business and hurts others. 
 High tariff has done more harm than any other one thing. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended. I favor a national in- 
 corporation law. a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 M. W. Bushnell, Manager, G. H. Bushnell Press Company 
 and the Standard Metal Work Company, Thompson- 
 ville, Conn. 
 
 Business disturbance is largely due to the "wildcat" in- 
 corporations of the past few years, where so much " water " 
 has been in evidence; to unsuitable legislation in regard to 
 business; the menacing of business by unscrupulous labor lead- 
 ers all tending to produce unrest. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended so that it can be practically applied. 
 
 John E. Warren, Paper Manufacturer, Cumberland Mills, 
 Me. 
 
 We need constructive legislation which will allow as large 
 liberty in the way of combinations as is consistent with the 
 common good. The Sherman Law should indicate in what way 
 combinations may be made and for what purposes. I am favor- 
 ably disposed to a national incorporation law and decidedly 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 James M. Dodge, Chairman of the Board, Link-Belt Com- 
 pany, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Lack of unity in court decisions affecting large business 
 associations is causing much disturbance. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended only by clearly defining "reasonable" and 
 "unreasonable" restraint. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
128 
 
 E. B. Hatch, President, The Johns-Pratt Company, Hart- 
 ford, Conn. 
 
 Lack of confidence is due to the attitude of the govern- 
 ment toward industrial combinations and large corporations. 
 We believe that the Sherman Law should be amended so as to 
 permit of certain commercial combinations under governmental 
 restriction and supervision, and that the law should be so 
 clearly drawn as to prevent any misunderstanding as to what 
 kind of a combination would constitute a restriction of trade 
 and what would be legal under the act. We do not believe that 
 farmers should be allowed to combine to restrict production of 
 crops. We do believe, however, they should be allowed to com- 
 bine for the purpose of obtaining fair prices. We believe that 
 such combination under governmental restriction and super- 
 vision would benefit the whole nation. 
 
 John F. Wolff, Vice-President, L. Wolff Manufacturing 
 Company, Plumbers' Supplies, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Uncertainty in regard to the effect of prosecutions under 
 the Sherman Act is the disturbing element in business. The 
 Sherman Act should be amended so as to allow business to 
 obtain a reasonable profit legally, and to provide for a civil 
 action for alleged violations, and criminal action to be brought 
 only in the case of a second offense. I favor a national incor- 
 poration act. 
 
 Scovill Manufacturing Company, Waterbury, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear possibly, but not workable with- 
 out detriment to the general good. We favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. It is bad absolutely in every particular. It 
 requires competition such as never before existed. In all coun- 
 tries and in all times past competitors could agree together 
 on prices in times of stress to avoid bankruptcy, and did so 
 agree. 
 
 Otto Armleder, O. Armleder Company, Wagon Manu- 
 facturers, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Too much politics and the concentration of money in the 
 hands of a few led to disturbance in business. Stop Wall street 
 gambling and you will correct our greatest evil. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Bay State Belting Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty due to politics is causing disturbed business 
 conditions. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, but combinations of farmers 
 should be rendered lawful. We favor a national incorporation 
 law. 
 
129 
 
 Ackerman & Brummel, per Max Brummel, Leather, Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 An ambiguous Sherman Law which does not apply to pres- 
 ent conditions; decisions of the courts which no one can con- 
 strue, and no statesman here who can solve the problem to the 
 satisfaction of the general business man, account for disturbed 
 business conditions. The Sherman Law should be repealed. 
 It is too old for this century, and its place should be taken 
 by a law that would apply to present conditions of trade. As 
 to combinations of farmers, a restriction of necessities of life 
 is at least as harmful as a combination of manufacturers to 
 restrict their output and to innate prices and should be just 
 as unlawful. I favor a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 A. McCallum, Manufacturer of Silk Hosiery, Northampton, 
 Mass. 
 
 Cursed politics and labor unions, which go hand in hand, 
 are responsible for the present disturbed conditions. Old com- 
 petitive methods would be feasible if manufacturers could pro- 
 cure competitive labor. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 by making it clear to the average business man what it really 
 does mean. Let us have a national incorporation law, by all 
 means, if the law is so framed that it will not be ambiguous as 
 to its meaning. 
 
 T. J. Shaut, President and Treasurer, Ashland Leather 
 Company, Ashland, Ky. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the Sherman Law 
 persecution, not prosecution, of corporations, railroads and 
 so-called trusts by the Government; too much newspaper talk; 
 and the prime evil, too much politics. Election of President 
 every eight or ten years would, it seems to me, be more accept- 
 able to the people. 
 
 C. H. Turner, Lumber Manufacturer, Malone, N. Y. 
 
 I am a Eepublican and have always voted that ticket, until 
 last year I voted the Democratic ticket. I am disgusted with 
 politics. My business, lumber, has been rotten since 1907. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Amend or repeal the 
 Sherman Law. 
 
 Clark Bros. Bolt Company, Milldale, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable to a limited extent 
 only. A return to old competitive methods would be disastrous 
 to the growth and to the best interests of the country. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended in such a way as to do away 
 with the necessitv for judicial interlineations. 
 
130 
 
 G. F. Steele, Vice-President and General Manager, Nekoosa- 
 Edwards Paper Company, Port Edwards, Wis. 
 
 A return to the old competitive methods would be a return 
 to barbarism, and I do not think it would be feasible in this 
 enlightened age to force a return to such methods. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed. I believe an entirely new law 
 should be enacted making it possible to regulate large corpora- 
 tions, through commissions, and supervise intelligently corpora- 
 tion methods. I favor a national incorporation law and an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission. Too much politics is the cause 
 of business agitation. 
 
 Horace A. Carter, Treasurer of The Wm. Carter Company, 
 and Treasurer of Springfield Knitting Company, 
 Needham Heights, Mass. 
 
 First, waiting for the interpretation of the Sherman Act, 
 and, second, uncertainty of what the interpretation really 
 means; unscientific meddling and absence of sound system in 
 dealing with the tariff, without regard to business founded on 
 tariff basis all tend to unsettle business. The Sherman Law 
 should be made perfectly clear and should leave no doubt as 
 to what is to be considered restraint of *trade. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The Bessemer Gas Engine Company, Grove City, Pa. 
 
 A general lack of confidence, which may be called a mental 
 condition arising from various causes, accounts, in some degree, 
 for business disturbance. The ever increasing drain on the 
 producer to maintain the ever increasing number of non-pro- 
 'ducers in the various asylums and jails of the country, is no 
 slight factor in the general worriment. Presidential elections 
 should be for eight or twelve years, thus removing one cause 
 of disturbance. 
 
 Donald McDonald, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 My OAvn opinion is that the best way to control the trusts 
 is to put the tariff down to a point which will permit importa- 
 tions whenever prices are unduly raised. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended so as to allow the largest combinations of 
 capital and the most economical methods of doing business, 
 while preventing the numerous persecutions of individual con- 
 cerns with which all business men are familiar. 
 
 Ralph L. Shainwald, President, The Standard Paint Com- 
 pany, New York City. 
 
 Business is disturbed chiefly by the uncertainty which 
 checks new enter] irises. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 to make its provisions clear to all. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
131 
 
 J. L. Record, President, Minneapolis Steel and Machinery 
 Company, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 In my judgment a Federal incorporation law giving the 
 government control of corporations doing interstate business, 
 and compelling all corporations doing interstate business to 
 incorporate under such a law; and the creation of a commerce 
 or trade commission to exercise and control, is the proper rem- 
 edy for business instability. Of course, repealing the Sherman 
 Law and enacting a new one permitting trade agreements would 
 be necessary. 
 
 Richardson & Boynton Co., Manufacturers, New York. 
 
 Interference by the United States Government, generally 
 without warrant of law as the law is understood by the people 
 has had much to do with unsettling business. If lawyers do 
 not know the meaning of the Sherman Law, why should busi- 
 ness men know it? Universal bankruptcy would result from a 
 return to old competitive methods, and besides the people do 
 not want it either. "We absolutely favor a repeal of the Sher- 
 man Law, and, if necessary, pass a new law that is comprehen- 
 sive to all, and only a practical business law. 
 
 Geo. E. Keith, Shoe Manufacturer and Bank President, 
 Brockton, Mass. 
 
 Tariff and politics are making all the trouble. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so that a business man can know 
 how he can conduct his business. Trade unions should, not be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. The pres- 
 ent labor union and contractor system in building trade of 
 Brockton is a great trust. I don't object to a national incor- 
 poration law. 
 
 E. M. Funkheuser, President, Roanoke Gas and Water 
 Company, Roanoke, Va. 
 
 Theodore Koosevelt's theft of Bryan's recognition of the 
 innate envy of man, and the resulting desire to take from the 
 rich, is the cause of present disturbed business conditions. 
 Either repeal the Sherman Law or make it plain enough for 
 people not members of the United States Supreme Court to 
 understand. I am opposed to a national incorporation law, 
 unless State's rights is but a dream. 
 
 A. W. Chaffee, Treasurer, New York Net and Twine Com- 
 pany, Moodus, Conn. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business con- 
 ditions ? Damfino. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, and think favorably 
 of an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should 
 not be repealed, but amended. It is not clear and workable. 
 
132 
 
 Philip T. Dodge, President, Mergenthaler Linotype Com- 
 pany, New York City. 
 
 The causes of .present disturbed business conditions are, an 
 indefinite, drastic law, its literal interpretation and enforce- 
 ment, political pandering to the rabble, and general fear and 
 uncertainty due to too much regulation, too many laws, and 
 threatened legislation. I see little advantage and many dis- 
 advantages in a national incorporation law. A Federal license 
 is not needed. And as to an Interstate Trade Commission, I 
 say, no, let private business alone. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed, or amended to make it definite, reasonable and 
 understandable. 
 
 S. L. Gilbert, Manager, Armstrong Cork Company, St. 
 Louis, Mo. 
 
 Politics and political catering to present day labor unions 
 are potent causes of business unrest. I believe that the Supreme 
 Court can and should make the Sherman Law clear and work- 
 able. While I do not consider it feasible to attempt to return 
 to old competitive methods, we must have new and progressive 
 competitive business ways. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, but not an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 W. H. Childs, Vice-President, American Coal Products 
 Company, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to cover abuses in 
 morals. I am not yet settled in mind as to national incorpora- 
 tion and Federal license. An Interstate Trade Commission 
 might possibly be satisfactory. Doubt on the part of business 
 as to what is lawful is the cause of disturbed business con- 
 ditions. 
 
 James R. Nicholson, President, Harvard Brewing Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Over-capitalization, " insurgency," and tariff uncertainty 
 are disturbing business. The Sherman Law should be repealed 
 to make it clear as to its meaning. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and a Federal license law. I consider as particu- 
 larly dangerous -combinations of farmers, either to restrict pro- 
 duction or to hold a crop for higher prices. 
 
 Holden-Leonard Company, Manufacturers Ladies' Dress 
 Goods, Bennington, Vt. 
 
 The enforcement of the Sherman Law and agitation of the 
 tariff issue are at present the chief causes of business unrest. 
 The Sherman Law ought to be, repealed and a new law more 
 in accord with modern business conditions should take its place. 
 We favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
133 
 
 Frank E. Eckhart, Secretary and Treasurer, Eckhart Car- 
 riage Company, Auburn, Ind. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and a law should be 
 passed regulating all combinations, financial, manufacturing, 
 farming and labor. Make laws that favor none, but put all on 
 an equality. Combinations at the present time are necessary 
 for the highest development. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. 
 
 Julius Heimann, President, Heimann & Lichten, Manufac- 
 turers of Ladies' Hats, Monson, Mass. 
 
 Too many lawyers in our legislative bodies and, conse- 
 quently, many unnecessary laws, and too much "playing poli- 
 tics " to the galleries have brought some disturbance upon busi- 
 ness. We favor an Interstate Trade Commission and an amend- 
 ment of the Sherman Law so that it will be made perfectly 
 clear what is legal and what is illegal for corporations doing 
 interstate business to do. 
 
 E. B. Hazen, Bridal Veil Lumbering Company, Bridal Veil. 
 Ore. 
 
 I favor a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, but not a national incorporation law. The Sherman 
 Law is not clear and workable. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Too much anti-business legislation 
 and agitation are responsible for the existing uncertainty in 
 business affairs. 
 
 W. C. Winter, Pettibone, Mulliken & Co., Railroad Sup- 
 plies, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should not be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, neither should 
 combinations of farmers, assuming the act remains on the 
 statute books. Otherwise, and in the light of reason, farmers 
 should be allowed to form such combinations. Why not? 
 
 John Stambaugh, Secretary and Treasurer, The Youngs- 
 town Steel Company, Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 The causes of business disturbance are mostly economic. 
 Political uncertainty has made it worse. I favor a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law, but only on condition that other legislation 
 be enacted to take its place. It should be amended if it is not 
 superseded. Amendments should more clearly define and pro- 
 hibit harmful combinations of capital and labor, and not ham- 
 per them when they work for economic and moral good. 
 
134 
 
 T. A. Lemmon, President, Chicago, Wilmington & Ver- 
 million Coal Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Too much politics and too much tariff tinkering are re- 
 sponsible for business disturbance. I do not favor old competi- 
 tive methods as a general proposition, but I object to combina- 
 tions of capital simply formed to monopolize. The Sherman 
 Act should be amended to permit price agreements, subject to 
 State or government control similar to the German scheme. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 George E. Foster, President, Mellen Lumber Company, 
 Mellen, Wis. 
 
 We should have " regulation " of corporations instead of 
 prosecution and persecution; but such regulations should be 
 non-political. Corporations as a rule have accomplished more 
 for the good and welfare of the general public than individ- 
 uals could or would have done. Farmers and laborers must 
 come in the same as corporations. Too much poor politics have 
 caused business disturbance. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. O. Walker, Secretary, Escambia Land and Manufacturing 
 Company, Pensacola, Fla. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the operation of the tariff and of the Sher- 
 man Law, and too frequent political upheavals, are disturbing 
 business. The Sherman Law should be amended so as to pro- 
 vide for national examination of corporate accounts ; compulsory 
 limitation of earnings or reduction of prices of commodities 
 produced when earnings reach the legal maximum. It should 
 also prohibit watered stock. 
 
 F. C. Ayres, Treasurer, J. C. Pearson Company, Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 Lack of confidence on the part of consumers and dealers, 
 due to the attitude of the administration, and uncertainty of 
 interpretation of existing laws are causes of disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and 
 the enactment of a national incorporation law, a Federal license 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Edward C. Hinman, President, American Steam Pump 
 Company, Battle Creek, Mich. 
 
 Too much politics ; too little patriotism and too much middle 
 of the road, have caused present conditions and disturbance 
 in business. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. I do 
 not favor either a national incorporation law or a Federal 
 license law. as wo have too many laws already. 
 
135 
 
 S. H. Fullerton, President, Chicago Lumber and Coal Com- 
 pany and Gulf Lumber Company, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Prosecution and persecution of the business interests of the 
 country; over-expansion during the boom years before 1907; 
 political agitation and the general extravagance of all the people 
 are the causes of business anxiety and hesitancy. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and a Federal license law. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed and something substituted for it 
 that can be understood and is possible of enforcement. Reason- 
 able co-operation should be permitted in every line of manu- 
 facturing in order to prevent waste and destructive competition. 
 
 George Paxton Diehl, Vice-President, Edgewood Distilling 
 Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license 
 law, and an Interstate Trade Commission. Disturbed business 
 conditions are due to the attempted reform of, first, railroad 
 abuses; second, big business abuses; third, municipal misgov- 
 ermnent, and, fourth, retail liquor traffic. These reforms are 
 too violent and sudden and have destroyed confidence. They 
 savor too much of confiscation and restriction of constitutional 
 liberty. 
 
 C. B. Rockwell (Cranston Worsted Mills), Bristol, R. I. 
 
 National incorporation might be made a good thing, espe- 
 cially if state incorporations were done away with. Overtrad- 
 ing, tariff legislation, the check following the so-called trust 
 investigations, government inquiries into private business, and 
 the discussion of and legislative action looking toward an income 
 tax have all tended to disturb business conditions. Some speedy 
 quietus is needed, so that honest business can proceed, unham- 
 pered by doubt of the future. 
 
 Hewes & Potter, Manufacturers of Suspenders and Belts, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 An Interstate Trade Commission woul"d be all right if it 
 could be kept out of politics, and we favor a national incor- 
 poration law and Federal license. The Sherman Law should 
 be made to harmonize with the decision of the Supreme Court 
 in the Standard Oil Case. Fear of tariff changes and the ex- 
 treme political activity usual about this period are causing busi- 
 ness disturbance. 
 
 Irish Bros., Miners and Shippers of Coal, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Uncertainty on the part of large firms, corporations and 
 railroads as to procedure under the Sherman Act is the lead- 
 ing cause of business disturbance. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed. We favor a national incorporation law and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
13G 
 
 F. K. Russell, F. K. Russell Machine Company, Dallas, 
 Texas. 
 
 The Sherman Act should either be amended or re-written 
 altogether. It has not yet been made clear and workable. The 
 public and the press are evidently determined to get a better 
 hold on the large concerns which have seemed in the past to 
 be above public or governmental interference. Naturally these 
 changes in the attitude of the people and of the government 
 tend to unsettle conditions for the time being. 
 
 C. Arthur Blair, Chickasha Milling Company, Apache, Okla. 
 
 Congress should pass a monetary reform bill (Aldrich's 
 suits me), also a "reasonable" protective tariff, and should 
 then adjourn; then let the country adjust itself to the condi- 
 tions these bills will bring about and all will be well. Too 
 much muckraking about Wall street tends to unsettle people's 
 minds in regard to their investments. Pass the bills I have 
 mentioned and in the language of Mr. Hanna, " Let well 
 enough alone." 
 
 J. W. Johnson, President, Johnson & Johnson, Manufactur- 
 ing Chemists, New Brunswick, N. J. 
 
 The violent prosecutions under the Sherman Law which 
 law has had so many and various interpretations none of 
 which defines what a business man may or may not do, have 
 caused most of the present disturbance. I favor government 
 supervision over certain lines of business, as in national banks, 
 a national incorporation law, and Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Harry Ainsworth, Vice-President, Williams, White & Co., 
 Machinery, Moline, 111. 
 
 Too much high finance on the one hand, that is, on the 
 part of some of the great corporations, and the small profits 
 which railroads are making on the other hand, tend, in my 
 opinion, to unsettle business. So far as high prices are con- 
 cerned, farmers do not get them. The middleman is chiefly 
 responsible for high prices, and the farmers should be permitted 
 to combine for self-protection. 
 
 Franklin Remington, President Foundation Company, Con- 
 tractors and Engineers, New York. 
 
 Originally, overbearing and grasping behavior of certain 
 trusts, producing drastic legislation affecting good and bad 
 alike, now political gallery playing preceding a Presidential 
 election. What is needed now is more education of the voters 
 so that the political parties will be forced to respond to the 
 demand for stable business conditions. 
 
137 
 
 H. J. Fleming, Secretary and Treasurer, Bonet Construction 
 Company ; Member firm, Bonet & Fleming ; Manager, 
 Chipman Knitting Mills, Easton, Pa. 
 
 Jn view of failure to enforce existing statutes during a 
 long period of constructive prosperity, the lack of legislative 
 control of contemporaneous development, and the condition of 
 our commercial and industrial growth, making it necessary for 
 the future welfare of the nation to enforce the statutes enacted 
 for the control of business, as conducted at the present time, 
 this enforcement naturally excites a disturbance in the trade, 
 which in time will be allayed. The Sherman Law should be 
 made clearer. I favor a national incorporation law for cor- 
 porations doing an interstate business, and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 Hugo Morrisey, President, Jefferson City Water Works 
 Company, Jefferson City, Mo. 
 
 I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission in a general 
 way, provided it could be established without interfering too 
 much with the right of capitalists to control their own affairs, 
 or with the rights of the States to control their citizens. There 
 lias already been too much legislation both in nation and State 
 infringing upon individual rights and denying to citizens the 
 square deal to which every one is entitled. 
 
 R. D. Smith, Local Manager for Edwards & Bradford 
 Lumber Company, Center, Neb. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to control prices 
 and prevent excessive rise, as well as a disastrous slump. Such 
 an amendment would protect alike the consumer and the small 
 manufacturer. 
 
 Prices have been very high, and every business man feels 
 that they are approaching a limit, and there is a general dispo- 
 sition to hedge in fear of a break that would cause heavy loss 
 
 L. A. Ault, President, The Ault & Wiborg Company, Manu- 
 facturers, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 I am in favor of national incorporation for corporations 
 doing an interstate business, and would have them amenable 
 only to the national authorities. Such a change would go far 
 toward removing the causes of present unrest and apprehension, 
 and business men would be able then to know exactly what 
 they could do within the bounds of Federal law. 
 
 Aberdeen Mill Company, Aberdeen, S. D. 
 
 We regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. Trade 
 unions and combinations of farmers should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act, unless it be made law- 
 ful for every industry to have a similar privilege. 
 
138 
 
 Alfred Stanley, Manager Livermore Falls Pulp Company, 
 Plymouth, N. H. 
 
 A disposition on the part of government officials and poli- 
 ticians to constantly harass large corporations, even when they 
 are earnestly trying to do business legally, as they understand 
 the law, cannot fail to disturb general business. As a nation 
 we have become great by the development of our national re- 
 sources. Development today or encouragement to develop is 
 being discouraged. Too much said about " conservation " of 
 our resources. If capital is to be interested to take the gold 
 or coal from frozen Alaska, let them combine and make money 
 if they can in' doing it. The men or corporations that get 
 hold of gold are good spenders. It will do all of us more 
 good than to conserve it in Alaska. 
 
 F. E. Nusen, care Missouri Malleable Iron Company, East 
 St. Louis, 111. 
 
 Too much agitation against the railroads and large indus- 
 trial corporations and fear of radical changes in our tariff are 
 making business men uneasy. The suit against the U. S. 
 Steel Corporation, whose dealings have been notoriously far 
 and broad gauge, has clearly manifested that the Sherman 
 Law is not a measure that can be regarded as clear and work- 
 able. Our strongest European competitors are fostering the 
 large aggregations of capital, and under the old methods of 
 competition we would soon drop behind in the industrial race. 
 
 Houston Lowe, Capitalist and President The Lowe Bros. 
 Company, Dayton, Ohio. 
 
 \\ 'c need government control of corporations, and at the 
 same time the enactment of a law, after careful deliberation, 
 that the corporations can safely work by. Overcapitalism is, 
 in my judgment, the cause of present disturbed conditions. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and the amendment of the 
 Sherman Law, as I have indicated. 
 
 George O. Carpenter, Manufacturer, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 We need a revised Sherman Anti-Trust Law to meet present 
 conditions the conditions of 1912 instead of those of 1890. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission of business men under 
 the Department of Commerce and Labor. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 Willis K. Jackson, Manufacturer Lumber etc., Buffalo, N.Y, 
 
 I favor an amendment of the Sherman Law according to the 
 plan outlined by former President Roosevelt. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. Business is not half as much disturbed as people 
 think. 
 
139 
 
 George F. Woolston, Manager, The Bishop-Babcock-Becker 
 Company, New York City. 
 
 Senseless political agitation, muckraking newspaper and 
 magazine articles and overzealous workers in the cause of re- 
 form are some of the causes that have led to disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. The Sherman Law is clear and workable, 
 but it is liable to cost some " good " trusts and their poor stock- 
 holders a lot of money. What we want is common sense in 
 carrying out the spirit and intention of the law. We favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion, with proper restrictions. 
 
 Libbey & Dingley Company, Cotton and Woolen Manu- 
 facturers, Lewiston, Me. 
 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act unless everybody and everything be ex- 
 cepted why should they be? We see no reason why farmers 
 should be given privileges denied to others just as honest. 
 
 If those elected to enact laws governing such matters as 
 are contained in your questions do not do a good job through 
 lack of capacity, or otherwise, leave them at home the next 
 trip. 
 
 Abner Morse, Morse Brothers, Canton, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the attitude of the government toward 
 large investment* of capital, together with the agitation re- 
 garding the tariff and the probability of tariff changes, are the 
 causes of business disturbance. The Sherman Law should de- 
 fine what constitutes an illegal combination or monopoly in 
 restraint of trade, giving large investments of capital an op- 
 portunity to do business in a manner fair to smaller competi- 
 tors. T favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 Joseph D. Bascom, Broderick & Bascom Rope Company, 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it appli- 
 cable to such cases only as involve moral turpitude. Fear and 
 uncertainty, brought about by apprehension of drastic and un- 
 reasonable interpretation of the Sherman Law, are the causes 
 of present disturbed conditions in business. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 E. Ira Richards & Co., Manufacturing Jewelers, New York 
 City. 
 
 We regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. We 
 favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission. Extravagance of living and the 
 apprehension that exists on the part of capital in relation to 
 the treatment of investments by governmental authority are 
 among the causes of business disturbance. 
 
140 
 
 Charles A. Eaton Company, Manufacturers Boots and 
 Shoes, Brockton, Mass., and Augusta, Me. 
 
 Prosecutions and the destruction of confidence in the man- 
 agement and development of great industries, also too much 
 playing to the galleries on the part of our political leaders, 
 are disturbing business conditions. I am opposed to a return 
 of old competitive methods, if it means the stopping of the 
 continued development of consolidated business enterprises that 
 insures economy of production and distribution. The Sherman 
 Law should be made perfectly plain in its operation and appli- 
 cation, so that the rights of all shall be respected and pro- 
 tected. I favor a national incorporation Jaw. 
 
 W. A. Gaines & Co., Distillers, Frankfort, Ky. 
 
 Intemperate and theatrical methods, which have been em- 
 ployed in attacks on large interests, and the tariff question 
 are chief causes of business disturbance. We favor a national 
 incorporation law for public utilities and corporations engaged 
 in interstate commerce. We do not favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission except for corporations that may be incorporated 
 under a national law. The Sherman Law should clearly de- 
 fine all those questions that must now be decided by courts in 
 each individual case through long and expensive litigation. 
 
 Dickson Q. Brown, President of Associated Producers Com- 
 pany (Petroleum Producers), New York City. 
 
 Uncertain interpretation of the law and the continual pres- 
 sure of politicians on business men, whether the latter are 
 honest or not, are chief causes of business disturbance. I favor 
 a national incorporation law or a Federal license law, and I 
 also favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. I do not oppose a 
 law regulating corporations, but do think that the law should be 
 clear and simple. 
 
 R. B. Pitts, President and Treasurer, Hermitage Cotton 
 Mills, Camden, S. C. 
 
 Too much "tinkering " is the matter with business. I favor 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 
 combinations of farmers should be permitted, unless such action 
 should be in the nature of a " corner/'' 
 
 Indianapolis Mortar and Fuel Company, Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 We regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and 
 that there is no need of amending it. We favor a national 
 incorporation law, a Federal license law, and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Business disturbance is due to uncertainty. 
 
141 
 
 S. F. Seager, Seager Engine Works, Lansing, Mich. 
 
 If not repealed, the Sherman Law should be amended to 
 permit legitimate business combinations. I believe in a national 
 incorporation law; 1 also favor a Federal license law, pro- 
 vided State laws are done away with and replaced by a single 
 Federal law. I am for an Interstate Trade Commission, as it 
 seems to be the only way out. Enforcement of the Sherman 
 Law, which is totally unfit for our present conditions, is the 
 chief cause of business disturbance. I believe government reg- 
 ulation necessary, but do not believe the Sherman Law can be 
 made a proper means, and that Federal incorporation, uniform 
 in all States, and an Interstate Trade Commission, are the only 
 practical solution. 
 
 P. T. Jackson, Jr., Vice-President, International Cotton 
 Mills Corporation; Treasurer, Bay State Cotton Cor- 
 poration; President, Boston Yarn Company, and 
 Treasurer of three Cotton Mills, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Business readjusting itself to the recent trust decisions of 
 the Supreme Court is the cause of any unsettled feeling that 
 exists. I do not believe in trying to legislate away competi- 
 tion, as it is a natural law, and to interfere with it is certain 
 to upset business in the long run. I do not regard the Sherman 
 Law as clear and workable. It should be amended to define 
 more clearly what constitutes a monopoly. 
 
 A. T. Eastwick, Treasurer, James Lees & Sons Company, 
 Bridgeport, Pa. 
 
 The prosecution of the so-called trusts under the Sherman 
 Law, and the apparent agitation which many fear will result 
 in sufficient reductions to cripple the industries, especially the 
 textile industries under Schedule K, are the causes of the un- 
 settled feeling in business circles. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended so as to permit large combinations of capital, under 
 proper regulation and control of the government. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Genesee Lumber Company, Genesee, La. 
 
 Too much socialism in the press, the government and the 
 people, is causing business disturbance. We say yes to a na- 
 tional incorporation law as the lesser of the evils, and we would 
 be for an Interstate Trade Commission only as a last resort. 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. It is an attempt to 
 turn back the stream of time. 
 
 W. N. Small, President, El Paso Foundry and Machinery 
 Company, El Paso, Texas. 
 
 Jail sentence instead of fines, is the amendment needed in 
 the Sherman Law. 
 
142 
 
 Arthur Meeker, Armour & Co., Union Stockyards, Chicago, 
 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are largely due to the prose- 
 cution of corporations under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment of a 
 national incorporation law, a Federal license law, and an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act, but combinations of farmers, either to restrict production 
 or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not be rendered 
 lawful. 
 
 Henry C. Bannard, United Breweries Company, Chicago, 
 111. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business con- 
 ditions ? Too much Wickersham ! 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. Trade unions 
 should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 if it is not to be repealed. As to combinations of farmers, I 
 think the Kentucky night riders should be punished. I am 
 not in favor of an Interstate Trade 'Commission. 
 
 Henry W. Wellington, Henry W. Wellington Company, 
 Silver Lake, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The American's " get rich quick " is the cause of disturbed 
 business conditions. The Shernian Law should be repealed. The 
 railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 
 farmers should be allowed to combine. I favor a national in- 
 corporation law, a Federal license, and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 E. D. Sweet, Manager, Long-Bell Lumber Company, Cedar 
 Vale, Kan. 
 
 Knockers in the way of politicians seeking a following, and 
 too many inferior lawyers making our hvws. make the trouble 
 for business. Give us good level-headed business men for our 
 lawmakers and business will be 0. K. again. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, a Federal license law. and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. 
 
 G. W. Campbell, Campbell Lumber Company, Marlington, 
 W. Va. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license sys- 
 tem, but not an Interstate Trade Commission. Lack of confi- 
 dence in the present national administration and fear of a worse 
 one to come is behind our business anxiety. 
 
143 
 
 The Goehring Manufacturing Company, Mirrors, Sash and 
 Doo'rs, Akron, Ohio. 
 
 General disturbed conditions and overproduction are the 
 causes of unrest. The country has sent too many attorneys to 
 Washington, and not enough business men, for the general pros- 
 perity. We favor a national incorporation law, and think that 
 an Interstate Trade Commission might be necessary. The gov- 
 ernment should grant the corporations a charter outlining what 
 they can do, not only in one State, but any State in the Union. 
 This charter should outline what they are allowed to do and 
 what they cannot do. Trade unions should be granted a charter 
 the same as any corporation, and this would outline what they 
 would be allowed to do. Combinations of farmers should be 
 encouraged, but they should take out a corporation license the 
 same as any other corporation, which would outline what they 
 could do and what they could not do. 
 
 V. L. Price, Vice-President, National Candy Company, St. 
 Louis, Mo. 
 
 Too much legislation and talk on the part of public of- 
 ficials have caused disturbed business conditions. We favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law, but if not repealed, its amendment, 
 so that it will allow reasonable, but not restrictive, intercourse 
 between business houses in the same line of business. We 
 f;i\or a national incorporation law, Federal license, and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. T. Wynkoop, Russell-Miller Milling Company, Bismarck, 
 N. D. 
 
 Fast living, and corporations striving to pay dividends on 
 over-capitalization, are the causes of disturbance in business. 
 The Sherman Law as it reads is all right. I don't agree with 
 the interpretation placed on it by the court. I favor a national 
 incorporation law. Federal license, and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Chas. E. Schou, Assistant Treasurer and General Sales 
 Manager, Empire Cream Separator Company, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 We certainly favor an Interstate Trade Commission and a 
 national incorporation law. The Sherman Law should be made 
 clearer to business men. Uncertainty is the cause of present 
 disturbed business conditions. 
 
 H. H. Franklin Manufacturing Company, Automobiles and 
 Finished Castings, Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it more clear 
 and workable. We favor a national incorporation law. Dis- 
 turbance in business is due largely to trust prosecution and 
 tariff agitation. 
 
144 
 
 Daniel Wells, Lumber Manufacturer, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 The monetary situation and behind that the inevitable ebb 
 tuid flow of all life is responsible for any disturbed business 
 conditions. I favor a national incorporation law. Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. We must have a 
 merchant marine. Foreigners carry all our goods. They laugh 
 at us. Our plight is idiotic, We must have free lumber from 
 Canada. It is not feasible to attempt to return to old competi- 
 tive methods. Competition is the death of industry. I would 
 favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, providing there is a substi- 
 tute made. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act. A labor trust is imminent. 
 
 Summer-field Baldwin, Woodward, Baldwin & Co., Balti- 
 more, Md. 
 
 Labor unions, strikes and boycotts; excessive speculation in 
 commodities, stocks and bonds; a Democratic House with imo 
 ti gating committees galore, and tampering with the tariff by a 
 lot of men who know little or nothing about it, are the causes 
 of disturbed business conditions. I do not believe the country 
 could hold its trade if it returned to old competitive methods. 
 The Sherman Law is not clear, and Governor Harmon, when 
 attorney-general under Mr. Cleveland, said it was not workable. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended in accord with the deci- 
 sions of the Supreme Court. 
 
 William M. Pratt, Goodell-Pratt Company, Toolsmiths, 
 Greenfield, Mass. 
 
 Political stage play is causing the trouble in business. The 
 Sherman Law should either be repealed or amended so that 
 it will be honorable and not criminal to do business. I favor 
 a national incorporation law of the proper kind, and an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission. 
 
 E. C. Bellamy, General Manager, Mammoth Spring Electric 
 Light and Power Company, Mammoth Spring, Ark. 
 
 Labor and anticipated political changes are the causes of ex- 
 isting business disturbance. The Sherman Law has been made 
 clear and workable. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 L. M. Butman, Secretary and Treasurer, The Empire 
 Worsted Mills, Jamestown, N. Y. 
 
 Bad politics is the cause of disturbed business conditions. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to control rather 
 than disrupt. We favor a national incorporation law, and we 
 regard a return to former competitive methods as feasible, if 
 under government "control. 
 
145 
 
 Brown Brothers Lumber Company, Rhinelander, Wis. 
 
 Kecuperation from the reaction that was bound to come 
 after an unprecedented period of prosperity and the prosecu- 
 tion of some of the trusts, with the uncertainty of the results 
 therefrom, are the two underlying causes of business disturb- 
 ance. The Sherman Law should be repealed and a proper sub- 
 stitute enacted. We favor a law placing the larger companies 
 engaged in interstate business under Federal supervision and 
 making definite rules for the guidance of such companies. We 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Railroads should be allowed to ente/ into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. 
 
 J. Langeloth, Chairman, The American Metal Company, 
 New York. 
 
 Confidence has been destroyed by the government tr}dng to 
 enforce laws that were not defined. Capitalists became fright- 
 ened, and trade suffered in practically all directions. We favor 
 a national incorporation law, and unless such a law is passed, 
 we would favor a Federal license. If not repealed, the Sher- 
 man law should be amended in such a way as to enable business 
 men and corporations to know what to do. 
 
 A. W. Brooks, Treasurer, Pratt Shoe Company, Natick, 
 Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. If amended it should 
 permit large combinations, such as the United States Steel Com- 
 pany et al., to conduct their business under thorough super- 
 vision, under one unit, instead of several, as proposed by the 
 courts. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Josiah Howard, President, C. B. Howard Company, Lumber 
 Manufacturers, Emporium, Pa. 
 
 I believe that affairs are adjusting themselves on a surer 
 and more prosperous basis than ever. Overcredit and political 
 agitation have caused whatever disturbance exists. The Sher- 
 man Law is clear and workable and not ready for amendment 
 as yet. I favor a national incorporation, law. Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 P. J. Brix, Brix Logging Company, Oneida, Wash. 
 
 The causes of disturbance in business are the uncertain 
 conditions in regard to legislation and the decisions of the 
 courts. The general business world is at sea and, consequently, 
 must wait for developments. I favor a national incorporation 
 law. 
 
14(5 
 
 The John Wildi Evaporated Milk Company, Highland, 111. 
 
 Too much politics and too much agitation, without reason- 
 able consideration of the subject by those who do the agitating, 
 are causing trouble in business. All corporations should be 
 compelled to sell at reasonable price's and depend, as the rail- 
 roads do, on superior service, bustle and goods to secure the 
 business; thus too high or too low prices would be prevented. 
 We favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should he 
 repealed or, if amended, it should provide for reasonable con- 
 trol of corporations without unreasonable restrictions. 
 
 D. M. Sechler, Manufacturer of Agricultural Implements, 
 etc., Moline, 111. 
 
 The President and Attorney (Jeiieral are principally re- 
 sponsible for causing the present disturbed business conditions. 
 I would favor a national incorporation law, if it will relieve 
 corporations from the burdens imposed by the various States. 
 If the law would be on the line of one introduced in Congress 
 two years ago, which provided for a continuance of State op- 
 pression and added one more for the nation, I would say, " Xo." 
 
 John W. Tuthill, President John W. Tuthill Lumber Com- 
 pany, Sioux Falls, S. D. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission if composed of 
 expert and experienced business men, without any politicians. 
 Political agitation and the activity of the government in trying 
 to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act are responsible for any 
 disturbance in business. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and a Federal license law. The Sherman Law should not be 
 repealed and does not at present require amending. 
 
 Albert Canz, President of the National Capital Brewing 
 Company, Washington, D. C. 
 
 The high prices of articles manufactured by trusts and 
 the high tariff on the necessaries of daily life are the causes 
 of business disturbance. Combinations of farmers ought to be 
 made lawful and railroads should be all owed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 John H. Flint, Treasurer, Tyer Rubber Company, Andover, 
 Mass. 
 
 We favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. Business disturbance is due to politicians 
 causing trouble by their appeals to different elements, irrespect- 
 ive of the interests of the country at large. 
 
147 
 
 J. Walter Freiberg, President, The Freiberg & Workum 
 Company, Distillers, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 T favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The Sherman Law should he repealed, unless 
 it may be so amended as io enable persons to know whether or 
 not they are operating within the Jaw without awaiting the de- 
 cision of the court. Lack of confidence, due to attacks and 
 threats of attacks on the part of the government, and general 
 fear of legislation based upon political expediency, instead of 
 scientific investigation, is troubling business. Tiailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 W. J. Olcott, President, Oliver Iron Mining Company, Du- 
 luth, Minn. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are due to errors of 
 both labor and capital. The uncertainty as to the exact mean- 
 ing of the Sherman Law. The apparent unfavorable attitude 
 of government officials towards large corporations, and their 
 efforts to return to destructive competition. Too much legis- 
 lation by incompetent representatives. Too much cheap poli- 
 tics and too little statesmanship. Too little encouragement 
 towards developing our great national industries and the un- 
 certainty as to an adequate return on legitimate investments. 
 
 A. D. Hawley, Treasurer and General Manager, The Bristol 
 Manufacturing Company, Knit Underwear, Bristol 
 and Plainville, Conn. 
 
 LTncertainty as to the government's attitude regarding fur- 
 ther proceedings against large business by the Federal authori- 
 ties is the 'principal cause of business agitation. We favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law and, in its place, the making of a 
 new law up to date. We favor a national incorporation law 
 and, possibly. Federal license. 
 
 C. S. Butterfield, Lumber Manufacturer, Norfield, Miss. 
 
 Too much paternalism, viz.: Interference by the general 
 government and by State governments with State corpora- 
 tions and the conduct of their business, have caused the pres- 
 ent disturbed conditions. T am in favor of a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law, and if it is not to be repealed, then in favor 
 of amending it to bring it in line with the modern situation. 
 
 The Lippincott Glass Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The causes of business disturbance are attacks on capital 
 employed when organized to steady prices; the very moderate 
 crop yield, and the growth of socialistic influences. The Sher- 
 man Law should be made more reasonable, definite and clear. 
 so that an ordinary individual mav know where he stands. 
 
148 
 
 Frank J. Whitney, Vice-President, Wachusett Shirt Com- 
 pany, Leominster, Mass. 
 
 The principle of the Sherman Law is right; its interpreta- 
 tion is vague and tentative. We do not favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, and combinations of farmers should be rendered 
 lawful to a reasonable degree. Business disturbance is due to 
 readjustments under the Sherman Law, to the absence of a 
 sound banking policy and to the need of a permanent, non- 
 partisan tariff commission. 
 
 N. E. Loomis, The Mosaic Tile Company, Zanesville, Ohio. 
 
 Unless we return to the old methods, bad as they were, it 
 will only be a short time before we will have no business to 
 attend to. The Sherman Law should either be repealed or it 
 should stand unenforced, as was the case for several years. 
 If it is not to be repealed it should be so framed as to include 
 every combination,, banks, insurance companies, churches, ' farm- 
 ers, trade unions, etc., etc. 
 
 Joseph Klee's Sons, Clothing Manufacturers, Moundsville, 
 W. Va. 
 
 Too much national and State legislation of a character that 
 tends to agitate the public mind and too many demagogues 
 going around talking loosely and recklessly for their own po- 
 litical advantage are causing political disturbance. The Sher- 
 man Law should not be repealed or amended. I favor a na- 
 tional incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
 Warner, Moore & Co., Manufacturers of Flour, Meal, etc., 
 and Dealers in Building Supplies, Richmond, Va. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed in order to stop the 
 attack on corporations. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. It is the worst trust 
 we ever had. Attacks on corporations and too much politics 
 interfering with business are the causes of the present disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 G. W. Fuller, Vice-President and General Manager, A. S. 
 Cameron Steam Pump Works, New York City. 
 
 The threat of drastic application of the Sherman Law has 
 unsettled confidence and restricted investment in new business. 
 .Repeal the Sherman Law, pass a national incorporation law 
 and create a permanent tariff commission with plenary powers, 
 subject only to decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States. 
 
1-19 
 
 J. S. Ralston, President, The Ralston Steel Car Company, 
 Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 Political ghost dancers and demagogues of the United States 
 of the Senator Pomerene kind are causing disturbed business 
 conditions. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law is 
 not clear and workable and ought to be repealed. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and combinations 
 of farmers should be lawful. 
 
 Abram C. Mott, Manufacturer, Heating and Cooking Ap- 
 paratus, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The government trying to stop the economic business tide, 
 is causing the present business disturbance. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should cer- 
 tainly not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Law, 
 as they are the greatest known combination for the restriction 
 of production and competition. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 T. Frank Stevens, Treasurer, Maine Manufacturing Com- 
 pany (Refrigerators and Ice Chests), Nashua, N. H. 
 
 A permanent tariff board should be created by Congress,, 
 as the present unrest is due to a great extent to uncertainty 
 regarding the tariff. While I do not consider it feasible to 
 attempt to return to what are known as old competitive methods, 
 I think that, to a large extent, competition ought to be restored. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 F. P. Boynton, Boynton & Co., Manufacturers of Mould- 
 ings, etc., Chicago, 111. 
 
 Political agitation due to the approaching election and the 
 over-production of stock issues not based on value, I think, are 
 helping to disturb business conditions. An Interstate Trade 
 Commission and a Federal license law would help to improve 
 the situation. The Sherman Law should be amended so that 
 its meaning would be beyond question. 
 
 J. Alex. Hayden, Manufacturer and Decorator, The Hayden 
 Company, New York City. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to attacking large business cor- 
 porations according to a law on our statute books, which law 
 has been to my mind shown to be unworkable. A law should 
 be made correcting any abuses on the part of large combina- 
 tions of capital which may be detrimental to the general wel- 
 fare of the people of the United States of America. 
 
150 
 
 John W. Nary, President and Treasurer, Worsted Mills, 
 Trenton, N. J. 
 
 Radicalism and tariff agitation are causing business uncer- 
 tainty. The Sherman Law should be amended to make it more 
 easily understood. The existence of a holding company should 
 not in itself constitute a violation of law, if there is no oilier 
 violation connected witli such company. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 M. H. Taylor, Pittsburgh Coal Company, Erie, Pa. 
 
 Overtrading and overproduction arc the principal causes of 
 business disturbance. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 to clearly specify what constitutes offenses against it. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates., sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 1 favor a national 
 incorporation law. Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Charles H. Lindenberg, The M. C. Lilley Company, Manu- 
 facturers, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 Principally uncertainty as to what will be done by the trust* 
 and the tariff is the trouble with business to-day. The Inter- 
 state Trade Commission does not impress me favorably, for I 
 favor no law that promotes State Socialism. The attempt to 
 fix prices of manufactured goods by law or by commission is 
 very different from fixing prices for public utilities. 
 
 A. B. Rinehart, President, The Akron Belting Company, 
 Akron, Ohio. 
 
 Politicians playing to the public (although the public are 
 becoming tired of their antics) have had much to do with di<- 
 turbing business. I favor a national incorporation law, but am 
 not in favor of an Interstate Trade Commission or a Federal 
 license law. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. 
 
 Frank H. Payne, Metric Metal Works, Erie, Pa. 
 
 Insincere legislators and subterfuge legislation /'. e., legisla- 
 tion against somebody, something or some corporate 4 interest 
 other than found in a legislator's own constituency, instead of 
 legislation for the general welfare of the nation are causing 
 most of the trouble. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, 
 which is neither clear nor workable. 
 
 James Rogers, President, J. & J. Rogers Company, Pulp 
 and Paper Manufacturers, Ausable Forks, N. Y. 
 
 So far as the paper and pulp interest is concerned, the dam- 
 age to its business is almost if not wholly caused by the 
 paper and pulp clause in the Canadian KVciprocity Act. The 
 Sherman Law is reasonablv clear and workable. 
 
151 
 
 J. E. Patterson, Merchant and Manufacturer, Wilkes-Barre, 
 Pa. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate business. I do not favor changing the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Act; additional legislation may.be needed. If "water- 
 ing " stocks is meant by overcapitalization, then I favor gov- 
 ernment regulation of capitalization. 1 also favor laws applying 
 publicity to commercial corporations. 
 
 Benjamin F. Miles, President, Browning Engineering Com- 
 pany, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Return to old methods of competition is absolutely im- 
 possible, being against the world-wide current of affairs. In 
 matters dealing with commerce the powers of government should 
 be limited as far as possible, and individual initiative should 
 be unhampered as far as possible by government regulations 
 and espionage. 
 
 John M. Cameron, Great Western Oil Refining Company, 
 Erie, Kan. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to inside rivalry or 
 discord between the big moneyed interests, disaffection over 
 recent enforcement of anti-trust legislation, and the timidity 
 and conservatism of capital. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to make clear " reasonable restraint." I favor an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. R. Montgomery, President, The J. R. Montgomery Com- 
 pany, Manufacturers of Cotton, Yarns, etc., Windsor 
 Locks, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should bo made plain and comprehensive, 
 so that it will allow a proper combination of capital to conduct 
 any size of business. It is not at present clear and workable. 
 We favor a national incorporation la\v. 
 
 Corning & Co., Distillers, Peoria, 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the inability of the 
 business and manufacturing interests to fully understand what 
 is really required, and the vague and indifferent meaning of 
 the Sherman Law. The Sherman Law should be made broad 
 and plain, so that the business and manufacturing interests of 
 the country would understand what to do. 
 
 B. Eldredge, President, National Sewing Machine Com- 
 pany, Belvidere, 111. 
 
 Too much competition is ruinous to a stable business. 
 
 Combinations are a good thing if a commission could be 
 formed by the government to regulate them on a basis of a 
 fair profit on capital actually invested. 
 
152 
 
 T. A. Adams, President, The Manhattan Refrigerating 
 Company, and President, The Union Terminal Cold 
 Storage Company, New York City. 
 
 The efforts to tear down our present commercial and manu- 
 facturing industries in order to make capital for the men that 
 are being, or wish to be, elected to represent us, are the causes 
 of disturbance in business. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, and I can see no objection to the experiment of an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. The Sherman Law ought to be 
 repealed. 
 
 Leonard Tuft, Pinehurst, N. C. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that corporations 
 shall be under the supervision of some commission, and that 
 perhaps production should be limited to some per cent, of the 
 total business in their line. Business disturbance is due largely 
 to the agitation and changing of business methods on account 
 of the Sherman Law. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 a Federal license law, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The Marbury Lumber Company, Marbury, Ala. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, and combinations of farmers 
 should be permitted. We favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. Not knowing where we 
 stand is the chief cause of existing business disturbance. 
 
 W. V. Cranford, Manufacturer, Cranford Company, Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y. ' 
 
 The farmer is peculiarly subject to attack by middlemen. 
 They should be encouraged to form associations for marketing 
 their products. It would tend to bring them more closely in 
 touch with the consumer, help to reduce cost of living, give 
 them a living profit for their goods, and enable them to buy 
 their supplies in quantity and at wholesale rates. 
 
 Northwestern Lumber Company, Hoquiam, Wash. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the substitution 
 of a law compelling all corporations to publish inventories and 
 work in the open both combinations of capital and combina- 
 tions of labor. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. 
 
 The Brecht Company, Manufacturers of Packing House 
 Machinery, etc., St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 If not repealed the Sherman Law should make clear what 
 are reasonable and unreasonable restraints. Too much govern- 
 mental interference with business is tending to unsettle business 
 interests and to make investors timid. 
 
3S3 
 
 J. W. Koch, President, The Stoneware Pipe Company, East 
 Alton, 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions? The socialistic cry: Down 
 with capital ! and passing laws to that effect. No country can 
 prosper without protection to capital and encouragement to 
 industries, to develop the resources of the country, otherwise 
 capital will find investments in foreign lands more profitable. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 George R. Collett, St. Louis National Stock Yards, National 
 Stock Yards, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and a new law passed 
 making good its defects. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and a Federal license law. Too much uncertainty as to the 
 meaning of the Sherman Law is a disturbing element in busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Edward P. Nichols, Treasurer, Great Falls Manufacturing 
 Company, Textiles, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Political chicanery is the trouble with business. The Sher- 
 man Law ought to be repealed. Old competitive methods are 
 emphatically not feasible. The railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. 
 
 James C. Clow (James B. Clow & Sons), Waterworks Sup- 
 plies, etc., Chicago, 111. 
 
 Unfair attacks on corporations, the inability of corpora- 
 tions to adjust themselves to laws not understood, the Social- 
 istic attitude toward railroads, corporations, etc., the high tariff, 
 crop failures and general fear occasioned by all causes above 
 mentioned, with many more, have led to disturbed business con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Arthur Rogers, President, The Eastern Ohio Glass Com- 
 pany, Barnesville, Ohio. 
 
 General prosperity is the cause of business disturbance. The 
 Sherman Law is clear and workable, and a return to old com- 
 petitive methods is feasible. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. 
 
 I. Baumgart, President, Art Wall Paper Mills, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The indefinite moves of the administration against com- 
 merce, and uncertainty as to what is going to happen next, are 
 causes of business disturbance. The only real solution, to my 
 mind, is national incorporation. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to make it clear and definite and to make it a pro- 
 tective rather than a destructive agency. 
 
154 
 
 C. H. Salisbury, Vice-President and Secretary, Jacob Haish 
 
 Company, Woven and Barbed Wire, etc., De Kalb, 
 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law looks clear and workable. rireu instances 
 must govern the question as to its amendment. 1 favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. Too much politics in Congress is mv answer as 1o the 
 causes of disturbed business conditions. 
 
 W. J. Eckman, Vice-President, The M. B. Farrin Lumber 
 Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to lack of confidence 
 from fear of expectancy in legislation, heralded too far in ad- 
 vance. The Sherman Law ought to be amended so that manu- 
 facturers may protect themselves by limiting production 
 tli rough association methods. 
 
 L. H. Cramer, President, The G. F. Harvey Company, 
 Manufacturing Chemists, Saratoga Springs, N. Y. 
 
 Restless uncertainty as to the outcome of present conditions 
 is halting the progress of business. The Sherman Law is clear 
 and workable, probably as far as <-an be possible. I favor a 
 national incorporation law. Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Frederick Swindell, Rock Manufacturing Company, 
 Woolens, Rockville, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should ei flier be repealed or made so 
 lliat a layman can understand it. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law. Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. AVe have too much political agitation for the good 
 of business. 
 
 D. B. Meacham, President, Hanging Rock Iron Company, 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Ill-advised legislation and tariff tinkering have contributed 
 to cause agitation in trade. -Another cause of disturbance is 
 that there was a general impression that 1910 would be a 
 "boom" year, and productive capacity was built greatly in 
 excess of real consumptive demand. 
 
 Richard B. Carter, Writing Inks, etc., East Cambridge, 
 Mass. 
 
 Tariff agitation, " trust busting," and the uncertain politi- 
 cal outlook are chief causes of present business hesitancy. The 
 Sherman Law should not be repealed without .something in 
 place of it along the lines of international incorporation, Federal 
 license, or an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
155 
 
 William Martin, President, T. Martin & Bro. Manufacturing 
 Company, Elastic Web Manufacturers, Chelsea, 
 Mass. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, which has certainly 
 not been made clear and workable. We are for a national incor- 
 poration law and a Federal license law. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. 
 
 Janeway & Carpender, Wall Paper Manufacturers, New 
 Brunswick, N. J. 
 
 Laws should permit agreements to be made that will con- 
 trol prices., and when made any violation of those entering the 
 agreement should be punished. The laws governing business 
 of this country should not be different from those in England 
 or Germany. Business men should run their own business 
 without being obliged to employ lawyers to run it for them. 
 
 F. F. Peabody, Cluett, Peabody & Co., Troy, N. Y. 
 
 Agitation against big businesses: by politicians, and uncer- 
 tainty regarding the tariff, are the causes of business disturb- 
 ance. I favor the amendment of the Sherman Law so that the 
 National Government may regulate corporations doing an inter- 
 state business in the same way that they regulate banks. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license law. 
 
 F. C. Fletcher, Manufacturer, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Too much political activity against business in connection 
 with the tariff issues and attempted regulation of business by 
 those who understand very little about it are causing the present 
 disturbed business conditions. The Sherman Law should be 
 repealed and an entirely new law should replace it. T favor a 
 national incorporation law. 
 
 L. D. Kellogg, President, Kellogg Switchboard and Supply 
 Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions are due to bad 
 conscience of some heavily watered combinations,, to crops, 
 Wall street, and probably some overproduction holding on since 
 1907. 
 
 J. W. Phinney, Type Founder, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to clear up points 
 that are now in doubt. The great accumulation of wealth by 
 unfair means is the chief cause of business disturbance. I 
 favor a national incorporation law. Fedora 1 license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
156 
 
 Paul E. Page, Lumberman, Buckley, Wash. 
 
 Anticipating quick assets by established business houses, 
 and over-credit given to new business enterprises, are causes of 
 present disturbance. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and 
 workable, but I do not believe in the courts reading something 
 into the law which is not in it. To my mind the law is clear, 
 workable and practical, so long as it is construed as it is writ- 
 ten. 
 
 Leslie M. Johnston, Secretary, Treasurer and General Man- 
 ager, A. M. Byers Company, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 The sole cause of business disturbance is indecision in re- 
 gard to the interpretation of the law in its bearing upon " big 
 business." The Sherman Law should state specifically, if pos- 
 sible, what a corporation or combination shall or shall not do 
 to comply with the law. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 F. A. Worthington, Treasurer of Agawam Company, Manu- 
 facturers of Woolen Goods, Agawam, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and should be 
 repealed. I favor either a national incorporation law or a 
 Federal license law I am not sure which would be the better. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements, subject 
 to Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Henry Albers (Albers Bros. Milling Company), Portland, 
 Ore. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made more stringent and un- 
 evadable. I consider it feasible to attempt to return to former 
 competitive methods in business. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and a Federal license law. if the State laws are re- 
 pealed. 
 
 W. H. Cowdery, President, American Fork and Hoe Com- 
 pany, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Caution, fear of uncertain results from the enforcing of the 
 Sherman Law are, in part, the causes of business hesitancy. 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 R. C. Peabody, President, American Stoker Company, New 
 York. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a national incorporation law. 
 
 Wallace L. Pierce, S. S. Pierce Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be repealed, giving us a fresh 
 one. We should have a national incorporation law. Too much 
 politics is the cause of a good deal of business disturbance. 
 
157 
 
 Charles J. Davol, President and Treasurer, Davol Rubber 
 Company, Providence, R. I. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to uncertainty and 
 consequent insecurity caused by the government's wholesale 
 attack on large business interests. The Sherman Law should be 
 repealed or amended. If amended, it should state specifically 
 just what corporations can and cannot do. 
 
 G. W. Olmstead, Secretary, J. G. Curtis Leather Company, 
 Ludlow, Pa. 
 
 The hostile attitude of the government toward corporations 
 is responsible for business uncertainty and doubt as to .the 
 future. The Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, a federal license law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 F. W. Prentice, Manufacturer, Adrian, Mich. 
 
 I believe all charters should be issued by the government, 
 and only after careful inspection by competent men, and stock 
 issued only at 100 cents on the dollar. No "fake" company 
 should be allowed to exist. Honest enterprises could then get 
 all the money they need, as the public would have confidence 
 in all stock issued. 
 
 Silas J. Llewellyn, Iron and Steel Manufacturer, Interstate 
 Iron and Steel Company, Chicago. 
 
 The present disturbed conditions are due to many causes, 
 but chiefly poor laws and poor constructive statesmanship. 
 
 Am in favor of more co-operation in manufacturing, mer- 
 chandising and distributing of products. Would like to see 
 our merchant marine encouraged and developed. 
 
 George H. Christian, President, Hardwood Manufacturing 
 Company, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 I am in favor of the Sherman Law just as it is, and I con- 
 sider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. Neither 
 trade unions nor farmers should be exempt from the Sherman 
 Act. 
 
 S. S. Wheeler, Crocker- Wheeler Company, Manufacturers 
 and Electrical Engineers, Ampere, N. J. 
 
 Abuses by labor and bad capital are the causes of business 
 disturbance. The Sherman Law is, in our opinion, clear and 
 workable, and does not need amendment. 
 
 S. C. Irving, Vice-President and General Manager, The 
 Paraffin Paint Company, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 Too much legislative interference is disturbing business. I 
 regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and I favor 
 a national incorporation law and a Federal license law. 
 
358 
 
 J. A. Campbell, President, The Youngstown Sheet and Tube 
 Company, Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 What business needs is a hitching post that we can tie to. 
 and know what is legal and what is illegal. Tf we have this, 
 the business of the country will soon adjust itself to existing 
 conditions. 
 
 The Charleston Consolidated Railway and Lighting Com- 
 pany, Charleston, S. C. 
 
 I think an important cause of the present conditions is the 
 failure of the legislation of the country to develop so as to 
 meet the changing economic conditions. I believe a properly 
 framed Federal license law would be beneficial. 
 
 Frank Hopewell, Treasurer, Sanford Mills, L. C. Chase & 
 Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to allow firms 
 and corporations to meet in conference looking toward better- 
 ing conditions, and preventing thereby, intolerable competi- 
 tion, which in the long run works injury to all. 
 
 L. B. Faulkner, General Manager, Olympia Light and 
 Power Company, Olympia, Wash. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, nor do I think 
 it feasible to attempt to return to old competitive methods. 
 I am not prepared to say in what way the Sherman Law should 
 be amended. 
 
 Eugene P. Edwards, Farmer and Manufacturer, People's 
 Gas Building, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and a JH-W law en- 
 acted which should absolutely define just what a corporation 
 could or could not do in terms which could not he misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 Gebhard Bohn, White Enamel Refrigerator Company, St. 
 Paul, Minn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that it can be fully 
 understood by business men. Fear of tariff tinkering and other 
 agitation connected with coming political events have much to 
 do with keeping business unsettled. 
 
 M. L. Sperry, Manager, Savannah Electric Company, Sav- 
 annah, Ga. 
 
 Ill-advised attacks upon corporations are the leading cause 
 of business disturbance. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 to permit the incorporation of large companies, subject to proper 
 regulation. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
159 
 
 Jacob Dold Packing Company, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Our conditions do not seem to be disturbed. The Sherman 
 La\v should be amended to make it positive and not ambiguous. 
 Trade unions and combinations of farmers should not be ex- 
 cepted from the Sherman Act ; neither should the livestock 
 association. 
 
 A. C. Rosencranz, President, The Vulcan Plow Company, 
 and President, Board of Education, Evansville, Ind. 
 
 Present unsettled conditions in business are caused largely 
 by politicians seeking an issue to attract votes and gain power 
 without due regard for the general welfare. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 L. H. Booch, Vice-President and Manager, Bridge & Beach 
 Manufacturing Company, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to allow co-operation 
 among kindred industries without creating monopolies. Pres- 
 ent business unsettlement is due largely to the uncertainty as 
 
 In what can be done under the law. 
 
 Yellow Poplar Lumber Company, Coal Grove, Ohio. 
 
 The failure of the government to keep in touch with busi- 
 ness progression and the use of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act 
 by the government in prosecuting and practically intimidating 
 flic large business interests, all tend to disturb conditions. I 
 am in favor of a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
 Wisconsin Tissue Paper Company, Appleton, Wis. 
 
 Political interference with business and government ' prose- 
 cutions under the Sherman Law, which ought to be repealed, 
 are responsible for the disturbance in business. We are in 
 favor both of a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 John A. Mathews, Managing Director, Halcourt Steel Com- 
 pany, Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 Political tinkering; excessive wages to common labor and 
 to "union" labor, with limited output due to union regula- 
 tions and short hours, are leading causes of business disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 Worthy Paper Company, Mittineague, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the action of the government in the en- 
 forcement of the Sherman 'Act, as interpreted by the courts, 
 is largely accountable for any disturbance which exists in busi- 
 ness. \Ve favor a repeal of the Sherman Act and the enact- 
 ment of a national incorporation law and a Federal license law. 
 
J(30 
 
 W. B. Kunhardt, Treasurer, The Carpenter Steel Company, 
 Reading, Pa. 
 
 Capital is naturally timid and therefore is not disposed to 
 embark in railroad development or industrial enterprises on a 
 large scale so long as there is a strongly pronounced disposition 
 on the part of the government, both State and National, to 
 make business the football of politics. 
 
 The Dueber Watch Case Manufacturing Company, Canton, 
 Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. We should 
 have a national incorporation law, or a Federal license law, and 
 we favor, also, an Interstate Trade Commission. Existing dis- 
 turbances are due chiefly to political demagogues. 
 
 H. C. Osborn, President, The American Multigraph Com- 
 pany, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Ex-President Roosevelt in his article on " The Trusts, the 
 People and the Square Deal," has fully expressed my ideas as 
 to the proper policy of the government toward " big business " 
 and the proper remedies for existing evils. 
 
 Seth A. Borden, Cotton Manufacturer, Fall River, Mass. 
 
 The present uncertainty and constant interference with busi- 
 ness are . naturally tending to unsettle business conditions gen- 
 erally. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed, not amended. 
 Repeal is what we want in the interest of business and of na- 
 tional prosperity. 
 
 Perrin P. Hunter, President, American Carriage Company, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Too much politics ; too much legislation ; laws not enforced ; 
 failure to punish criminally for infractions of Sherman Law 
 all tend to disturb the public mind and unsettle business 
 conditions. 
 
 The Krohn, Fechheimer Company, Stove Manufacturers, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Legitimate business is not disturbed to a great extent. 
 There was not sufficient liquidation after the panic of 1907. 
 Commodity prices and wages are not yet low enough to stimu- 
 late trade. 
 
 W. C. Arthurs, President, Mt. Vernon Car Manufacturing 
 Company, Mount Vernon, 111. 
 
 The country is suffering from too much politics. I am de- 
 cidedly of opinion that the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, 
 is neither clear nor workable, and that it ought to be re- 
 pealed. 
 
Augustus P. Loring, Manufacturer and Lawyer, Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 The jealousy with which those who have not regard those 
 who have a jealousy which, in some instances, is more or less 
 justifiable along with political agitation' which appeals to that 
 and to other passions natural to humanity have a great deal to 
 do with existing business disturbance. It might be well to let 
 the men who have proven their ability to accumulate vast for- 
 tunes keep on accumulating and secure by taxation some share 
 of their wealth for public uses, rather than deprive them of 
 the opportunity to continue their money-making. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
 W. & B. Douglas, Manufacturers of Pumps, Middletown, 
 Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law seems clear enough for those who wish 
 to obey the law, but to those who wish to play around the edge 
 of trouble, it seems inadequate. We believe in competitive 
 methods, but do not believe in allowing goods to be sold below 
 cost, for this means bankruptcy to many manufacturing and 
 mercantile concerns. We favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission composed of practical men. 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to prolonged political dis- 
 cussion, delayed decisions from the Supreme Court, over-expan- 
 sion of credits in proportion to the volume of money, which 
 always seems too small when business is active. 
 
 Chattanooga Coffin and Casket Company, Chattanooga, 
 Tenn. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not altogether clear and workable. It 
 should be amended so as to make it clearer and to inhibit com- 
 binations from operating in a manner to injure the public. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting- 
 rates, and combinations of farmers to secure fair prices for 
 their products should be permitted. We favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license, and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion, or regulation and inspection by the Government, as is 
 done with national banks. Old competitive methods are still 
 in existence. 
 
 Franklin Murphy (ex-Governor), Manufacturer, Newark, 
 N. J. 
 
 The Sherman Law, upon the whole, is practically clear and 
 workable. I am in doubt as to the advisability of amendments 
 to the Sherman Law at present. T favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law. 
 
 Sunny Brook Distillery Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 We favor a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission, The Sherman Law has not been made clear and 
 workable and ought to be amended. 
 
102 
 
 Benjamin C. Lane, Vice-President, The Allen-Lane Com- 
 pany, Mill Agents, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for corporations having plants or 
 business other than selling in more than one State. I would 
 also suggest Federal legislation prohibiting States from impos- 
 ing any license or other tax on corporations having a charter 
 from either the United States or another State, except tax on 
 tangible property actually within the taxing State. I favor 
 additional legislation making it compulsory on United States 
 district attorneys to act on petition of aggrieved parties, accom- 
 panied by bond for reasonable costs, complaining of violations of 
 the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I believe in holding companies, 
 under proper restrictions. The government should regulate cap- 
 italization and publicity should be applied to commercial cor- 
 porations through an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Most of the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale are demonstrable; but there are corresponding dis- 
 advantages, such as (1) less personal interest; (2) less personal 
 touch and sympathy between "hands" and those above; (3) 
 disregard of local and community interests, and (4) more pro- 
 motion by " pull " and favoritism. The claim of steadier em- 
 ployment of labor, and at better wages, is questionable. There 
 is less chance for a man if he does lose a job to get another. 
 It is true that business on a large scale may command the best 
 ability, but often at disproportionate cost. I approve legislation 
 to permit large aggregations of capital under single control, and 
 for the merger from time to time of smaller corporations, and to 
 permit agreements which regulate production, prices and the 
 like under suitable public control. We favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 We favor as little arbitrary legislation and as much auto- 
 matic as possible. Any consumer or competitor should have 
 the right to initiate legal process to have a corporation or com- 
 bination declared a practical monopoly, which, if established, it 
 should then and thereupon become subject to special regulation 
 and supervision common to all monopolies of that class. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to allow com- 
 binations subject to government control and regulation of 
 prices, the moment it is shown that such a combination prac- 
 ically dictates prices. Disturbed business conditions are due, 
 in my judgment, to threats of tariff revision, and attempts to 
 enforce impracticable anti-monopoly legislation. 
 
 James T. Barber, North Western Lumber Company, Eau 
 Claire, Wis. 
 
 A mixture of impossible reform theories and the lowest 
 kind of politics are the trouble with business. Require all cor- 
 porations doing interstate business to secure charters from the 
 national government and further require full publicity of all 
 corporations having more than, say, $5,000,000 capital. 
 
163 
 
 Harry R. Jones, Treasurer and General Manager, The 
 United Steel Company, Canton, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed not amended. I 
 favor a national incorporation law, but not an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused by political 
 hysteria; insincerity of purpose on the part of our law-makers, 
 resulting from a desire on their part to gain political advantage ; 
 too many investigations conducted in a sensational manner for 
 political effect; hasty legislation based on political expediency 
 and not on broad-minded statesmanship; too large a proportion 
 of lawyers in our law-making bodies, and not enough business- 
 men; too many laws based on theoretical conditions and not on 
 actual business experience. 
 
 We need more broad-minded constructive statesmanship, and 
 less politics. The tariff should be revised piecemeal, and only 
 after a thorough investigation of each item by a permanent 
 tariff commission. There is entirely too much hasty tariff 
 legislation, based upon political expediency, and not upon a 
 sound and thorough knowledge of the business affected by each 
 item. 
 
 Sohn & Reutschler, Iron Foundries, Hamilton, Ohio. 
 
 Too much uncertainty as to what business men may or 
 may not do legally stands in the way of business progress. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Wm. L. Brown, Pickands, Brown & Co., Iron Manu- 
 facturers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Political hysteria and too much legislation, also too many 
 contradictions between State and national enactments, tend to 
 cause disturbance in business. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended so that it can be clearly understood. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and a Federal license law. 
 
 J. E. Patton, Jr., Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa. 
 
 Reasonable regulation and control by the Federal govern- 
 ment is a practical solution of the problem. I favor the repeal 
 of the Sherman Law and the enactment of a national incor- 
 poration law or a Federal license law. 
 
 George H. Stowell, Manufacturer of Cotton Goods, Clare- 
 mont, N. H. 
 
 Wickersham and Taft are causes of present disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions. The Sherman Law should be repealed or else 
 amended to make it less drastic. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
164 
 
 James Burke, President Burke Electric Company, Erie, Pa. 
 
 I am particularly impressed with the question: "Do you 
 consider it feasible to attempt to return to what are commonly 
 known as old competitive methods of business?" The question 
 infers that there have been some " old competitive methods " 
 that have gone out of existence, but my observation of over 
 twenty years of the electrical manufacturing industry., is that 
 none of the " old competitive methods " have been laid aside, 
 but that they all still exist, together with a number of new 
 ones. 
 
 In the electrical manufacturing industry it is true that all 
 kinds of competition have been eliminated between certain com- 
 panies which have been brought together by consolidations or 
 combinations, but these conditions have brought about more 
 severe competition for the independent concerns that continue 
 to enjoy their liberty. 
 
 Competition along the lines of quality in connection with price, 
 and treatment of purchasers, is helpful and produces advance- 
 ment in the art, and in my opinion is to be encouraged. When, 
 however, the wonderfully ingenious methods developed by the 
 combinations of companies are used instead of the truly com- 
 petitive methods, the net result, when the interests of all are 
 considered, is a step backward. 
 
 George De Forest, Utica Steam & Mohawk Valley Cotton 
 Mills, Utica, N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to continued tariff 
 agitation ; playing politics to the galleries ; too many foolish laws 
 enacted by lawyer legislators, to be interpreted by the same 
 law}'ers or their partners for fat fees from corporation clients. 
 The effect of recent national and State legislation is to make it 
 much more expensive for corporations to do business. The tax 
 on net profits of corporations is rank discrimination and in- 
 justice. 
 
 As to amending the Sherman Law, I would prefer to see 
 how the recent decisions by the court work out. The American 
 Tobacco dissolution seems to be a farce, so far as competition 
 is concerned. I regard an Interstate Trade Corn mission as im- 
 practicable. 
 
 P. M. Bucher, Secretary, Pierce, Butler & Pierce Manufac- 
 turing Company, Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 The greatest trust in the United States to-day is the trade- 
 union. The next greatest trust is the "lawyers' trust," com- 
 bined with large fees and demoralizing methods to drive all 
 good business enterprises out of the country. I favor national 
 incorporation and Federal license. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended so that a business man can loll at all times whal 
 is and what is not lawful. 
 
165 
 
 T. Coleman du Pont, Wilmington, Del. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, unless properly 
 amended. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license, or 
 supervision of some kind of interstate business, and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, if not too cumbersome, 
 
 John J. Griffin & Co. Manufacturers of Gas Meters, Phila- 
 delphia, Pa. 
 
 The enforcement of the common law would cure the evils 
 of the body mercantile and of the body politic. The Sherman 
 Law ought to be repealed. Theodore Roosevelt is the cause of 
 present disturbed business conditions. 
 
 George E. Molleson, Railroad Supplies, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, or it should be 
 amended, so as to permit of modern methods of business and 
 to provide that no one group shall control any line of business. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements, affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 George T. Betts, J. S. Betts Company, Ashburn, Ga. 
 
 Agitation against large business, on account of lack of con- 
 fidence of the public; the activity of selfish politicians, and ar- 
 ticles in socialistic magazines are chiefly responsible for the 
 present unfortunate attitude of the public mind toward busi- 
 ness in general. 
 
 Eastern Clay Goods Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty of the government's position regarding cor- 
 porations tends to disturb business. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed and a new law passed regulating and controlling 
 corporations. We favor a national incorporation law and Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 James I. Levy, President Ashland Home Telephone Com- 
 pany, Ashland, Wis. 
 
 Too vigorous prosecution of the big corporations has made 
 business trouble. The Sherman Law should be repealed if 
 something better cannot be substituted. I am in favor of na- 
 tional incorporation. 
 
 Newton Wagon Company, Batavia, 111. 
 
 Business has been disturbed partially by too much power 
 concentrated in one Wall Street man or firm; also the action of 
 railroad managers endeavoring to stop legislation affecting the 
 regulation of rates, and the crop shortage over quite a breadth 
 of territory in consequence of drouth. 
 
166 
 
 August Brentano, President, Southern Stove Works, Evans- 
 ville, Ind. 
 
 A Vail street, extravagance and agitation over the tariff are 
 making the business man anxious about the future. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended so as to more clearly define the opinion of the 
 Supreme Court relative to reasonable restraint of trade. 
 
 United States Horse Shoe Company, Erie, Pa. 
 
 Too much politics, and uncertainty on the part of large 
 undertakings as to the attitude of the government toward them, 
 arc causing a large degree of anxiety in business circles. If 
 the Sherman Law cannot be repealed, it ought to be amended. 
 We favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 L. W. Fogg, General Manager, Tower Hill Connellsville 
 Coke Company, Uniontown, Pa. 
 
 Inflation and distrust are largely responsible for disturbed 
 business conditions. To the layman, the Sherman Law is not 
 yet clear and workable. If possible, it should be made more 
 definite as to monopoly. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 W. A. Herron, Steel Manufacturer, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Lack of confidence resulting from uncertainty of the effect 
 of governmental prosecutions, is the moving cause of disturb- 
 ance in business. The Sherman Law should be amended to 
 make clear what are improper combinations or trade agreements. 
 I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 J. D. Robinson, Secretary and Treasurer, The Libbey Glass 
 Company, Toledo, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to more clearly de- 
 fine between reasonable and unreasonable competition. I favor 
 a national incorporation law, but not an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 William Gray, Gray & Davis, Automobile Lamps, Ames- 
 bury, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, unless it can be 
 amended to conform to modern business conditions. It is not 
 now clear and workable. We do not consider it feasible to return 
 to old competitive methods. 
 
 Rheinstrom Bros., Fruit Conservers and Distillers, Cin- 
 cinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to follow the 
 Gorman Law of unfair competition under which damages can 
 be secured. 
 
167 
 
 Attleboro Chain Company, Manufacturing Jewelers, Attle- 
 boro, Mass. 
 
 Too much puzzling interpretation of law, yellow journalism 
 und playing politics, are working havoc with business. The 
 tariff should be in the hands of a Board which should look 
 into American conditions and compare them with the situation 
 in Europe. In no other way should be tariff be handled. 
 
 S. M. Dalzell, Coal Operator, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Too much activity on the part of the Department of Jus- 
 tice, along with too little judgment in applying that activity, 
 has a disquieting effect on business. The Sherman Law should 
 be made clear. It should cover trade unions, which, in my 
 opinion, are the most dangerous trust we have. I favor a 
 national incorporation law. 
 
 Phillips Insulated Wire Company, Pawtucket, R. I. 
 
 Promiscuous prosecution under the Sherman Act is the 
 leading cause of business disturbance. We favor a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law and an enactment of a national incorporation 
 law, a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Woodmanse Manufacturing Company, Freeport, 111. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, which is neither 
 clear nor workable, and we do not deem it feasible to return 
 to old competitive methods. The railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 Federal Chemical Company, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 The Sherman Law has disturbed business more than all 
 other causes combined. If it cannot be repealed, any amend- 
 ment that will make it clearer so that business men may know 
 where it stands, should be adopted. We favor a national in- 
 corporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 E. A. Mallory & Sons, Hat Manufacturers, Danbury, Conn. 
 
 Interference with so-called trusts and more particularly rail- 
 roads in too radical a manner has caused disturbance in busi- 
 ness conditions. The Sherman Law should be made clear, 
 workable and reasonable. We favor a national incorporation 
 law. 
 
 Wm. Lothman, Lothman Cypress Company, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 Business is feeling the disturbing effects of too high prices 
 of most commodities ; of reaction from the too good times up to 
 1907 and of effect of uncertainty about the Sherman Law, 
 which ought to be amended so as to cover all doubtful points. 
 
168 
 
 S. Karpen & Bros., Furniture Manufacturers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Increased cost of living causing disturbance in general trade 
 and unsettling the equilibrium of business intercourse; State 
 and national legislation, both, already in force and projected 
 for the near future, all tend to prevent an early readjustment 
 satisfactory to business interests. 
 
 E. P. Schoening, The Columbia Star Milling Company, 
 
 Columbia, 111. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to " the eternal uncertainty.' 7 
 Either the Sherman Law should be repealed or it should be 
 made so clear by amendments that business may know what is 
 legal and what is not. 
 
 C. C. Wagner, Hardware Merchant, Mansfield, Ohio. 
 
 Disturbance has been caused in the gradual elimination of 
 speculative values and the re-adjustment to new levels. I do 
 not think that actual consumption affected the situation. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 F. A. Seiberling, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, 
 
 Akron, Ohio. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and that railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I regard the 
 Sherman Law as clear and workable and am opposed to its 
 repeal. 
 
 G. F. Harwood, President, Appleton Woolen Mills, Apple- 
 
 ton, Wis. 
 
 I believe that the tariff question ought to be handled by a 
 tariff board and not used for a political football. Too much 
 politics and not enough statesmanship is making the trouble 
 for business interests. 
 
 Zachary T. Hollingsworth, President, Hollingsworth & 
 Vose Company, Paper Manufacturers, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Political agitation principally is responsible for existing 
 business unsettlement. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 in accord with business requirements. I favor a national in- 
 corporation law. 
 
 W. C. Bryant, The Bryant Electric Company, Bridgeport, 
 Conn. 
 
 I 'sing the Sherman Law for political purposes is the chief 
 cause of business unrest. The Sherman Law should be re- 
 pealed or modified to permit co-operation under proper super- 
 vision. 
 
169 
 
 J. S. Keen, Detroit Oak Belting Company, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 Too much politics and tariff legislation are interfering with 
 business. The Sherman Law should be amended, making it so 
 clear that the Supreme Court can understand it and be unani- 
 mous in its interpretation. We should have a national incor- 
 poration law. 
 
 Robert H. Gross, President, The East Butte Copper Mining 
 Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 If we are to maintain our position among the nations of 
 the world, our laws must be sufficiently clear to enable us to 
 continue to build up large industries, under proper control of 
 the government. 
 
 L. B. Curtis, Manufacturer, Bridgeport, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended by allowing reason- 
 able combinations, or else it should be repealed. Too much 
 political and governmental interference is having a distracting 
 effect upon business. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 W. A. Marble, Manufacturer of Corsets, New York. 
 
 The uncertainty as to just what the Sherman Law means 
 and the fact that it is left to the court to decide what combina- 
 tions arc *' good "' or " bad " are causing business disturbance. 
 I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 Edwin Golding, Pottery Materials, Wilmington, Del. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it say what 
 the Supreme Court says it means. Our present disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions are due to lack of a dependable government- 
 endorsed business policy. 
 
 Standard Plate Glass Company, Butler, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to provide for gov- 
 ernment supervision. I favor a national incorporation law, a 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Over- 
 production is the cause, in my opinion, of business disturbance. 
 
 Western Stoneware Company, Monmouth, 111. 
 
 The prosperity of the country depends on the railroads to 
 the greatest extent. Too much politics and legislation, together 
 with labor agitation, have caused discontinuance of building to 
 a great extent. 
 
 F. M. Slagle & Co., Lumber and Grain Dealers, Alton, Iowa. 
 
 Literally translated, the Sherman Law would make the price 
 of newspapers and peanuts a combination same as beef, lumber, 
 grain, etc., as you have to pay the same price any place one 
 
 buys. 
 
170 
 
 Graton & Knight Manufacturing Company, Tanners and 
 Belt Makers, Worcester, Mass. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license 
 law. The Sherman Law should be repealed unless it can be 
 modified. 
 
 Hoopeston Canning Company, Hoopeston, 111. 
 
 Uncertainty is the trouble with business. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended to allow combinations under govern- 
 ment supervision. We favor a national incorporation law, a 
 Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Prentiss Tool and Supply Company, New York City. 
 
 Tariff and trust agitation are making trouble for business. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and we should have a 
 national incorporation law in its place; also a Federal license 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein, Candy Makers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Any disturbance of business is due to readjustment of con- 
 ditions brought about by attempted enforcement of the law, 
 which should have been done years ago. We are in favor of a 
 national incorporation law. 
 
 The Hood Rubber Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 We have no disturbed business conditions. We do not think 
 the Sherman Law is clear. The words " restraint of trade" 
 should be clarified. 
 
 J. S. Molynn, Manager, Dierks Lumber and Coal Company, 
 Broken Bow, Neb. 
 
 The tariff and big combinations seem to be in the storm 
 centre. 
 
 A. C. Stebbins, Manager, Lansing Wheelbarrow Company, 
 Lansing, Mich. 
 
 Business is pretty good; it is up to the average. I favor a 
 national incorporation law. 
 
 Augusta Lumber Company, Augusta, Me. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions? Congress, 
 Taft, politics, Wall Street. The Sherman Law should be wiped 
 out of existence. 
 
 James A. Smith Lumber Company, Osage, Iowa. 
 
 High finance and its selfishness has caused the agitation 
 which now unsettles the country. I am in favor of national 
 legislation to control business of an interstate character. 
 
171 
 
 J. A. Brett, Westinghouse Electric Company, Cincinnati, 
 Ohio. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to politics. The Sherman Law 
 should be made clear or repealed. 
 
 Dibert, Stark & Brown Cypress Company, Ltd., Donner, La. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended in some way to fit 
 conditions as they, exist to-day. Political agitation is the cause, 
 or in a very large degree the cause, of existing disturbances. 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 BANKERS, RAILWAY AND INSURANCE 
 OFFICIALS. 
 
 Charles Shade, President The First National Bank, Rock 
 Rapids, Iowa. 
 
 The daily routine of a country banker is usually limited to 
 a small radius. His line of business does not bring him 'into 
 contact with the Sherman Law, so that answers made to your 
 questions bearing upon this law are theoretical only. The so- 
 called Sherman Law is quite plain as to what is to be declared 
 a " trust " in restraint of trade, the question for interpretation 
 by the courts being, what actual conditions shall constitute a 
 trust. They have affirmed in their decision that a " reasonable " 
 allowance must be made in the application of the law. Their 
 decision that the so-called Tobacco Trust and the Standard Oil 
 Company are trusts in restraint of trade applies only to com- 
 panies such as these or other companies carrying on business in 
 a similar manner. It occurs to the writer that they still leave 
 the question open for review in many cases, and as they are the 
 only court to interpret what a trust in restraint is, the writer 
 believes that the law should be revised and made so plain that 
 any one carrying on a large business could interpret it as ap- 
 plied to his particular business. 
 
 An Interstate Trade Commission would be a feasible way 
 of handling interstate corporations. Their books and actions 
 should be open for inspection by the commission, and the com- 
 mission should be supported by law to the regulation of such 
 business. 
 
 Samuel Rea, Vice-President, Pennsylvania Railroad Com- 
 pany, Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 I believe the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is not yet 
 clear, but under court interpretation will become workable. I 
 do not consider it feasible to return to what are commonly 
 known as old competitive methods in business, for it means 
 unreasonable and generally ruinous competition. Competition 
 is desirable, and we can have it if the laws of supply and de- 
 mand are permitted to take their course. I do not favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law. I am not prepared to make any 
 reply as to amending the Sherman Law. The matter should 
 first be studied bv a commission of wise and experienced men 
 
 172 
 
173 
 
 \vhn>e findings and recommendations should determine this ques- 
 tion. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. This necessary privilege 
 should never have been withheld. 
 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act. No worse violation of the act has been ex- 
 perienced than the abrogation, through force and intimidation, 
 of the free right to labor and the restraint of trade caused by 
 strikes and labor union activities. 
 
 Alexander Gilbert, President Market and Fulton National 
 Bank, New York City. 
 
 Past errors, excessive speculation, overcapitalization, undue 
 expansion of productive capacity from 1901 to 1907 are respons- 
 ible, in my judgment, for any disturbance that exists in business 
 conditions. We violated economic laws. We traveled a long 
 distance in the wrong direction. We must go just as far in 
 the right direction before we shall be able to resume our onward 
 march to prosperity. Had the Sherman Law been enforced in 
 1901. present disturbed business conditions would not be so 
 much in evidence. 
 
 T regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as clear and 
 workable. While it may be possible to correct evils which have 
 resulted from business methods of big corporations, we can 
 never go back to old competitive methods. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended only so far as may be necessary to render 
 its interpretation easy; i. e., to express its intent and purposes 
 so clearly that it cannot be misunderstood. A national incor- 
 poration law would probably clear up and adjust the present 
 situation as to corporations. 
 
 First National Bank. Hood River, Ore. 
 
 If all corporations could be forced to issue stock only for 
 actual values and no showing be made other than of actual 
 physical value of property owned, instead of on its face earning 
 power over a certain period, it would establish confidence. Busi- 
 ness agitation is due to overcapitalization, undue inflation and 
 false and sensational reports exaggerating actual conditions, cir- 
 culated for a purpose, reaching the ears of the wary investor 
 who frequently fails to get at the true facts. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended. The working expe- 
 rience now obtained should enable competent men to frame 
 legislation that would be more intelligible and be exhaustive 
 in regard to what is actual violation and fitting penalties. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Combinations of farm- 
 ers ought to be permitted, and railroads should be allowed to 
 outer into agreements affecting rates. 
 
174 
 
 T. R. Frentz, Cashier, The New German-American Bank, 
 Oshkosh, Wis. 
 
 State rights should not be interfered with as long as States 
 do not grant too lax a set of laws to corporations, but a cor- 
 poration organized under the laws of one State which seeks to 
 do any interstate business should be compelled to take out a 
 license in each State it desires to do business in. 
 
 As long as large corporations devote their energies along 
 such lines as to give to the people the best articles, the best 
 made and at the lowest prices, they are unquestionably a great 
 good to the country. When, however, these institutions are 
 evolved with the idea of " squeezing " the consumer and com- 
 pelling him to pay the very last extortable cent for their prod- 
 uct, then such corporations should be dissolved, and in my 
 opinion that is the exact intent of the Sherman Law. 
 
 Just because a corporation is large; just because its capital 
 is a billion dollars; just because it is able to pay good, reason- 
 able dividends to its stockholders; just because it controls the 
 trade; just because it is able to wipe out competition, is no 
 reason, in my opinion, why it is a criminal institution. The 
 larger the institution, the bigger the capital, the abler the man- 
 agement, the greater is the ability of that corporation to do 
 the greatest good to the greatest number. 
 
 A big corporation, with plenty of capital, honest manage- 
 ment, a desire to give the people a square deal, is an ideal insti- 
 tution and unquestionably is the business house of the future. 
 
 In my opinion the day of the many small competing manu- 
 facturers is gone forever. 
 
 The two underlying causes of the present disturbed business 
 conditions are: 
 
 (1) The tremendously high cost of living, which causes the 
 absorption of any ordinary man's wages for the bare food neces- 
 sary to maintain life itself, and leaves him nothing to buy 
 any comforts or luxuries. When he has paid for his food, his 
 wood and his coal, there is nothing left to buy furniture, clothes, 
 paint, or build barns, fences or additions to his house. This 
 makes itself felt very quickly and very keenly in the producing 
 business world, and when retailers cannot sell they cannot buy 
 from the factory. The factory having no demand for its prod- 
 uct shuts down or runs on reduced hours, and labor is still 
 further handicapped in its struggle for life. 
 
 (2) The fear of a coming panic. Everyone knows that 
 panics come around about once in twenty years, and that all 
 great panics always are preceded two or three years by a pre- 
 liminary breakdown or sometimes called a semi-panic. Every- 
 one knows that the panic of 1893 was preceded by the break- 
 down of 1890, and everyone knows that the general conditions 
 in 1892 and 1912 are practically identical. The same high cost 
 of living, the same political discontent, the same presidential 
 contest, the almost certainly same result, the general fear of 
 
175 
 
 the change in political policies and the still uni'orgotten pre- 
 liminary breakdown of 1907. 
 
 Added to these two main causes might be cited the addi- 
 tional irritant of the United States government's attack on the 
 so-called trusts, which proposes to put out of business (strangely 
 enough) those very concerns which have cheapened the cost of 
 living to the consumer. 
 
 E. Nelson Blake, President First National Bank, Arling- 
 ton, Mass. 
 
 1 favor national incorporation as the plan more easily and 
 surely enforced for companies engaged in interstate commerce. 
 I do not believe in holding companies, for the reason that it is 
 so difficult to prevent control that will check competition and 
 give a monopoly of funds or of product. The spirit of the Sher- 
 man Law is sufficient when enforced with " reasonable " appli- 
 cation by the Supreme Court to deal with unfair competition 
 and restraint of trade. The government should regulate capi- 
 talization, and laws should be passed applying publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations, through a commission to be appointed for 
 that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers. Any amend- 
 ments to the Sherman Law should make the language of its 
 requirements simple and strong, and when evaded, the penalty 
 should be enforced. Laws are made for the lawless who resort 
 to every method to evade justice. Time is showing the weaker 
 points of the Sherman Law, which can be strengthened from 
 time to time. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are largely due to "politics." 
 Money is very sensitive and timid. Fear of some future com- 
 plications either at home or abroad causes great caution. 
 '* Operators " of stocks and in stocks thrive on disturbance in 
 "markets." Managers of "trusts" and their satellites are 
 decrying disturbance so that they may be the "ins." "Wall 
 Street" influence is not favorable to peaceful conditions. With- 
 out their adverse influence our crops would give good business 
 this fall. 
 
 Henry W. Yates, President Nebraska National Bank, 
 Omaha, Neb. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers 
 not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission in relation to common carriers. It is, however, a com- 
 plicated question, and it would seem that general laws, either 
 State or national, should be sufficient. Too much government 
 is bad government. The proposition is different from that 
 applicable to railroads, which are quasi-public institutions and 
 are therefore properly subject to a central public control. 
 
I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. Endeavors, however, should be made to secure uni- 
 form State laws for the incorporation of companies to do inter- 
 state business something similar to the movement, success- 
 fully accomplished, by banks and lawyers to secure uniform 
 legislation in the matter of negotiable instruments. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended to make the punishment apply 
 solely to the unlawful acts committed by small or large com- 
 panies. The fact of largeness should not of itself be considered 
 criminal. 
 
 I do not believe in holding companies. It makes the stifling 
 of competition too easy. I think there is a difference between a 
 large company even with numerous branches doing business 
 upon its own direct responsibility, and a mere holding company. 
 In practical operation it is possible that in many cases it would 
 be the same, but, nevertheless, it is by no means certain that 
 this would be the case. As to unfair competition and restraint 
 of trade, statutes forbidding specified practices should be enacted 
 nothing else can be fair. The government should prevent 
 fictitious capitalization and laws should be passed providing 
 for publicity applied to commercial corporations; but the neces- 
 sity of a commission to carry out those laws is not clearly 
 apparent, as the protection desired might be obtained through 
 general laws. 
 
 Andrew J. Frame, President Waukesha National Bank, 
 Waukesha, Wis. 
 
 Too restrictive measures destroy our freedom for which our 
 forefathers fought. Andrew Jackson said our prosperity is 
 greatest when left most free to individual effort. Curb the 
 monopolies, but do not attempt to run all business. Socialism 
 destroys, individualism upbuilds. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce. I do not believe in holding companies. Corporations 
 are a necessity; limit them so that they will not become monop- 
 olies. The government should regulate capitalization. The 
 question of providing protection for minority stockholders and 
 subsidiary interests, and to prevent the exploitation of investors, 
 is one of the biggest of your problems. Laws are abundant. It 
 is human to err, and greatly regrettable that all cannot be made 
 honest. I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission if we 
 could find honest and intelligent men to discharge its duties. 
 The Sherman Law is fairly clear and workable, but it might 
 l)e bettered by making as clear as possible what is " reasonable " 
 and what is " unreasonable." Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. In my judgment, business 
 disturbance is largely due to political demagogism. The crops 
 for fifteen years have been abundant. The many are suffering 
 for the sins of the few. Prosecutions have come to the point of 
 persecution of honest tradesmen, etc. The reign of reason, not 
 radicalism, is most needed. 
 
177 
 
 C. R. Breckinridge, President Arkansas Valley Trust Com- 
 pany, Fort Smith, Ark. 
 
 We must have concentration of production to keep pace with 
 the world; and we must have control of it to escape commercial 
 despotism. It must be controlled by government regulation in 
 necessary cases, or else we shall drift into national socialism. 
 The means should not be so complicated as to defeat the end. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended; but I am not prepared 
 to enter into details. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and regula- 
 tion of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and results should 
 not be subjected to so many delays. The Sherman Act should 
 apply to all men alike, without preference either to trade unions 
 or any other class. I am inclined to favor a national incor- 
 poration law and also a Federal license law if necessary, or so 
 far as to give adequate control. An Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion is apparently necessary. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 our bad currency and banking system ; the abuses arising from 
 the present system of monopoly; the lack of proper control of 
 monopolized industry; the fostering of monopoly and the bur- 
 dens upon trade and the people of a protective tariff ; unlawful 
 and unwise exactions of organized labor; extreme shortage of 
 food crops, and great excess in the cotton crop. 
 
 C. W. Snow, President of First National Bank and Presi- 
 dent of C. W. Snow & Co., Druggists, Syracuse, 
 N. Y. 
 
 Some of the causes of disturbed business conditions are (1) 
 failure to revise the tariff; (2) extravagance pervading all 
 classes of society; (3) the tyranny of the labor unions; (4) fear 
 of attack by the government on the part of many of the large 
 corporations; (5) the uncertainty preceding the presidential 
 election; (6) the imperfect currency and banking system of 
 this country; (7) the large increase of the production of gold, 
 one of the causes of the high cost of living. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not entirely clear and should be 
 amended so far as to make it clear and workable. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor a national incorporation law for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce, and an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers. I believe in 
 holding companies, under public control. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations. 
 
J7S 
 
 A. E. Adams (The First National Bank), Youngstown, 
 Ohio. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are caused, in my 
 judgment, by general dissatisfaction with our system of distribu- 
 tion, crystallized into positive discontent by the dulness follow- 
 ing the panic of 1907 and now being expressed in political agi- 
 tation. In a word, the immediate cause is politics. I do not 
 regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and I favor its 
 repeal if replaced by a better. If it is to be amended, it should 
 define that " restraint of trade " means everything calculated 
 to result in excessive profit to the producer or otherwise excess- 
 ive cost to the consumer. " Excessive " is here intended to 
 mean anything more than normal return for the use of the 
 money employed, plus a fair compensation for the skill arid 
 ability shown, and reasonable pay for the risk involved. 
 
 The old competitive system was almost as much of a burden 
 to the consumer as the monopolistic system. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor 
 a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. I admit the advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale, plus sounder financial condi- 
 tions. 
 
 I believe in holding companies, with proper restrictions as 
 to publicity, etc. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, though overcapitalization, per se, is not an evil, and it 
 ought not to be necessary to pass laws to protect the investing 
 public against the absence of common sense. 
 
 David J. Charles (Miners Savings Bank & Trust Com- 
 pany), Butte, Mont. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I believe in holding companies. Unfair competition 
 and restraint of trade should be dealt with under the Sherman 
 Anti-Trust Act. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 by providing that capitalization shall be in accordance with 
 assets. I favor laws providing publicity for commercial corpora- 
 tions, and I also favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Under 
 recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States 
 the Sherman Law appears to be clear and workable. 
 
 Frederic A. Delano, President, Wabash Railway Company, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Uncertainty ! Impossibility of adjusting conditions to shift- 
 ing requirements and a growing unrest in regard to the rela- 
 tions between labor and capital are responsible for present dis- 
 turbed conditions. I consider a national incorporation law as 
 probably desirable, and the same in regard to a Federal license 
 law. The question, however, is one subject to a good deal of 
 debate. The Sherman Law, I believe, ought to be repealed. 
 
179 
 
 William A. MacRae, Manager of the Bank of California 
 National Association, Portland, Ore. 
 
 J am of the opinion that neither national nor State legisla- 
 tion is a sovereign remedy for existing ills; but that the cure 
 must come from an enlarged conception on the part of the 
 great body of business men ; that the golden rule, " Do unto 
 others as you would that others should do to you/ 7 would prove, 
 if generally applied, a better remedy than laws which ingenuity 
 will find a way to circumvent. Speaking of the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale, I am of 
 opinion that those advantages may and should exist, but 1 
 doubt whether the purchaser of "trust" products always 
 receives the benefit of the resulting economies. I regard national 
 incorporation for companies doing interstate business as pre- 
 ferable to Federal license, unless national incorporation would 
 interfere with the taxing of such corporations by the States. 
 I have no remedy to suggest, but I do not believe the Sherman 
 Anti-Trust Act has successfully prevented monopolies. I see 
 no objection to holding companies if created for a legitimate 
 purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, if the mem- 
 bers are selected for their fitness to fill the position, not as a 
 reward for political services. 
 
 Sylvester C. Dunham, President Travelers Insurance Com- 
 pany, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 I favor Federal charters for corporations doing an inter- 
 state business, including insurance companies. I also favor 
 legislation recognizing the fact that modern business must be 
 transacted by large corporations operating on a large scale. 
 A law amended up to date and sufficiently specific should be 
 enacted. I believe in holding companies under suitable restric- 
 tions. The advantage to the public of competition is greatly 
 overestimated. The public pays the penalty for reckless and 
 irresponsible competition, which is worse than unfair compe- 
 tition. I favor laws providing for government regulation and 
 publicity. 
 
 In addition to the other advantages claimed for those doing 
 big business on a large scale should be added suppression of 
 ruinous and irresponsible competition, whereby degraded prod- 
 ucts are imposed upon the market, such as adulterated foods, 
 shoddy garments and Buddenseik buildings. 
 
 The Sherman Law as now interpreted has not yet been 
 made clear and workable. It should not be repealed, but mod- 
 ernized. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. Politicians are responsible, in my judgment, 
 for disturbed business conditions. 
 
180 
 
 Charles F. Cox, Railway Treasurer, Grand Central Ter- 
 minal, New York City. 
 
 In general, all laws should be repealed which lead to prose- 
 cutions of corporations or individuals because of what they may 
 intend to do or have the power to do, instead of for specific and 
 material acts they have performed. In regard to advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale, no one can 
 reasonably believe that the numerous corporations into whicli 
 the Standard Oil Company is dissolved can serve the public 
 better and more economically than was done by the original 
 corporation. I favor Federal incorporation as avoiding conflict 
 and complication. After Federal incorporation I would exclude 
 State interference. 
 
 William Ingle, Vice-President and Cashier Merchants' 
 National Bank, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 Watering of stocks and securities, stifling of reasonable com- 
 petition, outrageous tariff laws with attendant extravagance, and 
 an attempt to right by legislation in a single session of Congress 
 the accumulated economic wrongs of forty years are prominent 
 among the causes of business disturbance. If it were possible 
 by stretching the " commerce clause " of the Constitution a bit 
 further and say that all banks of any kind in using the mails 
 between States were engaged in interstate commerce and there- 
 fore all subject to national regulation, a great step would be 
 taken. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear as now interpreted, but, in 
 the main, as a matter of English language it is. If the Sher- 
 man Law is to stand as interpreted, I would favor its repeal, 
 but only long enough to enact a stronger and more compre- 
 bensive measure. Railroads should be allowed to sell their wares 
 at wholesale, just as does a grocer. Trade unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. On the 
 contrary, all such organizations should be made to incorporate 
 with substantial capital to be responsible for acts of their mem- 
 bers. I favor a national incorporation law, and I should say 
 " Yes " to an Interstate Trade Commission, but not with great 
 enthusiasm. Practical judges and superior courts should answer 
 every purpose. 
 
 David H. Seibert, President The Pennsylvania National 
 Bank, Pottsville, Pa. 
 
 I favor laws to provide for government regulation of capi- 
 talization, and I also favor laws calling for publicity and apply- 
 ing to commercial corporations through a commission to be 
 appointed for that purpose, methods akin to those now used in 
 regulating common carriers and their rates through the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law. 
 
181 
 
 Joseph T. Bowen, Jr., Chicago, 111. 
 
 Lack of public confidence in our administration is the chief 
 cause of business disturbance. The Sherman Law should have 
 a judicial interpretation which can be followed. I do not favor 
 its amendment. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 H. P. Hersey, Savings Bank Treasurer, Hingham, Mass. 
 
 Stop taking the freedom out of the country and allow people 
 to do business legitimately and at a profit. Competition is the 
 father of bankruptcy. I do not consider it feasible to return 
 to old competitive methods. They made many bankrupts. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended so that business can be done, 
 a good profit allowed, and business men can know where they 
 stand. I favor a national incorporation law, but not an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. It probably would be unfair, like the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 I believe a law should be passed that will allow business 
 to be carried on without interference, and that a liberal profit 
 is right. Too much interference by the government has depre- 
 ciated the value of the securities owned by savings banks and 
 life insurance companies to a fearful extent, and the prosecu- 
 tion of the so-called trusts, which have seldom hurt the com- 
 mon people of the United States, has been a direct injury to 
 them and a benefit to the very ones at whom it was aimed. 
 If we can have a just law that all can understand when read, 
 which will not adversely affect the business of the country, then 
 reepal the Sherman Law; but if a more drastic enactment is 
 to take its place, then let it stand and be a dead letter. 
 
 J. W. P. Lombard, President The National Exchange 
 Bank, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should not be repealed without something 
 definite to take its place " had better bear the ills we have," 
 etc. The Sherman Law, if amended, should have its provisions 
 made clear. A superabundance of laws, whose meaning is not 
 altogether clear, has checked development and put a stop to new 
 enterprises. I favor national incorporation, but doubt if either 
 that or Federal license would be of any benefit to the country 
 at large. I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission the 
 country has simply gone wild over government by commission. 
 
 Henry M. Garlick, President The First National Bank, 
 Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce and more uniform State laws in regard to cor- 
 porations. There should be a general law broad enough to avoid 
 technical restraint and permit reasonable agreements. The 
 Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission if finally found necessary. 
 
182 
 
 I. C. Hirsch, Real Estate, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 In my view the Sherman Law is not clear and workable, 
 and if it is not to be changed or taken off the statute books, 
 its meaning will be that all must resort again to cutthroat com- 
 petition, which will kill most business and give the field over to 
 the large corporations so necessary in these times. To return 
 to old competitive methods would surely spell destruction to 
 most of our honest business institutions, as all must try to 
 secure orders to keep capital and labor active, and the ordinary- 
 sized and small companies surely would not be able to compete 
 with the very large ones. I favor the repeal of the Sherman Law 
 and the enactment of a substitute to compel all to use fair and 
 just means in securing business. I mean by fair and just hon- 
 est methods. I favor a national incorporation law that will per- 
 mit owners and managers to say how and when they should run 
 their business, as long as they are honest and do not violate any 
 law now on the statute books. Business men, railroad men and 
 financiers need peace and rest. 
 
 Frank Harding, Lawyer, President Orange County Trust 
 Co., Middletown, N. Y. 
 
 While most thinkers agree that the corporation has served 
 an excellent purpose, and agree that the large aggregations of 
 capital are more effective than small ones, yet the whole advan- 
 tage put in the scale against the disadvantages of having a 
 creature greater than the creator would seem to indicate that 
 the trend of corporate growth and activity has been toward 
 a condition of society to which none of them would subscribe. 
 All the advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale do not all put together justify taking the corporation 
 out of the position of a public creature made for a beneficent 
 purpose and making it a destructive giant. 
 
 If there is no alternative for Federal legislation dealing 
 with interstate corporations, I prefer the license principle. At 
 the same time I suggest that the House of Governors seems to 
 indicate a way to sane uniformity. Note the results of the work 
 done in reference to the commercial paper laws. 
 
 W. R. Thompson, First National Bank, Hancock, Mich. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. An Interstate Trade Commission should 
 be created, with power to govern and regulate all such corpora- 
 tions. The Sherman Act should be repealed, and all complaints 
 should be settled by the commission. I believe in holding com- 
 panies, subject to approval by a proper commission. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization. 
 
 Abuse of power by a few corporations and efforts to magnify 
 the wrongdoing by unscrupulous politicians, as well as articles 
 in sensational newspapers and magazines disturb the public 
 mind and tend to unsettle business. 
 
183 
 
 F. J. Hollocker, Secretary and Treasurer, The Trust Com- 
 pany of St. Louis County, Clayton, Missouri. 
 
 The government ought to legalize and have commercial cor- 
 porations carry on trade under government approval, devising a 
 system whereby prices may be agreed upon by the various manu- 
 facturers and the output raised, lowered or changed systema- 
 tically by experts and by conference. The prices should not be 
 extortionate, but every provision made for a fair profit to all; 
 commodities, available by reason of near location and conse- 
 quent reduced freight rates, to be allotted to different members 
 of the association situated nearest to the consumer, the ulti- 
 mate object and purpose always being the cheapening of prices, 
 promotion of quality and promptness in execution of orders 
 to thus avoid wasted effort of capital and labor in competition 
 without commensurate profit. I favor Federal regulation and 
 license for companies doing interstate business. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization. 
 
 Walter F. McCaleb, President West Texas Bank & Trust 
 Company, San Antonio, Tex. 
 
 It strikes me that Federal license for companies doing an 
 interstate business is more nearly in harmony with our tradi- 
 tions, but I doubt our being able to solve the problem on this 
 line. It looks as though Federal incorporation alone could save 
 the situation. The holding-company issue is a most difficult 
 matter to approach. It looks to me as though no law whatso- 
 ever can successfully prevent the attaining of the results, even 
 if legislation were invoked; there are oblique ways. The Gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization, and laws should be 
 passed for publicity to be applied to commercial corporations. 
 Theoretically the claims of advantages for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale are largely true. Evil results follow, first, 
 from tariff; second, from pernicious, even vicious management. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. W. Carpenter, Cashier, Manufacturers National Bank, 
 North Attleboro, Mass. 
 
 Trusts so called can and should be of great economic 
 value both to producer and consumer, but recent history does 
 not record that they are as a rule. I prefer national incorpora- 
 tion for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I am op- 
 posed to holding companies, and favor specific statutes if the 
 Sherman Act is not powerful enough to deal with unfair com- 
 petition and restraint of trade. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization, and laws should be enacted calling for pub- 
 licity in regard to all matters that the public have a right to 
 know regarding tbo affairs of commercial corporations. 
 
184 
 
 Eugene C. Galloway, President, Gate City Coffin Company, 
 Manufacturers; President, Fulton County Home 
 Builders, Construction; President, The Imperial 
 Company, a Hotel Corporation; President, Gate City 
 Realty Company, an Investment Company, for buy- 
 ing and selling real estate, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are only partly caused 
 by the Sherman Act. The country generally has been over- 
 trading and is liquidating, which affects the volume of business. 
 In the South particularly at the present time the low price of 
 cotton depresses business. Give us 12-cent cotton, and we will 
 never have a panic in the South, and it would probably prevent 
 one in the nation. 
 
 While water seeks its highest level, prices on the contrary 
 seek their lowest level. No arbitrary act of government can 
 prevent prices between competitors being the same. When, 
 from a demoralized condition of affairs, one commodity is re- 
 duced in price, its competitive article immediately falls to that 
 price to meet it. When competition brings prices of commodi- 
 ties below their normal price and at a loss to the manufacturer, 
 it is next to impossible to raise the prices to a normal and 
 reasonable one without an agreement between competitors. 
 Prices in this respect are like reputation. It is easy to tear 
 down, but hard to build up again. It needs a slight agree- 
 ment between competitors, which at present the Sherman Act 
 forbids. This tends to demoralize business. When affairs are 
 in this shape, it should be permitted competitors to combine, 
 but under an Interstate Trade Commission, and by their author- 
 ity. This commission should investigate conditions and see the 
 absolute necessity of such advances by an agreement between 
 competitors. 
 
 Worth Kilpatrick, Coal Operator and President Second 
 National Bank, Connellsville, Pa. 
 
 The present business conditions are the natural results of 
 past seed sowing. The railroad companies for the past twenty 
 years or more until lately gave differentials and rebates to 
 favored interests, building them up to enormous money powers, 
 at the sacrifice and oppression of the smaller dealer, manufac- 
 turer, operator and shipper. These latter make up the larger 
 number of people, and when it was seen that there could be no 
 relief given until agitation was made in earnest against these 
 unlawful conditions, such agitation carried with it what could 
 only be expected the pendulum swung to the far side. But 
 with patriotic law-makers that will rise above self and enact 
 such laws as will protect all interests in their rights, we will 
 then settle down to great and honest work, everyone feeling 
 that he is protected in his efforts. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and if for the best interests of all concerned an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
185 
 
 A. Augustus Healy, Retired Merchant, formerly Vice-Presi- 
 dent of the Central Leather Company, New York. 
 
 Great corporations have grown up under the Sherman Law, 
 under the supposition that they were entirely legal, as no objec- 
 tion was made by the government. They should not, there- 
 fore, be treated as criminals. They are generally willing to 
 submit themselves to reasonable regulation which would safe- 
 guard the rights of the public. In the whole matter of regulat- 
 ing and controlling corporations care should be taken not to 
 stirie the spirit of enterprise. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due very largely to lack 
 of confidence caused by unwise attacks upon corporations. The 
 present destructive method of procedure is very injurious. The 
 government should reason together with the officers of business 
 corporations, with the view of rectifying what is wrong in pres- 
 ent methods, and until such negotiations fail the corporations 
 should not be attacked in courts of law, which is hurtful to 
 sentiment in the business world and productive of bad feeling, 
 causing expense and delay. The Sherman Law should be made 
 clear, reasonable and intelligible to conform to changed condi- 
 tions of business. 
 
 In addition to other advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale should be added the advantage that 
 emploj^ees may become profit-sharers through holding the stock. 
 The public also has the same advantage and opportunity. 
 
 I believe in holding companies, under limitations to prevent 
 oppression. The holding company is a great convenience in 
 a large business organization with plants perhaps widely scat- 
 tered. It acts like a central office in which different members 
 of a large business organization may be brought into harmo- 
 nious and efficiently working relationship. It enables also the 
 working parts of the organization to act conformably to the 
 laws where they may be located. 
 
 Leslie French, Cashier First National Bank, Escanaba, 
 Mich. 
 
 There is too much agitation and uncertainty for any one 
 to be sure of his ground; we think business is of the cautious 
 hand-to-mouth variety. Let us have a strong Federal incor- 
 poration act that corporations will have to come under and will 
 absolutely have to obey. The government can control if it is 
 given a tool that is sharp enough. 
 
 I believe large aggregations of capital must be allowed, but 
 they certainly should represent actual bona fide values (phys- 
 ical) and be under rigid government control. They should be 
 compelled to incorporate under a general Federal law and 
 should be compelled to forfeit their charter if they do forbidden 
 things, as enumerated. Further, the officers and directors should 
 be criminally liable to the government. I refer you to the 
 National Banking Law as a pa*t model. 
 
186 
 
 H. R. Page, President, Central State Bank, Jackson, Mich. ; 
 President, Home Store Company, Chicago, 111. ; Presi- 
 dent, Chicago Sewer Pipe Company of Brazil, Ind., 
 and last, but not least, Farmer, 502 So. Jackson street, 
 Jackson, Mich. 
 
 I am with Levy Mayer \vhen he says in the Chicago 
 Tribune : 
 
 "Let the government, instead of fettering or shackling the 
 tremendous and limitless resources, energy, and strength of 
 our industrial world, turn its fruits into paths of profit and 
 usefulness for all of the people/' and adds: 
 
 " 1. Place power with the President scientifically to reduce 
 the tariff, and, if necessary, remove it entirely from imported 
 articles that can be sold on a competitive basis with the products 
 of trusts and monopolies that are not incorporated under Fed- 
 eral law. 
 
 " 2. Enact a Federal incorporation law, under which all cor- 
 porations engaged in interstate trade may become incorporated. 
 That law should contain provisions for visitation and examina- 
 tion similar to those now in the national bank act and in the 
 regulations of the Controller of the Currency. Such a law should 
 not be compulsory. Every corporation availing itself of its 
 provisions should be permitted to abandon and surrender its 
 State charter. Every such Federal corporation should be given 
 rights, powers and privileges in everv State on the scale of 
 those now enjoyed by national banks, free from the harassing, 
 nagging, conflicting, and oppressive statutory provisions and 
 burdensome taxes that prevail in nearly all of the States against 
 foreign corporations doing business therein. 
 
 " 3. Remove every such Federal corporation from subjection 
 to the anti-trust act. In other words, expressly provide that 
 the provisions of that statute shall not govern Federal corpora- 
 ions but shall continue to apply only to those not availing of 
 the Federal corporation act. Give to every Federal corporation 
 the unrestricted and untrammeled right to contract and to 
 enter into any kind of trade agreements pertinent to its busi- 
 ness. As a consideration for such freedom provide that every 
 such Federal corporation shall be required to pay into the Uni- 
 ted States treasury annually one-fourth of its net profits, after 
 providing for all fixed charges, interest, payments, deprecia- 
 tion, maintenance and a dividend equal to, say, 7 per cent, on 
 all outstanding stock. 
 
 " In order to avoid the payment of dividends on watered 
 stock, provide that a department of the government, a Federal 
 corporation commission, shall have the right to determine to 
 what extent the issued stock of any such corporation is in ex- 
 cess of the fair value of all of its property. 
 
 " In this way there will be no statutory penalty on business 
 progress and ambition or on commercial genius. Corporate 
 officers will then continue with increasing efforts to develop 
 and enlarge their industries and fields of activity." 
 
187 
 
 Frank H. Foster, Cashier, National Bank, Claremont, N. H. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the fundamental policy of the government 
 whether advantages of combinations are to be recognized, and 
 combinations permitted under reasonable safeguards, or whether 
 all restrictions of competition are to be made illegal, whether 
 in the line of real economic progress or not is the principal 
 cause of business disturbance. 
 
 The writer believes we are bound to see more or less contin- 
 uous progress toward a higher degree of organization in all 
 industrial activities, accompanied by an extension of the func- 
 tions of both States and nation, to guard the welfare of the 
 many against abuse of the great extensions of power that have 
 come and will continue to come to the few. Enlarged govern- 
 mental responsibilities are inevitable, but a great danger comes 
 in here that individual initiative, which has played such an 
 important part in our national life, may be curbed and Jiedged 
 about to such a degree as to lose the advantages it has heretofore 
 brought to societ}^. It will need broad, enlightened and dis- 
 interested statesmanship to steer between the Scylla of un- 
 restrained monoply and the Charybdis of a paralyzing bureau- 
 cracy. 
 
 In regard to the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, I can see no necessary relation between size 
 of business and protection to employees against accidents. In 
 addition to the advantages claimed may be mentioned stand- 
 ardization of products, quick deliveries, and reduction in losses 
 on " bad bills," and economic waste. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate business. In regard to holding companies, I would 
 favor laws preventing them, if Federal incorporation can be 
 had, but not otherwise. Without Federal incorporation, a law 
 requiring combinations to merge in one large corporation would 
 leave such corporations exposed to the imposition of oppressive 
 taxes, or other burdens, as a " foreign corporation," in any 
 State except the one in which it was incorporated. A single 
 corporation is preferable, if it can be protected against burden- 
 some State laws bearing upon foreign corporations. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization. I can see no escape 
 from the creation of an Interstate Trade Commission with large 
 powers. It will not be an unmixed blessing, but what are the 
 alternatives? Removal of wholesome restraints altogether, or 
 a perpetuation of the spectacle now being enacted of dragging 
 one combination after another into court to ascertain after the 
 fact whether its acts have been reasonable, when no sure guide- 
 posts have been set up by which a corporation may travel with 
 assurance of avoiding prosecution. 
 
 Ex. Norton, Broker, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and ought to 
 be repealed. Uncertainty as to the legal status of corporations 
 is the cause of disturbance in business. 
 
18S 
 
 Felix T. McWhirter, President, People's State Bank, 
 Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 failure to keep the capitalization of every corporation fully up 
 to par value and to lack of proper and thorough examination 
 ( semi-annual ly or annually) by government authority, the 
 results given in official published statements. Interstate corpora- 
 tions should operate under a general national charter, with no 
 holding company, or combination with other corporation. The 
 " people " are partners in every concern holding corporate 
 existence and should be so regarded. 
 
 If capital is kept at par value and uniform protection guar- 
 anteed, enlargement will follow demand. The general law of 
 supply and demand is as sure in its operation as is the law of 
 gravitation. True statesmanship demands that this law shall 
 be safeguarded, and that advantages shall be dependent only 
 upon actual capital invested, intelligent representation of the 
 article or commodity offered and square dealing with employees. 
 Under existing conditions, doing business on a large scale does 
 not assure steadier employment of labor and at better wages. 
 Economies in production, economies in distribution and greater 
 use of by-products certainly do exist in connection with business 
 on a large scale; and competition should insure the benefits of 
 these advantages in some degree to the consumer. Command 
 of the best ability, but at an adequate or exorbitant compensa- 
 tion, is also admitted, as well as better protection against indus- 
 trial accidents and more command of international trade. I 
 think an Interstate Trade Commission ought to be avoided if 
 possible. I would not favor publicity beyond that of annual 
 or semi-annual statements, duly attested by government examin- 
 ers and supported bv the sworn statement of at least three 
 directors and the active officers. 
 
 With intelligent pressure a high order of socialism, recogniz- 
 ing and rewarding intelligence, integrity and experience, will 
 supplant the futile efforts of trade unions and the demagogic 
 arguments of shallow and dangerous politicians. 
 
 Chase & Barstow, Stock Brokers, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to too much ill-con- 
 sidered legislation in regard to railroads and general business 
 and too much diffuse talking by president, attorney-general 
 and others during the past eight or ten years. 
 
 Business people and railroad people have learned that ruin- 
 ous competition is of no lasting benefit to anyone. It is impos- 
 sible to make people compete in prices and rates if they do not 
 wish to do so. Legislation cannot accomplish this, but the ex- 
 perience of the past four years has shown plainly that such 
 legislation and governmental talk and action following can 
 ruin tens of thousands of the citizens of this country and dis- 
 turb the general welfare of millions. 
 
189 
 
 Samuel E. Elmore, President, Connecticut River Banking 
 Company, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, pri- 
 marily to the attempt to rudely enforce a crudely formed plan 
 to regulate the " trusts," by destroying instead of curbing them, 
 thus producing chaos. The laws should apply equally to all- 
 department stores, as well as oil and steel producers, etc. The 
 great gain to the public by combinations of capital should not 
 be overlooked, because they have also caused some to make ex- 
 traordinary gain. The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, 
 but should not be repealed, unless a proper substitute can be 
 framed. While I would prefer a substitute for the Sherman 
 Law, I suggest that, if it is to be amended, it should be made 
 plain and reasonable, so that those who wish to act honestly 
 and justly could be assured of protection, which is what laws 
 are needed for. 
 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of he Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, provided that the members of the com- 
 mission are qualified. I do not favor a national incorporation 
 law ; let each State take the consequences of its legislation. Poli- 
 tics will eventually regulate that, without paternal action. I see 
 no serious objection to holding companies. The competition 
 between the States to make laws governing incorporation is a 
 small matter and will correct itself. "Do you favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers ? " Yes. 
 
 R. H. Rush, Cashier, The First National Bank, Charleroi, 
 Pa. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation with rigid supervision for 
 corporations doing an interstate business. I do not believe in 
 holding companies. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and 
 workable, and am utterly opposed to its repeal. What is needed 
 i* more rigid enforcement, with provisions made clear on all 
 points. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, but should be limited as to the time, so that they 
 could be regulated to suit new conditions arising. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, a Federal license for those doing 
 interstate business and an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 disposition of " combinations of capital " to realize greater 
 profits on constantly increasing or overcapitalization, and the 
 attempt on the part of our government to check the appalling 
 violation of the Sherman Act, without its provisions being thor- 
 oughly understood and clearly defined, and the absence of 
 Supreme Court decisions on all points supposedly violated, fend 
 undoubtedly to create apprehension and disquietude in the con- 
 duct of important business. 
 
190 
 
 Charles J. Seeds (The Delaware County State Bank), Man- 
 chester, Iowa. 
 
 Business uncertainty is due to climatic and other local con- 
 ditions in certain parts of the country; to doubt and fear of those 
 having the handling of money of our big concerns, as to the 
 course of government officials in the way they would construe 
 the present laws, and the way the same would eventually be 
 construed by the courts. 
 
 For companies doing interstate commerce permit State incor- 
 poration, and require all corporations doing interstate business 
 (with a capital of $150,000) to have a Federal license, said 
 license or fee 'payable annually. 1 do not believe in holding 
 companies strictly as "holding companies." One company 
 should be prevented from holding stock in another, except to a 
 limited extent and for a limited time. Laws should be enacted 
 specifying just what constitutes unfair competition and restraint 
 of trade., and when those laws are violated the authorities should 
 go after the person or persons responsible, with a criminal pen- 
 alty. The government should regulate capitalization, and pub- 
 licity should be applied to commercial corporations. The large 
 corporations seem to be a necessity; let's keep them but keep 
 them safe. 
 
 I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission, something 
 along the lines suggested, in case the present Department of 
 Commerce could not properly handle. I can see no good reason 
 why there should be any limitation as to capital for commercial 
 corporations so long as the capital is actually there more 
 than for railroads. Make laws that are reasonable and fair to 
 all, saying just what is what; then enforce them. We are in 
 a day of "big things and quick actions," and to swing them 
 takes a lot of money, as well as brains. 
 
 Andrew T. Sullivan, President, Nassau Trust Company, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to impaired confidence, 
 caused by political agitation, injudicious actions and invectives 
 on the part of State and Federal officials; also excessive greed 
 and dishonesty exhibited by those in control of certain corpora- 
 tions. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. I believe it will 
 always be a disturbing factor, a menace to legitimate business 
 interests and a weapon of destruction in the hands of dema- 
 gogues and blatant reformers. If not repealed, then I favor 
 amending its provisions so as to harmonize with the growth of 
 the country and existing business conditions, provision to be 
 made for reasonable regulation and supervision. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. The government should regulate capitalization assets 
 and earning capacity to be equitably considered. Publicity 
 should be applied to commercial corporations. 
 
101 
 
 Joseph L. Seligman, J. & W. Seligman, Bankers, New York 
 City. 
 
 The Sherman Law will not be clear and workable until the 
 courts define more clearly what constitutes " reasonableness/' 
 I do not consider it feasible to attempt to return to old competi- 
 tive methods, but competition is greatly to be preferred to gov- 
 ernment interference and inquisition, which has so disturbed 
 conditions of late. I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, 
 but its amendment. It should be amended by enacting more 
 stringent laws against directors and promoters of guilty corpora- 
 tions; the establishment of a government corporation bureau; 
 enforcement of a law compelling all corporations to incorporate 
 under government statutes. 
 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. " Should trade unions be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Act ? " Trade unions 
 are growing far too powerful: they should be curbed in every 
 manner consistent with the second section, Article IV., of the 
 Constitution of the United States of America. " Should com- 
 binations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a 
 crop for higher prices, be lawful under the Sherman Act ? " No ; 
 also no dealing in corners or futures of staple commodities 
 should be allowed. Gambling in grain must and ought to be 
 immediately stopped. 
 
 I decidedly favor a national incorporation law, but it must 
 not entail inquisition into the private affairs of innocent per- 
 sons constituting the corporation, such as stockholders who are 
 connected with the management. I favor a Federal license law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 In my judgment, the cause of disturbed business conditions 
 is too much government attempt at remedying all at once the 
 entire corporation " evils " of the country, coming, as it did, in 
 a time of European and world-wide unrest and financial dis- 
 furbance. 
 
 Under the general Federal incorporation law there should 
 be a clause that every director, etc., should be made to swear 
 on assuming his directorship (or administrative office) that he 
 will not, either directly or indirectly, ever hold one share of 
 the stock, or give any intimation to others, for purposes of 
 speculation, etc., of proposed changes or other knowledge he has 
 acquired through his position in the company. 
 
 N. G. Lamson, President, Merrimack River Savings Bank, 
 Lowell, Mass. 
 
 The sensational attempt to enforce the unpractical Sher- 
 man Law has had much to do with disturbing business. If 
 the destructive tendencies of that law cannot be removed by 
 -amendment, then it ought to be repealed. 
 
192 
 
 Alexander Brown & Sons, Bankers, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to panicky conditions 
 in the currency situation; a too rapid recovery from the panic 
 of 1907 has been followed by reaction attended by lack of con- 
 fidence, due to political and governmental problems. We think 
 that a Federal incorporation act, designed to secure publicity 
 and familiarity with the affairs of the large industrial con- 
 cerns (rather than to give governmental control), offers the 
 speediest specific for existing conditions. The main objection 
 to the plan is that it opens the door to legislation tending 
 toward a dangerous centralization of financial power in Wash- 
 ington. We are inclined to think, however, that the advantages 
 of an act of this sort would outweigh the disadvantages. The 
 recent decisions of the Supreme Court have rendered the Sher- 
 man Act much clearer and have prepared the way for making 
 it very clear and workable. It is hardly feasible and certainly 
 inadvisable to return to old competitive methods. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended to provide for a further examina- 
 tion, investigation and study of the larger industrial corpora- 
 tions. Their relation to the foreign and domestic commerce 
 of the country and the observance of the result of the recent 
 " trust " dissolutions, covering a period of several years, will be 
 the best guides to proper amendments. Any amendment at the 
 present time would likely be based on false premises, with a 
 possible explanation of a Federal incorporation act. 
 
 John Stites, Attorney-at-Law and Vice-President of The 
 Louisville Trust Company, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Business can in time adapt itself to almost any conditions, 
 when those conditions are stable and known; but no business 
 can succeed under uncertain conditions. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. unless its meaning can be made clear. If 
 amended, its meaning should be made clear and its enforcement 
 put into the hands of a national commission, with duties plainly 
 defined, its powers safeguarded, and its acts made subject to 
 review by the courts in proper cases. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 W. E. Coffin, President, Iowa Loan & Trust Company, Des 
 Moines, Iowa. 
 
 The Sherman Law was a poor law ; in fact, it was too indefi- 
 nite in its terms; but it has been given definition, and now that 
 the situation has been clarified we should enforce the law. Aside 
 from this, we should have peace, and a settled condition of affairs 
 rather than more agitation. Disturbed business conditions are 
 due partly to reaction from a condition of too much expansion 
 and .partly to too much political agitation. I favor enforcement 
 of the present law. also a Federal incorporation act, and publicity 
 of the affairs of all corporations doing an interstate business. 
 
193 
 
 W. B. Anderson, Vice-President and Manager Merchants 
 and Miners Bank, Calumet, Mich. 
 
 rncertainty with respect to the future of the large cor- 
 poration!?, and the frequency of changes in our tariff system, 
 are perhaps the greatest, but not the only causes of business 
 disturbance. The Sherman Law has not been made clear and 
 workable, and I question whether it can be satisfactorily 
 amended. Railroads should he allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 It would seem to be safe, inasmuch as they are subject to regu- 
 lation. Trade unions, too, need to be regulated by some power 
 greater than the union. In regard to combinations of farmers, 
 size should receive very careful consideration. I favor, for 
 companies engaged in interstate commerce, such national incor- 
 poration or Federal license as will enable the Federal govern- 
 ment to regulate. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion and publicity should be applied to commercial corporations. 
 We need the large corporations. They should not be dissolved, 
 but should be under Federal regulation. Federal regulation 
 will necessitate an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 L. M. Bashinsky, Exporter of Cotton and Vice-President of 
 Farmers and Merchants National Bank, Troy, Ala. 
 
 We believe the general unrest will not he eliminat^. until 
 the government can undertake supervision of all interstate cor- 
 porations under wise laws. Such a course would satisfy the 
 stockholders, and the entire country would be inspired with 
 confidence. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 It should be amended to provide for governmental supervision 
 of all interstate business. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, and combinations of farmers 
 to secure fair prices for their products should be permitted. I 
 favor a national incorporation law. Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. The average politician, who does 
 not understand economic laws, is mainly responsible for business 
 unrest. 
 
 Frederick H. Lane, Commission Merchant, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and in its place a 
 Federal incorporation law should be enacted providing the right 
 of the government to send a representative to any directors' 
 meeting merely as an inspector and also providing for a fair 
 measure of publicity. The causes of present disturbed business 
 conditions are tariff agitation, unseasonable weather, overcapi- 
 talization and irregular banking. The advantages of doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale apply, as a rule, more particularly to staple 
 products, such as steel rails, piece-dyed fabrics and food prod- 
 ucts. Productions dependent on fashions or artistic individual- 
 ity can often be produced on a small scale more economically 
 than on a large scale. 
 
394 
 
 Howard Caswell Smith, Banker, New York. 
 
 Among enormous corporations I believe competition is dan- 
 gerous and destructive; though steps should be taken to prevent 
 the crushing of competitors by any methods subject to a high 
 moral criticism. Limited publicity is essential. I favor a na- 
 tional incorporation law, if not unconstitutional. The time is 
 not ripe for an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The time is not ripe for such a move, and the healthy varia- 
 tions of various businesses would make such a scheme impracti- 
 cable. 
 
 Causes of the present disturbed business conditions are: 
 (1) The turpitude and avarice of men in the highest walks of 
 life who proved unworthy of their trusts; (2) the resulting 
 popular clamor, which forced legislative and executive activity, 
 not based on scientific study and knowledge of economic prob- 
 lems. We can only hope for successful results by the intelligent 
 study of economic laws bearing on our business problems and 
 the intelligent application of facts to these laws. We cannot 
 hope to develop a practical theory that violates economic laws. 
 Popular clamor is useful to make us all think, but not to solve 
 our problems. 
 
 Otto Fowle, President First National Bank, Sault Sainte 
 Marie, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clearer and more workable than form- 
 erly, but not yet sufficiently so. It should be amended so as to 
 be effective without stifling legitimate business. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates only 
 as subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I prefer 
 Federal license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. 
 Holding companies are proving dangerous, and I think that laws 
 dealing with them might afford a necessary remedy. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization, and laws should be 
 passed applying publicity to commercial corporations. I am 
 not prepared to say definitely, but I am inclined to favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The great question is to permit the employment of capital, 
 insuring just remuneration without stifling competition. It 
 must be done but how? The effort to control monopolies is 
 largely responsible for business disturbance. 
 
 H. Thane (Desha Bank & Trust Company), Arkansas City, 
 Ark. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation only for interstate commerce. I 
 believe in holding companies to a limited extent ; in government 
 regulation of capitalization; in publicity for commercial cor- 
 porations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission and modi- 
 fication of the Sherman Law. Disturbed business conditions are 
 due to too much " trust busting/' 
 
195 
 
 C. R. Wheeler, President The First National Bank of 
 Peoria, Peoria, 111. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation requiring national incorporation 
 for companies doing interstate commerce. I do not believe in 
 holding companies. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, and laws should be enacted applying publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations. The Sherman Law should be amended in 
 such a way that all corporations can work under it without vio- 
 lating the law, unless they violate it with full knowledge of 
 what they are doing. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. Dis- 
 turbed business conditions are due to the agitation of the tariff, 
 and bringing suit against the different corporations of the 
 country, whose defense is that the Sherman Act is not clear in 
 its meaning. 
 
 George C. Watt, Vice-President First National Bank, Brad- 
 dock, Pa. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business; also inspection the same as national banks, and 
 published sworn annual statements to be sent to each stock- 
 holder. I favor laws preventing a company located in any 
 one State from owning a stock company incorporated and doing 
 business in another State. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act should 
 be amended to specifically forbid certain practices. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization and publicity should be 
 applied to commercial corporations. Admitting the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale, such corpora- 
 tions should be under careful regulation and restriction. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. The causes of disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions are, in my judgment, too much politics and 
 crude legislation, as well as the large production of gold. 
 
 Samuel R. Bell, Cashier The Larchmont National Bank, 
 Larchmont, N. Y. 
 
 My answer as to present disturbed business conditions ap- 
 plies throughout every civilized country. The conversion of 
 " liquid" capital into "fixed" improvements and the economic 
 conflict between the old principle of competition and the mod- 
 ern principle of combination prevails everywhere throughout 
 civilization. The Sherman Law should be amended by specify- 
 ing what is " unreasonable " monopoly or " restraint of trade." 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. The holding company is not necessarily an evil, but it 
 should be controlled by a Federal commission, and all publicity 
 required as to its operation. I prefer Federal legislation or 
 review of State incorporations by a Federal commission for com- 
 panies doing interstate commerce. 
 
A. Goodell & Sons Company, Investment Bankers, Loda, 
 
 You are starting at the wrong end to accomplish desired 
 regulation of all large companies. Take ont the enormous profits 
 accruing to the organizers of any great corporation, such as the 
 Beef, Tobacco, Sugar, Oil and Transportation companies, and 
 you would settle the question once for all. A supervision of 
 all interstate corporations by the national government, such as 
 is now in force in regard to national banks, limiting capital- 
 ization to reasonable and specified amounts and controlling the 
 issue of stocks and bonds, would do more to settle this question 
 than any other legislation. The trouble now is any group of 
 individuals can organize without capital and escape personal 
 liability such as a private individual must assume. This would 
 immediately decrease the number of corporations to legitimate 
 needs and check wild speculation and promotion schemes in- 
 tended to defraud the people. 
 
 We are the laughing stock of the foreigners and too con- 
 ceited and dishonest in our business methods to see our own 
 shortcomings. Railroads have been run by a lot of stock gam- 
 blers pure and simple. The Alton, Bock Island and a lot of 
 others were fleeced. They are examples of what unbridled greed 
 of speculators will do for a good road. No man is safe to invest 
 his money in stocks of these great combinations. Of course 
 there are exceptions, but the conditions are as bad as in the 
 life insurance companies before the late unpleasantness. The 
 whole trouble is we are trying to regulate something ivhich 
 should not be allowed to exist. I mean huge, over-capitalized 
 Corporations, unwieldy, expensive, and demoralizing the business 
 conscience of the nation, building up enormous fortunes for a 
 few individuals who cannot give it away as fast as it accumu- 
 lates. On the other hand, our poverty and crime are a menace 
 to the country. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 over-capitalization such as the United States Steel Corporation. 
 In order to pay dividends on stock they must control the market 
 and obtain a fictitious price for their products, such as $28 a 
 ton for steel rails, with no variation in price. This means high 
 prices to railroads for construction and eventually high rates 
 for freight to consumer. 
 
 I emphatically favor national incorporation, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should 
 be. either repealed or enforced. Put in a criminal clause which 
 will hold officers personally, and make its provisions as clear as 
 the law in regard ao stealing. 
 
 W. M. Kern, Treasurer, Dollar Savings Bank, New York. 
 
 1 favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission only to the extent of regu- 
 lating the holdings of the stockholders to prevent a limited or 
 monopolistic corporation. 
 
197 
 
 Charles A. Wickersham, President and General Manager, 
 Atlanta & West Point Railroad Co., The Western 
 Railway of Alabama, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 The writer is not a " trust buster." He has little patience 
 with the Sherman Law and less with the prosecutions instituted 
 to enforce it. It occurs to him the effect is not good on the 
 business interests of the country, but, on the contrary, is bad. 
 This law had two purposes in view ; one to preserve competition, 
 and the other to prevent monopolies. At the time of its passage 
 twenty years ago there may have been some excuse for it, but 
 now the condition is such that we doubt if it would be wise 
 to undertake the preservation of competition or the preventing 
 of monopolies. Commerce has undergone, within a few decades, 
 a wonderful revolution, owing to the many and mighty changes 
 which have taken place in conditions, which are world-wide. 
 
 Once commerce was in a sense local, limited by national 
 boundaries and racial lines, because communication and trans- 
 portation both existed within narrow bounds, owing to time 
 and expense. Largely these factors have disappeared, and com- 
 merce, vi n fettered, now claims universal dominion. It ignores 
 distance, time, expense and race; steam and electricity have 
 united into one commercial empire all countries and all races. 
 
 Competition once was a struggle between individuals, but 
 now it is a struggle between countries. To-day each great coun- 
 try is striving to dominate the world commerce. The conflict 
 is raging between Germany, England, France, the United States 
 and other powers. Each is behind its forces as they press the 
 conflict to secure the trade of China, Japan, South America, 
 Africa, etc. 
 
 Xow it is evident that whoever is a soldier in the world- 
 wide contest must control unlimited means, resources unbounded. 
 Hence, every factor which enters into a successful effort to win 
 the market of this or that people must be within the grasp of 
 the combatant. 
 
 It may be necessary for one who seeks the trade of some 
 foreign ^people to own railroads, ships, telegraph lines, cables, 
 manufacturing plants, elevators, compresses, saw mills, planta- 
 tions, etc. This requires millions, yes, billions of dollars, con- 
 centrated in one or a few hands. 
 
 When so much capital is placed under control of so few, the 
 result is necessarily destruction of competition in the common 
 acceptation of the word, and monopoly takes its place. Perhaps 
 all would agree that in the world competition such vast concen- 
 tration of interests must exist to succeed, but the difficulty is 
 that when any commercial institution prepares to enter the 
 struggle, as a competitor in the world markets, locally it becomes 
 a monopoly and destroys domestic competition in a large meas- 
 ure. So if we intend to fight for the world commerce, we must 
 not hope to enjoy unrestricted domestic competition or escape 
 the ills of monopolies. 
 
198 
 
 For these reasons we are not in favor of the Sherman Law, 
 and yet we would not say there should be no regulation of com- 
 merce. However, what those regulations should be and how 
 enforced, I am not in a position to say. My own opinion is, 
 our greatest trouble is too much legislation. If we intend to 
 insist on the Sherman Law and compel competition by legisla- 
 tion, and we do it, we will have to abandon the struggle to be- 
 come dominant in the world commerce. 
 
 David Jameson, Vice-President, The Citizens National 
 Bank, New Castle, Pa. 
 
 if brought about by fair methods and in the natural develop- 
 ment of a business, mere bigness should not be inhibited, nor 
 the mere purchase, absorption or merger of competitors, unless 
 preceded by unfair, destructive competition, or followed by ex- 
 ploitation of producers of raw materials or consumers of finished 
 product. 1 understand this to be the interpretation of the Sher- 
 man Act given by the Supreme Court, although it might be 
 made more definite. 
 
 it does not seem to me practicable or desirable to attempt a 
 quasi- judicial supervision of business in its multitudinous rami- 
 llcations. Such an attempt could hardly stop short of fixing 
 prices of commodities ; and in an attempt to restore competition, 
 we would destroy it. Punish unfairness, make the game clean, 
 and let the competitors play it out. This will promote trade, 
 produce strong men and make our nation great. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. Additional legislation is needed making 
 destructive competition a crime, with severe punishment. Ke- 
 store competitive methods, and the evil will disappear. I would 
 abolish holding companies if a way could be found to avoid the 
 difficulties growing out of conflicting State laws. So far as 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade are concerned, I 
 would keep the Sherman Act and with it the progress made 
 towards its interpretation, but would try to make it more defi- 
 nite. The government should regulate capitalization, and pub- 
 licity should be applied to commercial corporations. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. 
 
 S. E. Bradt, Vice-President, First National Bank of De 
 Kalb and of the Commercial and Savings Bank, De 
 Kalb, 111. 
 
 I favor repeal of the Sherman Law, and specific laws to gov- 
 ern specific cases. Disturbed business conditions are due, pri- 
 marily, to abuses of power by some of the large corporations; 
 secondly, to ambiguity of the Sherman Law, and thirdly, to 
 politics. (Perhaps this last should be first.) I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. Eail- 
 roacls should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
199 
 
 Emerson McMillin, Banker and Officer of Many Companies 
 That Manufacture Coke, Tar and Ammonia Products, 
 New York City. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I believe in holding companies. To prohibit the 
 holding of the stock of one company by another would be a 
 serious step backward. Laws can be made to punish abuses of 
 the right. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act has worked so dis- 
 astrously during the last few years that I would prefer statutes 
 expressly forbidding specified practices for dealing with unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade. I favor laws providing for 
 government regulation of capitalization. There is absolutely 
 no excuse for overcapitalization. In response to the question 
 relating to the protection of minority stockholders I have either 
 controlled or been largely interested in scores of corpora- 
 tions, but have never known of injustice to minority stock- 
 holders, and have never had one complain. On the other hand, 
 1 have known minority stockholders to bleed the majority out- 
 rageously when the approval of all shares was necessary to 
 reorganization. 
 
 I approve all the claims of advantages for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale, and think that they sufficiently cover that 
 branch of the subject. I do not recognize as a fact the state- 
 ment that to secure these advantages provision must be made 
 by Federal law. There is no more necessity for regulating large 
 corporations than small ones. There are ten thousand abuses 
 by individuals, especially amongst the professional classes, for 
 every single abuse by corporations. To satisfy (but not to 
 protect) the public, 1 favor the commissions. 
 
 " Do you believe that the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, 
 is made (a) clear and (b) workable? 77 To " a," yes. To "b," 
 no. So long as attorney-generals are human there will be turmoil 
 under the existing law, even as interpreted. 
 
 " Do you consider it feasible to attempt to return to what 
 are commonly known as old competitive methods? 77 I pray and 
 hope not. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. It should be 
 amended. Bailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements, 
 affecting rates. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act all Americans are equal. As 
 to combinations of farmers any law should apply equally to all. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license law. 
 I have profound respect for commissions, but think it possible 
 to go too far. Disturbed business conditions are due to the 
 approaching Presidential campaign. 
 
200 
 
 F. J. Atwood, President First National Bank, Concordia, 
 Kan. 
 
 National incorporation might bo better for companies en- 
 gaged in interstate commerce; but Federal license could more 
 readily be obtained, probably. I am not opposed to holding- 
 companies if under government supervision and control. Tin- 
 Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and should be re- 
 pealed, if coincident with the enactment of a better law. Kail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 Combinations of farmers should be permitted, subject to gov- 
 ernmental approval of their methods. In addition to the ad- 
 vantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale are 
 economies in the time of the public; the long haul, through 
 trains, department stores, etc. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization and publicity should be applied to commer- 
 cial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due. in my judgment, to 
 lack of harmony between business conditions and laws relating 
 thereto. I believe the whole matter should be considered by a 
 commission composed of the ablest men obtainable as nearly 
 non-partisan as possible they to recommend definite, compre- 
 hensive, scientific and constructive legislation calculated to meet 
 twentieth century industrial conditions. 
 
 James H. Ritter, President Chelten Trust Company, Phila- 
 delphia, Pa. 
 
 From a business (not banking) experience of many years, 
 I am convinced that free competition is commercial warfare. 
 On the other hand, fostering of large corporations is sure to 
 result in governmental ownership and socialism. I prefer Fed- 
 eral license for companies engaged in interstate commerce, and 
 would further suggest that a State corporation should be per- 
 mitted to take out State licenses in one or two adjoining states. 
 The public need protection against large aggregations of capital. 
 Perhaps some relief could be obtained by limitation of capital 
 or amount of annual business, as in life insurance companies. 
 1 believe in holding companies, within reasonable limits. Unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade can be dealt with under the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The government should regulate cap- 
 italization and publicity should be applied to commercial cor- 
 porations through a commission to be appointed for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
 To my mind, all the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale are arguments for socialism, and such 
 seems to be the trend of affairs to-day. Personally, I should 
 be and am. sorry to see the elimination of the individual. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Coin mission with powers not unlike those 
 now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in rela- 
 tion to common carriers. 
 
201 
 
 Edward S. Bancroft, President Home Mortgage Investment 
 Company of New York City. 
 
 We have reached the stage in our national life when large 
 capital is required, and many branches of business can only be 
 conducted by means of a great combination of incorporated 
 capital. A national law should compel labor organizations to be. 
 incorporated and under national control, with a sufficient capital, 
 thus making labor responsible to its companion, capital, as cap- 
 ital is responsible to labor. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I believe in holding companies. Unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with by 
 statutes expressly forbidding specified practices. I favor laws 
 providing for government regulation of capitalization. Only 
 limit capitalization to actual cash paid in, and "good will" to 
 appear so stated, just as the paid-in surplus appears. 
 
 I admit the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, so far as economies in production, economies 
 in distribution, greater use of by-products, better protection 
 against industrial accidents and more command of international 
 irado are concerned. I question the claim of steadier employ- 
 ment of labor and at better wages, and I believe that " command 
 of the best ability" is true only in a few cases. 
 
 I favor repeal of the Sherman Law. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission as a necessary evil. Too many complicated laws 
 too frequently changed and not simple and clear cut when made 
 are the causes of business disturbance. 
 
 B. P. Jones, President, Valdosta Bank & Trust Co., Vald- 
 osta, Ga. 
 
 Eeduce the tariff to a revenue basis and you will not have 
 so much need for the Sherman Law. I regard the Sherman Law 
 as clear and workable, and I consider it would be best for the 
 country to return to old competitive methods. I do not regard 
 it as necessary to amend the Sherman Law. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission, if they do not control 
 the Commission. Trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, and combinations of farmers to 
 obtain fair prices for their products should be lawful. 
 
 Wm. E. Hamilton, Real Estate, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it impossible 
 to carry on dishonest practices such as have alarmed the public 
 within recent years; also to prohibit over-capitalization, and 
 thereby protect small stockholders and prevent the exploitation 
 of investors. I favor national incorporation and Federal license. 
 
202 
 
 Warren J. Davis, President, Manufacturers National Bank, 
 Racine, Wis. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 over-extension of credit, extravagance, political cowardice in the 
 face of public clamor, increased indebtedness. Prosperity in 
 the shape of large earnings leads to expansion and also extrava- 
 gance in living. This leads to augmentation of fixed capital, 
 the decrease in flexible assets, and a shrinkage of the margin 
 between quick assets and liabilities. This condition, intensified 
 by the distrust engendered by political demagogues, and the 
 immobility of bank reserves at critical periods, destroys confi- 
 dence, and abridges both production and consumption. 
 
 Get rid of the demagogue first, replace him with a business 
 man in the State Legislature and Congress, and confidence will 
 return and prosperity blossom like the buds in spring weather. 
 Enact a sound banking system, and this country will again 
 command the respect of investing nations, and inspire its own 
 citizens with new hope and life. As to amending the Sherman 
 Law, I would prefer to wait for further interpretation by the 
 Supreme Court. I think I favor national incorporation and 
 Federal license. I do not yet favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. Leave trade alone. Don't try to put it in a straight- 
 jacket. It is politically enslaved now. Give it liberty or you 
 will kill it. It is nearly paralyzed now. 
 
 W. A. Miller, President, Guarantee Title & Trust Com- 
 pany, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended, if in any way, to 
 make it more strongly applicable against attempts of stifling 
 competition. The Sherman Law is perhaps as clear and work- 
 able as any law that could be framed. I favor a national in- 
 corporation law. As to an Interstate Trade Commission, my 
 reply is negative. Eailroads need such supervision because they 
 are common carriers. If we have good, healthy, open and free 
 competitive conditions restored in merchandising and manufac- 
 turing, the resultant competition will serve as a sufficient leveller, 
 will keep out inflation, and cause all goods to be manufactured 
 and marketed under the most economical conditions. 
 
 Edward Ivinson, President First National Bank, Laramie, 
 Wyo. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, 
 it should be made more explicit. I do not consider it feasible 
 to return to old competitive methods. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and a Federal license law; but not 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. Politics and fear of drastic 
 measures from the Sherman Law are the causes of business dis- 
 turbance. 
 
203 
 
 R. B. Raines, President, First National Bank, Independ- 
 ence, la. 
 
 Admitting all the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale, the great disadvantage resulting is to the 
 individual ; more and more, men become only parts of a machine. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended by denning what is re- 
 ferred to by the Supreme Court as " Good Trusts." Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and 
 combinations of farmers to secure reasonable prices for their 
 crops ought to be rendered lawful. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, Federal license, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 In my judgment, the causes of disturbed business conditions are 
 extravagance, private and public; everybody anxious to get rich 
 quick, and willing to strain credit to the breaking point. 
 
 T. B. Caldwell, President, Merchants & Planters National 
 Bank; also Farmer, Mt. Pleasant, Tex. 
 
 Individuality under just laws is all that is necessary to pro- 
 mote happiness and confidence in business. Too many people 
 are depending on the States and the United States for help in 
 the form of pensions and Government employment. I favor a 
 national incorporation law only for railroads. I am not in favor 
 at present of a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
 The general government has already encroached upon States 
 rights by taxing corporations created by the States. The gen- 
 eral government has no right to take from a State a right to 
 tax its corporations by exacting an additional tax in behalf of 
 the United States. Neither do I believe that the United States 
 1ms a right to tax incomes. Leave that to the States. An im- 
 port tax is all the government has a right to collect. 
 
 J. C. Hales, President, Branch Banking Company, Wilson, 
 N. C. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I do not believe that any of the advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large scale are peculiar to large 
 combinations. The only true and healthy condition is a fair 
 field to all, and you cannot have this if you allow such large 
 combinations as deter and prevent individual effort, enterprise 
 and character. I am entirely opposed to large, top-heavy com- 
 binations, no matter what reasons are given for their existence, 
 or advantages claimed. I believe they are inherently dangerous 
 and cannot be made otherwise. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to prohibit without condition the control of more than 
 a certain percentage of the purchase, manufacture or sale of 
 any monopoly within the United States, thus declaring at once 
 what is a trust or monopoly. Ten per cent, is enough for any- 
 one. 
 
204 
 
 Lynn H. Dinkins, President, Interstate Trust & Banking 
 Company, New Orleans, La. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it specific, 
 and to say what is prohibited and what is permitted. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor national incorporation, Federal license,, and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. I believe in holding companies; in govern- 
 ment regulation of capitalization; and in publicity for com- 
 mercial corporations. To the advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale, should be added, resources sufficient 
 to exploit new ideas tending towards increased efficiency in any 
 direction when possible results may be long deferred. 
 
 Jas. K. Blish, President, First National Bank, Kewanee, 
 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable; I think the 
 Supreme Court has emasculated it. I do not favor a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law; I favor revising it, making it better and 
 stronger. I do not feel competent to say just in what particu- 
 lars, unless to give the courts to understand that it means what 
 it says, and is not to be frittered away by judicial interpretation. 
 I think that we should be fair with railroads, and also that they 
 should be compelled to be fair with the people. I believe that 
 they should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 I think a Federal license law might work well, and I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission with powers not unlike those 
 now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in rela- 
 tion to common carriers. 
 
 O. M. Bake, President, Miami Valley National Bank, 
 Hamilton, Ohio. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 and publicity should be applied to commercial corporations 
 through an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to remove any defects that have been found 
 to exist. Disturbed business conditions are due to the general 
 dissatisfaction of employees with the high cost of living. 
 
 George H. Hollister, President, The Northern Trust Com- 
 pany, Fargo, N. D. 
 
 I am of the opinion that capitalization only for cash, 
 through publicity of operations, and a fair and intelligent tariff, 
 would work wonders all along the lines mentioned in your 
 questionnaire. I am inclined to favor state control, with Federal 
 license granted upon filing in Washington of statements of 
 business assets, liabilities, profits, expenses, dividends, etc., in 
 detail for companies engaged in interstate commerce. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to road as originally intended 
 and strengthened. 
 
205 
 
 Frank N. Briggs, President of Interstate Savings Bank 
 and President of Colorado Bankers Association, Den- 
 ver, Colo, (who started life in direst poverty, and 
 in this free country, and under its present laws, has 
 come into a comfortable financial condition by the 
 practice of economy and industry). 
 
 Let the natural laws of competition and commerce control 
 business and commerce, as it has done before very satisfactorily 
 to the people of this country. I believe in holding companies, 
 if the privilege is not abused. 1 believe in free commerce among 
 free people. Stock issued should never exceed cash values in- 
 vested; that is far enough to go. I do not believe in an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. There is too much interference with 
 property rights now. I believe the advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale to be correct in honestly con- 
 ducted business. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear but is too restrictive, and I favor 
 its repeal. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act; treat all organizations alike, if 
 we must be under such a law. The same statement applies 1o 
 farmers. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to politics, office- 
 seekers, job hunters and all other kinds of agitators, \vho con- 
 sider it a popular thing to attack business interests. 
 
 H. W. Sutton, Cashier, First National Bank, McKees 
 Rocks, Pa. 
 
 Loss of faith in big business by the common people has had 
 much to do with causing unsatisfactory business conditions. 
 Added to this loss of faith has been loss of confidence in the 
 laws of the country, as administered by our judges. The ordin- 
 ary man appears to have no show in local or supreme courts 
 when up against politicians or money. Abolish marginal trad- 
 ing on stock exchanges and the grain exchange, and make it 
 unlawful to corner anything, and something will be effected 
 toward improving conditions. 
 
 G. J. Planz, President, Security Trust Company, Bakers- 
 field, Cal. 
 
 T favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. Unfair competition and restraint of trade 
 should be reached by statutes expressly forbidding specified prac- 
 tices. The government should regulate capitalization and apply 
 publicity to commercial corporations. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission to permit large aggregations of capital under 
 single control, and for the merger from time to time of smaller 
 corporations. The Sherman Law should be amended to 
 it perfectly plain. 
 
206 
 
 H. P. Goff, President The Crafton Trust Co., Crafton, Pa. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions have been caused 
 by a series of events and blunders on the part of persons occupy- 
 ing high position, extending over a period of several years, by 
 muck-raking, frenzied finance, frenzied politics, frenzied court 
 decisions (Judge Landis in the Standard Oil case, for instance), 
 to say nothing of a frenzied Department of Justice. These and 
 other causes have lent their part in bringing about a country- 
 wide spirit of unrest and general lack of confidence. The vague 
 fear of some impending evil (in the Sherman Act) has operated 
 in disrupting mutuality in business, resulting in ill-advised, 
 unrestrained and ruthless competition for business, immediately 
 traceable to the withdrawal of the Eepublic Iron and Steel 
 Company from the Association of Manufacturers, who met 
 periodically for the purpose of conferring as to their general 
 welfare. The present chaotic conditions can be expected to 
 exist, in a greater or less degree, until there is established 
 co-operation and mutuality among manufacturers generally by 
 governmental regulatation or otherwise. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that its meaning 
 shall be made clear, definite and unambiguous. I favor Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 To the advantages claimed for those doing business on a 
 large scale should be added others, such as safeguarding the 
 health and happiness of employees and their families by pro- 
 viding modern sanitary dwellings. This the smaller manufac- 
 turer is not able in many instances to do. 
 
 W. M. Gilbert, President, National Manufacturers' Bank of 
 Neenah, Wis. 
 
 For companies engaged in interstate commerce I prefer 
 State incorporation, with perhaps a Federal license for inter- 
 state business. The Sherman Law should be amended or addi- 
 tional legislation enacted to determine what combinations shall 
 be held to be illegal. I believe that one corporation might hold 
 stock in another, but not a controlling interest. The government 
 should regulate capitalization and provide for publicity to be 
 applied to commercial corporations. An Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission would probably be effective of good results. 
 
 " In your judgment what caused or causes the present dis- 
 turbed business conditions" Answer "Why do the heathen 
 rage and the people imagine a vain thing?" 
 
 E. L. Meyer, President First National Bank, Hutchinson, 
 Kan. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I favor laws that will prevent one com- 
 pany from holding stock in another company. The government 
 should regulate capitalization. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission to permit agreements which regulate production, 
 price? and the like under suitable public control. 
 
207 
 
 Seth L. Cushman, President Bristol County National Bank, 
 Taunton, Mass. 
 
 I favor both national incorporation and Federal license for 
 companies engaged in interstate commerce, leaving the choice 
 optional. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. It should be 
 completely done away with. There should not be any Interstate 
 Commerce Commission to have anything to do with railway rates. 
 I am most decidedly opposed to an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. As I have already pointed out, I do not favor the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 .Disturbed business conditions are caused by the fear of legis- 
 lativo interference in response to the demand from the unsuc- 
 cessful and socialistic masses, together with the aggressions of 
 the labor reformer. If a business man or corporation or a com- 
 mon carrier is to be told by commissions what their product is 
 to be sold for (be it goods or transportation), then those who 
 sell to them must be told what price to charge. Eegulate both 
 -inls. if at all. When it comes to that, Government better 
 do the business and pension all the people. Anybody with busi- 
 ness ability will then go to Germany or Canada, where they 
 could reap the benefit of their ability. 
 
 I am not in favor of too much publicity as to business mat- 
 ters; that is a "fad" that is being overworked. Committees 
 and commissions, as usually made up, generally manage to 
 destroy business and simply please the curious. 
 
 W. H. Powers, President, Commercial National Bank, Brad- 
 ford, Pa. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. The Sherman Law should be amended to forbid 
 specified acts. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I favor national incorporation and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. Laws should be passed provid- 
 ing that stocks and bonds should only be isued at par on a cash 
 lasi>. Publicity should be applied to commercial corporations. 
 I believe to a limited extent in holding companies. Extreme 
 measures in trust prosecution are largely responsible for busi- 
 ness disturbance. 
 
 T. S. Chapman, President Jersey State Bank, also Farmer, 
 Jerseyville, 111. 
 
 Believing that, regardless of whether it is big or little busi- 
 ness, competition is necessary for the best conditions of develop- 
 ment, I also think that while big business is comparatively new, 
 if not hampered by adverse legislation and litigation, in a short 
 time big business will stimulate competition just as big. Aggre- 
 gation of capital is necessary. We cannot have a big country 
 and all little men or little business. The' attitude of legislation 
 should be as big- and broad as the biggest business and equally 
 applicable to all. 
 
W. D. Morgan, President, Bank of Georgetown, George- 
 town, S. C. 
 
 1 believe that in this age a combination of capital and inter- 
 ests is necessary to economically handle the country's lately 
 increasing business. Fictitious capitalization or watering of 
 stock^ is. in my opinion,, largely responsible for breaks in the 
 stock market, the passing of dividends and disturbance of busi- 
 ness generally. Old-fashioned honest business methods applied 
 to modern conditions would have a great elfect in curing the sick 
 business child and restoring it to a healthy condition. This is 
 a free country, and free and unrestrained competition should 
 exist. 
 
 I am not sufficiently familiar with the Sherman Law and 
 court decisions to suggest amendments. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act 
 if operated in restraint of trade. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 E. M. Scott, President, First National Bank of Huttig; 
 Manager, Union Saw Mill Company; General Su- 
 perintendent, Louisiana & Pine Bluff Railway Com- 
 pany; Director, Frost-Johnson Lumber Company. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed or made to conform 
 to present-day conditions. If not repealed, it should be amended 
 so that certainty of expression would indicate what could be 
 done lawfully. Uncertainty as to what can be lawfully done 
 and prosecutions under the Sherman Law are, in my judgment, 
 tbo chief causes of disturbed business conditions. We need 
 first a workable law and a Trade Commission with much the 
 same latitude as a board of directors managing the affairs of 
 a corporation. 
 
 I favor a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 
 H. C. Lucas, Vice-President Yakima Trust Company, North 
 Yakima, Wash. 
 
 I favor repeal of the Sherman Law, and if not repealed, I 
 think that all combinations, including labor unions and farmers, 
 should come under the law; otherwise it looks to me like class 
 legislation. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law for inter- 
 state commerce corporations. 
 
 The causes of present disturbed business conditions, in my 
 judgment, are the politicians who want to pass laws to apply 
 to all the States, when the law they desire will benefit, perhaps, 
 merely the State from which the representative conies. To put 
 ibis matter concisely, the cause for the present condition is "too 
 much politics." 
 
209 
 
 T. D. Collins, President, Citizens National Bank, Tionesta, 
 Pa., also Farmer, Merchant, Oil Producer, Lumber- 
 man, Civil Engineer and President and General Man- 
 ager of the Sheffield and Tionesta Railroad Company, 
 Nebraska, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should not be am ended unless to make 
 it clearer and more effective. I regard as feasible a return to 
 old competitive methods. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Business disturbance is due, first, to the high tariff, then to 
 labor unions demanding high prices for labor and short hours, 
 or lessening the hours for a day's work. The farmer cannot 
 produce his farm products at the prices of to-day and pay 
 present prices for his labor. I do not believe in trusts. I do 
 not Mieve that the business of the country should be done 
 by half a dozen men, and that all the rest of mankind should 
 be no better than serfs. 
 
 J. G. Smyth, Lumber Manufacturer, Cattleman, Ranch 
 Owner, Merchant and President of Commercial Na- 
 tional Bank, Uvalde, Tex. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and Federal license for large 
 incorporations; also an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 Sherman Law should be made intelligible to the business man 
 and the investor. 
 
 To do business successfully to-day, we must have combina- 
 tions of capital and only in corporations can men with little 
 capital successfully enter business. Our corporation laws should 
 be Avritten plain and the assets, liabilities and earnings should 
 be published to the world as in national 'banks, and all utterers 
 or venders of fake stocks and bonds should be punished by long 
 terms in the penitentiary. Stocks should be issued only for 
 cash and that at par. and bonds at not more than one-half of 
 the value of property bonded. 
 
 C. H. Worden, First Vice-President, First National Bank, 
 Fort Wayne, Ind. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and regulation for companies 
 engaged in interstate commerce. I regard the Sherman Act as 
 sufficient to deal with unfair competition and restraint of trade. 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and publicity 
 should be applied to commercial corporations. I believe in doing 
 business on a large scale, and I believe that the advantages 
 cl aimed for " large-scale " business all exist and perhaps others. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike 
 those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 relation to common carriers. 
 
210 
 
 Charles H. Wright, Municipal Bonds, Chicago, 111. 
 
 If it were possible, I would like to see the States adopt a 
 uniform Corporation Law. If it is not possible, a Federal 
 license is probably next best, ""with the intent of the Sherman 
 Law as interpreted in the recent decision of the Supreme Court 
 as the basis for the issuance .of this Federal license,, and carry- 
 ing a corporation's right to engage in interstate business. 
 
 I suppose it is too much to wish that some day our courts 
 may be able to distinguish between points of justice and points 
 of law. I do not think justice should ever be compelled to wait 
 upon law and precedent; as long as it does so there will be 
 dissatisfaction with laws and law makers. It is the old conflict 
 of the " letter " and the " spirit." 
 
 Bryan Lathrop, Trustee of Many Estates and President 
 Graceland Cemetery Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should either be repealed or amended, 
 so as to make clear to all men the conditions on which com- 
 binations can be legally formed,, in such a way as to lessen costs, 
 without creating a monopoly or restraining trade. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license, and 
 my present impression is in favor of an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. The causes of disturbed business conditions are, first, 
 an inelastic currency; second, uncertainty under the Sherman 
 Law, which has prevented an earlier return to normal business 
 conditions. 
 
 H. S. Willard, Pig Iron Manufacturer and President First 
 National Bank of Wellston, Wellston, Ohio 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission if wages are regu- 
 lated also. The root of the evil of high prices (if high prices 
 are an evil) should be treated as well as the branches. I favor 
 a national incorporation law if it will give stability, confidence 
 and peace, removing the hostility of government to business. 
 For the same reasons I favor a Federal license law. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed or amended. If amended, it should 
 be made clear and definite, defining plainly what is conspiracy 
 and restraint of trade. 
 
 C. S. Johnson, Cashier, The First National Bank, Platts- 
 burgh, N. Y. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation for dealing with- companies en- 
 gaged in interstate commerce. The government should regulate 
 capitalization, and publicity should be applied to commercial 
 corporations. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I favor national incorporation, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
211 
 
 Charles S. Shultz, President Hoboken Bank for Savings, 
 Hoboken, N. J. 
 
 I think it proper that a Federal non-partisan commission 
 should be constituted to regulate large combinations and to 
 secure to the people the benefit of their operations. I favor 
 Federal license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with 
 by statutes expressly forbidding specified practices. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization and should provide for 
 publicity to be applied to commercial corporations through an 
 Interstate Trade Commission which would permit agreements 
 and regulate production. 
 
 Charles J. Griswold, Cashier, The National Hamilton Bank, 
 Hamilton, N. Y. 
 
 The great superstition of the past was the divine right of 
 kings. The great superstition of the present is the divine right 
 of legislatures. Natural law and not artificial law will best 
 govern trade. Therefore the less legislation the better. The 
 " square deal " should, of course, be preserved, but we cannot 
 legislate a common success. We may forbid individuals to act 
 together, but this will not give individuals a better chance to 
 act alone. We may legislate brains out of our industrial life, 
 but this would not make the fools more efficient. 
 
 Clarence Buckingham (not active), Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law, in my judgment, is not clear and work- 
 able; and I should favor changes and modification that would 
 make it plain and workable. Kailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, and trade unions should 
 be treated the same as the employers. I favor a Federal license 
 law for companies engaged in interstate commerce. Lack of 
 confidence and politics are the causes of business disturbance. 
 
 S. W. Pierce, President, The Central National Bank, Junc- 
 tion City, Kan. 
 
 I favor Federal .license for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. The Sherman Law should be amended so far 
 as may be necessary to make it more effective. Combinations 
 of farmers to secure fair prices for their products should be 
 lawful. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, and laws 
 applying publicity to commercial corporations. 
 
 O. F. Anderson, Cashier Moline Trust Savings Bank, 
 Moline, 111. 
 
 I prefer national legislation for dealing with companies 
 engaged in interstate commerce. Let the Sherman Law stand 
 as it is. It does not matter how large an aggregation of capital 
 is employed, provided no unfair methods nre used to stifle com- 
 petition. 
 
212 
 
 G. H. Nye, President of Cayuga County National Bank, 
 also President of Nye & Wait Carpet Company, 
 Auburn, N. Y. 
 
 High living; extermination of everything that could be con- 
 verted into cash; unequal and unjust taxation, and rapid in- 
 crease in valuations, causing higher rents, etc., as well as the 
 wide difference between mill and retail values, are among the 
 chief causes of disturbed business conditions. 
 
 Incorporate and tax all business enterprises. This not only 
 protects the community but the creditor. Private bankers in par- 
 ticular are almost immune from taxation. 
 
 One of the greatest sources of discontent is the taxation of 
 capital where the general offices are located, and the consequent 
 restriction of local taxes to real property based on an arbitrary 
 valuation by local assessors. In this way the capitalization 
 largely escapes, while the home bears a constantly increasing 
 burden. The competition of communities offering a low tax 
 rato, or freedom from taxes, should be prohibited. Assessors 
 are in fear of manufacturing plants removing if they do their 
 duty. There should be uniform taxation laws. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation under uniform law, dis- 
 tributing taxes pro rata to its constituent parts. I believe in 
 holding companies, if minority interests are properly safe- 
 guarded. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 laws calling for publicity to be applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions should be enacted. In regard to the advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large si-ale, it should be added that 
 in a large business the standard of efficiency is that of the 
 highest unit; others must be brought up to it. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. W. Campbell, Cashier Commercial National Bank and 
 Member of Iowa General Assembly, Fort Dodge, 
 Iowa. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness. I also favor government regulation of capitalization and 
 publicity for commercial corporations. Admitting the advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, those 
 advantages exist in the interest of those interested only, not for 
 the consumer. The Sherman Law should be amended as to 
 penalties, or in any way to strengthen the act. The law is all 
 right, but some court decisions seem more like an attempt to 
 evade, rather than to sustain the law. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, if the commissioners are hon- 
 est and know their business. Trade unions should not be 
 allowed to interfere with any person's business. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The causes of disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions, in my judgment, are poor crops, too many auto- 
 mobiles and too much extravagance. 
 
Frank Chapman, Flour Miller and President Ogdensburg 
 Bank, Ogdensburg, N. Y. 
 
 Too much agitation; too much litigation on the part of the 
 Federal government against railroads and other corporations; 
 uncertainty, doubt, fear; our President talking, talking, talk- 
 ing, and the Attorney-General threatening, threatening, appar- 
 ently thankful that they are not as they class successful men 
 to be extortioners, thieves and law-breakers; all these are the 
 causes of business disturbance. " Big business " has brought 
 to the consumer better product and cheaper price. It has also 
 secured a higher grade of talent and skill, both in management 
 and employees. I favor the repeal of the Sherman Law and 
 the enactment of new laws wisely construed to meet present 
 conditions. I favor a national incorporation law, if wisely and 
 broadly drawn, and an Interstate Trade Commission, if politics 
 can be eliminated therefrom and removal therefrom can be made 
 only for cause. 
 
 H. V. Alward, Cashier First National Bank of Kalispell, 
 Kalispell, Mont. 
 
 A conviction on the part of the business people that radical 
 changes in the organization of business are to take place and that 
 an adjustment of the tariff is imminent, causing a hesitancy in 
 future commitments; a conviction 011 the part of corporation 
 managers that their present status is only temporary, and that 
 there is no proper and legal way to put themselves on a perma- 
 nent basis, are the causes of disturbance in business. A timidity 
 has also been brought about on the part of bond investors by 
 the prosecution of corporations whose obligations are held ex- 
 tensively throughout the United States. I prefer national incor- 
 poration for companies doing interstate commerce. 1 regard it 
 as having some advantage in giving a corporation a start under 
 national laws. This power should properly be given to the na- 
 tion, as it is only from a national viewpoint that the commercial 
 interests of this diversified country can be properly handled. 
 
 Hamilton Mayo, President Leominster National Bank, Leo- 
 minster, Mass. 
 
 1 prefer national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I regard the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as suffi- 
 cient to deal with unfair competition and restraint of trade. It 
 should be amended so as to make it clear and workable. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 The government should regulate capitalization and publicity 
 should be applied to commercial corporations. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission with powers not unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation 
 to common carriers. Disturbed business conditions, in my judg- 
 ment, are in part attributable to doubt and uncertainty as to 
 the Sherman Law. 
 
214 
 
 Adolf Pavenstedt, First Vice-President, Havana Central 
 R; R. Company and Senior Partner of G. Amsinck & 
 Co., Bankers and Merchants, New York City. 
 
 I favor very much a national incorporation law, also Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the unscrupulous 
 methods, greed and graft of many promoters, financiers, syn- 
 dicates, corporation directors. The country is sound, the people 
 are sound, but Wall Street is not! The high cost of living 
 is, surely, largely the result of corporation methods and of 
 the high tariff. Large companies and large industrial enter- 
 prises work cheaper than small ones, but only when they com- 
 pete with one another. If competition stops, the " cheaper 
 working" becomes an illusion and the people have to pay a 
 royalty to a few multimillionaires. Monopolies work dear be- 
 cause fancy salaries are paid, incapable relatives or friends are 
 placed in high-paid positions; energy relaxes. 
 
 R. E. Frey, Cashier Carthage National Bank, Carthage, Mo. 
 
 Amend the Sherman Law to allow any business man to 
 know what it means, without a divided opinion by the United 
 States Supreme Court. In my judgment, business disturbance 
 is due to the timidity of capital, owing to pending legislation. 
 Without large capital few business enterprises would be started, 
 and corporations should have a fair return on investment, and 
 a degree of license in operation. 
 
 I favor explicit and complete laws governing all classes of 
 corporations, so that a group of men will know just what legis- 
 lation to expect before they incorporate and will not be subject 
 to persecution after winning unless some law has been violated. 
 I favor national incorporation. Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 D. C. Clark, Weighmaster, Central Weight and Inspection 
 Bureau, Ellensburg, Wash. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is neither clear nor 
 workable. It should not be repealed, however, until something 
 better is provided. Old competitive methods would be better 
 than those that are now in force. Railroads should be allowed 
 to* enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions ask for 
 no partiality, but simply their rights under the law. Combina- 
 tions of farmers, to secure fair prices for their products, should 
 be permitted. 
 
 I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. Disturbed business conditions are due 
 to the effort to compel big interests to obey the law just as the 
 ordinary individual is required to obey it. 
 
215 
 
 Robert Ives Gammell, President Providence National Bank 
 and Cotton Manufacturer, Providence, R. I. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable. 
 [ do not consider it feasible to attempt to return to what are 
 commonly known as old competitive methods in business. The 
 Sherman Law should not be repealed entirely. It should be 
 amended so that it will be practicable and not a constant cause 
 of litigation. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act? No, certainly not. 
 
 Combinations of farmers either to restrict production or to 
 hold a crop for higher prices should not be rendered lawful 
 under the Sherman Act. I do not favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law. Do not let us abandon State government entirely. 
 My reply is the same to a Federal license law, and to the query 
 regarding an Interstate Trade Commission that is too far- 
 reaching. Constant agitation by Congress and too much Fed- 
 eral control are among the causes of present disturbed business 
 conditions. 
 
 S. B. Lynd, Cashier Citizens National Bank, Louisville, 
 Ky. 
 
 This talk about our having gotten away from the age of 
 competition is absurd. Competition is American and is based, 
 on human nature. 
 
 Admitting the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, all these combined do not compensate for the 
 elimination of the small independent merchant or manufacturer. 
 I prefer national incorporation for .companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I regard the Sherman Act as sufficient to deal 
 with the exploitation of producers and consumers, also with 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade. The government 
 should regulate capitalization. I am probably in favor of an 
 Interstate Trade Commission to apply publicity to commercial 
 corporations, but not to regulate prices. 
 
 George Woodruff, Banker, Lawyer and Editor, President 
 First National Bank, Joliet, 111. 
 
 I favor national incorporation, examination and frequent 
 publication of financial statements for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce. While I favor, on principle, laws to prevent 
 one company from holding stock in another company, neverthe- 
 less I believe that this should be handled with caution, as much 
 of the business of the United States would be affected. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. The social revolution which 
 is taking place is the chief cause of business disturbance. Doing 
 business on a large scale is the economic tendency of the world. 
 
21 G 
 
 J. Sloat Fassett, Banker, Rancher and Lumberman, Elmira, 
 N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law is workable possibly, hut by no means 
 clear. A return to old competitive methods is feasible, yes, but 
 would be utterly destructive of success. " Do you favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law?" Yes, yes, yes. I think that railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the Sherman Act. They exercise 
 more restraint on trade than all corporations or any corpora- 
 tion. Farmers should not be permitted to combine to restrict 
 production, or to hold a crop for higher prices. That would 
 be discrimination utterly unjustifiable. Treat all alike in like 
 situation. The causes of present disturbed business conditions, 
 in my judgment, are: (ft) Improper uses of great corporate 
 wealth and power; (1)) agitation and legislation on political 
 rather than economic lines. Too much emphasis is placed upon 
 methods and too little upon morals. The Steel Company is 
 prosecuted, but five governors can meet to recommend restraint 
 of cotton trade and be applauded. The attitude of the ad- 
 ministration for nine years has been punitive rather than cor- 
 rective or preventive. I believe in sane and honest government 
 regulation. 
 
 W. D. Vincent, Cashier, Old National Bank, Spokane, 
 Wash. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. I believe in holding companies under laws pro- 
 viding for the fullest publicity. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Regarding price control, a study of price tables 
 shows that prices of raw materials have risen remarkably within 
 the last few years, and not prices of so-called "trust products.'' 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale 
 are unquestionably of benefit both to the laborer and to the 
 consumer. The Sherman Law should be repealed. Disturbed 
 business conditions are due partly to natural economic causes ; 
 also to short crops ; to gradual reaction from the speculative 
 period preceding 1907; to general personal extravagance: the 
 high cost of living, and party politics. 
 
 Julius Wangenheim, President Bank of Commerce & Trust 
 Company, San Diego, Cal. 
 
 The Sherman Law is good in spirit, but not clear in prac- 
 tice. It should be amended by the appointment of a commission 
 similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor national 
 incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. The government should regulate capitalization. 
 
William Barret Ridgely, Banker and Manufacturer, Wash- 
 ington D. C. (Former Comptroller of the Currency). 
 
 The panic of 1907 was the natural culmination of a long 
 period of activity and the resulting overexpansion of credits 
 all over the world. It was made worse in the United State< 
 by our imperfect hanking and currency systems. The depres- 
 sion is continued and intensified by social and political unrest, 
 mainly natural and unavoidable with human nature constituted 
 as it is; but made much worse by the agitation of the "muck- 
 rakers " and a reformers " some sincere, and many not who 
 have just learned of evils and conditions which are as old as 
 civilization, and who think those evils arc to be cured at once 
 by a few laws of their own invention, instead of waiting for 
 the results of time and experience 1 . 11 will take a long time 
 and many trials, but things will gradually grow better and bet- 
 ter, and be worked out fairly in the end. 
 
 The Sherman Law should not be repealed, but modified, 
 so that it will allow large corporations, which may or may not 
 be combinations, to exist and do business under Federal regula- 
 tion. I favor national incorporation ultimate^, and also an 
 interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 W. P. Manley, President Security National Bank, Sioux 
 City, Iowa. 
 
 Perhaps too much politics perhaps an apparent attempt on 
 the part of "big interests'' to discredit the administration for 
 its attempt to enforce the law is responsible to a large degree 
 for any disturbance that exists. The Sherman Law should not 
 be repealed unless a 'better law can be substituted. I favor 
 national incorporation for certain classes of corporations, State 
 corporations to take out Federal license. The holding company 
 is responsible for most of our troubles. Abolish it. and you 
 have largely solved the problem. I am in favor of an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, of government regulation of capitalization, 
 and of laws providing for publicity applied to commercial cor- 
 porations. 
 
 Chas. H. Warren, Treasurer, Mutual Life Insurance Com- 
 pany, New York City. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are due to overcxpan- 
 sion of capacity to manufacture. excess legislation passed and 
 pending, directly and indirectly restricting the use of capital, 
 with increased costs caused by the lessened efficiency of labor 
 resulting from the policy and attitude of the representatives 
 of organized labor. 
 
 I favor a Federal license law for interstate business exceed- 
 ing in the aggregate a specified amount say. $2.">;000,000 per 
 annum. The Sherman Law should bo amended by defining 
 "unreasonable" restraint of trade. 
 
218 
 
 Albert Strauss, Banker, J. & W. Seligman & Co., New York 
 City. 
 
 A few more decisions will make the Sherman Law clear 
 notably the United States Steel case. The Sherman Law cannot 
 be intelligently amended until the courts have completed the 
 process of interpreting it. Even then there is no use in attempt- 
 ing to remedy evils, until we have denned them with sufficient 
 clearness to know what we are trying to accomplish. If there 
 is any statement denning the evils talked about, with sufficient 
 clearness to form a basis for legislation, I have not seen it. I 
 favor a permissory national incorporation law, and I believe 
 that the railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 I attribute disturbed business conditions to the impression, 
 fostered by politicians because it is believed to be popular, that 
 the Sherman Law outlaws most of our successful business enter- 
 prises. This impression will be gradually dispelled, as successive 
 judgments of the Supreme Court correct the assertions of po- 
 litical orators. 
 
 Geo. W. McCabe, President, Lake View State Bank, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made practical, protecting hon- 
 est corporations and putting out of business dishonest corpora- 
 tions. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law for interstate corporations; also a Federal license 
 law, but not for local State corporations. I also favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 The chief cause of disturbed business conditions is the un- 
 certain application of law as to future commercial and monetary 
 affairs. We need constructive legislation, with a " square deal " 
 for all business institutions no more watered stocks. 
 
 Clarence H. Kelsey, President Title Guarantee & Trust 
 Company, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to specify as nearly 
 as -possible where reasonable restraint ends and unreasonable 
 begins. Present disturbed business conditions are due to various 
 causes greed and overreaching in consequence, over-expan- 
 sion and succeeding disaster followed, after the panic of 1907, 
 by great resentment on the part of the unfortunate at the con- 
 sequences, and a desire to correct bad law defects (widespread) 
 in character and conduct, with the result that legislatures and 
 courts are influenced, to do things that upset honest business 
 and dishonest business alike. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
219 
 
 R. W. Hosmer, R. W. Hosmer & Co., Insurance Agents, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 I think that business disturbance arises from the prosecu- 
 tions by the government of large concerns which have been doing 
 business for a long time unlawfully, and also from the pend- 
 ing revision of the tariff, which is liable to be overdone. The 
 Sherman Law will be clear and workable after a decision from 
 the Supreme Court in the United States Steel suit now pend- 
 ing. It is hardly feasible to return to old competitive methods, 
 though it would be better for the nation if we could, as it would 
 make a more contented people and not concentrate the profits 
 in a few hands. The Sherman Law should be amended only 
 to make it more plain. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. A national incorporation law is desirable 
 if the Sherman Law is not made plain and strictly enforced. 
 If the Sherman Law is made plain and properly enforced, then 
 we do not need a national incorporation law. 
 
 F. E. Harwi, Vice-President Exchange State Bank and 
 President The A. J. Harwi Hardware Company, 
 Atchison, Kan. 
 
 Briefly, I attribute present disturbed conditions that apply 
 to the trade in this vicinity to the following reasons: (1) Par- 
 tial crop failure; (2) prospect of parcels post legislation, un- 
 favorable to mercantile interests, particularly in small towns; 
 (3) freight rate agitation, introduced by interior jobbers west 
 of Missouri Eiver for concessions that would wipe out the Mis- 
 souri River as a basing point for freight rates; (4) govern- 
 ment action against large industrial corporations. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law. The Sherman Law 
 should either be repealed, or worked over into an industrial 
 act that would clearly define the limits and privileges of cor- 
 porations. 
 
 F. E. Lyford, President First National Bank, Waverly, 
 N. Y. 
 
 Following the disturbance in 1907, caused by lack of con- 
 fidence in everything and everybody, and the regulations and 
 restrictions that have come, whereby those who can do large 
 things hesitate, not knowing what other restrictions may come, 
 all other business has been affected by that same feeling of 
 hesitation and uncertainty. Too much regulation will cause 
 stagnation anywhere. I favor Federal license and that legisla- 
 tion should be enacted requiring full publicity of the affairs 
 of corporations and combinations. I believe in holding com- 
 panies, with full publicity. The Sherman Law should be re- 
 pealed or amended to fit present business conditions. 
 
220 
 
 C. A. Brown, President, Marfa National Bank, Marfa, 
 Texas; President, First National Bank, Alpine, 
 Texas; Vice-President, First National Bank, Ft. 
 Stockton, Texas; Vice-President, Marathon State 
 Bank, Marathon, Texas. 
 
 A growing desire among all classes to get something for 
 nothing and craze for speculation and lack of proper apprecia- 
 tion and respect for the rights of others, in other words, a 
 growing dishonesty and the lack of industry and frugality, are 
 substantially the causes of much business uneasiness. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so as to more definitely exempt 
 from its operations combinations of capital for the successful 
 furtherance of trade and development of the resources of our 
 country giving us the markets of the entire world. Also to 
 define very clearly combinations and agreements between all 
 classes of producers, manufacturers, laborers and others cal- 
 culated to interfere with and restrict natural results. The pen- 
 alites for violating the provisions thus indicated should be made 
 severe and for flagrant cases imprisonment should be added. 
 Every farmer, and everybody else, should be permitted to plant 
 as much or as little of any crop as he pleases and hold it as 
 long as he likes and can. In fact, he should do as lie pleases, 
 as long as he does not wrong his neighbor, and if he does not 
 do as he pleases he should bo made to do as he pleases ; but he 
 should not be permitted to enter into agreements with others 
 calculated to bring about unnatural results to the injury of the 
 public. 
 
 Edward H. Mason, President The National Bank of Bruns- 
 wick, Brunswick, Ga. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it understand- 
 able. The "trust-busting" business should cease and punish- 
 ment of guilty officers should begin. Let the innocent stock- 
 holder alone and punish the officer, or officers, \vho violate the 
 law. Too many politicians looking for office and catering to the 
 ignorant and vicious classes, reckless of the injury that they do 
 to the established industries of the country and to the millions 
 of worthy workers and their families who depend on those indus- 
 tries for support are chiefly responsible for disturbing business. 
 
 O. G. Alexander, Cashier First National Bank, Corona, 
 N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and should be 
 modified to meet the actual conditions of business. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and 
 combinations of farmers should be lawful. 1 favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
221 
 
 Robert H. Montgomery, Certified Public Accountant, New 
 York. 
 
 The business and financial men of the country are largely 
 to blame for present unsettled conditions, because they are leav- 
 ing a de facto control of business to lawyers, whose training un- 
 fits them for practical and constructive legislation or super- 
 vision. For instance, Attorney General Wickersham wrote the 
 present Federal Corporation Tax Law. It was so entirely un- 
 workable from a practical standpoint that the Treasury Depart- 
 ment is making no effort to enforce it ; it has, however, issued 
 regulations which are workable, but which do not accord with 
 the provisions of the law, nor with the Attorney General's in- 
 terpretation of the law. Furthermore, the law arbitrarily re- 
 quires all corporations to close their books at 31st December 
 of each year, and thus have imposed on the corporations mil- 
 lions of dollars of extra and unnecessary expense, whereas, the 
 government's purpose would have been just as well served by 
 requiring reports of the corporations' fiscal years. But the law 
 was written l}y a lawyer and suggestions relative thereto by prac- 
 tical business men were unheeded. 
 
 William A. Paine, Banker, President Copper Range Con- 
 solidated Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Whatever may have caused disturbed business conditions, 
 their continuance is due entirely to causes which intelligent, 
 comprehensive and early Federal legislation could and would 
 cure. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and we 
 should have an Interstate Trade 'Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Railroads and industrial corporations should be permitted 
 by law to associate for the purpose of regulating rates, produc- 
 tive prices, etc. Under the present cost of living, wages cannot 
 be reduced and should be increased, but fair profits must be 
 allowed employers. Destructive competition must be abolished. 
 
 W. H. Bucholz, Vice-President Omaha National Bank, 
 Omaha, Neb. 
 
 Political agitation, too much attempted regulation, uncer- 
 tain policies, misunderstood laws and the reaction following an 
 era of prosperity and of thoughtless extravagance have brought 
 about the" present disturbance in business. I favor a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law and the enactment of a new law, permitting 
 large business enterprises along clearly defined channels a 
 help to business rather than an interference. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, but not to be hampered by too much red tape. 
 
222 
 
 A. R. Shattuck, Manager of the British and American Mort- 
 gage Company, New York. 
 
 There is one phase of the decree of the Supreme Court dis- 
 solving the American Tobacco Company and the Standard Oil 
 Company instead of one corporation which may have per- 
 petrated iniquities we have a number of corporations, and the 
 price of oil and tobacco will undoubtedly be raised to the con- 
 sumer. If the government succeeds in dissolving the United 
 States Steel Corporation the price of steel will undoubtedly 
 be raised. Who therefore will be benefited ? Not the consumer, 
 who comprises the largest proportion of citizens in the country. 
 It will be perhaps the producer, who may get a little more 
 for his raw products, and the small competitor. We are there- 
 fore not legislating or litigating for the good of the largest 
 number, but to give preference or advantage to a few. The 
 whole question of competition and restraint of trade should be 
 settled in a clear-cut way. If it is desired that this country 
 Shall make progress rapidly, that progress must be financed by 
 great corporations and by rich men. If it is desired that this 
 country shall advance slowly it can do so by rendering it un- 
 desirable for great corporations and for rich men to invest their 
 money in new enterprises which go towards advancing it. Cer- 
 tainly under existing laws there is no inducement for the great 
 corporations to extend their business, or for rich men to invest 
 their money in new enterprises. 
 
 L. M. Newman, Cashier, First National Bank, Chippewa 
 Falls, Wis. 
 
 Prosecutions under Sherman Law, and incidental unrest, 
 politics in approaching Presidential campaign, tariff talk, cur- 
 rency talk and generally too much talk and agitation, account 
 for such business disturbance as exists. I think decisions in 
 Standard Oil, Tobacco and Steel cases, and methods adopted to 
 conform to the decisions will speedily (in fact have already, 
 to some extent) clarify the situation and show the intrinsic 
 value of the Sherman Law, which I believe to be very great. 
 Let us give this law sufficient time to observe its results under 
 the interpretations from time to time rendered by the Courts, 
 before 'we tinker with it at all. The tinkering period will only 
 serve to demoralize business as long as it lasts. 
 
 W. J. Echols, President The Merchants National Bank, 
 Fort Smith, Ark. 
 
 I believe in the value to our country of a clear aud lucid 
 law regulating combinations, trusts, etc., and I see no sufficient 
 reason for exempting railroads, labor unions or farmers' unions. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, or amended in such a 
 way that the law may be lucid and clear, and that it may not 
 be necessary to refer each case to the United States Supreme 
 Court. 
 
223 
 
 Ferdinand Hermann, Speyer & Co., Bankers, New York. 
 
 i do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 1 consider it feasible to return to what are commonly known as 
 old competitive methods, with suitable restrictions. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law, unless it is made clearer by amend- 
 ments. It ought to allow more latitude to those corporations 
 which do not follow aggressive monopolistic tendencies. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 Any combination of farmers to restrict production or to hold 
 a crop for higher prices is detrimental to the general welfare 
 and ought to be prohibited or attacked. I am opposed to a 
 national incorporation law, as this ought to apply to the States 
 only. As to the Federal license law, my view would depend on 
 which form such a law would take. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission in principle, but with powers carefully drawn, not 
 obstructive, and composed of persons fully capable of under- 
 standing the needs of business and the scope of their duties. 
 
 In my judgment the causes of business disturbance are gen- 
 erally apprehension of too much government activity in enforc- 
 ing the Sherman Law, also uncertainty of the tariff outlook, 
 all of which tend to make business men careful and prompt 
 them to restrict the scope of their enterprises. I am in favor 
 of the German policy toward corporations and "cartels," but 
 not to the extent that prices are raised artificially within the 
 country and shaded outside. This can be partially remedied 
 by a suitable tariff reduction. 
 
 A. E. Lang, President, Street Railway Company, Toledo, 
 Ohio. 
 
 I am decidedly of the opinion that it is not feasible to return 
 to what are commonly known as the old competitive methods 
 of business. At the same time I do not favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. It is to the advantage of the country that rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. Trade unions and the farmers should stand 
 in the same position as other citizens toward the law of the 
 land. 
 
 J. B. Patterson, President, Detroit & Western R. R., Detroit, 
 Mich. 
 
 The causes of business disturbance are various. Among 
 them is the aggressiveness of Socialism, the demand for the 
 referendum and recall, with the possible effects of those meth- 
 ods of political action upon the stability of property and busi- 
 ng interests. Investors are naturally distrustful under these 
 conditions as to risking their money in property that may be 
 unfavorably affected by legislation tending toward confiscation. 
 
224 
 
 James C. Fargo, President, The American Express Com- 
 pany, New York. 
 
 Politics is the cause oil disturbed business condition!?. I do 
 not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, while I do not con- 
 sider that it has heen made clear and workable. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended,, first,, so as to make it intelligible, 
 and, second, not only that "the concentration of capital essen- 
 tial in the full and efficient development of modern business " 
 be made legitimate, but when so used must not be left subject 
 to confiscation. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. Trade unions and combinations of farmers should not 
 be excepted from the Sherman Law. I would favor an Inter- 
 >tatc Trade Commission, if it is to do away with all other Fed- 
 eral or State commissions, and be given absolute and exclusive 
 control over all common carriers, whether engaged in the inter 
 or intra-state business. 
 
 Charles McCulloch, President Hamilton National Bank, 
 Fort Wayne, Ind. 
 
 The attacks upon certain corporations are producing present 
 disturbed conditions. These corporations should have been pre- 
 vented years ago from pursuing the course that has brought 
 about the present prosecutions. The low price of iron to-day 
 is caused by the attack on the United States Steel Corporation. 
 The financial power of this corporation, as with the Tobacco 
 Trust, can control prices. The Tobacco Trust regulated the 
 price of tobacco in the field or in the hands of the farmer. 
 Not satisfied with this and with the profits of manufacture, 
 they want to control the local trade and profits. I consider it 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended only so far as to make it intelligible 
 to all parties. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Bernard Rogers, Klee, Rogers & Co., Insurance Agency, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Artificial inflation of price< on the New York Stock Ex- 
 change, smaller crops, but chiefly the tariff, are causes of busi- 
 ness disturbance. The people \vere humbugged by a higher 
 tariff when a lower was promised, and every one knows it has 
 to be changed. People only buy imports for immediate needs 
 on a falling tariff. We ought to have a ne\v law making the 
 president's term six years, \vith only one term. Old competi- 
 tive methods are impossible. It is a question whether the 
 recent decision of the Supreme Court in reading into the Sher- 
 man Law "reason" or " reasonable" has not weakened it. The 
 criminal clause for officials and corporations should be very 
 plain. We should have a national incorporation law sooner 
 the better along with piiblieit % y. 
 
225 
 
 Stuart Wilson, Cashier, State National Bank, Texarkana, 
 Ark. 
 
 The present administration, by its uncertain and destructive 
 policies; notoriety-seeking, petty State politicians; the attitude 
 of lawmakers toward railroads and corporations these, in my 
 judgment, all contribute to present disturbed conditions. 
 
 I strongly favor laws which will permit industrial and other 
 corporations to grow in strength and volume of business; but 
 I believe they should be under government supervision when 
 doing an interstate or international business. I prefer Federal 
 license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I be- 
 lieve in holding companies, under proper restrictions. The 
 government should regulate capitalization, and publicity should 
 be applied to commercial corporations. The Sherman Law should 
 either be repealed or made so that the average business man 
 can understand it. It now appears that the best lawyers cannot 
 agree upon an interpretation. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Law, and com- 
 binations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a 
 crop for higher prices, should not be permitted. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. T. Hamilton, President The Merchants National Bank, 
 Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be strengthened by amendments to 
 make the control of large corporations more readily within the 
 reach of public authority. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. Trade unions should be made to obey the 
 law equally with all others. Farmers are so numerous and 
 widely separated, with such small individual holdings, that they 
 cannot form a formidable combination. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and Federal license, with proper limitations. I do 
 not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Strengthen the 
 Commerce Commission. I do not favor a multiplicity of com- 
 missions. Disturbed business conditions are due to the labor 
 situation, navigation laws, tariff and long delays of our courts 
 in hearing and deciding cases. 
 
 William Carson, Banker and Manufacturer, Burlington, 
 Iowa. 
 
 Overproduction and the difficulties of adjusting business to 
 present laws and conditions are the causes of such uncertainty 
 as now exists in business affairs. The Sherman Law should 
 not be repealed, unless something better can be discovered. Eail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 I do not favor either national incorporation or Federal license 
 for companies doing interstate commerce. I am not in favor of 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
226 
 
 W. Ring, Mailler & Quereau, Australian and New Zealand 
 Shipping Merchants, New York City. 
 
 If our government officials, from the highest to the lowest, 
 would devote their time and energies to the duties of their posi- 
 tions, and not attempt to curry favor and placate the so-called 
 voting interest by radical appeals, intemperate denunciations 
 and impossible and unworkable theories and give us a rest, 
 better times would soon appear. Present business disturbance 
 is caused by the recent action of the government against cor- 
 porations and individuals engaged in business; constant threats 
 by officials and the uncertainty of what is legal or illegal in 
 the ordinary conduct of trade and business. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, but it is being 
 worked into intelligible shape by our courts and public officials. 
 I am not in favor of a return to old competitive methods. Com- 
 petition often means the " death of trade " and, in the end, 
 leads to absolute monopoly by the death of competitors. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to meet present and future 
 conditions of business, permitting co-operation in trade and busi- 
 ness, and not only competition. Eailroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 Charles Fall, President Hoboken Trust Company, Hoboken, 
 N.J. 
 
 Cannot corporations be compelled to apply their earnings, 
 before paying any dividends, to reduce the amount of overcapi- 
 talization, by purchasing their stock or otherwise, until the 
 amount of capitalization is equal to the value of the property, 
 etc.? 
 
 The Sherman Act should enumerate unlawful acts with 
 clearness and should make officers and individuals in control 
 responsible and punishable by jail sentences. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor 
 either a national incorporation law or Federal license, or both. 
 I also favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The present 
 business disturbance is owing to artificial interference with the 
 fundamental laws of economics, i. e. f holding up prices when 
 business is on the decline. 
 
 John M. Wever, President Merchants National Bank, 
 Plattsburg, N. Y. 
 
 I prefer Federal license to national incorporation for com- 
 panies doing interstate commerce. The Sherman Law ought to 
 be repealed. Interstate railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. I do not approve an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion; let the Interstate Commerce Commission have jurisdic- 
 tion. The Sherman Law, and particularly the manner of execut- 
 ing it, has been the chief cause of existing .business disturbance. 
 
227 
 
 H. K. Twitchell, Vice President Chemical National Bank, 
 New York. 
 
 Underlying conditions have never been better. Business is 
 being held back simply because industries cannot look forward 
 to the future with any confidence. Money and the productions 
 in every field are sensitive to prospective changes. If corpora- 
 tions and farmers could know what the attitude of the govern- 
 ment was going to be for five years as regards tariff, regula- 
 tion of corporations and general governmental policy, business 
 would revive immediately. If the tariff changes could be based 
 upon advice of a Tariff Commission,, and if the proposed changes 
 in the financial system could be outlined by men having no 
 direct or indirect connection with large centers of wealth, rapid 
 progress would be made. A law must be enacted which will 
 permit of the control of corporations, but under which they will 
 know exactly what they can do and what they cannot do. Large 
 combinations of wealth are a natural part of our present indus- 
 trial system and must be regulated, but not broken up. 
 
 The present tendency toward concentration of capital for- 
 bids the return to old competitive methods. I favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law, because it is my opinion it would be diffi- 
 cult to amend the present law to fit modern conditions. 
 
 W. F. Paxton, President Citizens Savings Bank, Paducah, 
 Ky. 
 
 The continued disposition of the government to dissolve cer- 
 tain corporations, instead of making such amendments to the 
 law as would specifically restrict abuses and define them so 
 clearly that speedy termination of abuses would be possible, is, 
 in my judgment, the chief cause of business disturbance. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not quite clear and workable. It should 
 be amended and made practical. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 I believe in holding companies; it is to the advantage of the 
 public in many cases for one corporation to hold stock in an- 
 other. 
 
 Omar H. Wright, President Second National Bank, Bel- 
 videre, 111. 
 
 Too much " red-eyed legislation is the chief cause of our 
 business troubles. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. 
 We should have a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 I favor some kind of Federal control which, at the same 
 time, will eliminate the hazardous State legislation so often at 
 variance with national law and so widely different in the differ- 
 ent States. 
 
228 
 
 Walter G. Oakman, President of Hudson Companies, etc., 
 etc., New York City. 
 
 The suggestion of the establishment of a commission akin 
 to the Eailroad Commission to supervise all commercial enter- 
 prises is most unfortunate, in my judgment. It would mean an 
 immense organization to be effective, and it would be impossible 
 to meet constantly changing conditions under such control. Kail- 
 roads sell one commodity and delays in decision regarding their 
 charges are not necessarily important. In commerce quick 
 action is sometimes vital. As to the causes of any business 
 disturbance which exists, it is a period of evolution and chang- 
 ing conditions which induce hesitation and prudence and which 
 will gradually improve. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear, but perhaps workable, fail- 
 ing other legislation. Unlimited competition would result in 
 survival of the strongest and a recurrence of conditions now 
 deemed requiring regulation. The country would not accept 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law, unless substituted by other legisla- 
 tion. Perhaps the best solution would be a control of the 
 amount of the total of any industry by any one corporation. 
 A general control -of business by a commission, covering the 
 details of each activity, would be impossible and destructive. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Such agreements are useful and can 
 do no harm when subject to approval. As to trade unions and 
 the operation of the Sherman Act, trade unions are the most 
 arbitrary combinations now existing and should be under super- 
 vision of authority. Combinations of farmers are too difficult 
 to organize to merit present attention. 
 
 Wm. C. Demorest, President, Realty Trust, New York City. 
 
 In my opinion, the present business conditions would be 
 vastly improved by calm, dispassionate attempts to adapt our 
 entire social fabric to the changed conditions which have arisen 
 by reason of numerous corporate co-operative developments dur- 
 ing the last twenty years. A campaign of education should be 
 carried on by business interests, similar to that waged during 
 the " silver craze," to convince people that huge corporations 
 are not necessarily to their disadvantage, but, subject to reason- 
 able control, are for the best interests of the people and have 
 inevitably come to stay. 
 
 W. E. Lowe, Johnson & Higgins, Insurance, New York 
 City. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that it will be 
 applicable to present conditions and intelligible to the average 
 layman. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 L favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
229 
 
 S. Z. Mitchell, Securities, New York. 
 
 Make the Sherman Law clear beyond any question, so that 
 even the most ordinary layman shall know what it means beyond 
 any doubt. I think the monopoly and non-competition features 
 should absolutely not apply to public service corporations of any 
 kind. The latter should be regulated and controlled by State 
 or Federal commissions. The object of regulation and control 
 is to prevent discrimination. Competition means discrimina- 
 tion. To prevent any kind of large public service corporation 
 from discrimination in rates when it is attacked by a " strike 
 company" for blackmailing purposes in a small, congested or 
 highly productive piece of the territory served is like binding 
 a man hand and foot, and thus preventing him from defending 
 himself when he is attacked by a blackmailer who wants to steal 
 his watch or pocketbook. Eegulation and competition at the 
 same time is not only unfair, but wholly illogical. 
 
 D. L. Evans, J. N. Ireland & Co., Bankers, Malad City, 
 Idaho. 
 
 We can't get back to " small things," and we should compel 
 "big things" to deal honestly and be satisfied with the in- 
 creased profits arising from the economies of combination. " Wa- 
 ter " must be kept out of business. The inability of borrowers 
 to meet their obligations and the spending beyond their capacity 
 to produce are the chief causes of any business embarrassment. 
 I favor national incorporation for interstate companies; Fed- 
 eral license fo'r persons engaged in interstate commerce, and I 
 also favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to give government supervision over monopo- 
 lies. " Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act ? " Yes, to give the poor man the benefit of 
 a doubt. " Should combinations of farmers be treated as law- 
 ful ? " Yes, for the same reason. 
 
 Morris Sternbach, Morris Sternbach & Co., Member New 
 York Stock Exchange, New York City. 
 
 In my humble opinion we need a plain, common-sense law to 
 fit the requirements of the present conditions one which every 
 business man can understand and carry out, instead of being 
 obliged to consult a lawyer to ascertain whether he is acting 
 legally or otherwise. I favor the repeal of the Sherman Law 
 and the enactment of an entirely new law to conform with 
 present needs. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, and farmers should be permitted to com- 
 bine. I favor a national incorporation law and Federal license. 
 I would prefer that the powers of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission should be enlarged, instead of creating an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
230 
 
 C. Burtis Hunter, Brooklyn Rapid Transit System, Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to several causes: 
 (a.) Provisions of the Sherman Law not made clear and work- 
 able; (6) President Taft's betrayal of the people to whom he 
 pledged a " downward revision " of the tariff consequently, dis- 
 trust of his administration; (c) ascendancy of Democracy,, caus- 
 ing fear and unrest in the camp of the high protectionists; (d) 
 protests of common people against greed of trusts. 
 
 Suggestions : Where trusts or combinations " cut prices " 
 in one section of the country to crush less powerful competitors, 
 the low-level prices the trusts establish there should be made 
 effective in any and all parts of the country they serve ; in other 
 words, a universal " cut price/' which renders competition fair 
 and " on the level/ 5 which, in turn, will invigorate trade and 
 afford a general reduction or " leveling " of costs to the con- 
 sumer. Federal (or national) incorporation laws could compel 
 this universal cut price. I also favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Wherever possible, the elimination of the middleman and the 
 selling of commodities direct from producer to consumer, sav- 
 ing the former's exorbitant profits to the consumer. This would 
 drive the middleman out of his present field of economic use- 
 lessness and compel him to become of some economic value to 
 the community, namely, a producer. 
 
 The encouragement of the " back-to-the-f arm movement/' 
 which makes producers out of consumers; thus increasing the 
 productivity of the land, thereby levelling price's according to 
 immutable laws of supply and demand. 
 
 W. J. Humphrey, Wyoming County National Bank, War- 
 saw, N. Y. 
 
 Overproduction; extravagance, both governmental and indi- 
 vidual; changed economic and social conditions because of new 
 inventions and their application; uncertainty and disagreement 
 as to how best to conform to these changed conditions all con- 
 tribute to unsettled business relations and to make men uncer- 
 tain as to the future. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I also favor national incorporation for companies en- 
 gaged in interstate commerce. 
 
 J. Montgomery Hare, Fire Underwriter, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable. 
 I favor its repeal and the enactment of laws forbidding specified 
 practices. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor a Federal license law for corporations 
 engaged in interstate commerce. Disturbed business conditions 
 are due to agitation of the popular mind by those having selfish 
 ends to attain. 
 
231 
 
 D. J. F. Strother, Attorney-at-Law and President of First 
 National Bank, Welch, W. Va. 
 
 Extravagance, political agitation and a poor banking system 
 are responsible for disturbed business conditions. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed, but if amended it should be made 
 declaratory of the common law and should give the Federal 
 courts power to enforce it. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor neither national incor- 
 poration nor Federal license; each tends to give the general 
 government too much power and control over private business. 
 The individual State should protect its people from harmful 
 corporate action on the part of domestic as well as non-resident 
 and foreign corporations, by laws regulating the conditions under 
 which they can engage in business, as well as organization and 
 conduct of the corporation. I don't approve of this government 
 being conducted by commissions. It is removing it from a 
 republican form and departs radically from the constitutional 
 intent. 
 
 The trend of public sentiment, induced in large part by 
 demagogic politicians and writers, is towards democracy and 
 socialism, and is a very present danger. The many investigat- 
 ing committees and commissions, which propose innumerable 
 laws to regulate everything in detail, are doing much to foster 
 this sentiment and destroy the faith of the people in our insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 J. K. Beretta, President Laredo National Bank, Laredo, 
 Tex. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission if consolidation and 
 trust conditions continue; otherwise I don't. The advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale exist; but they 
 are offset by strangled competition. I favor Federal license, and 
 am opposed to holding companies. The government should 
 regulate capitalization. I favor the examination and regulation 
 of all corporations on the same principle that banks are regu- 
 lated and examined, this for the protection of the public and 
 minority stockholders. The Sherman Law should be repealed. 
 Trusts and an inelastic currency are the causes of business dis- 
 turbance. 
 
 M. W. Mattecheck, Gogebic National Bank, Ironwood, 
 Mich. 
 
 Pernicious political activity and too many suits against cor- 
 porations, accomplishing nothing in particular toward solving 
 the business situation, are the leading causes of business dis- 
 turbance. The Sherman Law should be repealed. Eailroada 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 decidedly favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
232 
 
 Homer W. Johnson (Johnson Bros. Land Company), Sioux 
 City, Iowa. 
 
 Too much " water " in the liabilities of all public service 
 corporations, on which interest must be paid by consumers, is 
 one prime cause of disturbed business conditions. The State 
 should control all business within the State of State corpora- 
 tions. The interstate commerce of State corporations should 
 be controlled by Federal legislation. In all Federal legislation 
 regulating State corporations all business of such corporations 
 done within the State should be expressly excepted, with a pro- 
 vision conferring power on the States to regulate that. Over- 
 capitalization is largely the whole trouble too much " water " 
 to pay dividends on. We have too many commissions and 
 officers and courts now. Give the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission full authority and sufficient funds to carry on its work. 
 Make concerns doing business on a large scale show that they 
 have real money invested, and then protect them to the extent 
 of earning fair interest on actual value. I favor national incor- 
 poration and Federal license. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended according to the La Follette bill as outlined in the 
 press. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act. Workers only make a living anyhow do 
 not make it any harder for them to do that. 
 
 Henry L. Ward, President Burlington Trust Company, 
 Burlington, Vt. 
 
 Judicial and political uncertainties the latter arising 
 largely from the four-year term are responsible for the unset- 
 tled feeling in business. The presidential term should be eight 
 years anyway and twelve would be still better. I prefer Federal 
 license as the least of three evils for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. I would suggest an Interstate Corporation 
 Commission. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 and laws should be enacted providing for publicity applying 
 to commercial corporations. I believe in holding companies 
 under proper restrictions. 
 
 The seven advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale may be summarized under one caption " Scien- 
 tific Management." Regulate capitalization; encourage scien- 
 tific management; stimulate ambition and human nature will 
 do the rest. 
 
 A. D. Swift, Cashier, Elk County National Bank, Ridgway, 
 Pa. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate business. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, and laws should be enacted applying publicity to commer- 
 cial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission! 
 
233 
 
 J. H. Brosius (The National Bank of Avondale), Avondale, 
 Pa. 
 
 Unsettled political conditions,, caused largely by excessive 
 tariffs, with unrestricted industrial combinations 'making unrea- 
 sonable profits in many instances, are the causes of disturbed 
 business conditions. But Fm for Taft if he keeps busy. 
 
 Railroads should be divorced from ownership and operation 
 of mining and mines or any other business, and vice versa. 
 
 I agree with the claims made for those doing business on a 
 large scale; it might also be added that 40 per cent, of produc- 
 tion in any line is sufficient for one concern, and that such con- 
 cern ought to be under government supervision as to prices, 
 wages and publicity. I favor national incorporation, and I 
 regard an Interstate Trade Commission as most important. 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is clear and workable. 
 
 W. W. Harker, Vice-President Dollar Savings Bank Co., 
 also The Harker Pottery Company, East Liverpool, 
 Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due principally to the 
 discovery that large business has been carried on illegally for 
 twenty years. The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is clear 
 and workable. It would probably be painful to return to old 
 competitive methods, but I regard it as feasible. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 do not favor either national incorporation or Federal license for 
 companies doing an interstate business, unless the law apply to 
 corporations which, by reason of size, dominate an industry, 
 but not to others. The holding company for many purposes 
 is not monopolistic, but is a useful business vehicle. I prefer 
 the enforcement of the present Sherman Anti-Trust Law to the 
 enactment of statutes forbidding specific practices. 
 
 H. M. Shnavely, Cashier Farmers National Bank, Ephrata, 
 Pa. 
 
 All commissions created with authority to interfere with the 
 conduct of the business of corporations by their responsible 
 officers should be abolished. Business disturbance is due to 
 entirely too much legislation and pernicious interference by 
 political demagogues with the natural course of business. The 
 Sherman Law should be repealed. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. The Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission should be legislated out of existence. Com- 
 binations of farmers to secure fair prices for their products 
 should be lawful. Incorporation should be left to the States. 
 I believe in holding companies. We should have specific legis- 
 lation, if any, dealing with unfair competition and restraint 
 of trade. I do not favor government regulation of capitali- 
 zation. 
 
234 
 
 David G. Evans, Advertising, The Curtis Publishing Com- 
 pany, New York. 
 
 Large combinations will always exist; economy demands 
 them. I fail to be interested in any movement or legislation 
 that does not seriously consider economy. We can't improve 
 permanently without it. 
 
 I admit the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, providing a wise policy is generally in use. 
 To those advantages should be added better protection for mar- 
 ket conditions; saving to the people as a whole; better working 
 conditions for employees; a more general distribution of good 
 stocks and bonds (this is important). 
 
 I prefer Federal legislation for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. There should be a liberal use of common sense 
 and at least some general knowledge of business conditions 
 in the framing of such legislation. I do not believe in holding 
 companies. Laws will never detail and provide for all the tricks 
 of sharp men, so far as unfair competition is concerned. Re- 
 straint of trade can be detailed and should be taken care of. 
 Restraint-of-trade features are of great importance and should 
 be so considered in any legislation to be enacted. I favor laws 
 providing for government regulation of capitalization, and I 
 regard as indeed important the enactment of laws that call for 
 publicity and that armly to commercial corporations, through a 
 commission to be appointed for that purpose. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. 
 
 Daniel A. Kimball, President, The Housatonic National 
 Bank, Stockbridge, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable, 
 but the moral effect has been good. It should be amended, de- 
 fining, if possible, what is legal. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor combinations 
 of farmers. I am in favor of a national incorporation law, if 
 on the lines of our Massachusetts laws. I believe in holding 
 companies, if reasonably controlled. I prefer special statutes 
 dealing with unfair competition and restraint of trade; but I 
 say this with some qualifications; dreading any further legisla- 
 tion at present. In the same spirit I reply to the question 
 relating to government regulation of capitalization. I believe in 
 large combinations honestly conducted. Perhaps I may favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, but not now. One would like 
 to see more attention given to banking and currency reform; 
 a low tariff; a real attempt to build up the maritime system 
 with American sailors and American ships; a parcels post, etc. 
 
 Since the last panic it would seem as if politics and tariff 
 uncertainties and railroad economies have been prominent causes 
 of business disturbance. 
 
235 
 
 A. D. Buckner, Cashier, Paris National Bank, Paris, Mo. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to a natural reaction 
 after too much prosperity, which brought on the panic in 1907, 
 and to attempted forced return of prosperity immediately after 
 the panic. Poor crops and, unquestionably, the uncertainty of 
 the results of pending and prospective governmental interfer- 
 ence with the avowed (and possibly unlawful) policies of large 
 interests have had much to do with causing uncertainty and 
 anxiety among business men. The Sherman Law as now inter- 
 preted is clear and workable, except to those who would evade 
 the plain intent and purpose of the law. I consider it feasible 
 to return to past competitive methods. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and farmers 
 should be allowed to combine until the law can be enforced 
 against combinations which have made farmers' organizations 
 necessary for self-protection. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 government should regulate capitalization, and laws should be 
 passed protecting minority stockholders and subsidiary inter- 
 ests, and providing for publicity. 
 
 Charles M. McCurdy, President First National Bank, 
 Belief onte, Pa. 
 
 I regard national incorporation as necessary for companies 
 engaged in interstate commerce. I believe in holding companies. 
 I am not in favor of government regulation of capitalization, 
 but am in favor of publicity being applied to commercial cor- 
 porations. I do not favor multiplying commissions with large 
 powers. A national incorporation act may be necessary, but the 
 powers of any commission operating under it should be restricted 
 to hearing complaints that the proper courts should decide. I 
 attribute disturbed business conditions to the chaotic state of 
 laws relating to corporations and to the extravagance of the 
 American people. The Sherman Law should be repealed. 
 
 S. M. Smith, Wendell State Bank, Wendell, Idaho. 
 
 I prefer a longer test of the Sherman Law before anything 
 should be done about amending it. At present I regard it as 
 clear and workable. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Na- 
 tional extravagance and uncertainty as to the ultimate solution 
 of the problems now confronting the American people are the 
 more important causes of business disturbance. I prefer na- 
 tional incorporation for companies doing an interstate business. 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and laws should 
 be enacted providing for publicity to be applied to commercial 
 corporations through an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
236 
 
 A. L. Hoblit, Cashier, Carlinville National Bank, Carlin- 
 ville, 111. 
 
 Want of confidence in the large corporations and the feeling 
 that something is going to happen and the universal trend to 
 get high prices for everything, including labor, are disturbing 
 business. People cannot obtain anything except at exorbitant 
 prices, and fear that a collapse will come and that heavy losses 
 must follow prompts them to hesitate about undertaking any 
 new venture or developing to a fuller extent the business in 
 which they are engaged. I consider it feasible to return to old 
 competitive methods, not entirely, but in a modified form. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to make its meaning clear, so 
 that men may easily understand what is unlawful, but not to 
 permit large corporations to monopolize all lines of business. 
 Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I favor a national incorporation law. As to a Federal 
 license law, I don't know what you aim at; but I don't favor 
 requiring license to do a legitimate business, outside the liquor 
 business. Doing business on a large scale makes a few men 
 very wealthy, and increases very largely the number dependent 
 on salaried positions. 
 
 Oscar P. Miller, President Lyon County National Bank, 
 Rock Rapids, Iowa. 
 
 I am of opinion that prosecution by the government has 
 had something to do with bringing about disturbed business 
 conditions; also tariff discussion and overspeculation have had 
 a share in creating uncertainty among business men. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 would exempt farmers from the operation of the Sherman Law, 
 as I do not think they could combine like corporations. I 
 think a national incorporation law a good plan for dealing with 
 the situation. I favor considerable restriction upon holding 
 companies. At the same time, I believe they have their uses. 
 If a company does not seek to form combinations for controlling 
 trade and commerce it ought to be regarded as legitimate. 
 
 S. I. Robison, President City National Bank, Texarkana, 
 Ark.-Tex. 
 
 I believe that the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale exist, and that, by proper regulation, the 
 consumer will get the benefit of them. I believe the Sherman 
 Law to be clear and workable, as now interpreted by the Su- 
 preme Court. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act, but combinations of 
 farmers should be permitted. Disturbed business conditions are 
 due to uncertainty on the part of the financial world, brought on 
 by the "trust-busting" proceedings. 
 
237 
 
 F. Hageman, President National Bank of America, Salina, 
 Kan. 
 
 Overspeculation is one of the causes of disturbed business 
 conditions. Prices could not stand still; they had to go higher 
 or lower. Poor crops in many localities; the menace of poli- 
 ticians and uncertainty as to whether the government was go- 
 ing to confiscate everything that amounted to anything, have 
 all tended to create anxiety and uncertainty in business circles. 
 So many men have found it too easy to rise into office by crying 
 " Thief," they think that what got them there will keep them 
 there; and others are emboldened by the success of their prede- 
 cessors. Then there have been some outrageous steals by big 
 men that shocked the people and caused them to be suspicious 
 of everything big. The Sherman Law should be amended so 
 as to make plain how a big business can be conducted honestly 
 and 'without oppression. % Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates; otherwise there will be disas- 
 trous rate wars and receiverships and defaulted bonds. I favor 
 a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 South Branch Valley National Bank, Moorefield, W. Va., 
 A. M. Inskeep, President. 
 
 We are in doubt as to whether the Sherman Law, as now 
 interpreted, is clear and workable. We do not consider it feas- 
 ible to return to old competitive methods. We do not favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. All combinations in 
 restraint of trade should be regarded as unlawful. We favor 
 a national incorporation law and Federal license. Too much 
 legislation, and not enough of the right kind, is the cause of 
 disturbance in business. The government should regulate capi- 
 talization, and laws should be enacted calling for publicity 
 applied to commercial corporations. 
 
 Hugh L. McElderry, President Talladega National Bank, 
 Talladega, Ala. 
 
 I believe big concerns, like the Standard Oil, help more 
 people than they hurt, by giving a cheaper and better article 
 to the consumer. I favor Federal incorporation for interstate 
 business. We might as well go back to the wooden plow-stick 
 some of us used as boys, as to go back to old-fashioned com- 
 petition. Holding companies should be supervised under strict 
 limitation and governmental control. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed, provided we have a law enacted permitting Federal 
 incorporation and regulation of interstate business. The gov- 
 ernment should stop badgering everyone who has managed to be 
 successful in business and to accumulate a fortune. 
 
238 
 
 Henry Koehler,Western Exchange Bank, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing interstate 
 commerce, with control by the government similar to that ap- 
 plied to national banks. I do not believe in holding companies. 
 Each corporation should be separate, distinct and independent, 
 with capital limited to cash value of property and plant. Gov- 
 ernment regulation of capitalization would be best both for the 
 corporations and the people. Publicity applied to commercial 
 corporations would be best for all legitimate business. Securi- 
 ties of corporations, under proper regulation, would command 
 better prices and a larger number of investors. Corporations 
 should be limited in issuing stock and securities to actual cash 
 and worth of property owned. I am of the opinion that the 
 "holding company" is the greatest evil and should be legis- 
 lated out of business. 
 
 As to the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale, I do not believe in the " economies of production." 
 Experience has not shown this to be true. Where there has 
 been a saving in operation, etc., overhead charges are generally 
 increased, and, on the whole, it has increased cost. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission with proper authority. 
 
 O. C. Davidson, President Commercial Bank of Iron Moun- 
 tain, Iron Mountain, Mich. 
 
 I believe that the advantages which are claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale exist, and that, if not permitted 
 to do business on a large scale, a large portion of our export 
 business would soon be lost. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission, and Federal legislation to deal with companies 
 doing interstate commerce. I believe in holding companies as 
 absolutely necessary. The Sherman Law should either be repealed 
 or amended. Statutes should forbid specified practices of unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied to com- 
 mercial corporations. Too much politics; too many hypocrites 
 who pose as reformers, are responsible for disturbed business 
 conditions. 
 
 A. D. Allen (Fidelity Trust Company), Louisville, Ky. 
 
 Not knowing what's going to happen, and hardly knowing 
 what has happened in other words, uncertainty is responsible 
 for existing business disturbance. The Sherman Law is not 
 clear and workable, and I favor its repeal. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act. Combinations of farmers to secure fair prices for their 
 products should be lawful. Xo farmers' combination will be 
 tight enough to do much harm. I favor Federal license for com- 
 panies engaged in interstate commerce. 
 
239 
 
 A. F. Daley, President and General Counsel, Wrightsville 
 & Tennille Railroad Company, Tennille, Ga. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for such large combinations 
 of capital as are clearly organized for interstate business, but 
 local organizations should be subject to State control, such as 
 short lines of railways wholly within one State and handling 
 interstate business only in connection with larger lines. If this 
 is not practicable, then national incorporation for all under 
 control of one commission. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act should 
 be repealed and specific legislation enacted, showing what is 
 illegal. The government should regulate capitalization. The 
 advantages claimed by those doing business on a large scale 
 exist and should be encouraged and protected by law. 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Act is a standing menace to 
 invested capital and should be substituted by specific laws suited 
 to the public interest. The regulation of capital in public utility 
 investments should also carry with it such regulation of labor 
 as will protect capital from oppressive demands of labor. 
 
 Orion Latimer, President First National Bank, Abingdon, 
 111. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing an 
 interstate business. The additional legislation which I favor, 
 to prevent exploitation of producers and consumers, is the ap- 
 pointment of a commission to regulate interstate trade. I believe 
 in holding companies, providing they are properly conducted. 
 Corporations should be supervised the same as the national 
 banks. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 laws should be passed providing publicity for commercial cor- 
 porations. The Sherman Law should be amended to define fair 
 and unfair competition. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. Business conditions are un- 
 settled over corporate regulation, and uncertainty as to the 
 methods to be pursued to set things right. 
 
 W. D. Despard, Marine Insurance, Electric Lighting and 
 Power, New York City. 
 
 I am in favor of Federal control of all commerce conducted 
 by corporations. I am a stockholder and an officer of corpora- 
 tions myself. We have a Federal bankruptcy law. Why not 
 extend the principle? 
 
 Lack of decision, directness and, above all, of promptness on 
 the part of the courts in dealing with these questions, and lack 
 of authority of the Federal administration are causes of busi- 
 ness disturbance. The Sherman Law should be repealed. If 
 not repealed, it should be amended so that it can be complied 
 with. I favor a national incorporation law. Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
240 
 
 Rathbone Gardner, President Union Trust Company, Prov- 
 idence, R. I. 
 
 Legislation should proceed in accordance with the fact that 
 there are natural monopolies and that, under present-day con- 
 ditions, many lines of business can only be conducted economi- 
 cally on a large scale and by the use of vast aggregations of 
 capital. Such monopolies and near-monopolies should be sanc- 
 tioned and regulated. I prefer national incorporation for com- 
 panies engaged in interstate commerce. The Sherman Act can- 
 not reach such evils as the exploitation of producers and con- 
 sumers. Clear and definite legislation, dealing with them 
 directly, is requisite. Government regulation of capitalization 
 is more needed than anything else. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. Combinations of farm- 
 ers, either to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher 
 prices, should not be rendered lawful. In my judgment, dis- 
 turbed business conditions are due to apprehension as to pos- 
 sible tariff legislation and uncertainty as to legality of methods 
 in use by big business. 
 
 J. W. Vanden, First National Bank, Jackson, Tenn. 
 
 I fail to see any indication of business trouble. Crops are 
 good ; productions of all kinds are normal ; real values are firm ; 
 money cheap; products command a good price; and there are 
 no more labor troubles than usual. Therefore, we have occasion 
 to exult over conditions. 
 
 I believe in a reduction of the tariff to a revenue basis and, 
 when the income tax is sufficient to pay governmental expenses, 
 in free trade absolutely in the necessaries of life. All corpora- 
 tions doing interstate business should be under governmental 
 (Federal) control and should be taxed so as to produce revenue 
 to the government and not permit the building up of monopo- 
 lies. Prevent the building up of such enormous fortunes by 
 legislation. The Sherman Law should be amended from time 
 to time to meet extraordinary conditions. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a na- 
 tional incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Holding companies should be absolutely pro- 
 hibited. 
 
 J. H. Hunt, The Union National Bank, Massillon, Ohio. 
 
 Yes, the Sherman Law is made clear and workable. Every 
 case will now go to the Supreme Court to decide "what is 
 reasonable." We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. As to 
 amendment, there is no room between private and government 
 ownership. Any business disturbance is caused by stirring up 
 the water in stocks. Legitimate business is not disturbed. 
 
241 
 
 Lorenzo Leland, President First National Bank, Ottawa, 
 111. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the legal status of corporations; uncer- 
 tainty as to currency and banking laws, etc., are causing the 
 present disturbed business conditions. I favor some clear, posi- 
 tive, direct legislation on the subject dealt with by the Sherman 
 Law, so that men can tell whether or not they are violating the 
 law. This might or might not require the repeal of the Sher- 
 man Law. I favor national incorporation and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 I believe in doing business on a large scale ; that competition 
 alone will no longer furnish sufficient means of control, and 
 that the central government should furnish it through a com- 
 mission or in some such manner. 
 
 In addition to other advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale should be added that they can borrow 
 money, when necessary, at lower rates because they are safer. 
 They do not carry so much idle capital in proportion to the 
 volume of business. In support of an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, it may be remarked that banks organized under the 
 laws of the United States are examined and supervised by the 
 government, why not other corporations? 
 
 R. L. Saville, Cashier Dawson National Bank, Dawson, 
 Ga. 
 
 Development of the various industries of the country has 
 taxed financial resources to their utmost. Investments in so 
 many instances have proven faulty that investors are suffering 
 from a lack of expected returns, and traders, on the other hand, 
 are suffering from the absence of the profits they expected to 
 make on borrowed capital. These conditions naturally cause 
 disturbance, and in some cases worse than disturbance. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and should be 
 amended. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, and combinations of farmers should be lawful. 
 I favor Federal license for companies engaged in interstate com- 
 merce and an Interstate Trade Commission to supervise their 
 business. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 corporations should be obliged to comply with rules requiring 
 publicity regarding everything the public has a right to know. 
 
 A. A. Bryden, President Miners Savings Bank, Pittston, Pa. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission in relation to common carriers. Companies doing inter- 
 state commerce should be controlled by Federal legislation. I 
 am opposed to holding companies, and I favor laws providing 
 for government regulation of capitalization, and also laws that 
 provide for publicity, as applied to commercial corporations. 
 
242 
 
 J. M. Sharon, President Harrison National Bank, Cadiz, 
 Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made more clear wherever it is 
 not clear. A national incorporation law would probably be best 
 in some cases. I cannot see that it would do any harm to allow 
 railroads to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to an 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Legislation should be en- 
 acted requiring that in all cases the actual amount of cash 
 invested in a company shall be shown. I think no company 
 should be allowed to do business, unless the actual amount of 
 capital represented should have been paid in cash, and that 
 such capital should be unimpaired and in no case bonded for 
 more than 60 per cent, of its value. Capital paid in should be 
 cash, same as a national bank is organized, and the capital should 
 be kept good and at least annual statements made. Too many 
 persons and firms are now selling worthless stocks and swindling 
 people. This business now is doing more harm than all the 
 trusts ever did. 
 
 A. M. Shook, President The First Savings Bank & Trust 
 Company, Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable; it leaves each 
 case to be decided on its own merits, resulting in endless litiga- 
 tion and uncertainty. To attempt to return to old competitive 
 methods would be ruinous to the business of the country. The 
 Sherman Law should be repealed and another law passed to 
 meet modern conditions. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 I am inclined to favor State incorporation, with Eederal 
 license for those companies engaged in interstate trade. I think 
 that an Interstate Trade Commission is the best solution of the 
 problem. 
 
 Political uncertainty, tariff agitation and the unreasonable 
 and unnecessary assaults on legitimate business are the causes 
 of uncertainty in the business world. 
 
 C. Cadogan, President Citizens' National Bank, Hornell, 
 N. Y. 
 
 I think President Taft is wrong in proceeding against the 
 United States Steel Company, as they were trying hard to get 
 within the law. There is no class of securities held as extensively 
 by all classes of the people as the United States Steel. Any- 
 thing befalling them, the harm is far-reaching. These great 
 business problems should be dealt with entirely outside of poli- 
 tics. Admitting the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, still I think the small dealer has rights and 
 should be protected. I favor a national incorporation and 
 United States government control for companies doing interstate 
 business. I also favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
243 
 
 W. J. Thorn, Cashier, The First National Bank, Buffalo, 
 Wyoming. 
 
 Overspeculation, the disturbing effect of government attacks 
 on trusts and, most of all, the course pursued by the trusts 
 themselves in their efforts to convince the government and the 
 people that these attacks are the sole cause of depression, and 
 that business would be prosperous if the trusts were let alone 
 and allowed to practice their high-handed operations as here- 
 tofore, are~the causes of business uncertainty and lack of con- 
 fidence in the future. 
 
 So much is written for and against the Sherman Law that 
 it is impossible for a layman to decide intelligently as to its 
 merits. The arguments of special pleaders on both sides are 
 very plausible. 
 
 Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, but always subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Samuel Lehman, Vice-President Pearl Street Market Bank, 
 Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and should be 
 either repealed or amended. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 The politicians who are trying to make capital for political 
 purposes; the many laws introduced and some enacted, making 
 moneyed men timid to invest in any new enterprise or expand 
 what they already have, are responsible for disturbed business 
 conditions. I think that laws should be passed to prevent large 
 corporations from charging exorbitant prices. I believe in hold- 
 ing companies and in fair competition, but not restraint of 
 trade. A law preventing watered stock would be beneficial and 
 a protection to innocent purchasers. 
 
 Charles E. Ulrich, Vice-President Home Savings & State 
 Bank, Peoria, 111. 
 
 The enormous wealth of individuals and corporations, de- 
 rived from the profits of their business, seems proof to me that 
 the profit is too large, or not properly divided, and that the 
 public is the ultimate sufferer. Combinations of all kinds of 
 enterprises, with intent to get the best of the consumer i. e., 
 to raise prices beyond fair profit have caused whatever dis- 
 turbance exists. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, provided great care 
 is taken not to have its duties and powers conflict with those 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and Federal license. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended in the further direction of restraint of super- 
 vision over corporations. 
 
244 
 
 Allen W. Johnston, Treasurer, The Schenectady Savings 
 Bank, Schenectady, N. Y. 
 
 As to returning to old competitive methods, I answer, 
 Yankee fashion, If no competition, would there not be monop- 
 oly? If no competition, would there be as good quality? 
 
 Here is what I know about farming. I have a farm of 
 seventy-five acres and do considerable truck gardening. My 
 farmer goes to the city sometimes with a load of tomatoes which, 
 for a profit, should bring from fifty to seventy-five cents, at 
 least, a bushel or basket. At times he finds the city flooded 
 so to speak with tomatoes and find farmers anxious to get 
 home and get to work, selling their tomatoes at twenty-five and 
 thirty cents a bushel. He either dumps his load likewise and 
 comes back, or brings the load back and tries it again. I ask 
 again the question, "Would it not be better for farmers to 
 either fix for themselves a better method of marketing, or have 
 somebody do it for them ? " For instance, if they have over- 
 produced in the case of tomatoes, should they not confer as to 
 the acreage to be produced in that district? Or if, perchance, 
 they omitted to produce enough in a season, would it not be 
 better for the consumer, as well as the producer, if they con- 
 ferred likewise? Or if, perchance, they all rush to market on 
 one day, should they not confer to regulate such mistake? 
 
 C. Frederick Childs, Bond Dealer and Banker, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the public's inability 
 to understand the extent to which the courts' interpretation of 
 the Sherman Law may be carried, and the visible effects of 
 destroying corporations which have been responsible for the 
 country's prosperity and our national supremacy as a progressive 
 people. We need concentrated capital and well-organized cor- 
 porations to compete with the nations of the world. Apprecia- 
 tion of this fact was the principal reason for the Canadian de- 
 feat of reciprocity. If Congress will harness the labor unions 
 and corporations to the same governmental vehicle and drive 
 them both with the power of an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 the beneficent result to the common people as a whole would 
 be inevitable. I favor a Federal license law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. Trade unions should not be excepted from 
 the operation of the Sherman Act. They should be regulated, 
 and under the same governmental supervision and control as 
 corporations. 
 
 F. P. Browne, Cashier, First National Bank, Bay City, 
 Mich. 
 
 I fear the attempts of any commission to regulate business, 
 and think it can more safely be left to competition ; but I favor 
 requiring publicity, through sworn statements, showing actual 
 paid-in capital, dividends and other profits, with fines for mis- 
 statements, etc. 
 
245 
 
 Henry L. Holmes, Orange National Bank, Orange, N. J. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to (1) the growing 
 realization that the "interests" (so called) have been reaping 
 an unjust profit by reason of political preferences, such as the 
 tariff, favorable railroad rates, etc. ; ( 2 ) the belief that they are 
 the instruments in returning to power the political forces which 
 have granted and will continue to grant these preferences; (3) 
 exposures of dishonesty in high places the Sugar Trust thefts, 
 the insurance investigation, etc.; (4) class against mass, en- 
 gendered by causes mentioned above; (5) uncertainty regard- 
 ing the effect of corrective measures, such as tariff revision. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 R. L. Selden, Cashier Deep River National Bank, Deep 
 River, Conn. 
 
 There are very few so-called laws that can meet changing 
 requirements without amendments, except it be the Ten Com- 
 mandments. The Sherman Law is clear, but not entirely work- 
 able. We should have a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. I believe thoroughly in the advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, such as 
 economies in production, economies in distribution, greater use 
 of by-products, steadier employment of labor and at better 
 wages, etc. 
 
 George B. Pendleton, Cashier, New Bern Banking & Trust 
 Company, New Bern, N. C. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to permit large 
 corporations to do business on a large scale, but under strict 
 supervision of an Interstate Trade Commission, which should 
 have broad and liberal powers to prevent any abuses. Combina- 
 tions of farmers should be under strict supervision of the same 
 commission. Uncertainty is the cause of business disturbance. 
 Let us follow the example of Germany ; they one of our great- 
 est commercial nations encourage the corporation idea, but do 
 not fail to exercise control over the corporations. 
 
 William Hurd Hillyer, Vice-President and Treasurer, 
 Hillyer Trust Company, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 The Sherman Act should be repealed. I believe in holding 
 companies, but with such requirements as to publicity as would 
 protect the investor and clearly define the relations between 
 the parent company and subsidiaries. I prefer Federal license 
 to national incorporation. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. In my judgment, the reactionary attempt to force 
 destructive competition on a co-operative age is responsible for 
 present business disturbance. 
 
246 
 
 Mortimer M. Singer, Mortgages, New York. 
 
 Too much promoting; too active growth of railroads and of 
 large manufacturing plants ; a national lack of patience, and too 
 much extravagance in private, State and national affairs are 
 the causes of disturbance in business. A decade of quiet is 
 needed to impress upon our people the proper purpose of life 
 and the equities of properties. The Sherman Law I regard 
 as clear and workable. I favor, under certain conditions, a 
 national incorporation law and a Federal license law. An Inter- 
 state Trade Commission is desirable, but not until a test has 
 been made of the plans of the reorganization of the American 
 Tobacco Company, the Standard Oil Company, etc. 
 
 Frank C. Bolt, President San Gabriel Valley Bank, Pasa- 
 dena, Cal. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law, 
 also an Interstate Trade Commission if possible to cover such 
 a large proposition. 
 
 Newspapers, by deceiving the people as to cost of what they 
 consume, have unsettled people's minds as to business condi- 
 tions. Oftentimes the first cost of an article is not as much 
 as the cost of delivering the article to the consumer. The first 
 cost of ice is about $2 per ton. To deliver it into your box 
 adds $8 per ton, because of the small quantit} r taken at one 
 time, and so it goes down through the whole list. 
 
 F. J. Lisman, F. J. Lisman & Co., Bankers, New York City. 
 
 Too much ill-considered legislation, with the possibility of 
 more of the same kind; also the rigid enforcement of the Sher- 
 man Law, have been and are causes of business disquietude. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and something reason- 
 able enacted in its place. Combinations should be allowed, and 
 corporations should be required to file copies of the agreement 
 made with some court, the court to decide within thirty days 
 whether the same is reasonable. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates they must in the very 
 nature of their business. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. S. Aisthorpe, President, First Bank and Trust Company, 
 Cairo, 111. 
 
 The uncertainty of legislation and how the laws are to be 
 applied to large corporations is the main cause of such business 
 disturbance as exists. I believe the business interests of the 
 country can be conserved by fair and equitable regulation of 
 the combination of large capital in* various enterprises, that 
 allows reasonable profits to cover risks and all depreciations. I 
 favor a national incorporation law for interstate business, Fed- 
 eral license for interstate corporations and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
247 
 
 Wilbur M. Purrington, Manager Savings Bank, Hayden- 
 ville, Mass. 
 
 The periodic contraction of demand due to our habit of 
 spending our earnings before we get them accounts for a large 
 share of such disturbance as at present exists in business affairs. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to meet conditions requir- 
 ing remedial legislation. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor a Federal license law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. I am of the opinion 
 that laws should be passed preventing one company from hold- 
 ing stock in another, also providing for government regulation 
 of capitalization and for publicity, as applied to commercial 
 corporations. 
 
 G. T. Townsend, President Merchants National Bank, 
 Middletown, N. Y. 
 
 If people would be industrious, careful, not extravagant, 
 and we had less lawmaking, things would be better. I favor 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law. Neither trade unions nor farm- 
 ers should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act 
 if it is to continue in force. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and Federal license, but not an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. We want no more interstate commissions composed of 
 politicians. Natural laws account for any disturbance that 
 exists in business. Business cannot always be good there must 
 be ups and downs. 
 
 S. H. Beach, President The Rome Savings Bank, Rome, 
 N. Y. 
 
 The chief cause of business disturbance undoubtedly is the 
 uncertainty felt by every business corporation as to what effect 
 the further enforcing of the Sherman Law will have upon its 
 particular business. The Sherman Law has not been made clear 
 and workable, and should be amended to enable a corporation 
 to know exactly what its restrictions are. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a 
 Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 F. V. Blesse, First National Bank, Eagle Pass, Tex. 
 
 Fear of destruction of vested interests is the cause of busi- 
 ness disturbance. I strongly favor a new banking and cur- 
 rency law similar to the Aldrich plan, which would undoubt- 
 edly tend greatly to improve the business situation. The Sher- 
 man Law has not been made clear and workable and ought to 
 be repealed if a better law can be enacted in its place one that 
 will be clearer and more efficient. I favor national incorpora- 
 tion, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
248 
 
 W. S. Hazelton, St. Joseph Valley Bank, Elkhart, Ind. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to forcing the dissolution of the 
 large corporations and to too much jingo politics, also to too 
 much tampering with the tariff. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor Federal legislation dealing with compa- 
 nies doing an interstate business. The law should give to the 
 government one director in all chartered companies of any size. 
 Additional legislation should deal with the exploitation of pro- 
 ducers and consumers. The government should regulate capi- 
 talization and apply publicity to commercial corporations. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Frederick W. Crosby, Retired Banker, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The uncertainty caused by attacks of the government on cor- 
 porations is partly responsible for disturbed business conditions. 
 The political situation is also an important factor, and a menace 
 to all business enterprises. I most assuredly favor a national 
 incorporation law. The Sherman Law is not clear and work- 
 able, and should be amended. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and com- 
 binations of farmers, to restrict production or hold a crop for 
 higher prices, should not be lawful. 
 
 David H. Miller, Cotton Exchange, New York. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law, as thus far interpreted, as clear 
 and workable. A return to old competitive methods is not 
 only feasible, but necessary; as a failure to do so will inevitably 
 lead to socialism. A repeal of the Sherman Law would be a 
 great calamity. No decisions yet rendered warrant any amend- 
 ment of the Sherman Law. These decisions have not only dis- 
 solved certain illegal combinations, but they have prevented 
 the formation or extension of many others. I concede that 
 further litigation may show that the law should be amended, 
 but the present situation does not. 
 
 Lyman P. Osborn, President, Warren National Bank, Pea- 
 body, Mass. 
 
 Take out of the Sherman Law anything which can be con- 
 strued as making illegal the " ability " to monopolize. Prohibit 
 the act and intent, but not mere size. Combinations of farm- 
 ers should be rendered lawful under the Sherman Act, but 
 trade unions should not be excepted from its operation. I 
 favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The attempt to enforce the 
 present Sherman Law, which no two persons now construe 
 in the same way, is largely responsible for business uncertainty. 
 
249 
 
 John A. Potter, President Patchogue Bank, Patchogue, 
 N. Y. 
 
 Railroads and other corporations are largely responsible for 
 present agitation by their arbitrary and unfair methods. Labor 
 unions, whether incorporated or not, should be treated on the 
 same basis as employers' corporations, and be compelled to live 
 up to their contracts. I favor Federal incorporation, with 
 proper restrictions, for companies doing interstate business. Im- 
 pending tariff legislation, insane real estate speculation, which 
 prevails all over the United States, are among the more prom- 
 inent causes of business disturbance. 
 
 F. H. Goff, President Cleveland Trust Company, Cleveland, 
 Ohio. 
 
 The disturbed business conditions are due to the impossibility 
 of determining what is lawful and what unlawful in carrying on 
 business, especially the business of large corporations. I con- 
 sider it feasible to return to old competitive methods, if large 
 combinations are to be permitted. I favor amending the Sher- 
 man Law by defining clearly the character of combinations or 
 business methods that are to be prohibited. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. I be- 
 lieve in holding companies as essential to economic manage- 
 ment. 
 
 T. G. Coombe & Co., Bankers and Brokers, New York City. 
 
 1. Overspeculation and too much capital sunk in productive 
 capacity and other fixed forms for the past decade. 
 
 2. Too much pplitics and hasty and unwise legislation. 
 
 3. Too few producers and too many distributors and con- 
 sumers proportionately, leading to high cost of living, are the 
 causes of disturbed business conditions. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law. The Sherman Law 
 should be repealed and a new measure adopted in accordance 
 with modern requirements. An Interstate Trade Commission 
 like the Interstate Commerce Commission might wield too much 
 power unwisely. 
 
 J. F. Wheeler, Cashier, Pioneer Dime Bank, Carbondale, 
 Pa. 
 
 I prefer Federal legislation for dealing with companies en- 
 gaged in interstate commerce. The Sherman Act is sufficient, 
 in my judgment, to prevent the exploitation of producers and 
 consumers. I believe in holding companies, under proper regu- 
 lation. I favor regulation, not destruction, in dealing with 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. I admit the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale. 
 
250 
 
 F. T. Conkling, Cashier Greenville National Bank, Green- 
 ville, Ohio. 
 
 I believe in the appointment of a commission, with proper 
 laws behind its members, to control trusts and combinations, 
 and to see that no fictitious values are created, and that the 
 money used in forming the corporations shall be the actual cost 
 of physical value of the business established. I favor national 
 incorporation for companies doing an interstate business. I am 
 opposed to holding companies. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization and should apply publicity to commercial 
 corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Wa- 
 tered stocks and bonds are the chief causes of business troubles. 
 
 E. A. Vinson, American National Bank, Cordele, Ga. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. I prefer Federal license 
 for companies doing an interstate business. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations, so far as the public have a right to 
 be interested in their affairs. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and farmers 
 should be allowed to form combinations. 
 
 J. F. McKinney, Treasurer, Palisades Trust and Guaranty 
 Company, Englewood, N. J. 
 
 Too much greed by corporations and American people gen- 
 erally is causing unfortunate business conditions. Machinery 
 of our government is worn out and not applicable to the pres- 
 ent needs of the country or the spirit of progress and advance- 
 ment dominant in this Republic. 
 
 Enact a Federal law requiring publicity. Appoint commis- 
 sions by the President, composed of same character of men con- 
 stituting the Supreme Court, who shall have power to regulate 
 stock and bond issues, have power to fix rates, etc., but permit 
 appeal in important cases to the Supreme Court. 
 
 J. W. L. Carty, Cashier Frederick County National Bank, 
 Frederick, Md. 
 
 Fear on the part of capital because of agitation and because 
 business men, it seems, do not know how to proceed under the 
 law, are the causes of business anxiety and hesitation. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended, after proper investigation as to 
 its faults. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor Federal license for companies in inter- 
 state commerce. I believe in holding companies. In regard to 
 overcapitalization, it may be said that by overcapitalization 
 .capital will sometimes take a chance. 
 
251 
 
 R. F. Clarke, President People's National Bank, Inde- 
 pendence, Iowa. 
 
 Specific legislation,, instead of general legislation, could take 
 care of many difficulties now existing. The public is asking for 
 an extremely high basis of living, and the cost is more than 
 they can stand a reaction is bound to take place. More spe- 
 cific legislation is needed than the Sherman Law now provides. 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing an interstate busi- 
 ness. I believe in holding companies, and I consider that the 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale 
 actually exist. 
 
 B. F. White, President First National Bank, Dillon, Mont. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are clear and apparent and should be protected. I prefer 
 Federal license as a last resort for companies conducting an 
 interstate business. I believe in holding companies to a limited 
 extent. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and 
 do not favor amending it. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, and combinations of farmers, to 
 secure fair prices for their productions, should be permitted. 
 Too much agitation, causing social and industrial unrest, is 
 responsible for present disturbed business conditions. 
 
 A. E. Mason, Treasurer Glens Falls Trust Company, Glens 
 Falls, N. Y. 
 
 Too much legislation and lax enforcement of existing laws 
 are responsible for business agitation and anxiety. The Sher- 
 man Law has not been made clear and workable. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. I am not opposed to holding companies, if a holding com- 
 pany is properly regulated. Government should regulate capi- 
 talization, and laws should be passed applying publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations. 
 
 W. M. Van Deusen, Cashier, National Newark Banking 
 Company, Newark, N. J. 
 
 It is no crime to be large; but large corporations must 
 realize their larger responsibility. The cause of business dis- 
 turbance is chiefly uncertainty. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended so far as it may be shown to conflict with proper 
 business methods. Federal incorporation would be all right if 
 not misused for political ends. In addition to the other advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale may be 
 added that it is easier to deal with labor. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
252 
 
 A. H. Hale, President First National Bank, Manchester, 
 N. H. 
 
 All business tending to become monopoly should be obliged 
 to make the same rates to all buyers and consumers, large or 
 small, so as to give everybody an equal chance to deal with the 
 corporation, regardless of the amount of capital or quantity of 
 business i. e. f railroad rates at reduced figures to big corpora- 
 tions crush out small corporations and should not be given. The 
 Sherman Law is more clear and workable than many people will 
 admit, but it can be improved upon. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, a Federal license law only under certain circum- 
 stances, and an Interstate Trade Commission if two commissions 
 are necessary. Disturbance in business has been due to excess 
 of business conducted on unfair terms. The people know some- 
 thing is wrong, but don't know how to go to work to right 
 things. They are bound to find relief in some way, if not in 
 the best way. 
 
 E. Q. Trowbridge, Banker, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to make it clear 
 and workable. I consider a return to old competitive methods 
 as feasible, in a degree. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. Trade unions should by no means be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Law. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. Economic conditions and political agita.- 
 tion are mainly responsible for business disturbance. 
 
 F. H. Chalmers, President, Farmers National Bank, Salem, 
 
 Va. 
 
 Prosecutions under the Sherman Act and uncertainty as to 
 legislation by Congress are, in my judgment, the causes of dis- 
 turbed business conditions. Federal incorporation should pro- 
 vide for examinations by representatives of the government, 
 just as national banks are now, and along similar lines. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended, providing for Federal incor- 
 poration for all corporations doing an interstate business. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 C. H. Eighmey, President First National Bank of 
 Dubuque, Iowa. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I do not believe in holding companies, and I 
 favor laws for the government regulation of capitalization 
 and for the creation of an Interstate Trade Commission to 
 permit agreements which regulate production, etc., under suit- 
 able public control, and to provide for publicity, as applied to 
 commercial corporations engaged in interstate commerce. 
 
253 
 
 Edward King, President of the National Bank of Lawrence 
 County ; also President and Treasurer of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Engineering Works, New Castle, Pa. 
 
 I have never seen a man whom I thought was competent 
 to give an enlightened opinion on the causes of disturbances in 
 business. I suspect there are several causes. A friend whis- 
 pers in my ear that there are too many people in this country 
 who are non-producers, getting their living out of the work 
 of others. I think it feasible to a great extent to return to 
 what are commonly known as old competitive methods in busi- 
 ness. I think that railroads . should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, and that combinations of farmers should be law- 
 ful. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 DeWitt D. Barlow, Vice-President, Atlantic Gulf and 
 Pacific Company, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law is sufficiently clear and workable; hon- 
 est compliance is not difficult, whereas evasion is. It should 
 not be amended as yet. Try it a while longer in the light of 
 the decisions. It is difficult to say what has caused disturbed 
 business conditions. I think, however, the following things had 
 little or nothing to do with it: (a) Eoosevelt; (6) the Sher- 
 man Law. Contrariwise, that the following had much to do 
 with it: (a) Increased gold production; (&) the diminished 
 and diminishing standard of thrift throughout the country. 
 The last affliction goes commonly by the name of "high cost 
 of living." I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. M. Holley, President State Bank of La Crosse, La Crosse, 
 Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be amended so as to render it 
 definite and capable of clear and explicit interpretation. I do 
 not favor a national incorporation law, unless the Sherman 
 Act can be so altered as to effect the same end. In regard to 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, I think I should prefer to 
 have the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission so 
 extended as to do the work that would be done by a Trade Com- 
 mission. Uncertainty as to State and national legislation and 
 the demagogic agitation of the so-called reformers are disturb- 
 ing the business interests of the country. 
 
 B. W. Spencer, President People's Bank and Trust Com- 
 pany, Passaic, N. J. 
 
 I am heartily in favor of the policy and program of our 
 President, William H. Taft, and believe that if his recommenda- 
 tions are carried out by legislation, the country will be greatly 
 benefited and the growth of socialism checked. 
 
254 
 
 C. M. Clark, Treasurer The Bradstreet Company, etc., New 
 York. 
 
 Lack of confidence, suits by the government and uncertainty 
 of interpretations of the Sherman Law and iiicompetency are 
 causes of the present disturbed business conditions. A national 
 incorporation law would be useless as long as States exert their 
 individual rights. It would not be feasible to attempt to return 
 to old competitive methods. Times have changed, and eco- 
 nomic conditions prevent. I favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 Law. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Fred A. Dexter, President Orange National Bank, Presi- 
 dent and Treasurer of The Leavitt Machine Com- 
 pany, etc., Orange, Mass. 
 
 I attribute disturbed business conditions to the bad trusts 
 who have not squared their affairs to the Sherman Act and to 
 interference with business interests by men of small principle 
 and smaller abilities, who have succeeded in getting into our 
 legislative halls. A national incorporation act along the lines 
 governing corporations in Massachusetts would be a protection 
 to shareholders. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and work- 
 able. But additional legislation that will specify in a reason- 
 able way what constitutes restraint of trade might help matters. 
 
 G. L. Watson, Banking and Oil Producer, Parkersburg, 
 W. Va. 
 
 The trusts and extravagant living and spending of money 
 by individuals have brought about any disturbed business con- 
 ditions that exist. The Sherman Law should be repealed and 
 a law enacted to suit present conditions. If individual effort 
 and industry can be reached in no other way, a return to old 
 competitive methods would be advisable. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 J. A. Cragin, President First National Bank, Joplin, Mo. 
 
 Overcapitalization largely trying to earn dividends on un- 
 paid capital stock, commonly called water is responsible in no 
 small degree for such disturbance as exists in business. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended in such manner as to be 
 plainly understood, doing away with uncertainties. Combina- 
 tions of farmers should be permitted under the Sherman Act, 
 and railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I 
 favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
255 
 
 Chalmers Curtis, Vice-President and Cashier, First Na- 
 tional Bank of Petoskey, Petoskey, Mich. 
 
 I think the United States Supreme Court can make the 
 Sherman Law clear and workable. I do not consider it feasible 
 to return to old competitive methods. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended, as may prove to be needed. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a 
 national incorporation law. I think the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission could do the work suggested for an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Business disturbance is due to "watered" stock,, 
 fake stocks sold to the people and the general belief that the 
 people's interests have not been safeguarded by law. The gov- 
 ernment should most decidedly regulate capitalization and pro- 
 vide for publicity for commercial corporations. 
 
 Charles H. Preston President of Danvers Savings Bank 
 (also Farmer), Danvers, Mass. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale doubtless exist; but the saving in many cases is used to 
 pay dividends on " watered " stock, or stock representing no 
 property. If the consumer received his share of the saving, 
 there would be less complaint. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation requiring national incorporation 
 for companies engaged in interstate business. I am opposed to 
 holding companies. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation, and laws should be passed applying publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations. 
 
 William H. Sandford, President The First National Bank, 
 Patton, Pa. 
 
 Drastic action of the government in dealing with certain 
 large corporations; uncertainty on the part of business men 
 generally as to the effect of recent decisions regarding the Sher- 
 man Law; the policy of labor unions; and the increased cost 
 of living are all factors in business disturbance. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, a Federal license system and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should not 
 be repealed, but it should be amended to create a commission 
 with power to regulate and limit exce.ssive profits of corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 John T. Mott, President First National Bank, Oswego, N.Y. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation covering national incorporation 
 for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I also favor 
 government regulation of capitalization and publicity for com- 
 mercial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission 
 and Federal license. The Sherman Law should be repealed. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
256 
 
 Harry Lee Taft, Banking, Pearsons-Taft Land Credit Com- 
 pany, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The suspicions aroused in the minds of the public; the un- 
 certainty confronting large enterprises as to just what may 
 be necessary to conform to the spirit of the law, and an undue 
 expansion of credits have caused disturbed business conditions. 
 The Sherman Law should be made so clear in its purposes 
 and requirements as to need no outside interpretation. I favor 
 a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 W. J. Covil, Lawyer and President First National Bank, 
 Webster City, Iowa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and should be 
 amended so as to meet modern requirements of business and 
 remove all uncertainty. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, and combinations of farmers 
 should be permitted. I favor national incorporation, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Present disturbed 
 business conditions are due to too much political agitation. 
 
 J. F. Ebeling, Cashier Quarter Savings Bank, Wheeling, 
 W. Va. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to too much " water." 
 Every Tom-Dick-and-Harry corporation from Wall Street down 
 to Wheeling has capitalized its future earnings. I favor Fed- 
 eral license for corporations engaged in interstate commerce. 
 The government should regulate capitalization. I also favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission and laws that call for publicity 
 applied to commercial corporations. I regard the Sherman Law 
 as clear and workable, and do not favor its amendment. 
 
 L. A. Williamson, President Wells County Bank, Bluffton, 
 Ind. 
 
 Trust prosecutions and uncertainty regarding tariff legisla- 
 tion are chief causes of any disturbance that now exists in busi- 
 ness. I favor national incorporation for companies engaged 
 in interstate commerce and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and publicity 
 should be applied to commercial corporations. 
 
 T. J. Hansen, Cashier, The Grand Island National Bank, 
 Grand Island, Neb. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and should be 
 amended to make it clear. I do not consider it feasible to 
 return to old competitive methods. 1 favor national incorpo- 
 ration and an Interstate Trade Commission. Unfair treatment 
 of the trusts or large combinations is the chief cause of present 
 disturbed business conditions. 
 
257 
 
 F. S. Jerome, President The First National Bank, Nor- 
 wich, Conn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to permit any 
 ordinary business understanding its intent. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Uncertainty of acts of the present administration, and con- 
 sequent delay and confusion to general business in connection 
 with the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is mainly responsible 
 for business disturbance. 
 
 E. Key, President First National Bank, Marshall, Tex. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. It should re- 
 ceive any amendments likely to make it a more workable instru- 
 ment. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates and trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act. Combinations of farmers, either 
 to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher prices, should 
 not be lawful. I strongly favor a national incorporation law 
 and Federal license, and I favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 I. P. Pardee, President Hazleton National Bank, Hazleton, 
 
 Pa. 
 
 
 
 I believe Federal laws should be enacted to prevent restraint 
 of trade, but not to restrain trade. The Sherman Law is not 
 clear and workable. I favor a national incorporation law. Ad- 
 ditional legislation is needed to render the Sherman Act not 
 so entirely destructive of all large business and corporations. I 
 believe in holding companies to a very limited extent, regulated 
 by Federal laws. 
 
 J. T. Wettack, President First National Bank, Coffeyville, 
 Kan. 
 
 Regulation and supervision are the needs of the hour. Gov- 
 ernment's effort to restore competition is a fraud and, while 
 doing injury to the public, is of no service whatever, except 
 to lawyers and court officers. The Sherman Law should be 
 repealed. I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 C. C. Bloomfield, President Union Bank, Jackson, Mich. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. Government should control capitalization. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so that it will clearly state what 
 it means and does not mean, thereby doing away with the 
 present uncertainty. I favor national incorporation and Federal 
 license. 
 
R. W. Schmeer, Cashier United States National Bank, 
 Portland, Ore. 
 
 Laws should be enacted that would clearly define the rights 
 of corporations and protect the people. In so far as interference 
 by the government is concerned, it should be of the least pos- 
 sible character. I prefer national incorporation for companies 
 engaged in interstate commerce. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization, and minority stockholders should be protected 
 by suitable legislation providing for publicity of corporate 
 affairs. 
 
 James R. Magoffin, Banker, New York City. 
 
 I am an individualist. I believe in a representative form 
 of government, and I believe in a low tariff, and think that a 
 substantial reduction in the tariff would counteract difficulties 
 arising from huge combinations of capital. Thus deprived of 
 their monopolistic features and power to fix prices, we would 
 have no special reason to fear them. I do not favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. With competition this is unneces- 
 sary. Let the best man win. 
 
 W. L. Threlkeld, Cashier Lexington Banking & Trust 
 Company, Lexington, Ky. 
 
 I favor the repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a national incorporation law. I am not clear as to Federal 
 license or an Interstate Trade Commission. I am opposed to 
 holding companies. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion only in connection with corporations doing an interstate 
 business. State regulations should provide for other corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 C. H. Brownell, Banking, but also considerably interested 
 in Manufacturing and Farming, Citizens National 
 Bank, Peru, Ind. 
 
 In my opinion, the fundamental questions to be settled in 
 this country relate to the tariff and the currency, and if these 
 were properly disposed of, most of the other questions would 
 answer themselves, and any additional legislation which would 
 be necessary would be very simple. 
 
 John B. Purcell, President, First National Bank, Richmond, 
 Va. 
 
 I believe that the Sherman Law should be repealed, and 
 that corporations engaged in interstate commerce can best be 
 regulated by a system analogous to that by which the national 
 banks of the United States are now controlled and regulated. 
 
259 
 
 William Houk, President, The Conqueror Trust Company, 
 Joplin, Mo. 
 
 Universal mania to get rich quick; overcapitalization and 
 stock jobbing; too much power in the hands of a very few men 
 by reason of excessive wealth; too much harassing of all cor- 
 porations ; general feeling of uncertainty as to what may happen 
 next, and a determination to make no new ventures or impor- 
 tant investments all these are factors in creating business un- 
 rest. Also the policy of the railroads and other great corpora 
 tions in making no improvements,, extensions or betterments, 
 not absolutely required, tends to aggravate disturbed conditions 
 
 Henry C. Fry, President, First National Bank, and Glass 
 Manufacturer, Rochester, Pa. 
 
 Want of good business judgment in national legislation, po- 
 litical agitation, newspaper sensations and uncertainty as to the 
 political character of the next administration, as well as the 
 general weakness of the present administration, compared with 
 the former one, are the causes of disturbed business conditions. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 Except in some large corporations there has been no change in 
 competition in business. 
 
 Charles C. Haring, President Quakertown National Bank, 
 Quakertown, Pa. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business, and additional legislation giving the government 
 control over large combinations. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization; laws should be passed applying publicity to 
 commercial corporations. The Sherman Law should be made 
 clear in its terms. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 George T. Smith, President First National Bank, Jersey 
 City, N. J. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that the whole 
 people may be able to recognize and understand what it means 
 to each and every one. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 If the law is made clear, there is no necessity for an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. The uncertainty of status under the pres- 
 ent law is the cause of disturbed business conditions. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 L. A. Bigger, Dealer in Bonds, Hutchinson, Kans. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The fixed price of gold in face of its increased 
 production and of improved methods for producing it is one of 
 the causes of disturbed business conditions. 
 
260 
 
 Blake Bros. & Co., Bankers and Brokers, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Too much money tied up in fixed form in 1907, when there 
 had also been too rapid expansion, accounts for existing disturb- 
 ance in business. Becovery from the effect has been slow and 
 will not be complete till the business men of the country are 
 sure where they stand and that they will not be hurt. Altered 
 conditions, due to sudden and ill-advised legislation, also account 
 for much of the disquietude among business men. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law and advocate Federal incorporation 
 for concerns doing an interstate business. 
 
 George S. Macrum, The National Bank of Western Penn- 
 sylvania, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are world-wide and caused 
 largely by the transition from old conditions to new; by poli- 
 tics ; by social and other influences. Agitation and unwise legis- 
 lation have had an irritating effect in this country. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law. We have other laws that cover 
 anything within reason that it does. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Remsen Rushmore, President, The City Savings Bank, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Lack of positive knowledge by large business interests as 
 to whether or not they are doing business legally under the 
 Sherman Law is the cause of any existing disturbance in busi- 
 ness. It ought not to be difficult to pass a law which would 
 send a criminal to prison, without also ruining a corporation 
 with which he is identified. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 C. T. Richardson, Richardson, Norton & Co., Brokers, New 
 York. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, because if 
 it were repealed something worse would probably take its place 
 and then business would have to endure more years of uncer- 
 tainty. I do not favor amending the Sherman Law, for the 
 present at least, but would prefer to wait and see what the 
 effect of the Supreme Court's decision would be on the large 
 business of the country. 
 
 E. H. Coombs, President, Bank of the Monongahela Valley, 
 Morgantown, W. Va. 
 
 Business disturbance has been caused by the action of the 
 Federal authorities against large corporations of the country. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
261 
 
 Charles H. Patrick, President and Treasurer, but retired 
 from active business, New York City. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are caused (1) by 
 lack of confidence; (2) extravagance; (3) Socialism; (4) 
 strikes. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable 
 and consider it feasible to return to competitive methods. I 
 do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, but possibly some 
 amendment might be desirable. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Alfred E. Hamill, Commercial Paper, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are largely caused by over- 
 expansion. Our railroads, our industrial concerns and enter- 
 prises of all sorts are trying to do too much at once. We are 
 all in the same boat individuals as well as corporations. 
 
 In my opinion certain work can be best done by great com- 
 binations without competition. They should, however, be regu- 
 lated. Combinations, whether of capital or labor, should re- 
 ceive similar treatment. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 E. W. Bowen & Co., Bankers, Delphi, Ind. 
 
 Extravagance in living and high taxes are unsettling busi- 
 ness. The middleman is also a factor. Eggs are eggs when 
 delivered in an auto touring car. 
 
 * The people are buying untaxable bonds city, county, state 
 and government at a low rate of interest, in order to avoid 
 taxes, making the balance of the property to bear all the bur- 
 dens of government. This is bad, and creates unrest among 
 
 i IIP ppoplo. 
 
 E. Keator, President, First National Bank, Cbrtland, N. Y. 
 
 Business unrest is due to politics and sentiment. About so 
 many years of prosperity then there grows in the minds of 
 the American people a spirit of unrest. Providence has blest 
 this country in every way, and I can only say to those who are 
 dissatisfied, "Have faith!" This country is all 0. K. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended so that corporations can un- 
 derstand it and govern themselves accordingly. 
 
 Herman Engelbach, President First National Bank, (also 
 Lumber), Arenzville, 111. 
 
 Too much of the nation's wealth in the hands of Rocke- 
 feller, Morgan & Company, along with too much agitation 
 of the " direct to the consumer" problem, are the causes of dis- 
 turbed business conditions. The Sherman Law ought to be 
 repealed. If amended, it should be made fair and just. I favor 
 a national incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
262 
 
 Fred C. McGill, Cashier, Oil City National Biank, Oil City, 
 Pa. 
 
 I favor the amendment of the Sherman Law in view of the 
 fact that business conditions and competitions have changed ma- 
 terially since it was passed. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. We need a central 
 government bank, with branches capable of coping with the 
 needs of each district. Overproduction, high tariffs, extravagant 
 living, but principally unsound currency and banking laws are 
 the causes of business disturbance. 
 
 Edward Burns, Vice-President, American Exchange 
 National Bank, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Act and threatened revision of the tariff are 
 leading factors in business uneasiness. The great mass of the 
 business of the country, from farming up, is still done under 
 old competitive methods and it is a mistake, therefore, to assume 
 that the business of the country is in the grasp of great com- 
 binations. The Sherman Law should have a thorough trial, 
 and upon the result of that trial should depend future legis- 
 lation in that direction. 
 
 Abram M. Hyatt, Vice-President, Lincoln Trust Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. We need a 
 national incorporation law or other Federal law, making clear 
 as to how business in a large way should be carried on. I pre- 
 fer national incorporation to Federal license, and I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The present disturbed conditions 
 in business are due to lack of knowledge of the Sherman Law 
 and the desire to handle business in a large way. 
 
 Alexander M. Hudnut, Broker in Stocks and Bonds, New 
 York City. 
 
 I believe in the repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and 
 all other antiquated, ambiguous and grotesque laws which make 
 the United States commercially the laughing stock of all the 
 nations of the world. If we have laws affecting business, let 
 them be clear, specific and definite, impossible to be miscon- 
 strued or misunderstood. 
 
 A. F. Dawson, President, First National Bank, Davenport, 
 Iowa. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are due to too much 
 government interference with business and too much doubt re- 
 garding the interpretation of laws which, I believe, the great 
 majority desire to obey. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. I think that trade unions 
 should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 
263 
 
 Leslie M. Shaw, First Mortgage Guarantee & Trust Com- 
 pany, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 It has taken twenty years to get the Sherman Law to its 
 present state of interpretation. Why amend, repeal it or do 
 more than go on? It has never failed to fit the case yet and 
 it will not fail. I believe the Sherman Law to be clear and 
 workable. It should not now be amended. For God's sake, 
 let it be tested out as now interpreted and get one or two days' 
 rest. I do not now favor a national incorporation or a Federal 
 license law. Give us a rest! 
 
 Thomas Thorson, President First National Bank, and Re- 
 publican National Committeeman, Canton, South 
 Dakota. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as fairly 
 clear and workable. I consider it feasible to return to old com- 
 petitive methods in business. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended by prison sentences for violators. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. In our locality a shortage of crops has caused what- 
 ever disturbance exists in business. 
 
 C. E. Witmer, First National Bank, Greenville, Pa. 
 
 Excessive prices could be largely regulated by adjustment 
 of the tariff. The trusts have brought themselves into their 
 present predicament by antagonizing tariff industries and piling 
 up large earnings principally for stock manipulation. If they 
 would forget the stock market entirely, the consumer would have 
 less grounds for complaint. The government should have super- 
 vision over corporations dealing in commodities regarded as 
 necessaries of life, controlling, say, 40 per cent, thereof. 
 
 H. P. Dowling, Vice-President, The Shelby County State 
 Bank, Harlan, Iowa. 
 
 I think the Interstate Commission, with full powers to regu- 
 late large combinations doing interstate business, is the best 
 method of solving the corporation problem. The exploitation of 
 investors through overcapitalization has been the worst evil. 
 Large combinations are necessary, but should be properly regu- 
 lated. 
 
 John Barbey, President Keystone National Bank, Reading, 
 Pa. 
 
 I favor a Federal license for State corporations doing an 
 interstate business. The Federal license should not conflict with 
 State legislation. I believe in holding companies. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed, but if it remains in force, trade unions 
 should be excepted from its operation. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
264 
 
 M. B. Wellborn, President First National Bank, Anniston, 
 Ala. 
 
 There is nothing especially the matter with business. We 
 have always had dull periods this is simply one of them. 
 Every one is employed, and the people are doing well. I regard 
 the Sherman Law as clear and workable. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the Sherman Act. Combinations of farmers also 
 should be treated as lawful. Let the producer get all he can. 
 
 Paul E. Havens, Leavenworth National Bank, Leaven- 
 worth, Kan. 
 
 Demagogues who are inciting a spirit of unrest and preju- 
 dice against all combinations of capital, and who are thereby 
 promoting the growth of socialism, are in a large degree re- 
 sponsible for existing dissatisfaction. The Sherman Law should 
 have provisions made so definite that judicial action would be 
 unnecessary in determining what combinations are harmful and 
 what are beneficial to the general public. 
 
 Wirt Wright, President, The National Stockyards National 
 Bank, National Stockyards, 111. 
 
 Uncertainty as to tariff legislation and as to their legal 
 status under the Sherman Act keeps business enterprises in 
 an unsettled condition. Another cause of disturbance is that po- 
 litical conditions abroad are also unsettled, thereby interfering 
 with the export trade. Federal incorporation and supervision 
 of enterprises engaged in interstate commerce ought to be sub- 
 stituted for the Sherman Law. 
 
 Samuel M. Smith, Merchants and Savings Bank, Janesville, 
 Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made more definite so as not 
 to leave the application of it to be based on a " rule of reason " 
 of the Supreme Court. This makes too much uncertainty for 
 business to take in consideration. Publicity of public corpora- 
 tions is a good thing, and I am inclined to think also that a 
 national incorporation law would help to put matters right. I 
 am not in favor of any more commissions. 
 
 Wm. L. Baker, Minnehaha National Bank, Sioux Falls, 
 S. D. 
 
 I am in favor of giving the government more control, with- 
 in reason, of the affairs of corporations. At the same time, I 
 am fully alive to the bad results of agitation by politicians with 
 a view only to their personal aggrandizement. There should 
 be an Interstate Trade Commission with powers not unlike 
 those of the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
265 
 
 P. Henry Woodward, President Dime Savings Bank, Vice- 
 President, Connecticut General Life Insurance Com- 
 pany, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 A good deal of our trouble has come from the rivalry of 
 States (for revenue purposes) in chartering corporations with 
 the privilege of defying the laws of other States and otherwise 
 performing acts which offend our sense of right and justice. 
 Whence can come deliverance? Quis custodes custodiet? Who 
 shall watch the watchmen? Will politicians acting from Wash- 
 ington be any better than those acting from Trenton or Albany ? 
 Can our complex natures be radically changed by law? 
 
 The American Trust and Savings Company, Bankers, 
 N. H. Fairbanks, Pres., Springfield, Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to attacks by dema- 
 gogues, yellow journals and political jackasses on large and suc- 
 cessfully conducted corporate businesses; the preaching to the 
 unfortunate and unsuccessful about fancied wrongs inflicted 
 by the successful man or large business corporation upon them ; 
 the wild preachings by Socialists to the laborers and unem- 
 ployed. An army of these preachers are found every night 
 upon the streets of the cities and towns throughout the country. 
 
 Frank Bailey, Vice-President Title Guarantee and Trust 
 Company, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, but if not repealed, 
 it ought to be amended so it can be understood. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license 
 law. 
 
 Political agitation is the chief cause of the present disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 N. W. Harris, President, Harris Trust & Savings Bank, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The large corporations have known the conditions of the 
 Sherman Law, and the Supreme Court decisions are not im- 
 posing heavy fines or taking away property from them for vio- 
 lation, and in fact are treating them more lightly than is usually 
 the case where the laws of the country are violated, and espec- 
 ially is this the case of the Tobacco Trust. 
 
 Walter S. Reed, Vice-President and Cashier, First National 
 Bank, Corning, N. Y. 
 
 Too many laws; too many investigations, so-called; too 
 much uncertainty as to what is lawful and as to what the 
 future may bring about, are the causes of business unrest. 
 The Sherman Law should be made less radical and should ex- 
 plain what business may do and may not do. I am in favor 
 of an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
266 
 
 Geo. W. Burton, President National Bank of La Crosse, 
 La Crosse, Wis. 
 
 Causes of disturbed business conditions : 
 
 1. Tariff agitation. 
 
 2. Uncertainty as to what big business may or may not 
 do lawfully. 
 
 3. A spirit of unrest which manifests itself in labor 
 troubles, the activity of agitators, and the eagerness of pseudo- 
 reformers to get into the limelight. 
 
 The great need of the American people to-day is a large 
 dose of the plain horse-sense which distinguished our forefathers. 
 
 Jerome Tourtellotte, Treasurer, Putnam Savings Bank, Put- 
 nam, Conn. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to extravagance 
 and investment in fake enterprises by poor people, mainly. 
 
 The Congressmen, as statesmen, at the time of the passage 
 of the Sherman Act, were the peers of like men in the present 
 day and age. Their acumen for weighing the intricacy of 
 law and the selfishness of human nature was above par. Their 
 ability to see into the future was above par. If the teeth are 
 allowed to be withdrawn from that act, the confusion will be 
 doubled and the unrest also. 
 
 Ambrose Cramer, Banking, etc., Chicago, 111. 
 
 Enforcement of the Sherman Law; suits brought for po- 
 litical purposes; attacks upon corporations; national, State 
 and municipal non-business men attempting to legislate busi- 
 ness; the tariff, fear of the growing craze for change, and its 
 effect upon investments, all tend to unsettle business condi- 
 tions. We need constructive laws, a law that defines a well 
 adopted, honest corporation from a dishonest one, and that 
 would secure a square deal for labor and property. 
 
 A. Goepel, President, Germania Savings Bank, Brooklyn, 
 N. Y. 
 
 Uncertainty as to what, or who next, is disturbing the busi- 
 ness of the country. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, 
 but if it is to be amended,. I would refer to the German law 
 " against indecent competition in business." I favor a national 
 incorporation law and Federal license law. 
 
 F. Ernest Cramer, President, Broadway National Bank, St. 
 Louis, Mo. 
 
 The present policy of unreasonably harassing almost every 
 Large business enterprise by continued governmental prosecu- 
 tion is most disturbing to business. I do not favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law, which I regard, as now interpreted, as 
 being clear and workable. 
 
267 
 
 Emerson Chamberlin, Retired Member of the Stock Ex- 
 change, New York City. 
 
 Uncertainty in regard to the Sherman Law is the principal 
 cause of business disturbance. There are also many others. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. The 
 railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act. They are the worst combinations. 
 
 H. C. Perrine, President, First National Bank, South 
 Amboy, N. J. 
 
 It would seem to me best that no limit should be placed 
 on the holdings or manner of doing business by individuals. 
 Whether an individual should or should not sell, should not be 
 compulsory. 
 
 If there were no trusts or illegal combinations there would 
 be plenty of competition. We should have a law allowing any 
 individuals or companies to build parallel and competing lines 
 to any extent that the projectors thought best. 
 
 John T. Manson, President The Yale National Bank, New 
 Haven, Conn. 
 
 Suits under the Sherman Law, political agitation and fear 
 of tariff changes are the disturbing elements in business. The 
 Sherman Law is not clear and workable and ought to be 
 amended, but not repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. I favor a Federal license law and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Harry H. Zobel, Secretary, Zobel Investment Company, 
 Alameda, Cal. 
 
 Concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of 
 irresponsible men is the cause of business disturbance. Thn 
 country needs a change of administration. The Sherman Law 
 ought to be amended to enable the Federal Government to have 
 clearer supervision of all corporations engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 A. G. Kendall, Farmers Exchange National Bank, San Ber- 
 nardino, Cal. 
 
 Agitation consequent upon the Sherman Law, which, it 
 seems, cannot be avoided, is mainly responsible for business dis- 
 turbance. We regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 Combinations of farmers should be regarded as lawful. We 
 favor a national incorporation law. As for Federal license, it 
 should be used only for registration. 
 
268 
 
 S. F. Estabrook, Banker, Boston, Mass. 
 
 In my judgment the average business man is afraid to do 
 anything for fear he will be sued and arrested and possibly put 
 in jail. Almost all of our business men are square and honest. 
 Somebody must tell us just what we can do. and keep within 
 the law, and the government officials must stop threatening 
 everybody. They talk too much. When a man or corporation 
 does go wrong, go for them, but don't threaten anybody and 
 everything. That's what has undermined business. 
 
 J. W. Pero, President, Colonial Savings Bank and Trust 
 Company, Fremont, Ohio. 
 
 The business of the country and its currency system have 
 been made the football of demagogues and politicians to such 
 an extent that a person with any means is foolish to risk his 
 money in any public utility or industrial enterprise, while the 
 younger generation is growing into maturity with the ideas that 
 some one owes them a living whether they work for it intelli- 
 gently and faithfully, or listen to the demagogues and try to 
 live by their wits. 
 
 William G. Willcox, Insurance, New York. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business con- 
 ditions ? 
 
 Primarily the monopoly of land and other natural resources 
 giving their owners an unfair proportion of the products of in- 
 dustry, and alteration of standard of value due to increased gold 
 supply, causing increased cost of living and general unrest. 
 
 Crude and unwise attempts to control business by legisla- 
 tion (mainly obstructive rather than constructive), and an era 
 of private extravagance may be mentioned as secondary causes. 
 
 Waldo Newcomer, President, National Exchange Bank, 
 Baltimore, Md. 
 
 We attempted to recover too rapidly after the panic of 1907, 
 and have a natural setback. On top of it came attacks on big 
 corporations under the Sherman Act, with little knowledge on 
 the part of either the government or the corporations as to 
 what was legal or illegal, even the United States Supreme Court 
 being in doubt. A terrible growth of socialistic sentiment and 
 labor unrest have made conditions more serious. 
 
 W. H. Purnell, Cashier, First National Bank, Kenosha, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make clear the con- 
 ditions under which business men may operate, especially those 
 who are engaged in large corporations, and to remove the dis- 
 couragement which now rests upon many honorable men in 
 business. I favor a national incorporation law. Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
269 
 
 Eugene Levering, National Bank of Commerce, Baltimore, 
 Md. 
 
 Present business disturbance is a natural and hopeful revul- 
 sion of the country at large from the " high finance " methods 
 practiced by many of our large industrial and railroad corpora- 
 tions. As " nothing is settled until it is settled right/ 7 so the 
 " so-called " present disturbed business conditions will continue, 
 varying in phase and times, of course, until the rights of the 
 individual are by law fully protected against the heretofore 
 growing power, often legalized, and greed of our large corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 C. E, Layman, Broker, Troutville, Va. 
 
 The attempt of the government to regulate large corpora- 
 tions which had heretofore conducted their business with com- 
 parative immunity from interference is responsible, in a great 
 degree, for existing uncertainty. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended so as to make it clearer ; to cut out the " unreason- 
 able" feature and to make it possible for the authorities to 
 prosecute prominent offenders, the same as any other violators 
 of the law. 
 
 A New York Trust Company. 
 
 We do not regard business as very much disturbed. The 
 causes of such unrest as exists are principally economic, i. e., 
 extravagance of government (pensions, navy, commissions, bu- 
 reaus, etc.) and extravagance, also, on the part of States, mu- 
 nicipalities and individuals. Also within recent months the 
 critical period in the disposition of the Oil and Tobacco cases, 
 the starting of the Steel suit, and the increasing tendency to 
 throw " big business " into politics. 
 
 William C. Heppenheimer, President The Bergen and 
 Lafayette Trust Company, Jersey City, N. J. 
 
 Politics, and politics only, is the cause of business disturb- 
 ance. This country has grown great, in spite of the politician, 
 and not because of him. Leave business men alone. If Con- 
 gress and the State Legislatures would only adjourn for two 
 years, we would have the greatest business revival this country 
 has ever seen. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 F. E. Burgess, President, Howard National Bank, Burling- 
 ton, Vt. 
 
 Too much talk about what is going to be done to the cor- 
 porations, but which either is not or cannot be done, and tpo 
 much politics are disturbing factors in the business situation. 
 The Sherman Law should be made plain enough for all to un- 
 derstand it. I favor a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
270 
 
 Elbridge G. Snow, President Home Insurance Company, 
 New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law should either be repealed or amended. 
 If amended,, it should define the extent of lawful restraint, 
 which at present seems to be unknown, until defined in indi- 
 vidual cases by the courts. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. There should be no privileged class and, 
 therefore, no exemption for trade unions or farmers. 
 
 Thomas F. Balfe, President, Newburgh Savings Bank, New- 
 burgh, N. Y. 
 
 Too much interference with large corporations by the attor- 
 ney general and the probability of legislation seriously affect- 
 ing the tariff are the principal causes of business apprehension. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. Eail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Harold W. Stevens, President Hartford National Bank, 
 Hartford, Conn. 
 
 Business disturbance is largely due to " social evolution," 
 analogous to "growing pains." The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to make it, at least, impossible for any corporation 
 to issue stock otherwise than for cash (money) or actual prop- 
 erty no "good will." Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. As at present devised, I favor 
 national incorporation. Am opposed to holding companies. 
 
 Walston H. Brown, Walston H. Brown & Bros., Brokers, 
 New York City. 
 
 I do not believe that the Sherman Law can be made ap- 
 plicable to present conditions; therefore I favor its repeal and 
 the passage of an act similar to the English or German law 
 governing corporations. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. 
 
 Walter J. Burns, Resident Partner, Balfour, Guthrie & Co., 
 General Shipping Merchants, Portland, Ore.; also 
 San Francisco, Seattle, etc. 
 
 The uncertainty regarding the interpretation that will be 
 put on the present laws causes business inquietude. The main 
 cause of combinations is the tariff. Modify it whenever com- 
 binations become noticeably powerful. I am for a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
271 
 
 Seymour Coman, Coman, Lanquist & Co., Bankers, Chi- 
 cago, 111. 
 
 Eoosevelt's recent article in the Outlook was on the right 
 track, in my opinion. The Sherman Law is clear enough so. 
 that aggregators of capital can keep out of trouble if they 
 wish. At the same time, it can be made more workable by 
 defining what they can do. The law should not be repealed 
 unless something better can be secured along the same general 
 lines. 
 
 Herbert A. Rhoades, President Dorchester Trust Company, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, and I favor a 
 national incorporation law, also an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion with powers not unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 M. A. O. Packard, President First National Bank, Plym- 
 outh, Ind. 
 
 The causes of present disturbance in business are, first and 
 chiefly, the interminable strife kept up by labor unions most 
 of them lawless and the oppressing onslaught on business by 
 the government and its representatives. 
 
 R. H. Ensign, Investor, Simsbury, Conn. 
 
 Largely trust suits under the Sherman Law are responsible 
 for business uncertainty. 
 
 Modern conditions have made large business necessary. The 
 big corporations should have a square deal. I see nothing but 
 harm for all classes, except lawyers, in the Sherman Law. 
 
 Thos. W. Barrett, Treasurer, Poughkeepsie Trust Company, 
 Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 
 
 It is my opinion that the National Civic Federation should 
 look well into conditions now existing in Germany and France, 
 where, I understand, they encourage the forming of great com- 
 binations in business and then foster and control the same. 
 
 Willis C. Allen, Mortgage Investments, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 The profits of all corporations controlling necessities, such 
 as transportation, water, gas, coal, meats, bread-stuffs, should 
 be limited to a liberal return on the actual investment, with 
 ample provision for depreciations. The tariff and lack of con- 
 fidence in the courts are the main causes of business unrest. 
 
 Wm. J. Lovejoy, Treasurer, Fulton Savings Bank, Fulton, 
 N. Y. ' 
 
 Many causes might be quoted as leading to the present dis- 
 turbed business conditions. The Sherman Law is not clear 
 and workable. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
272 
 
 L. G. Worden, President First National Bank, Merced, Cal. 
 
 Business conditions are exceedingly good here, could not be 
 better. I believe that corporations should be under Federal 
 supervision and unlawful competition stopped. I believe in hold- 
 ing companies under proper restriction and supervision. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, as well as a national 'incor- 
 poration law. 
 
 Harold Hardinge, Vice President and Cashier, Patapsco 
 National Bank, Ellicott City, Md. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made more 'explicit. Kail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Uncertainty 
 in regard to court decisions bearing on the Sherman Act are 
 causing hesitancy among business men. 
 
 E. Baumeister, of E. Baumeister & Co., Bankers, Asotin, 
 Wash. 
 
 Too many demagogues in politics are causing such business 
 disturbance as there is. The Sherman Law is clear and work- 
 able, and should be neither repealed nor amended for the pres- 
 ent. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 John Q. Lewis, Banker, Clinton, 111. 
 
 There has been too much agitation; too much injection of 
 selfish political activity and demagogism for the good of the 
 country, and if business is to prosper, every citizen should rise 
 to the level of patriotism and rebuke the agitators and selfish 
 politicians. 
 
 J. J. Mitchell, President Illinois Trust & Savings Bank, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law has some good features, but has not yet 
 been made clear and workable. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. 
 
 Edwin R. Fay & Sons, Bankers, Auburn, N. Y. 
 
 We favor repeal of the Sherman Law and enactment of a na- 
 tional incorporation law if that will insure once more business 
 confidence. The present business disturbance is due to political 
 interference with business. 
 
 I. O. Wood, President, City National Bank, Goshen, Ind. 
 
 I am in favor of the repeal of the Sherman Law and the 
 enactment of a new law, the provisions of which a layman may 
 be able to understand. The Sherman Law should be wiped off 
 the statute books. 
 
273 
 
 W. W. Morrison, President, The Continental Trust & Sav- 
 ings Bank Company, Toledo, Ohio. 
 
 Business is disturbed by too much regulation without proper 
 consideration of the difference between regulation and destruc- 
 tion. The Sherman Law should be amended so as to make it 
 possible to do business, or else it should be repealed. I favor a 
 national incorporation law. 
 
 Dudley Olcott, President Mechanics' and Farmers' Bank, 
 Albany, N. Y. 
 
 The bad judgment and unnecessary harshness of Mr. Wick- 
 ersham are largely responsible for present disturbed business 
 conditions. The Sherman Law should be either repealed or 
 amended. I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Everett L. Smith, Cashier, National Shoe and Leather Bank 
 of Auburn, Me. 
 
 Don't give us any more " commissions." Give business a 
 chance! There has been too much so-called government regu- 
 lation by officials without business qualifications or experi- 
 ence, their object being political effect. We favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. 
 
 Edwin A. Potter, Banker, American Trust Bank Building, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and am opposed to 
 a return to old competitive methods. The railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 T. Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., President Bay State Trust Co., 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Many different causes have led to present business uncer- 
 tainty, which will soon pass away. The Sherman Law should 
 be made clearer and more easily enforcible. We should have 
 either a national incorporation law or Federal license. 
 
 Perry P. Williams, Freight Broker, New York City. 
 
 The present conditions are not seriously disturbed except 
 for corporations in fear of dissolution for unfair methods. Busi- 
 ness seems generally good. Exports large. Money not yet cheap 
 enough to invite big speculation. 
 
 A. F. Vance, Jr., President, National Bank of Urbana, 
 Urbana, Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to Congress. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended so that ordinary people can 
 understand it. 
 
274 
 
 C. E. Floete, President, Armour State Bank, Armour, S. D. 
 
 What has caused disturbed business conditions? Taft and 
 Wickersham jumping on all business undertakings. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so that a man can tell what it 
 means without having to take it to a court to construe it, the 
 court possibly making it mean what Congress never intended 
 it to. 
 
 A. O. Paunack, Cashier, The Commercial National Bank, 
 Madison, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be amended so that it can be 
 interpreted by business men without having to pay fortunes in 
 fees to high priced counsel. Othenvise the law should be re- 
 pealed. 
 
 G. W. Dunton, President Sycamore National Bank, Syca- 
 more, 111. 
 
 Our laws should be such as to promote the utmost stability 
 in market values of stocks and bonds of large corporations, and 
 thereby encourage the widest possible distribution of the owner- 
 ship of such corporations among the common people. 
 
 E. L. Rogers, Rogers & Gould, Bankers & Brokers, New 
 York. 
 
 I favor the adoption of the so-called Aldrich currency plan; 
 the passage of a low tariff bill and a repeal of the Sherman 
 Anti-Trust Law, so that the business of the country may pro- 
 ceed. 
 
 The Union Trust Company, Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 Inflation, extravagance, uncertainty on account of undefined 
 laws, and fear of trouble that may follow the action of the gov- 
 ernment and the interpretation by the courts are causes of pres- 
 ent disturbance. 
 
 Frank H. Denman, President The Sonoma County Na- 
 tional Bank, Petaluma, Cal. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce. I believe in holding companies and in an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 State Banking and Trust Company, Sioux Falls, S. D. 
 
 Too much agitation is the cause of existing business uncer- 
 tainty. The laws should be clearly understood and equitably 
 enforced. 
 
 A. W. Mullins, Banker, Linneus, Mo. 
 
 The " West " generally has no disturbed business conditions. 
 
275 
 
 Hugh Henry, Lawyer and President of National Bank of 
 Bellows Falls, Vt., Chester, Vt. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business con- 
 ditions? Theodore Roosevelt,, more than all other causes com- 
 bined. 
 
 Robert E. Gillespie, President, Illinois State Trust Com- 
 pany, East St. Louis, 111. 
 
 Loafers,, politicians and agitators, too many laws and law- 
 makers have caused the present disturbed conditions. The Sher- 
 man Law should be made clear,, so that business men can ad- 
 just their affairs in conformity thereto. 
 
 Louis Windmuller, Banker, Insurance, etc., New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and we favor 
 a sensible modification of the same. 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 MERCHANTS. 
 
 Robert C. Ogden, Retired Retail Merchant, 125 East s6th 
 Street, New York City. 
 
 " Doubt, uncertainty, antagonism of the Federal government, 
 agitation by demagogues willing to sacrifice public interests for 
 private advantage, all tend to disturb business. 
 
 " Some authority is needed to interpret the law to honest 
 business men; to render co-operation possible; to combine in- 
 dustrial partnership with co-operation; to recognize the moral 
 equity of the wage-earner in the profits of his work. Capital 
 is and should be protected; managing ability should be re- 
 warded ; the working man has not yet had his hour." 
 
 Mr. Ogden is in favor of a national incorporation act, a 
 Federal license act, and an Interstate Trade Commission "to 
 help the honest to restrain the dishonest." He favors repeal 
 of the Sherman Law, and says that " old competitive methods 
 belong to a dead past." 
 
 Albert A. Sprague, President of Sprague, Warner & Co., 
 Wholesale Grocers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Commercial corporations have been the chief factors in the 
 growth and development of the country, and at the same time, 
 almost without exception, they have reduced costs to the con- 
 sumer. As such they should be fostered and encouraged by the 
 same protection and given the same rights as are granted to the 
 individual or the copartnership in the same kind of business. 
 
 Indiscriminate public antagonism to corporations, fostered 
 by an indiscriminate press and self-seeking politicians; uncer- 
 tainty as to the scope of the Anti-Trust Act, and agitation and 
 uncertainty regarding tariff action and anti-trust legislation on 
 the part of the Congress tend to hamper enterprise and to keep 
 business unsettled. The Sherman Law should be amended or 
 supplemented, so that an intelligent public can understand it 
 and know definitely what is a reasonable and what an unreason- 
 able " restraint of trade." Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, if it does not duplicate the expense and is not in con- 
 flict with State incorporation. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission, with limitations. It would be absurd to give the 
 government the power to fix prices on merchandise. 
 
 276 
 
277 
 
 A. C. Bartlett, President of Hibbard Spencer, Bartlett & 
 Co., Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law will never be satisfactorily workable 
 until the necessity for determining the legal status of each 
 individual case by submission to the courts is eliminated. If 
 aggregations of capital to an unlimited extent are to be permit- 
 ted as they must be under present conditions stifling of legiti- 
 mate competition must be prohibited, but the old competitive 
 methods would prove ruinous to any enterprises not employing 
 immense capital. 
 
 I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission with limita- 
 tions. No trade commission could successfully fix the prices 
 upon all manufactured articles from knitting pins to ocean 
 liners; nor could it intelligently or satisfactorily fix any prices. 
 The present disturbance is due to a combination of past extrav- 
 agance, doubt regarding the disposition of the government 
 (Federal and State) toward so-called trusts, the usual dullness 
 which precedes a presidential election, aggravated at this time 
 by extraordinary political disturbance, and a general reaction 
 from an extended period of prosperity. 
 
 A. E. Starr, Merchant, Zanesville, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that big business 
 may understand what they may do, as well as what they may not 
 do. I favor a national incorporation law, but only to secure uni- 
 formity among the States. The revenue should be collected by 
 the several States. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 not for interference with trade, but to supervise methods, correct 
 abuses and prosecute those who violate the laws. 
 
 Causes of disturbed business conditions are, too many elec- 
 tions; too much law-making; excessive taxation all of which 
 is reflected in the high cost of living, which is producing na- 
 tional unrest. Another cause is overexpansion along all lines 
 and an insufficient amount of money, both real and credit, to 
 take care of it. We have not yet emerged from the troubles of 
 1906, 1907 and 1908. We are convalescing and will be fortu- 
 nate if we pull through without a relapse. The business people 
 know these facts and have decided to wait. Yes, that's it, wait- 
 ing. That's the underlying cause. 
 
 I believe in laws that call for publicity where the stocks or 
 bonds are dealt in on the open market or by banks or brokers, 
 or where the people generally are trading and have a right to 
 know the workings of the business, particularly in the case of 
 railroads or large commercial institutions; but in the case of 
 close corporations, usually small businesses, owned by families 
 or friends, where seldom, if ever, the stock changes hands 
 in the case of such corporations I don't believe publicity does 
 any good. Neither should a business conducting interstate com- 
 merce be exempt from publicity simply because it may not be 
 incorporated, where corporations similarly situated are not 
 exempt. 
 
278 
 
 E, H. Outerbridge, Harvey & Outerbridge, Shipping and 
 Commission Merchants, New York. 
 
 I do not believe the Sherman Law as now interpreted is 
 sufficiently clear and workable., as many of the ablest lawyers 
 in the country seem to disagree as to its interpretation and ap- 
 plication, and to the lay minds of business men and corpora- 
 tion officers it is still an enigma. Possibly some working for- 
 mula may be developed under it after the Supreme Court has 
 ruled on more cases than have yet been decided, but the uncer- 
 tainty and delay, with the disturbing factor of the prosecutions, 
 would be a very expensive way to trade and commerce in arriv- 
 ing at the formula. 
 
 I presume if accurate statistics could be arrived at it would 
 be found that at least 90 per cent, of all the business of the 
 country is still done under free and competitive methods, and 
 I think it would be bold to say, in the light of this assumption, 
 that business cannot be safely and satisfactorily carried on in 
 that manner. If the immoral and illegal elements heretofore 
 practiced in open competition to secure advantages and crush 
 rivals, could be provided against, I think competitive methods 
 would be the most stimulating and best for the conduct of the 
 general business of manufacturing and merchandising, but I 
 believe in regulated monopoly for some forms of public serv- 
 ice corporations, particularly municipal corporations. Beyond 
 seeing that everyone can have an equal and fair chance, so far 
 as their abilities permit, I favor government having as little 
 to do with the conduct of business as possible. I would, there- 
 fore, favor laws which would give Federal supervision with a 
 Federal Appeal Commission with ample investigating powers, 
 but if government regulation goes beyond the exclusion of il- 
 legal and immoral practices and privileges, and the maintenance 
 of a square deal for all, it will inevitably tend to restrict or 
 discourage private enterprise and to create a demand for gov- 
 ernment ownership. 
 
 I would only favor repealing the Sherman Law when simple 
 but comprehensive legislation has been devised to eliminate 
 duress, illegal and immoral practices and privileges in conduct 
 of business upon competitive lines. 
 
 L. P. Larson, Manager, General Store and Farming, Bin- 
 ford, N. D. 
 
 General dissatisfaction exists on account of legislation held 
 up in Congress, causing the general public to believe they are 
 being discriminated against. The cost of "high living" is 
 also a cause of business disturbance. Many seem to have awak- 
 ened to the fact that they need to control their expenditures. 
 With a good increase in customers, better crops than last year 
 and good weather conditions, our sales do not show a corre- 
 sponding increase. 
 
270 
 
 B. F. Riter, Riter Bros. Drug Company, Logan, Utah. 
 
 Beginning with the agitation for tariff revision, which re- 
 sulted in the enactment of the Payne- Aldrich bill, the dissatis- 
 faction following over some of its schedules caused a continu- 
 ance of the agitation and consequent unsettled conditions in 
 all lines where the tariff is a factor. In addition were the hesi- 
 tancy and uncertainty as to what interpretation the Supreme 
 Court would put on the Sherman Act, and there still continues 
 a clash in public opinion as to the expediency of the decision 
 to cover the issues at stake. 
 
 Other causes of disturbance have been and are the demands 
 of labor for higher wages from those engaged in transportation, 
 and this in the face of a declining traffic, and increase of operat- 
 ing expenses in all other lines, with consequent decreased earn- 
 ings; the hostility of organized labor toward organized or cor- 
 porate wealth; the government suits for the enforcement of the 
 Sherman Act, causing a " hand-to-mouth " policy in buying and 
 producing on the part of industrial corporations; the adjust- 
 ment and segregation to comply with the law on the part of 
 the so-called trusts, presenting problems that are as intricate 
 as it would be to " unscramble eggs/' with the consequent effect 
 on labor, production and traffic; the uncertainty existing at the 
 present time over railroad rates as determined by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, and reversal by the Court of Commerce, 
 placing the railroad companies and traffic in general in a state 
 of hesitancy and uncertainty. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation of companies engaged in 
 in!erstate commerce, classifying same according to their char- 
 acter, and all to be under the control of several commissions. 
 I also favor Federal license, the fee incident to the same to take 
 the place of the present tax on corporations. 
 
 Exploitation of producers and consumers should be dealt 
 with by the creation of a commission with powers to determine 
 the merits of complaints, and by laws to punish offenses. I 
 favor laws not to absolutely prohibit holding companies, in so 
 far as it is necessary to prevent excessive and unreasonable 
 competition thus far and no further. Unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade should be dealt with by statutes expressly 
 forbidding certain specified practices. Capitalization should be 
 determined by a commission, which should also administer laws 
 relating to publicity as applied to corporate affairs. 
 
 Bulkley, Dunton & Co. (Paper), New York City. 
 
 Uncertainty as to tariff changes; uncertainty as to action by 
 legislative bodies concerning private business ; unreasonable de- 
 mands by trade unions ; and too much political interference with 
 business, are the causes of unrest. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended, or else some better law should be passed. The 
 amendment, or the new law, should provide for publicity and 
 government control of large corporations. 
 
280 
 
 Ed. V. Price & Co., Wholesale Custom Tailors, Chicago, 111. 
 
 There has been too much legislation. Irresponsible writers, 
 through the medium of magazines and newspapers, have been 
 attacking everything that would make their articles salable. 
 In addition to these attacks being malicious, the writers, in 
 many instances, have had little regard for the truth, but have 
 misstated facts and misconstrued incidents in order to make 
 their stories sensational and readable, and in our opinion their 
 chief and main object has been wholly to make money and not 
 to better conditions. A national incorporation law is badly 
 needed, and Federal license would do away with the necessity 
 of the Sherman Law. 
 
 If not repealed, the Sherman Law should be amended so as 
 not to interfere with large corporations doing a legitimate inter- 
 state business. As the law now stands, it is not clear and vir- 
 tually makes the court the sole supervisor of how business should 
 be conducted. The law should be clear and concise when 
 applied to business enterprises. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade 
 unions should be forced to incorporate and have some financial 
 responsibility, so that they will be obliged to live up to agree- 
 ments and contracts they enter into, which they do not do at 
 the present time. Farmers should be allowed to combine, with 
 reasonable restrictions. 
 
 James E. Brodhead, Lumber Merchant, Flemington, N. J. 
 
 If not repealed, the Sherman Law should be amended, par- 
 ticularly that part of it which makes it criminal for a layman 
 to violate a law which nine-tenths of the legal profession cannot 
 understand themselves. I favor national incorporation and 
 Federal license. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. 
 
 Political agitators, socialism, arrogant demands of unionism, 
 instigated by their leaders in the majority of cases, are causes of 
 business disturbance. All of which is further aggravated by 
 excessive or over production. The latter has and always will 
 be corrected by the unalterable law of supply and demand. 
 
 The foregoing statements are those of a layman and from 
 general observation and experience for the past forty-five years; 
 i. e., beginning as water boy, at fifteen years of age, on a gravel 
 train on railroad construction, in 1865; in charge of a com- 
 missary department on the Union Pacific Railroad, part of 
 1867-68; railroad construction from 1869 to 1875; a railroad 
 department purchasing agent, 1875 to 1879; and from that 
 date until the present time in the wholesale lumber business 
 or railroad supplies. In addition to above, for a number of 
 years past have had and still have a substantial interest in a 
 number of industrial enterprises, where large bodies of mostly 
 skilled men are employed as metal and pottery workers. 
 
281 
 
 A. Krakauer, President, Krakauer, Zork & Moye's Success- 
 ors (Inc.), El Paso, Tex. 
 
 I am decidedly of opinion that the Sherman Law should be 
 repealed altogether; therefore I do not want to express an 
 opinion as to the advisability of excepting trade unions from its 
 operation. I cannot see the difference between a combination 
 of farmers and one of manufacturers or merchants who hold 
 their products and stock of merchandise for higher prices and 
 make a combination with their fellow manufacturers or fellow 
 merchants as the case may be to accomplish that end. Why 
 should it be lawful in one case and not in the other? Labor 
 unions are, in my opinion, the biggest trust in the country. 
 They combine for the purpose of obtaining higher wages and 
 attempt to shut out competition absolutely by intimidation and 
 brute force; and still, no law can reach them,, simply because 
 politicians, with which this country is cursed, are afraid to lose 
 the votes of the laboring class if they should endeavor to legis- 
 late against the commitment of outrages by labor unions. 
 
 The continued knocking and hammering at corporations and 
 so-called " trusts " has undoubtedly brought on the present state 
 of affairs. 
 
 When we compare business conditions of six or seven years 
 ago, when business was good; when everybody made money and 
 prospered; when the laboring class had plenty work at good 
 wages; I say, when we compare these conditions with those pre- 
 vailing at present, when everybody, from the President of the 
 United States down to the chimney sweep, joins in the cry 
 " Down with the trusts ! ", " Down with corporations ! " the 
 reason for the depressed business conditions is easily explained. 
 Combination of capital at this age is as necessary as it was out 
 of place thirty or fifty years ago; and to make a comparison 
 between the good old ox-cart time and the present period of 
 steam and electricity is as absurd and ridiculous as anything 
 can be. 
 
 A national incorporation law that would eliminate the incor- 
 porations of the different States, which are oppressive in some 
 instances, would to a great extent, I believe, relieve the present 
 complex situation. 
 
 S. T. Harrison, Harrison-Headrick Hardware Company, 
 Memphis, Tex. 
 
 The Sherman Law might be amended to advantage. Stat- 
 utes forbidding specific practices in regard to unfair competition 
 and restraint of trade ought to be enacted. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and laws should be passed call- 
 ing for publicity as applied to commercial corporations. I favor 
 Federal license for companies engaged in interstate commerce, 
 and I also favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and 
 combinations of farmers should be lawful. 
 
282 
 
 D. L. Gore, President, D. L. Gore Company, Wholesale 
 Grocers, Wilmington, N. C. 
 
 You ask me, What causes the present discontent? In addi- 
 tion to the large financiers in New York and other parts of 
 the country not waiting for the panic patient to convalesce, but 
 starting large stock speculations and other things which many 
 of the people lost money by, and the great prosperity in the 
 West and South up to a year ago where cereals and cotton prices 
 had been and were then very high and are now much lower; 
 the people had rushed into land speculation as a specialty, and 
 other things on the side. Each farmer wanted all the land 
 that joined his, and the people in the towns and cities have 
 bought, and prices went up in their favor for years, while now 
 real estate in both country and city and town is lower, and the 
 speculators who are losing the small as well as the large are 
 mad with trusts or some other great monster, forgetting that 
 not the trusts, but the speculators themselves brought on their 
 own troubles and thereby lost money. Each individual grumbler 
 had better thank God for the good times we had and keep hard 
 at work now, and so be in the race when the next flood-tide 
 of good times comes. Then, again, too many young men think 
 they ought not to do manual labor, but to get easy clerical jobs. 
 Education without being taught to work is a mistake. 
 
 These are some of the things that bring the unrest. People, 
 as a rule, never go wild when they are busy ; so I fear our people 
 have not been as busy at hard and wholesome labor as they 
 should have been. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. The Sherman Law should be made' so plain that its 
 provisions will be easily understood and obeyed. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, and minority stockholders 
 should be protected. 
 
 Clayton T. Tullis, Snow-Tullis Hardware Company, Mont- 
 gomery, Ala. 
 
 Take about two-thirds of the gamblers in stock, cotton, wheat 
 and the rest, and put them to work on the rock pile or on a good 
 farm, and that will help some to put a stop to disturbance in 
 business. Lack of thorough knowledge of the Sherman Law; 
 too much power in the hands of a few men to dictate to the 
 balance of the United States regarding financial affairs, have 
 a great deal to do with disturbed conditions. The Sher- 
 man Law should be brought up to date to meet the present 
 requirements. It would be better for the railroads and also for 
 the shippers that the railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Combinations of farmers should be permitted 
 under supervision of an Interstate Trade Commission. I favor a 
 national incorporation law or a uniform incorporation law 
 adopted by all the States. I favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion, which I regard as the only solution of the problem. 
 
283 
 
 J. J. Hanshue, Wholesale Flour, etc., Lansing, Mich. 
 
 I believe that our Senate and House are wise enough to 
 improve the Sherman Law. As to old competitive methods, 
 most people are competing with each other. Why should the 
 strongest and shrewdest have privileges of monopoly? There is. 
 no harm in trying to improve the Sherman Law so as more 
 effectually to provide " equal opportunity for all, and special 
 privilege to none/' Trade unions should not be excepted from 
 the operation of the Sherman Act; neither should combinations 
 of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a crop for 
 higher prices; nor should boards of trade or stock exchanges. 
 
 Legitimate business is not much disturbed. So far as any 
 disturbance exists, it has been caused by the complications which 
 attend too much speculation. 
 
 I do not favor either Federal license or national incorpora- 
 tion. Leave the incorporation where it now lies. Influence the 
 States to make improvements, but do not further curtail the 
 rights and powers of the States. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are exaggerated. They are the stock argument of monop- 
 olists all over the world. A flour mill in a Kansas or Dakota 
 small town has every advantage of economy possessed by any 
 big city mill. Manufacturing as well as farming should benefit 
 as many people as possible. 
 
 In the old countries where monopoly and privilege prevail, 
 the people who are crushed out thereby can emigrate to newer 
 countries. By permitting monopoly, we are closing the door 
 of opportunity to millions of future stalwart young men, not 
 able to fall heirs to the monopolistic stocks. We are creating 
 classes of owners, hirelings and paupers the last two in awful 
 numbers. The mass of the people have no show against en- 
 trenched privilege. We can and should have a state of society 
 here in which all men may live and thrive without the necessity 
 of emigrating. 
 
 B. B. Cushman, The National Grocer Company, Detroit, 
 Mich. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my opinion, to the 
 effort of Federal authorities to curb combinations and to dis- 
 solve those whose strength has increased until it now measures 
 that of the United States government itself. Although mistakes 
 have been made (perhaps) by the procedure, and it might have 
 been possible to accomplish as much or more through milder 
 efforts, I question this. I think the opposition was so strongly 
 entrenched as to require the explosion of a good 16-inch gun, 
 to show them the effect of heavy artillery when properly 
 manned. I consider it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law most 
 assuredly, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
284 
 
 P. Weigel, Jr., Hardware and Steel, New Brunswick, N. J. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable. I 
 consider it feasible to return to competitive methods of the old 
 school. The Sherman Law should be amended so that it will 
 apply to all kinds of labor and trade unions the same as to cor- 
 porations and trusts and co-partnerships. Kailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. " Should trade unions be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act ? " No never ; 
 but to the contrary, each and every one should be made to incor- 
 porate and held responsible for his acts, and each and every 
 individual member liable for crime or damages. " Should com- 
 binations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a 
 crop for higher prices, be rendered lawful?" No, no; to the 
 contrary, they should be held liable. I favor national incor- 
 poration, also Federal license, within equity, reason and justice. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are caused by labor 
 and trade unions in particular; trusts and combinations in gen- 
 eral; distrust and mistrust of labor against capital, industries, 
 commerce, etc.; organized power of so-called labor and trades 
 unions, fearless, careless and uncontrollable for self-govern- 
 ment. The labor question is the very first item that must be 
 settled. The shop must be open and free to all. The purchase 
 price of commodities, materials, food stuffs, etc., must recede 
 to a low, honest level. Our curse to-day is born in the fact that 
 labor, farmers, manufacturers and merchants are grasping with 
 a terrible greed for exorbitant, excessive, inflated demands, each 
 in his line. The time is now at hand to let the bottom* drop 
 out. Commence anew at low values. Give us back the years 
 between 1894 and 1898. Wages were fair; profits not large, 
 but satisfactory. One dollar then was as large as twenty to-day. 
 Labor and capital were happy. 
 
 Abraham Roberts, General Manager, Co-operative General 
 Merchandise, Calumet, Mich. 
 
 State corporations doing interstate commerce should take out 
 Federal license under suitable conditions. The government 
 should regulate capitalization and laws should provide for pub- 
 licity to be applied to commercial corporations. For the time 
 being, an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike 
 those enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in rela- 
 tion to common carriers, would be useful. 
 
 Present business disturbance is due to the legalized exploita- 
 tion of the many by the few; private ownership of the tools of 
 production and public utilities, and too rapid increase of popula- 
 tion, both by birth rate and immigration. We want still larger 
 combinations of capital to produce and distribute the necessaries 
 of life, owned and operated by the many for the benefit of the 
 many, not owned and operated by the few for the benefit of the 
 few, which tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. 
 
285 
 
 Failing-McCalman Company, Hardware, Portland, Ore. 
 
 Great uncertainty as to our future conditions, not only as 
 regards the Sherman Act, but also the tariff, is responsible for 
 business disturbance. We favor Federal incorporation for com- 
 panies engaged in interstate commerce, and additional legisla- 
 tion giving power to associations to establish prices and main- 
 tain them. Prices must be subject to review, as are railroad 
 rates. We are opposed to holding companies. We also think 
 that statutes should expressly specify practices that are pro- 
 hibited, so that we may know what we can do lawfully. The 
 government should regulate capitalization. We do not favor 
 publicity, except for corporations offering stocks and bonds at 
 public sale. Small private corporations do not require publicity 
 to protect their minority stockholders, as a rule. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale, there are others, the chief of which is the 
 maintenance of a stable market, a condition which works to the 
 advantage of the producer, consumer and middleman. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 Trade unions should be required to incorporate and thus be 
 responsible for their acts. We favor an Interstate Trade Cora- 
 mission. Combinations of farmers should be subject to the 
 review of the same commission that passes upon the acts of other 
 combinations. The Interstate Trade Commission should cover 
 all price agreements of farmers, unions, merchants and manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 A. V. Neilson Company, Ltd., Wholesale Grocers, Alexan- 
 dria, La. 
 
 The overcapitalization of our large corporations and indus- 
 trial enterprises, straining the nerves of our money centres, is, 
 in my judgment, the cause of any disturbance that threatens 
 business to-day. The Sherman Law should be amended to make 
 it inviting to capital, but have it so plain and strict that capital 
 will follow the " Golden Rule." Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, but it should 
 be made a serious offense to interfere with the rights of others. 
 Farmers should be allowed to combine until they are strong 
 enough to care for themselves. I favor national incorporation, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Henry Hahn, Merchant, Portland, Ore. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, also national incor- 
 poration and Federal license. I am absolutely opposed to the 
 repeal of the Sherman Law. The amendment which I favor 
 would eliminate fines and provide for imprisonment for viola- 
 tions of the law. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 
286 
 
 S. H. Chatten, Lumberman, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 In my judgment there is no good reason why we should 
 not be having great prosperity now. All conditions are favor- 
 able, with one exception, and if the people understood the real 
 facts in the case they would not stand for it a single day. 
 Instead of our government tearing down great institutions they 
 should be standing back of them and say, " Go after the mar- 
 kets and business of the world," and with half a chance as 
 against other countries, they would get the business and a half 
 billion of dollars yearly in gold or its equivalent would come 
 our way from foreign countries. It's criminal to allow our great 
 natural resources to go undeveloped while one class is pitted 
 against the other, by telling them some great wrong is being 
 committed, and that business as now carried on is dishonest 
 which is not so. Teach the farmer how to produce more crops 
 per acre, and let the business man go ahead and develop the 
 country, and we will have such prosperity as the world has 
 never known, and every man, woman and child will reap his 
 full share of the benefit. It's a shame to allow things to go on 
 as they are. 
 
 W. Tyrie Stevens, Export Merchant, New York. 
 
 Trusts are so overcapitalized that to earn huge dividends 
 they are destroying the purchasing power of the people. I do 
 not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. It should be amended 
 so that great economic combinations shall be controlled in such 
 a way as to bring to the United States the trade of the world 
 and yet be unable to pillage the home people. Kailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 A national commission should be appointed, with full power to 
 deal with wage disputes. Combinations of farmers should be 
 amenable to the same control as manufacturing combinations. 
 I favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Orr, Jackson & Co., Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions, in our judgment, are caused 
 by the government's investigation of the Standard Oil, Tobacco 
 and Steel Trusts. This was bound to come; so the sooner it 
 was over the better. If trusts and combinations were satisfied 
 with reasonable profits, there would not be the great objection 
 to them that there is; but they are not. Since 8 or 10 per 
 cent, is not satisfactory, they want 25 per cent, if they can 
 get it and that, too, on " watered " stock. 
 
 We think the Sherman Law can be improved, also that it 
 is feasible to return to old competitive methods. The criminal 
 clause of the Sherman Law should be enforced. We favor a 
 national incorporation law and Federal license. 
 
287 
 
 James Benedict, Former Merchant and Manufacturer, New 
 York City. 
 
 The general political attacks upon property the fear of in- 
 numerable laws created to overtax all manner of property the 
 State, municipal and national extravagance engendered by the 
 results of excessive taxation the fact that successful business 
 seems to invite attacks from all political bodies the general 
 political unrest, but above all things else the Sherman Law 
 and the hysterical ways of enforcing it the pandering to the 
 mob generally for political effect. And the result of an un- 
 principled " Press " and the cheap, untrustworthy and " muck- 
 raking " magazines these phenomenal and dangerous influences 
 have all come to the front since the assassination- of President 
 McKinley. 
 
 The successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers of 
 this law besotted country the men who do things the men 
 Who have made the country will, if left alone, bring things out 
 all right. They do not need the advice of doctrinaires, nor of 
 college professors, nor of political agitators, nor yet of pro- 
 fessional " thinkers " nor of the large class who seek to ad- 
 vertise themselves in every way and at all times. Let us have 
 peace ! 
 
 Charles H. May, Jobbing Grocer, Fremont, Neb. 
 
 All corporations should be amenable to a law framed on the 
 lines of the national banking laws, in so far as the issuance of 
 stock goes. Then there would be no stock except such as is 
 covered by actual assets. Dividends would be paid on a proper 
 basis, and the public would not be compelled to pay corpora- 
 tions a profit on water and air. Thus one of the causes con- 
 tributing to business disturbance would be overcome. It is to 
 be hoped your Federation will give this phase of the question 
 the attention it deserves, as on some such basis as suggested 
 a remedy for the trust and monopoly evil can surely be found. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business, and States should enact similar laws for intra- 
 state corporations. National and State legislation on this and 
 related subjects should be in accord. 
 
 A. Lowenstein, Wholesale Produce Dealer, Chillicothe, Mo. 
 
 I think the entire country is suffering from the activities 
 of politicians who imagine a " Trust Busting Campaign " will 
 bring them into the limelight and be popular with the voters. 
 We need more business men in Congress and fewer politicians; 
 in fact, we could easily dispense with all the latter and neyer 
 miss them, except for the quiet and serenity their absence 
 would make. Whenever the people become educated to the 
 true state of affairs, they will vote the disturbers to business 
 out of office. If the above were not true, you would not now 
 be addressing these inquiries to people. 
 
Albert M. Day, Retired, Lake Forest, 111. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to the drastic attempt of the 
 government to break up all large corporations, or rather the 
 constant threat of such intention, and the unwise action of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, which seems in all cases to 
 consider the railroads blameable, and puts in effect rates under 
 which the roads cannot earn reasonable dividends and put a 
 proper amount back into the property. All large corporations 
 are dreading attack, and there is no way of knowing whether 
 they are legal or not till passed upon by the Courts. Natur- 
 ally, they curtail wherever possible. Eailroads with reduced 
 rates and increased expenses are obliged to curtail The largest 
 buyers of the country are thus kept out of the markets to a 
 great extent, and all business suffers. Investors fear for the 
 value of their securities; in some cases are frightened and sell; 
 in others refuse to buy what heretofore have been considered 
 desirable, and would be now under proper and reasonable regu- 
 lation and control. When it seems to be a crime to build up 
 a successful business, without regard to whether or not methods 
 used have been honest, and where no real monopoly was in- 
 tended or has arisen, business conditions cannot fail to be " dis- 
 turbed." 
 
 Arthur W. Joun, Treasurer, Wm. Simpson Sons & Co., 
 Drygoods Commission Merchants, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The fear that labor unrest and socialism are increasing 
 causes large interests to contract their liabilities, and has a 
 disturbing influence upon business in general. I favor national 
 incorporation for companies doing an interstate business. I 
 believe in holding companies, under limitations. Laws should 
 be enacted, expressly forbidding specified practices in restraint 
 of trade and unfair competition. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization of companies working under a Federal char- 
 ter. Minority interests should be protected through a commis- 
 sion. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. As to the 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, 
 I do not believe that workmen receive better wages, and I also 
 deny that such business always commands the best ability. 
 
 Wm. A. Petas, Geo. C. Buell & Co., Wholesale Grocers, 
 Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 Fear of drastic changes in the tariff law and other changes 
 liable to be brought about, provided there is a different politi- 
 cal party in control after the next presidential election, as well 
 as uncertainty in regard to the requirements of the Sherman 
 Act, all tend to unsettle business conditions. The Sherman 
 Act should be made more clear as to its requirements and we 
 should have a national incorporation law. 
 
289 
 
 Sehon, Stevenson & Co., Wholesale Grocers, Huntington, 
 W. Va. 
 
 The Sherman Law should not be repealed or amended. It is 
 plain and comprehensive. To undertake to state specifically 
 what should not be done would be to make lawful by implica- 
 tion all acts that .were not enumerated. 
 
 A commission or court for interstate requirements, and a 
 like commission or court in each State, should be appointed, so 
 that business interests could apply to them respectively to have 
 their system passed upon when they deemed advisable. Invest- 
 ors in business could themselves be the judges of the necessity 
 for such submission ; if they felt sure that their operations would 
 not be in restraint of trade or the stifling of competition, they 
 would pay no attention to the commission; if they were at all 
 uncertain, they would take no risk and have their systems passed 
 upon. 
 
 As it is now, unlawful acts are (perhaps unwittingly) com- 
 mitted and then punished by slow process of the courts, caus- 
 ing a shock and stoppage of business. Uncertainty as to what 
 the ruling of the courts might be is now the cause of business 
 disturbance. It is better to prevent a wrong than to punish one. 
 
 George M. Mell, Wholesale Lumber Dealer, Kane, Pa. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to the following causes : 
 
 (1) The so-called protective tariff, which protects no one 
 except the party or combination big enough to go to Washington 
 and influence legislation properly or otherwise. 
 
 (2) The water that is in most large corporations, notably 
 the railroad companies, most of them with stock issues two or 
 three times in excess of actual value, for which the people are 
 paying in excessive freight rates. 
 
 (3) The four reasons against parcels post, namely, Adams 
 Express, United States Express, the Wells Fargo and the Amer- 
 ican. 
 
 (4) The combination which controls food values; Armour, 
 etc. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Robert Fullerton, Lumber, Des Moines, Iowa. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to reaction from overexpansion 
 from 1900 to 1907. The bankers' panic of 1907 was the first 
 danger signal, and the political agitator has been busy disturb- 
 ing business by urging the prosecution of every successful indus- 
 trial corporation. Fear to move forward in the darkness and 
 dangers ahead is compelling captains of industry to shorten sail 
 and lay to, until such time as a correct observation can be taken 
 and the business fog lifts. I favor national incorporation, Fed- 
 eral license and an Interstate Trade Commission any instru- 
 mentality that can chart the way to safety in business affairs. 
 
290 
 
 J. W. West, Naval Stores, etc., Valdosta and Decatur, Ga. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions are due to uncertainty ; 
 " progressiveism " ; aggregations of capital, as well as labor 
 unions that are continuously demanding more and more pay, 
 which is one of the causes of driving capitalists into associa- 
 tions to protect themselves, etc. 
 
 I have felt the effects of trusts, or monopolies, as well as of 
 labor unions. Am opposed to both when they go to the extremes 
 as they have in our country. Great aggregations of capital, if 
 continued, will, sooner or later, drive out the individual from 
 nearly every line of business, even though he may have $100,000 
 or $500,000 capital. While I treat laborers with the greatest 
 consideration and believe in paying them upon their merits, 
 if our country does not undertake in the near future to stop 
 the lawlessness of unions, a revolution in our country is sure. 
 Had I a million dollars to-day idle, I would not invest it in 
 any enterprise that requires many laborers, nor in one that 
 comes in competition with any of the trusts or monopolies. 
 
 William Harris Douglas, Exporter, New York City. 
 
 So-called decisions of the Supreme Court regarding the Sher- 
 man Law show that those learned gentlemen are as much in 
 the dark as the average man in trying to define this law. I do 
 not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, but it should be 
 amended to make the law read so it could be understood. At 
 present everybody understands it to suit himself. The rail- 
 ways should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates 
 only at the pleasure of the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act, and combinations of farmers should not be per- 
 mitted to restrict production, but they should have the right to 
 sell at their own price, except in case of absolute failure of 
 crops, famine, etc. 
 
 George N. Grouse (Grouse Grocery Company), Syracuse, 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are, in a great measure, true, but the " large scale " cor- 
 poration seldom gives the benefit to its customers by a selling 
 price reduction. I favor Federal license for companies doing 
 an interstate business. The Sherman Law could be vastly im- 
 proved. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, 
 as long as the Commission is composed of competent members. 
 I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission if competent, 
 high class tradesmen compose it. The business disturbance has 
 been caused by too much exposure of high finance, resulting in 
 undue caution and lack of confidence. A bitter pill ofttimes 
 produces a speedy and most efficient recovery. 
 
291 
 
 L. E. Denison, President, Denison-Gholson Drygoods Com- 
 pany, Cairo, 111. 
 
 I consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. 
 The Sherman Law should not be repealed, unless we can im- 
 prove upon it. It should be made clearer. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act; neither should combinations of farmers, to restrict 
 production or hold a . crop for higher prices, be permitted. I 
 favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. Disturbed business conditions are due 
 to too much money in a few hands. Legislation to the end that 
 one man or set of men (such as J. P. Morgan, for instance) 
 may not have so much power for good or evil is what we want. 
 
 Overcapitalization is the source of most of our troubles. 
 There should be a Federal incorporation law and a commission 
 to oversee capitalization. If it is fair to the national banks, 
 it would not be unfair to other corporations. 
 
 E. L. Durkee & Co., Hardware .Merchants, Gloversville, 
 N. Y. 
 
 If our legislators would devote their energies to the speedy 
 enactment of such laws as would seem best to regulate manu- 
 facturers and trade, in accord with the advice of real business 
 men, acting not in any narrow interest, but for the welfare of 
 the whole American people, and would also revise the tariff 
 schedules in accord with party pledges, or defer action on the 
 latter to some definite future period, the business of the country 
 would soon revive. 
 
 There are many good features in the Sherman Law. It 
 should be amended to more clearly define what is monopoly or 
 unreasonable restraint of trade, and to provide a more expedi- 
 tious method of enforcement, with personal instead of corporate 
 liability. We favor a national incorporation law, with limita- 
 tions and restrictions, and an Interstate Trade Commission if 
 it can be so constituted and empowered as to expedite the settle- 
 ment of controversies and irregularities. 
 
 A. K. Edwards, President, The Edwards & Chamberlin 
 Hardware Company, Kalamazoo, Mich. 
 
 I prefer Federal legislation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I admit that the advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale exist in properly managed cor- 
 porations of the magnitude indicated, but I do not believe that 
 the consumer always derives his full share of such saving. I 
 favor a commission which would have control over interstate 
 trade, along the lines of the present Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. I believe that the government's present manner of 
 handling these problems is not only disorganizing, but demoral- 
 izing and against the best interests of the country at large. 
 
292 
 
 Edward D. Page, Faulkner, Page & Co., New York City. 
 
 In the effort to prevent monopolistic combination Congress 
 has passed a law which actually makes criminal the integration 
 of industry, i. e. } combination in vertical instead of a hori- 
 zontal plane, and co-operative or economic combination, both 
 of which processes reduce cost, increase the efficiency of a given 
 application of labor, capital and enterprise, and eventually, if 
 not immediately, reduce the price to the consumer. This makes 
 men who follow every injunction of the moral law wrongdoers 
 by legislation ! 
 
 Business disturbance is due to a number of conditions : (&) 
 The reaction, via the panic of 1907, of the excessive business 
 activity of 1905, 1906 and 1907; (&') the fear of a recurrence 
 of the panic under our present currency system; (c) uncer- 
 tainties created by half-baked legislation, intended for the repres- 
 sion or prevention of monopoly; (d) the feeling that we are 
 entering an era of falling prices; (e) retrenchment in ex- 
 penses, and probably half a dozen other conditions. Such dis- 
 turbance is rarely and is not in this instance the result of 
 a single cause. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 Otto C. Ericson, President, C. Jevne & Co., Importers and 
 Grocers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission; it might 
 become the most gigantic of all monopolies a tyranny. There 
 should be uniform incorporation laws for all the States. The 
 Sherman Law should be repealed, but if not repealed it should 
 be made clear and explicit, denning " unreasonable restriction 
 of trade." Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. 
 
 In attempting to pull up tares (trusts that are iniquitous) 
 the wheat is pulled up also (good corporations or trusts). 
 Progress cannot be realized without adequate laws to fit present 
 conditions. We are progressing in all things excepting in our 
 laws which are always reactionary. 
 
 George W. Kuhlke, Merchant, New York City. 
 
 Lack of confidence due to the government suits and the un- 
 certainty of large business corporations as to their future have 
 caused anxiety in business circles, especially in view of the fact 
 that the decisions so far delivered by the Supreme Court do 
 not lay down rules of a positive character for the guidance of 
 business when incorporated on a large scale. The experiments 
 in reorganization have not had a very encouraging influence 
 on business. There has been altogether too much political med- 
 dling with the normal course of business. I prefer a national 
 incorporation law to Federal license, but would accept the latter 
 if we cannot have the former. I also favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
293 
 
 William Judson, Wholesale Grocer, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 Eepeal the Sherman Law, and enact in its stead a new law, 
 the provisions of which shall be constructive rather than de- 
 structive, and compatible with the demands of modern business 
 conditions. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. Combinations of farmers should be 
 treated the same as combinations in other industries, and trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act. I believe in holding companies. I do not favor 
 government regulation of capitalization, but the law should 
 require capital to be fully paid in cash or property. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission a non-political one. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale, another important advantage is the market- 
 ing abroad of great quantities of American manufactured 
 product, which is impractical with small concerns. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 the fact that progress has outstripped law governing trade 
 relations, and confusion has resulted. There are too many 
 politicians too few statesmen. Abnormal increase in the 
 world's gold supply, thereby upsetting the established order of 
 relative values, and causing inequalities in compensation for 
 services and commodities, also causing discord, discomfort and 
 unhappiness, has much to do with business disquietude, and the 
 readjustment of all this will take much time. 
 
 Pacific Hardware & Steel Company, Portland, Ore. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in our judgment, to, 
 first, gospel of discontent spread by labor agitators and socialists ; 
 second, uncertainty as to meaning of the Sherman Law; third, 
 too much railroad legislation; fourth, unsettled rate conditions 
 caused by attack on Commerce Court. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to have the govern- 
 ment regulate prices, also permit consolidation of railroads and 
 co-operation in their tariffs. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. We favor national in- 
 corporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 J. J. Patterson, Wholesale Grocer, Chatham, Va. 
 
 The trusts have done a tremendous work for good in de- 
 veloping the commerce and extending the market for our prod- 
 uce, and they are giving consumers more for their money and 
 better quality. While they should be strictly regulated, there 
 should be no hysterical action. Statesmen, not demagogues, 
 should handle the great questions. The Sherman Law should 
 not be repealed, unless we can get something better. We don't 
 want to tear business all to pieces in correcting evils if we can 
 manage it differently. I favor national incorporation and Fed- 
 eral license. 
 
294 
 
 W. R. Chester, Wholesale Lumber Dealer, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The labor element is largely responsible for business uncer- 
 tainty. They have been the means of doubling the cost of 
 necessities of life. Overlegislation is also one of the great 
 causes of business unrest. 
 
 We have commissions enough. We have elected law makers 
 let them enact laws and see that they are carried out. Com- 
 missions are formed simply to give berths to politicians. If 
 commissions could have as members practical business men who 
 could advise our law makers, I would favor them, but from our 
 present experience no commission will be. made up in that 
 way. 
 
 If Congress and our legislatures would rescind all laws 
 relating to labor and its regulation, so-called trusts and our 
 railroads and then adjourn, it would inspire confidence to such 
 an extent that it would start every wheel in our mills and on 
 our railroads, and give employment to every man or woman 
 who applied, at fair wages, and thus bring comfort and happi- 
 ness to our citizens. 
 
 Drop politics and get down to business ! 
 
 C. O. Davidson, Vice-President Davidson Grocery Com- 
 pany, Boise, Idaho. 
 
 I believe that the concentration of capital has been pushed 
 far beyond the point where it is truly economical; I do -not 
 believe, however, that it is possible to frame laws to control 
 unlimited concentration, so as to give as fair service to the 
 public as large single corporations. 
 
 Admitting the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, I believe that most of the large combinations 
 are not taking full advantage of all these points, especially the 
 last. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I do not believe in holding companies, 
 and favor laws that will prevent them. Unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade should be dealt with by the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Act. The government should regulate capitalization and 
 provide publicity for commercial corporations. 
 
 Benjamin R. Kittridge, California Wine Association, San 
 Francisco, Cal. 
 
 It is necessary to distinctly define what is meant by " evils 
 in business " before they can be intelligently legislated upon, if 
 they can be legislated upon at all. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. Disturbed business conditions are due, 
 in my judgment, to fear of partial confiscation of property 
 through " regulation " or by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. 
 
295 
 
 Noyes Bros. & Cutler, Importers and Wholesale Druggists, 
 St. Paul. 
 
 Theoretically, a regulation of business by the government 
 to a reasonable extent and in a reasonable way for the best 
 interests of the country as a whole is a proposition to which 
 few would raise any objection. The difficulty has been and 
 probably will continue to be that the regulating laws, even 
 when they are reasonable in themselves, are not intelligently 
 or reasonably enforced by the employees of the government. 
 The men who enforce these laws frequently have no proper un- 
 derstanding of business methods and have the power of the 
 government back of them. They create needless trouble, ex- 
 pense and annoyance to perfectly honorable and law abiding 
 merchants. It is this officious meddling without intelligence 
 or reason and the literal interpretation and execution of regu- 
 latory laws to which the fair-minded merchants of the country 
 object. They do not object to reasonable regulatory statutes, 
 but they do seriously object to the stupid way in which these 
 statutes are carried out by the hired men of the government, 
 more often than not men who are very ignorant of business 
 conditions and very full of a sense of their own importance. 
 We do not believe that the objections to government interfer- 
 ence with business are objections to the theory of such laws. 
 They are objections to the method of execution. 
 
 D. E. Austin, United States Manager for Henri Nestle, 
 Nestle's Food, New York City. 
 
 Tendency of State legislatures to enact thoughtless legisla- 
 tion governing interstate trade, without regard for uniformity 
 or for equity, is a cause of business disturbance. Uncertainty 
 over the present status of all combinations of capital results in 
 lack of confidence of small investors, whose money is needed 
 for the free operation of present manufacturing and industrial 
 equipment, to say nothing of the planning of new. 
 
 I believe that corporations doing an interstate business 
 should be under Federal control and supervision as to stock 
 issues, etc., and therefore I believe in national incorporation, 
 or license, whichever best serves the purpose. 
 
 Frank R. Chambers, Firm of Rogers, Peet & Co., Clothiers, 
 New York. 
 
 A spendthrift nation paying for its folly is the chief of va- 
 rious causes of disturbed business conditions. The Sherman 
 Law is not very clear, but experience may develop its workable 
 quality. I consider it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, subject to court 
 review. 
 
296 
 
 Hunter, Stevens & Co., Lumber Merchants and Farmers, 
 La Salle, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law is evidently not clear and workable. It 
 should be amended to accomplish the object for which it was 
 created without causing the innocent to suffer because of the 
 guilty; or else it should be repealed to permit the enactment of 
 legislation in accord with present-day conditions. It would be 
 neither feasible nor prudent to return to old competitive meth- 
 ods. Many of the common necessaries of life are rendered 
 more available and cheaper by modern methods of business. 
 We favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 As to the causes of business disturbance, the leading cause 
 undoubtedly is the activity of the Federal Government in at- 
 tempting to enforce the so-called Sherman Law. Some means 
 should be provided whereby exceedingly large, as well as smaller 
 legitimate business interests may lawfully proceed with their 
 business, being guaranteed freedom from annoyance, from prose- 
 cution and persecution under the pretence of law enforcement. 
 
 Let us have done with destructive legislation! Let us have 
 constructive legislation ! 
 
 Lucien C. Warner, The Warner Chemical Company, 141 
 Broadway, New York City. 
 
 Disturbed conditions are caused by uncertainty as to what 
 are permissible methods of business. Capital is always timid. 
 Business, when wisely administered, should yield a reasonable 
 return on the money invested. Under competition well- 
 managed business, both railroads and manufacturing, often 
 yields no profits for several years in succession. In the long 
 run the public do not gain by these losses, as the greater the 
 risk of business the greater the profits sought when the busi- 
 ness proves successful. The Sherman Law should prohibit 
 specifically what experience has shown to be the evils of large 
 combinations, such as one company owning stock of another, 
 one director serving on two or more competing companies, 
 crushing competition by unfair means, etc. 
 
 Lawrence J. Morris, Lawrence Johnson & Co., Merchants, 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 World-wide political unrest, involving the threat of social- 
 ism; extravagance, national, State, municipal, corporate and 
 personal; higher wages, the cost of which could not be passed 
 on to the consumer, are all causes of disturbed business condi- 
 tions. I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 interests of business are too varied and complicated for such 
 a commission to handle intelligently. I do favor a national 
 incorporation law. The Sherman Law should not be repealed 
 at this time, nor until more indication is shown of the power 
 to pass and enforce a better regulating act. 
 
297 
 
 W. F. McLaughlin & Co., Coffees, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to the possibilities of change; 
 due to the correction of bad conditions. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended by making it stronger. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission, because the railroads should be practically public prop- 
 erty, and the same should apply to insurance companies and 
 telegraph and express companies. We favor a national incor- 
 poration law. 
 
 The people, including a big majority of merchants, want 
 laws passed by the Federal Government, not States, regulat- 
 ing business of all kinds, so that the business man, firm or cor- 
 poration would have to run the same in an honorable manner. 
 All combinations and associations, also agreements, between 
 business men or bankers are made to get more profit, and the 
 consumer has to pay that profit. Very few combinations of 
 corporations or individuals reduce the cost of an article. The 
 medium and small man must be protected in some way from 
 unprincipled men of enormous capital. 
 
 E. A. Schulze, President, Schulze Brothers Company, 
 Wholesale Saddlery, Duluth, Minn. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions can, generally speaking, be 
 traced to Washington. The policy emanating from that city 
 has made the future so uncertain that capitalists and business 
 men generally cannot help being apprehensive. Of course, the 
 coming presidential election has a disturbing influence. A good 
 deal of benefit, however, would result if people would try to 
 forget their troubles, talk less about wrongs which they have 
 suffered, or think they have suffered, and keep busy attending 
 to their affairs. The term of the President ought to be ex- 
 tended to eight or ten years, and that of Congressmen to from 
 four to six years. With a constitutional amendment to that 
 effect, business would have a chance to go ahead without danger 
 of an overturn every two years or so. 
 
 Plumb & Nelson Company, Wholesale Grocers, Manitowoc, 
 Wis. 
 
 The natural disturbance due to the effort of the big moneyed 
 interests to adjust their unlawful enterprises and to make them 
 conform to present just requirements, is the cause of trouble. 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to leave no ques- 
 tion of " reasonableness " to the Supreme Court. In other 
 words, it should prohibit all restraint of trade. Combinations 
 of farmers should be permitted within limits. Of course, a 
 starvation corner should be unlawful. I favor a national in- 
 corporation law, a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
298 
 
 Willard H. Platt, Treasurer, Greene Tweed & Co. (Hard- 
 ware), New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended or repealed. If re- 
 pealed, it should be followed by some constructive legislation 
 calling for regulation. If amended, it ought to legalize com- 
 binations and agreements for control of prices and providing 
 for government regulation (even to the control of prices). The 
 present Sherman Law should not apply to trade unions or com- 
 binations of farmers, but there should be some regulation or 
 supervision of labor unions and grangers controlling any given 
 line of industry. Care should be taken, however, that such 
 regulation or supervision should not be hostile or used to lower 
 the standard of living of the working men or farmers in 
 order to increase the profits of employers. All monopolistic 
 interstate corporations should be incorporated by the Federal 
 government and supervised in regard to capitalization, etc. All 
 corporations doing interstate business should be subject to some 
 supervision so that the government can tell whether or not they 
 have become monopolistic. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. General uncertainty as to what form government 
 supervision will take, is the leading cause of any business dis- 
 turbance. 
 
 James W. Cromwell, Member of firm of William Iselin & 
 Co., Dry Goods Commission Merchants, New York 
 City. 
 
 Let the penalties for the violation of the Sherman Law 
 fall upon the individual committing the act, and not upon the 
 corporation beyond the restitution by the latter of what has 
 been wrongfully gained. Innocent shareholders should not suf- 
 fer. 
 
 Uncertainty about fundamental conditions; apprehension of 
 governmental interference to stop the natural operation of the 
 laws of trade under which the business of the country was 
 developing, and to destroy the great organizations, instead of 
 supervising and regulating them, as may be done with advan- 
 tage to all concerned, are the causes of disturbed business con- 
 ditions. I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles A. Sherman, Sherman & Sons Company, New York 
 City. 
 
 In industries where economies can be affected by combina- 
 tion, we do not consider it feasible to attempt to return to what 
 are commonly known as old competitive methods; but such 
 combinations should be regulated so as to prevent restriction 
 of production and price control. We do not favor a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law. Trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, save when they resort to violence 
 and boycott. 
 
299 
 
 Irving A. Sibley, Hardware Merchant, South Bend, Ind. 
 
 Lack of confidence in the future; doubt as to what the next 
 Congress may do; disposition of capitalists to scare the people 
 into favoring their methods; fear of conditions after the next 
 national election all contribute to business disturbance. We 
 should have a tariff commission, appointed for good behavior, 
 or life, with power to act as necessity demands, and appointed 
 along civil service lines. The term of the President of the 
 United States should be longer, and business interests should 
 not be subjected to these periods of doubt and uncertainty every 
 four years. Elect a President for eight or twelve years, or for 
 life, retiring him at half-pay at a certain age and provide for 
 his widow. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not in all particulars clear and work- 
 able. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Pass a law to 
 protect small stockholders in incorporated companies, making 
 it criminal to pay out the profits of these corporations in unwar- 
 ranted salaries and compelling them to declare just dividends 
 instead. 
 
 E. S. Moore (Shattuck & Jackson Company), Parkersburg, 
 W. Va. 
 
 From a jobber's or distributor's standpoint one large manu- 
 facturing concern, properly regulated, is more satisfactory than 
 a dozen or so smaller ones, all after the same trade and asking 
 for recognition. If all are given assistance in distributing their 
 goods, it means an endless lot of brands and almost certainly 
 a lot of dead stock and the tying up of large amounts of capital 
 at the best. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce, and an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 government should regulate capitalization, and laws should be 
 passed calling for publicity to be applied to commercial cor- 
 porations, through a commission appointed for that purpose. 
 
 W. J. Holliday & Co., Iron and Steel Merchants, Indianapo- 
 lis, Ind. 
 
 During the past ten years abnormal conditions have obtained, 
 owing to pools and price agreements. In my opinion, the pres- 
 ent conditions are due to the breaking up of these price agree- 
 ments. I do not consider present conditions bad, except for 
 those companies with inflated capital, which have to make an 
 abnormal profit to pay fixed charges. I consider it feasible to 
 return to old competitive methods. The Sherman Law should 
 be made stronger. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor a Federal license law under 
 proper conditions, and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
300 
 
 John J. Van Nort (Jonas Long's Sons' Department Stores), 
 Scranton, Pa. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation and control by an Interstate 
 Trade Commission of companies engaged in interstate com- 
 merce. The Sherman Law should be made definite. I am 
 opposed to holding companies. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization. All " water " should be taken out, if pos- 
 sible, and none allowed in the future. I favor laws applying 
 publicity to commercial corporations through an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. I acknowledge the advantages claimed for 
 those doing business on a large scale, and believe that under 
 proper and honest safeguards there are still other advantages. 
 Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, but all 
 such agreements should be made public, with reasons for the 
 same. Trade unions should be controlled by specific laws. 
 Farmers should have the right to unite in building elevators or 
 refrigerators for the care of their products. Business disturb- 
 ance is due to the uncertainty of things. 
 
 W. A. Smoot, Jr. (Smoot & Co., Coal and Lumber), 
 Alexandria, Va. 
 
 There is a multitude of clear-thinking and prosperous 
 farmers, merchants and manufacturers in this country (whose 
 investments and influence, in the aggregate, far exceed those 
 of all others) who are out of sympathy with a great deal that is 
 being done to-day, but who are healthy and unprejudiced thinkers 
 and capable of rendering fair and substantial aid to a healthy 
 business revival, if they can be gotten at in a way that would 
 impress them as having this object in view entirely. 
 
 It is impossible to reach so large a number personally, but 
 it might be possible to reach them through some organization 
 that was controlled by men from every section or State, who were 
 identified with the business or farming interests and who were 
 well known and highly regarded. 
 
 This would be a vast undertaking, but if properly worked 
 out would organize the thought (to a great extent) of the 
 element that needs organizing most at this time. 
 
 Burlington Drug Company, Burlington, Vt. 
 
 We favor an Interstate Trade Commission to be elected by 
 the people, and State incorporation laws to be passed on by an 
 Interstate Trade Commission for companies doing interstate 
 commerce. The Sherman Act should be enforced and have 
 the opportunity to prove its value. We are opposed to holding 
 companies. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 laws should be passed calling for publicity applied to commercial 
 corporations. Disturbed business conditions are due chiefly to 
 tariff agitation. 
 
301 
 
 D. Q. Fox, President, The D. Q. Fox Company, Wholesale 
 Grocers, Springfield, Ohio. 
 
 The fact that the large industrial corporations are not com- 
 plying with the requirements of law is chiefly the cause of any 
 business disturbance. Most of them are on a wrong basis, and 
 the present attitude of the government as to the enforcement 
 of the law would naturally disturb such business conditions. 
 Furthermore, they ought to be disturbed, and the government 
 should stand firm in its position until the wrongs are made 
 right, and every corporation is compelled to do business accord- 
 ing to law. It would be ruinous to return to what are called 
 old competitive methods. Unrestrained competition would 
 mean the return of conditions as they existed in 1893. If 
 amended, the Sherman Law should be made more specific in 
 regard to certain definite practices. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 No matter what large corporations and combinations may 
 say and claim, they have but one object in view and that is: 
 larger dividends or rather, larger profits, as a basis for a larger 
 capitalization on which dividends must be paid. The public 
 has never yet and never will reap any benefit from the formation 
 of a large corporation to absorb a lot of smaller concerns. 
 
 H. Weinstock, Merchant, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 I favor national incorporation. I believe in holding com- 
 panies if they can be allowed to remain, without tending to 
 create private monopolies. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act is, in 
 my judgment, sufficient to deal with unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation, forbidding the issue of stock that represents "water," 
 pure and simple. Publicity should be applied to all corpora- 
 tions which offer stock to the public, but not to other private 
 corporations; I doubt the claim of steadier employment of labor 
 and better wages, for those doing business on a large scale. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission to control all corpora- 
 tions whose stock is offered for sale to the public. 
 
 Samuel Mahon, Wholesale Grocer, Ottumwa, Iowa. 
 
 Overcapitalization and consequent overtrading; the agitation 
 resulting from these conditions, causing uncertainty in legiti- 
 mate business, are the causes of present disturbance. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion as an experiment. The business of wholesale grocers is now 
 competitive, and we still live and manage to get along. Trade 
 unions should not be exempt from trie operation of the Sherman 
 Act, nor should combinations of farmers, to restrict production 
 or hold for higher prices, be made lawful note the Kentucky 
 tobacco raids. 
 
302 
 
 W. L. Milner, Merchant, Toledo, Ohio. 
 
 Primarily agitation by the railroads for higher rates; the 
 present transitory state of the tariff movement ; politics, and the 
 activity of the government in prosecuting trusts are the causes 
 of business disturbance. The Sherman Act can only correct a 
 fault after it has occurred. A Federal incorporation court can 
 prevent misuse of power. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. I consider it doubtful 
 that we could return to old competitive methods in business. 
 The Sherman Law should not be repealed, unless something 
 better replaces it. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I believe in stronger Federal gov- 
 ernment controlling all those matters not local to the States, 
 such as bankruptcy, divorce, etc. 
 
 George J. Gensman, Hardware and Implement Dealer, 
 Enid, Okla. 
 
 Uncertainty of capital as to the future policy of the govern- 
 ment; the carelessness of the general public during our past 
 period of prosperity these, in my judgment, are the principal 
 causes of any disturbance now existing in business. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act; neither 
 should combinations of farmers, so far as restricting production 
 or holding crops. I favor a national incorporation law, and if 
 such a law should not be enforced, then I favor a Federal license 
 law. I also favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Z. P. Bennett (Phelps, Lewis & Bennett Company), Whole- 
 sale Hardware, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 
 
 Business is all right. Only the stock gamblers are suffering 
 from their own folly. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 so that a combination will know when it is breaking the law. 
 And make prison sentences for the officials compulsory and spare 
 the clerks and other employees. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission which should be given 
 sufficient power, so that every decision they render would not 
 have to be revised in courts for months and years. 
 
 George D. Dayton, Merchant and Banker, Minneapolis, 
 Minn. 
 
 The Sherman Law will be made clear and workable, in pro- 
 portion as corporations adjust themselves to it. I am empha- 
 tically opposed to the repeal of the Sherman Law or to its 
 amendment. I believe in giving President Taft time to work 
 out his ideas. He and all of us are learning as we go along. 
 He is trying to do well for the country and will accomplish 
 much if permitted to. 
 
303 
 
 Harry B. French, President, Smith, Kline & French Com- 
 pany, Wholesale Druggist, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The necessary correction of trust abuses ; teaching capitalists' 
 that they are subject to them all these, in my judgment, are 
 the principal causes of any disturbance in business. The Sher- 
 man Law under the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States is clear and workable and, emphatically, should 
 not be repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. Business on a large 
 scale is absolutely necessary. I believe in holding companies, 
 under limitations prescribed strictly by law. In regard to the 
 protection of minority stockholders, I believe that control of a 
 company should not be transferred without giving minority 
 stockholders a right to participate. 
 
 Joseph Lindauer (Herman Bros., Lindauer & Co., Whole- 
 sale Drygoods), Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 Extravagance on the part of the masses ; the protective tariff, 
 putting too much of the country's wealth in the hands of a 
 few, are, in my judgment, the principal causes of disturbed 
 business conditions. The Sherman Law should be amended to 
 make it more specific; in regulating the output of any single 
 corporation, and also, when necessary, regulating prices. Eail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 and combinations of farmers should be permitted. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Hirsch Bros. Drygoods Company, St. Joseph, Missouri. 
 
 It is doubtful whether any disturbance of a national char- 
 acter exists at present, excepting the fact that, through the con- 
 centration of the money interests, disturbance can be con- 
 tinually manipulated. The Sherman Law has proven itself 
 insufficient to control the corporations. We are not, however, 
 in favor of its repeal. We favor a national incorporation law. 
 Admitting other advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, we question the correctness of the claim of 
 steadier employment of labor and of better wages. 
 
 C. F. Jackson, Department Stores, Norwalk, Ohio. 
 
 Socialism and labor unions are the causes of business dis- 
 turbance. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act; neither should combinations of farmers, 
 either to restrict production or hold a crop for higher prices. 
 I favor a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
304 
 
 A. Stamford White, Export Merchant, Grain and Provis- 
 ions, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The government should recognize its responsibility in hav- 
 ing allowed large corporations, like the Steel Company, to grow 
 up without any action under the Sherman Law. It is wrong 
 to disintegrate it at this late date and sacrifice thousands of 
 innocent stockholders. The law should be made clear, and if 
 any officers are hereafter guilty of wrongdoing they should be 
 punished individually. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 to make it possible to punish the individual officers of corpora- 
 tions who are responsible for a violation of the law, or who are 
 guilty of wrongful methods adopted to drive people out of busi- 
 ness. 
 
 S. E. Slade, Lumber, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it more elastic 
 and to put combinations under absolute government control. I 
 think there is much merit in the law. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, uniform and under government con- 
 trol; also a Federal license law, to supersede State license laws. 
 
 If there is a lumber trust, the government should so advise 
 the people, but if, after spending much public money in en- 
 deavoring to find a lumber trust, the government has failed to 
 discover one, it is the duty of the government to so advise the 
 public. 
 
 R. J. Caldwell, Merchant, New York City. 
 
 I favor compulsory national incorporation, which, however, 
 would be idle without a National Commerce Court and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission of strong, able, patriotic and true men, 
 whose duty shall be to prevent abuses, and with ample power to 
 enforce their decisions. 
 
 Unrestrained competition is the death of trade. Self-pres- 
 ervation is the first law of life, and legislators make themselves 
 ridiculous in trying to suspend natural law. Our legislatures 
 have but to study Germany if they would render real relief. The 
 Sherman Law should be supplemented with wise legislation, its 
 operation being meanwhile suspended. 
 
 W. T. Reaugh,' Boots and Shoes, Jacksonville, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and "should be 
 amended. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, and combinations of farmers, to hold a crop for 
 higher prices, should be lawful. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 I believe in revising the Sherman Act, whereby corporations 
 may make agreements that would enable them to realize legiti- 
 mate profits, but not to practice extortion. 
 
305 
 
 J. T. Ross, Merchant, Astoria, Ore. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due partly to the action of 
 the government under the Sherman Law, but also to a general 
 unrest and feeling that there must be a readjustment. Prices 
 are too high in comparison to wages paid to common labor. The 
 Sherman Law is not clear and workable, and should be amended 
 in such a way as not to hinder legitimate business, however 
 large, but to prevent monopolistic trusts from controlling busi- 
 ness and making unreasonable profits. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and a Federal license law. It does not seem to me 
 that small corporations should be included. Eetail business 
 should not be fettered with numerous unnecessary restrictions, 
 which might be all right applied to large corporations. 
 
 Horace Davis (retired from business), San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 I am not wise enough to suggest adequate remedies, but I 
 see clearly enough that giant trade corporations must be con- 
 trolled and checked or we shall have socialism pure and simple. 
 If worst comes to worst, I would rather be ruled by the people 
 than by Eockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan. There must be some 
 middle ground where we can live in peace. We have brought 
 the transportation monopolies to reason; the trade monopolies 
 must follow suit. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Oil and Steel and 
 Tobacco are as much monopolies as transportation. I see no 
 other way for the weak individual to cope with the powerful 
 monopoly. It is odious, but must be endured. 
 
 E. P. Loomis & Co., Barrel Apples, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law is rapidly becoming clear and workable 
 and will be entirely so with the decision of the Steel Trust 
 suit. It should be amended to show clearly what percentage 
 of any business is permissible and what combinations are legal. 
 The railroads already universally enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, by means of their traffic association, and these agree- 
 ments should be permitted. As. to combinations of farmers, 
 no combination such as that existed which had any binding 
 power on farmers, and farmers have never acted except as indi- 
 viduals. Why mention them specifically? Such mention looks 
 like playing politics. The same applies to labor unions. 
 
 Harry G. Euwer, Merchant, New Castle, Pa. 
 
 The cause and creator of trusts is the high protective tariff. 
 It is a foolish, short-sighted, dishonest policy for any nation. 
 We are now paying the penalty for our many years of high 
 tariff, the same as the Civil War paid the penalty for slavery. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, and we should have free 
 trade. This would do more to cure the trusts than anything 
 else. 
 
306 
 
 Carl Colby, Colby Bros. & Co., Merchants, Abbotsford, 
 Wis. 
 
 A lack of confidence on the part of the public caused by 
 investigations and disclosures of the past few years and fear 
 on the part of capitalists and employers of labor to expand 
 their business and increase their investments on account of not 
 knowing how future legislation will affect them, have brought 
 about present conditions. While evil conditions in the business 
 world should be righted, it should also be looked to that those 
 corporations or individuals who are honestly trying to conform 
 to the spirit of the law should be protected and encouraged 
 whether they are of large capital or not. 
 
 C. K. David, Ronaldson & Puckett Company, Ltd., Whole- 
 sale Grocers, Baton Rouge, La. 
 
 Let the Sherman Law take care of itself. We do not need 
 any more legislation. Simply stop passing laws. Let the State 
 attend to corporations. I admit the advantages claimed for 
 those doing business on a large scale. So long as the consumer 
 is not injured by their methods, let them alone. Supervision 
 to protect the consumer is all we need. Competition should 
 control the trusts, coupled with the natural evolutions of busi- 
 ness in this country. Injury to the consumer is more imagina- 
 tive than real. 
 
 William Taylor, Vice-President, John Taylor Drygoods 
 Company, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 I consider the Sherman Law as clear and workable. The 
 Sherman Law should not be repealed, unless we can get a law 
 that is clearer; that covers the ground the Sherman Law was 
 intended to cover in a more effective way. Eailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor na- 
 tional incorporation, a Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. Present uncertain business conditions are due 
 to the fact that so many people, instead of talking optimistically, 
 are talking pessimistically. 
 
 Daniel Stewart Company, Wholesale Druggists, Indianapo- 
 lis, Ind. 
 
 Uncertainty as to prospective legislation and the enactment 
 of the Aldrich tariff bill are the causes of disturbed business 
 conditions. The Sherman Law should be amended so that its 
 provisions may be clearly understood, and to put it on lines 
 suggested by recent decisions. Eailroads should certainly be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, and laws should be enacted 
 applying publicity to commercial corporations. 
 
307 
 
 John W. May, Merchant, Alexandria, Va. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to too much specula- 
 tion on paper, with no delivery of actual value; too many 
 articles in newspapers and magazines by ignorant and careless 
 writers whose ideas seem to be to fill space and draw salary. 
 These writers are not familiar with or experienced with the 
 manufactured articles about which they write. All bucket shops 
 should be closed. All whitewash deals on stock exchanges and 
 boards of trade should be prohibited. All trades in grains 
 should be required to deliver the actual grain. All stock trades 
 should be compelled to deliver the actual stock. Eailroads, 
 factories and all corporations should be prohibited from issuing 
 watered stock. No stocks should be issued, except for actual 
 value received. No promoter should be allowed any stock until 
 a company has been run successfully five years. 
 
 The Bostwick-Braun Company, Wholesale Hardware, 
 Toledo, Ohio, 
 
 Uncertainty as to how far-reaching would be Federal and 
 State legislation adverse to railroad and other large corporate 
 bodies causes business anxiety and hesitation. Also the pres- 
 ent disturbed conditions are largely the result of the period of 
 artificially sustained prices, through which we have passed. The 
 large profits vvhich these prices created tempted manufac- 
 turers to unduly expand their plants, until in many lines there 
 is a large overproduction. The so-called trusts are controlling 
 in many lines a smaller percentage of the production each year, 
 and the trust problem is gradually solving itself, which it must 
 do, unless there is a monopoly of the supply of raw material, 
 or of the means of transportation. 
 
 Wheeler & Motter Mercantile Company, Wholesale Dry 
 Goods, St. Joseph, Mo. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be so amended that there will 
 be no opportunity to misconstrue its meaning. Give the courts 
 a definite law which need not be construed. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act. The farmer should not be hampered; he should have the 
 privilege to sell or hold his crop, but should not have the privi- 
 lege to combine. Present disturbed conditions in business are 
 due to extravagance in living, tariff agitation, and the timidity 
 of capital. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 George P. Smith, Wholesale Grocer, Dubuque, Iowa. 
 
 Too much political influence and too little good business 
 sense in recent legislation, are the causes of trouble. The Sher- 
 man Law should be modified to meet present industrial and 
 commercial conditions. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
308 
 
 Joseph Home Company, Department Store, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Congress monkeying with business; politics and the politi- 
 cal necessities of all politicians; uncertainty as to what the 
 Sherman Law means; unrest among the people caused by high 
 cost of living all tend to unsettle business. It is a mani- 
 fest absurdity that a law passed for political reasons and for 
 effect twenty years ago, and which was never intended to do 
 anything; which was allowed to remain inactive for fifteen 
 years, and was made in a different business era, should now, 
 under greatly changed conditions, be the test of the legality 
 of reasonable business consolidations. We favor a national in- 
 corporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission with lim- 
 ited power. 
 
 Frederick Victor & Achelis, New York City. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. If attempt should 
 be made to amend the Sherman Law, it would most likely re- 
 sult in an utter failure. We favor a national incorporation 
 law. A Federal license law imposing a moderate fee for the 
 purpose of revenue would be advisable. An Interstate Trade 
 Commission, composed mostly of practical people and not too 
 many politicians, might be a good move. In our judgment, the 
 present disturbed business conditions are caused by the politi- 
 cal upheaval in Washington. We have altogether too much 
 political interference with business and too many laws calcu- 
 lated to injure and hamper business. 
 
 Sanders, Orr & Co., Cotton Merchants, Charlotte, N. C. 
 
 Politics. Politics. Too much politics. Too much La Fol- 
 lette, Champ Clark & Company, are the causes of business 
 disturbance. We do not favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. There is an " over-production " of commissions now. We 
 favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Trades unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act so long 
 as they are destroyers of property. Farmers should be per- 
 mitted to restrict production or hold a crop for higher prices. 
 They don't have to pTant a crop, neither should they be com- 
 pelled to sell it. If they pay their bills for supplies furnished 
 by merchants, certainly the surplus is their own. 
 
 R. V. Covington, President, Covington Company, Whole- 
 sale Dry Goods, Jacksonville, Fla. 
 
 Corruption in politics; uncertainty of legislation affecting 
 capital; trade unions and inefficiency of the Sherman Law are 
 disturbing elements in the business world. The Sherman Law 
 should be made specific, not subject to interpretation by judges. 
 Trade unions should not be exempt from its operation, but com- 
 binations of farmers should be permitted. I favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
309 
 
 F. B. Thomas & Co., Dry Goods, Etc., Roanoke, Va. 
 
 Special privileges that have enriched the minority at the 
 expense of the majority, fostered by unreasonable tariff and 
 patent laws that should be corrected or repealed without delay; 
 the ability to manipulate commodities and securities by tele- 
 graph, telephone and government posts all these conditions 
 tend to undermine honest, straightforward business, and to im- 
 pair public confidence in the security and the integrity of busi- 
 ness interests. If the Sherman Law had been enforced from the 
 beginning it would be unnecessary to ask whether it is clear 
 and workable. As to competitive methods, it ought to be enough 
 to say that competition is the life of trade. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended by adding criminal penalties, and the 
 authorities should enforce those penalties. All the advantages 
 of business on a large scale are in favor of the large-scale oper- 
 ator. The benefits to the consumer are not in proportion to the 
 saving. 
 
 James O. Bloss, Retired Merchant, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law may be "clear and workable," i. e., en- 
 forceable, but it is stifling to enterprise and endeavor. Instead 
 of the Sherman Law we ought to have a law to clearly define 
 what corporations might not do, not in general but specific 
 terms, following the rule of the ten commandments. I believe 
 it would help, it being conceded that what is not prohibited is 
 permissible. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I see no objection to making a national 
 incorporation law and Federal license permissible. 
 
 The enforcement of the Sherman Law has brought about 
 disturbance in business. It may be that corporations should not 
 be permitted to run riot, but there is such a thing as feeding 
 a horse shavings to such a point that he dies before he gets used 
 to his food. 
 
 George W. Collord, Retired, New York City. 
 
 I am in favor of a national incorporation law, drawn up by 
 a commission consisting of merchants, manufacturers and law- 
 yers, without political interference. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law, or if it is to be amended, make it plain just what 
 corporations should do and what they should not. Combinations 
 of farmers should be lawful. 
 
 V. J. Freudenthal, Merchant, El Paso, Texas. 
 
 The Sherman Law might be made more clear in some 
 respects, providing the corporation attorneys do not do the 
 amending. I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 The desire of some individuals to monopolize the earth is the 
 chief cause of business disturbance. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission and a Federal license law. 
 
310 
 
 Frank B. Peterson, Wholesale Grocer, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 We should have Federal legislation, compelling national 
 incorporation and uniform State laws, if possible. One com- 
 pany should not be allowed to hold a majority of stock in an- 
 other or, possibly, stock of a company in the same line of busi- 
 ness; e. g., as a great many companies carry their own goods, 
 it is necessary for them to invest the reserve funds. This is 
 an instance where no harm is intended or done. I favor govern- 
 ment regulation of capitalization and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. Disturbed business conditions are due to unwise legisla- 
 tion to correct abuses; to agitation by demagogues and to 
 unjust discrimination against corporations, whether monopolies 
 or not. 
 
 J. M. Comstock, Vice-President, Spokane Dry Goods Com- 
 pany, Spokane, Wash. 
 
 The present political situation and the prosecution of the 
 trusts by the government are unquestionably strong factors in 
 disturbing or retarding present business conditions. Give us 
 presidential elections once in eight years and only two sessions 
 of Congress during that time, and good times will be almost 
 continuous. If it is properly within the legislative domain 
 to arrange words so as to exactly define what a violation of 
 the Sherman Law is, I would favor such an amendment. I 
 favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law, and 
 I think that something in the nature of an .Interstate Trade 
 Commission is very desirable. 
 
 Dudley M. Irwin, Grain Merchant and Manufacturer. Buf- 
 falo, N. Y. 
 
 I favor Federal law governing corporations doing an inter- 
 state business, similar to the national banking law, insuring the 
 publishing of statements and national supervision. 
 
 What is most needed to-day is a wise, honest, square busi- 
 ness-man's government. Less muckraking, more business-men 
 in Congress, fewer lawyers and fewer professional politician? 
 are what the country requires. I favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 law, a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles C. Hitchcock (Department Store), Author of " The 
 Socialist Argument," Ware, Mass. 
 
 To attempt to prevent combination or concentration in indus- 
 tries is on a par with an attempt to prevent invention in ma- 
 chinery and when invented to destroy machinery (as was the 
 case in the early days of machine production). Combination 
 to the fullest extent is in line with economic evolution. Over- 
 see and control the trusts as to capitalization, price, profits, 
 even wages until the people are ready to assume their owner- 
 ship and control. 
 
311 
 
 W. M. Hoyt Company, Wholesale Grocers, by R. J. Ben- 
 nett, Vice-President, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Overcapitalization of public utilities and manufacturing en- 
 terprises, making dividends difficult, and the unreasonable de- 
 mands of labor unions are the causes of any disturbance in 
 business conditions. We fear that the Sherman Law is not 
 clear, and we favor its amendment so as to make it clear and 
 also fair, if it is not already fair. Eailroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. We favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law. As to an Interstate Trade Commission, we have no 
 clear opinion, but do not approve increased governmental ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 H. Michaels, President, Langley & Michaels, Merchants, 
 San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and am opposed to holding 
 companies. I also favor laws to provide government regulation 
 of capitalization. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act. We believe that the best results 
 in production and economy of cost are only possible with the 
 open shop. The Sherman Law should be amended to make it 
 clear and remove the uncertainties which now exist. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Business disturb- 
 ance is due to commercial conditions aggravated or greatly in- 
 flamed by an unnecessarily high tariff. 
 
 Fred Schuette, Merchant, Manitowoc, Wis. 
 
 I don't think business is disturbed quite as badly as gen- 
 erally stated. It might be very much worse. Such disturb- 
 ance as exists is due to unsettled tariff schedules, to necessary 
 prosecutions of corporations or rather of trusts and other causes 
 too many to mention. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 to allow corporations to expand within certain limits, and rail- 
 roads should be permitted to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor 
 most decidedly a national incorporation law, and I am also in 
 favor of an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles Leich & Co., Wholesale Druggists, Evansville, Ind. 
 
 We believe that combinations and pools under Federal super- 
 vision will restore confidence and prosperity. Agitation and 
 uncertainty are the causes of existing disturbance. The Sher- 
 man Law should be, repealed. We favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and an Interstate Trade Commission. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
312 
 
 E. S. Bowen, Treasurer, Newell Coal and Lumber Company, 
 
 Pawtucket, R. I. 
 
 Trusts, " trust busters" and also overproduction of manu- 
 facturers, in addition to the general uncertainty as to the out- 
 come of present attempts to enforce the Sherman Law, are dis- 
 turbing the business community. The Sherman Law should 
 be made constructive, instead of destructive. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, a Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 S. Herman, Merchant, Oshkosh, Wis. 
 
 The causes of business disturbance are: First, the unre- 
 stricted issuing of stock by public utilities corporations; second, 
 industrial monopolies created and sustained by a prohibitory 
 tariff, and a consequent high cost of living; third, increasing 
 uneasiness on the part of the people, brought about largely by 
 the above-named causes, and foreshadowing that changes are 
 imminent. The Sherman Law should be amended as outlined 
 by Senator La Follette in a bill which he introduced in the 
 Senate August 19, 1911. I favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 F. Coit Johnson, Merchant, J. H. Lane & Co., New York 
 
 City. 
 
 Trust prosecutions and tariff uncertainties are chiefly the 
 causes of business disturbance. There are also too many legal 
 and legislative interferei-jes with business stability. I favor a 
 national incorporation act. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended. The results of the United States Steel, Harvester 
 and similar cases should indicate in what particular amend- 
 ments are desirable to enable large corporations to operate eco- 
 nomically and efficiently, but without injury to the public. Eail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 Agnew & Co., Merchants, Wholesale, in Hides, Skins, Pelts, 
 Tallow and Wool, Port Henry, N. Y., and Boston 
 Mass. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. Business disturbance is due 
 mostly to political tomfoolery or political buncombe, such as 
 foolish and unwarranted attacks on the tariff. Let the Tariff 
 Commission have entire charge of adjusting tariff changes. Let 
 it be done scientifically. In the political world (in the United 
 States) there has been too radical a stand taken by some Be- 
 publicans and many Democrats for the good of this country's 
 best business interests. 
 
313 
 
 Yahr & Lange Drug Company, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 We do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 It is not, in our opinion, feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods in business. We favor the stand taken by Senator 
 Cummins (see " Chicago Record-Herald," November 18, 1911). 
 We believe that the Sherman Law is inadequate to meet present 
 conditions. We believe in the strict regulation of all combi- 
 nations between allied commercial and industrial interests. 
 There are combinations which are detrimental to the public 
 welfare; there are also combinations which are in the interest 
 of the public. The public has a right to demand goods at 
 reasonable rates, and the producer has a right to a reasonable 
 earning on the investment and a proper compensation for time 
 and effort. 
 
 Delayed activity on the part of the government violations 
 of the law should not have been allowed at any time is chiefly 
 responsible for the present uncertainty in business. We favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Julius Mautner, Mautner & Ahlswede, Furs, New York 
 City. 
 
 We find no business disturbance, only natural retrenchment 
 from overproduction, as it always happens in this country after 
 years of continued prosperity. The Sherman Law ought to be 
 repealed. If not repealed, it should be amended so that mer- 
 chants, or any industrial corporation, should share alike and 
 be made alike to pay the same rates without any rebates, and 
 that taxes should be payable according to incomes. We favor 
 a national incorporation law, a Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 Brown & Adams, Wool, Boston, Mass. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, if necessary to secure stable conditions. Un- 
 certainty is at the bottom of the present feeling of business ap- 
 prehension. And the two principal causes of this uncertainty 
 are doubts regarding the interpretation of the Sherman Law 
 and the possibility of important tariff changes. Capital is timid 
 and fearful. The Sherman Law should have its meaning made 
 clear. When that meaning is made clear, it may prove to be 
 too obnoxious to be satisfactory. 
 
 C. F. Adams Company, Merchandise, Erie, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear or workable, and should be 
 amended so as to make its intent plain to everyone. Railroads 
 should not be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Law, and combinations of farmers, to restrict produc- 
 tion by holding crops for higher prices, should not be lawful. 
 We favor national incorporation and Federal license. 
 
314 
 
 Morris Stern, Ullman, Stern & Krausse, Merchants, Gal- 
 veston, Tex. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. The Sherman Law should be amended to permit con- 
 solidations and combinations in all walks of business under the 
 control of a national commission. 
 
 Our trusts were based on the German " Kartell " system, 
 which is still in vogue under successful control of the German 
 government, while in the United States it became abused and 
 needed to be curbed. Stop overcapitalization; let actual values 
 and money, not good will or fictitious values, comprise capital, 
 with fixed prices and selling agreements as a proper protection 
 against unfair and ruinous competition. These can be controlled 
 to remain in line of reasonable profit only. A United States 
 Trade Commission should have the necessary powers and access 
 at any time to the books of all concerns. 
 
 A. G. Rhodes & Son, Mercantile, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 The unsettled condition of the tariff question is, in our 
 opinion, largely responsible for disturbed business conditions, 
 although, we believe, local conditions have a great deal to do 
 with it for instance, the low price of cotton in this section. 
 
 We do not favor amending the Sherman Law. Any law 
 made would have to go through with what the Sherman Law 
 has gone through, and it seems better to stay where we are than 
 to go back and start over. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, for how could a receiving line 
 give a through rate otherwise? We believe our laws sufficient, 
 and if they are enforced regardless of person or prestige, noth- 
 ing more will be necessary. 
 
 Carl F. Boker (Hermann Boker & Co., Steel Hardware), 
 New York City. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, which is neither clear 
 nor workable. It is not feasible, in my opinion, to return to 
 what are commonly known as old competitive methods. Kail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 and combinations of farmers, to secure fair prices for their prod- 
 ucts, should be lawful. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Law. 
 
 W. F. Graves (Graves Lumber Company), Hosford, Fla. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable. I consider it feas- 
 ible to return to old competitive methods in business. The only 
 change in the Sherman Law should be to make it more effective. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act, and combinations of farmers should be per- 
 mitted only to retaliate against other combined interests. 
 
315 
 
 Samuel Robert, Merchant and Importer, New York City. 
 
 I object to the persistent attempt to win more powers for 
 the general government. Our country has not been taught that 
 a paternal or centralized government, which is practically the 
 same thing, is the most desirable. Bather should that part of 
 the Constitution be strengthened which provides for free com- 
 merce, and free intercourse between the States be enlarged upon, 
 and every State compelled to recognize every lawful body or cor- 
 poration of every other State and not permitted to legislate 
 against it. 
 
 John S. Lawrence, Merchant, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear, but not enforceable; the pre- 
 mium on checking it is too great. It should be repealed, and 
 regulation and national incorporation should be substituted. 
 The present disturbance in business is caused by house-cleaning 
 on the part of the government, which has brought to light many 
 obnoxious practices on the part of " big business/' But I doubt 
 if the house-cleaning has yet gone far enough for its results 
 to be open to inspection. 
 
 J. L. Oestmann, Treasurer, Jas. S. Kirk & Co., Chemists, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable and not in need 
 of amendment. I favor a national incorporation law. Con- 
 fusion attending dissolution of the trusts, but primarily due 
 to the permission given to organize trusts and monopolies, has 
 caused business disturbance. I think that a new law should 
 be enacted regulating the trusts similar to the way that the 
 railroads are regulated, and that such a law would be in order 
 and better than dissolving them. 
 
 A. S. Aronson, Credit Manager for Frankel Bros., New 
 York City. 
 
 Our attorney-general is entirely too active and has little or 
 no regard for the consequences of his acts. Congress should 
 adjourn for about four years; it might help by saving us from 
 a great deal of harmful legislation. The Sherman Law should 
 be clearly defined, so that large interests may know what they 
 have to comply with. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an. Interstate Trade Commission 
 
 Charles Perry, Hotel Keeper, The Rainier- Grand Hotel, 
 Seattle, Wash. 
 
 The wide publicity of exaggerated conditions is the chief 
 cause of any existing business disturbance. The Sherman Law, 
 in our judgment, is clear and workable. Kailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
316 
 
 I. S. Coffin, Merchant, New York. 
 
 This country possessed great undeveloped resources. Men 
 of ability and foresight saw the possibilities of the future, 
 and took advantage of the opportunity and have built up great 
 prosperity. What they created should not be destroyed, but 
 fostered and regulated for the benefit of all. They were gen- 
 erally not criminals but benefactors; but the time has come 
 when these matters should be regulated to prevent excessive 
 concentration of capital in a few hands. 
 
 T. Clifton Jenkins, Wholesale Grocer, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Political agitation and social unrest; private and public 
 extravagance; too many non-producers in towns and cities, and 
 too few producers on the farms; unscientific farming; great 
 increase in the cost of labor due to restriction of hours and of 
 the conditions of labor; increasing taxation and unwise and 
 radical legislation against corporations these all enter into the 
 conditions which make for business unrest. I favor a Federal 
 license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Blish, Mize & Silliman Hardware Company, Atchison, Kan. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it plain, so 
 that business men may easily know what is right and wrong 
 under it, and keep within the law, as most men are disposed 
 to do. Trade unions should not be excepted from the opera- 
 tion of the* Sherman Act. They attempt to control prices and 
 stifle competition in the labor market. In our territory short 
 crops and bad management are the causes of any business dis- 
 turbance that exists. 
 
 Sims Bray, Sales Manager, Anderson Hardware Company, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be enforced. The law should be 
 enforced as long as it is a law. If enforcement hurts as it 
 does repeal the law or modify it in accord with the needs 
 of business and of the public. The commerce court should be 
 abolished. It does no good to railroads that they cannot get 
 in the other courts. This court tends- to reduce and curtail 
 the authority and efficiency of the Commerce Commission. 
 
 A. Milne & Co., Iron and Steel Merchants, New York City. 
 
 We have too much uncertainty as to government prosecu- 
 tions; too many lawyers; too many laws; too many politicians; 
 too much politics ; not enough " Mind your own business " ; 
 too many theorists telling others what they should do, when 
 they themselves do not understand the subject, like old maids 
 telling successful mothers how to bring up their children; too 
 many attempts to make our government a paternal one. 
 
317 
 
 Hazen & Lotspeich Co., Wholesale Grocers, Knoxville, 
 Tenn. 
 
 Selfishness on the part of the rich, and failure on the part 
 of our government to have the law executed promptly, are the 
 causes of business disturbance. Let every Senator get busy 
 in trying to carry out faithfully the teaching of the " Golden 
 Kule." We consider it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods, provided our government is strong enough to regu- 
 late the trusts and large corporations. Make the Sherman Law 
 clear and then have it enforced promptly and impartially. We 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Hugo Reisinger, Import and Export, New York City. 
 
 The uncertain political conditions of the country, the 
 Payne-Aldrich tariff and the suits brought against the trusts 
 under the Sherman Law are disturbing causes in business. I* 
 favor a national incorporation law. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended, taking the German law for corporations as a basis. 
 Competition and price agreements must be permissible. Every 
 trust should make public statement of its affairs at least twice 
 a year, and watered stocks- should be cut out of its stock. Wa- 
 tering stock should never be permitted. 
 
 Roehm & Davison, Wholesale Merchants, Detroit, Mich. 
 
 Pernicious activity of the national government in trying to 
 follow too closely a law, the exact meaning of which no two 
 lawyers agree on, is interfering with business security. Give 
 us something that will assure business stability. We want less 
 politics. The Sherman Law should be amended to permit trade 
 agreements under government supervision. We favor a national 
 incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 John S. Brittain, Wholesale Dry Goods, St. Joseph, Mo. 
 
 Less politics and fewer changes in our tariff system are 
 very desirable. We ought to have a permanent tariff commis- 
 sion that would remove the tariff from politics. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, Federal license, and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, if it seems necessary. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended so that it can be understood without in- 
 structions from a judicial body. 
 
 L. R. Atwood, President, Peaslee-Gaulbert Company, Louis- 
 ville, Ky. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it more 
 reasonable, practicable and clear, and to make it apply to labor, 
 professional men and farmers, as well as to merchants and man- 
 ufacturers. Political agitation is the disturbing element in 
 business affairs. 
 
318 
 
 W. K. Morison, President, W. K. Morison & Company, 
 Hardware Merchants, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 Either national incorporation or Federal license would be 
 effective, in my judgment, for dealing with corporations engaged 
 in interstate commerce. I believe in holding companies, under 
 suitable Federal control. Special statutes should deal with 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade. The government 
 should regulate capitalization and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Silberstein & Bondy Company, Merchants, Duluth, Minn. 
 
 We do not favor dissolution of large industrial corporations 
 as a solution of the trust problem, or as tending to restore com- 
 petitive conditions. The time is past for bringing that about. 
 Business methods must grow or retrograde. The only solution 
 seems to be regulation. We favor Federal incorporation and 
 control for companies engaged in interstate commerce, and a 
 business commission to regulate prices and conditions under 
 which such corporations can do business. 
 
 C. F. Shoemaker, Wholesale Druggist, Philadelphia^ Pa. 
 
 T favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor a 
 Federal license law, and an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers. Business 
 disturbance is due to uncertainty on the part of manufacturers 
 and merchants as to when and where government lightning 
 might strike them. 
 
 C. R. Johnson, Union Lumber Company, San Francisco, 
 Cal. 
 
 We favor repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and there should 
 be no exception as to any class under the law. Disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions, in our judgment, are due to the attempt of the 
 government, spurred on by politicians and theorists, to assume 
 functions which do not belong to it and for which its officials 
 are unfitted. 
 
 Chicago Stove and Range Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Make the Sherman Law brief and clear. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, and farmers 
 should be permitted to combine to secure fair prices for their 
 products. We favor a national incorporation law, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Present disturbed 
 business conditions are caused by politics. 
 
319 
 
 Walter C. Humstone, Retired Merchant, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 At present almost all business is being done under condi- 
 tions which in the past were thought to be legal and proper. 
 Changes in the past few years, brought about by public opinion, 
 make the future conduct of business uncertain until proper 
 conditions are clearly defined and understood. I do not favor 
 the repeal of the Sherman Law. Either a national incorpora- 
 tion law or Federal license seems necessary. I am in some 
 doubt as to an Interstate Trade Commission, but it may be de- 
 sirable. 
 
 T. W. Marse, Country Merchant, Taylor, Texas. 
 
 Causes of disturbed business conditions? Calling people 
 or trusts down to rules of reason and justice in business prog- 
 ress. We are making very good progress in this country in all 
 lines of industry. Such disturbance as exists is due to com- 
 pelling large combinations to recognize that the public have 
 rights that must be respected. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and Federal license, and see no objection to an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles W. Ott, Secretary, Wm. Steinmeyer Company, 
 Wholesale and Retail Grocers, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable 
 and ought to be repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, and combinations of farmers 
 should be lawful. I favor a national incorporation law and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. Too much politics and too little 
 regard for the general welfare by men in public office are 
 responsible for disturbance in business. 
 
 Charles B. Gookin, Retired Merchant, Cotton and Woolen 
 Dress Goods and other Textile Mills, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Uncertainty as to what is right and what is wrong under 
 the Sherman Law, which should be amended to make it clearer 
 and to state what corporations can do, is the cause of business 
 disturbance. I believe we should have constructive legislation 
 at once in order that capital may be employed and thereby give 
 employment to our wage-earners and also return interest on 
 money which is now idle. 
 
 William A. Heizman, Pennsylvania Hardware Company, 
 Reading, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended along the line of the 
 suggestions of Mr. Samuel Untermyer, especially in that it 
 should be made possible for competitors to combine in at least 
 some form which will prevent ruinous competition. I favor 
 a national incorporation law. Business is being disturbed by 
 too much political agitation. 
 
320 
 
 Robert L. Chamberlain, Treasurer of the Knickerbocker 
 Chocolate Company, New York. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to an excessive number of 
 demagogues in public life, the result of manhood suffrage. If 
 women are given the right to vote, conditions will become twice 
 as bad. A return to old competitive methods in business would 
 be feasible if unfair competition is punished by jail sentence. 
 Trade unions should most decidedly not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, as their object is to destroy 
 competition and, as a result, to destroy discipline and efficiency. 
 Their claim that they are not organizations for profit is not true. 
 
 Clyde Mitchell Carr, President Joseph T. Ryerson & Son, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 I do not think it feasible to return to old competitive meth- 
 ods; but I believe that modern methods, unless strongly regu- 
 lated, will prove of greater danger than the old competitive 
 methods. The Sherman Law should be amended, saying just 
 what a corporation may or may not do, making the penalty 
 severe and applied to individuals in some other way than by 
 fines. I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, if corporations are to be permitted to con- 
 trol the major portion of any commodity. 
 
 D. Wile, of Kaufman, Straus & Co., Dry Goods, Lexington, 
 Ky. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, but the limita- 
 tions of corporations should be more clearly defined, so that all 
 business men may know exactly where they stand. I favor a 
 national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act and should be regulated by new legislation. 
 The causes of disturbance in business are extravagant living 
 and the higher cost of almost every commodity. 
 
 William E. Peck, William E. Peck & Co., Export Mer- 
 chants, New York. 
 
 The high cost of union labor and its growing inefficiency 
 are the causes of business disturbance. The Sherman Law is 
 now clear and workable. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. We favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 William Willis Merrill, Merchant, Produce Exchange, New 
 York. 
 
 The Sherman Law, and the attempt to enforce that unwise 
 measure, is disturbing business. The Sherman Law should by 
 all means be repealed. 
 
.JIM 
 
 Plumb & Nelson Company, Wholesale Grocers, Manitowoc, 
 Wis. 
 
 We favor Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. The Sherman Law should be strengthened. Holding 
 companies should be prevented. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization, and publicity should be applied to commer- 
 cial corporations through a commission to be appointed for that 
 purpose. We favor an Interstate Trade Commission if prices 
 can be controlled absolutely. We do not deny the existence of 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, 
 but we prefer restraint of combinations anyway. 
 
 Collins, Darrah & Co., Lumbermen and Builders of Coal 
 Barges, Nebraska, Forest County, Pa. 
 
 Some of the large corporations affected by the Sherman Law 
 want to make hard times to get the law repealed, and that is 
 what is causing business trouble. We consider the Sherman 
 Law clear and workable. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, and combinations of farmers should be per- 
 mitted. We favor a national incorporation Jaw and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 Shem Spigelmyer, Merchant, Antes Fort, Pa. 
 
 The voters, both Democratic and Republican, are mostly on 
 the progressive order in these parts, and nothing else will do. 
 Antiquated ideas and old fossil teachings will not attract any 
 support here. The Supreme Court is regarded here as either 
 not knowing the law, or not caring to enforce it as it ought 
 to be enforced. The manipulation of commodities, watering 
 stock, and misunderstanding of the Sherman Act, have largely 
 caused unsettled conditions throughout the country. 
 
 E. J. Fairfield, Lindsay Brothers, Agricultural Implements, 
 Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 Calling a halt on our fast gait will do us no harm except 
 temporary inconvenience. The Sherman Law should be amend- 
 ed only to the extent of clearing the atmosphere so that the 
 combinations of capital and the general public will both know 
 where they are at. I am decidedly opposed to any change in 
 the law permitting the cut-throat methods with which combina- 
 tions started out and for which they were primarily organized. 
 
 The Dewey Brothers Company, Blanchester, Ohio. 
 
 The Sherman Law is about as clear and workable as can 
 be expected, as long as lawyers are law-makers. It is doubt- 
 less susceptible to improvement. The alleged disturbance in 
 business conditions is doubtless due,, in a large degree, to the 
 fact that former victims of Wall Street now have cold feet. 
 
322 
 
 George H. Raymond, President, Hans Rees' Sons, Tanners 
 
 and Leather Merchants, New York. 
 
 
 
 We ought to return perhaps not to old competitive methods, 
 but to competition without favoritism in freight rates. I be- 
 lieve the Sherman Law is being made clear. At the same time 
 I am in favor of a Federal license law and opposed to an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. I believe that business conditions are 
 improving. 
 
 J. H. Marr, Lumber and Grain, Davenport, Neb. 
 
 What we need is some more of Teddy Koosevelt or Sen- 
 ator La Follette. The people have become tired of the union 
 of great interests to destroy all competition, and at the same 
 time, they do not want such interference with business as will 
 tend to deprive them of employment and to increase the cost of 
 products to the consumer. Teddy Roosevelt remedy is what we 
 want. 
 
 M. Philipsborn, Merchant, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Machinations of politicians willing to sacrifice public wel- 
 fare to individual ambition, and in addition to that the ab- 
 sence of a thoroughly practical banking system tend to create 
 lack of confidence among business men. I favor a national in- 
 corporation law and also Interstate Trade Commission, and 
 think the Sherman Law ought to be repealed. 
 
 John Pritzlaff Hardware Company, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Persecution of the trusts under cover of the Sherman Law, 
 agitation of the tariff issue, muckraking demagogy under the 
 guise of reform these in brief are responsible for business dis- 
 turbance. A national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission would doubtless help to establish a better situation. 
 I am in favor of the repeal of the Sherman Law. 
 
 James Mandlebaum, Fones Brothers Hardware Company, 
 Little Rock, Ark. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended, simplifying it so 
 as to make it possible to punish severely those who are guilty 
 of violating it, and also to make it so clear that it will not be 
 necessary for business men to run to a lawyer's office to learn 
 what they can or cannot do. 
 
 Richard G. Wagner, President of the Wisconsin Sugar Com- 
 pany, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Aggressive legislation adverse to the interests of business 
 and tariff agitation both tend to make uncertain the minds of 
 business men and to unsettle business conditions. The Sher- 
 man Law should be amended so as to make big business pos- 
 sible and corporations with large interests also possible. 
 
S. Hamiil Company, Wholesale Grocers, Keokuk, Iowa. 
 
 Too much political agitation and a general fear that some- 
 thing is going to happen and too much centralization of big 
 interests are, in our judgment, the causes of business uncer- 
 tainty. The Sherman Law should be amended so that all busi- 
 ness, large or small, if conducted honestly, should be protected. 
 English laws protect large and small interests and might be 
 studied with good results by our lawmakers. We favor national 
 incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 G. H. Wells, Gould, Wells & Blackburn Company, Whole- 
 sale Grocers, Madison, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable. 
 I do not consider it entirely feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods: but competition is not obsolete yet. The Sherman 
 I jaw should be amended to make it more specific. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor a national incorporation law, together with an Interstate 
 Trade Commission for interstate business. 
 
 Mears-Slayton Lumber Company, Lumber Dealers, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 A lack of statesmanship and a considerable surplus of poli- 
 ticians are responsible for a good deal of disturbance in busi- 
 ness. We should have a national incorporation law and an 
 Intel-state Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should be 
 made constructive, not destructive, and farmers should be al- 
 lowed to combine if they want to. 
 
 A. G. Webb, Lumberman, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 LTncertainty as to the powers of corporations and the hostile 
 attitude of the executive and legislative authorities of the na- 
 tion and various States toward combinations of capital are chief 
 among the causes of unrest. We ought to have a national incor- 
 poration law and the Sherman Law should be amended so as 
 to make it clear. 
 
 A. H. Lindeke, Wholesale Drygoods, St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable, 
 but I am not prepared to suggest as to its amendment. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 I do not believe in government control of private business. 
 
 Warren M. Salisbury (W. H. Salisbury & Co., Inc.), 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 We favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and that railroads 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 approval by the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
324 
 
 Benoni Sherman Green, Wholesale Saddlery, Bloomington, 
 111. 
 
 In a general way there are no disturbed business conditions. 
 Some hesitation is being caused in business enterprise by the 
 restrictions imposed through doubtful interpretation of the 
 Sherman Law. The Sherman Law should be made so plain and 
 understandable that any person of common intelligence could 
 comprehend it. Railroads should be allowed to cuter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. We favor a national incorporation la\v. 
 but not an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Willis Davis, Secretary, Southwestern Drug Company, 
 Wichita, Kan. 
 
 J prefer national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. Holding companies should be restrained to the 
 extent that they shall not become monopolies. I prefer the Sher- 
 man Anti-Trust Act for dealing with unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Wm. S. French, Merchant, Evansville, Ind. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is clear and work- 
 able. It should be amended to strengthen its control over inter- 
 state corporations of all kinds. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor Federal license 
 for interstate corporations and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 Wm. Q. Wales, President Brown-Wales Company, Mer- 
 chants, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I think a paid commission to study the business situation 
 in this country and suggest either new laws or amendments to 
 the Sherman Act is the most feasible solution to the present 
 uncertainty in business. 
 
 O. V. Tracy & Co., Wholesale Grocers, Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 I prefer a national incorporation law for corporations doing- 
 ail interstate business, and State incorporation where the busi- 
 ness is confined to one Stale. Railroads should be. allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission with national incorporation. 
 
 Max Morehouse, Merchant, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 Large interests are afraid of unsettled and uncertain condi- 
 tions. There is nothing much the matter with- the business of 
 retailers. It is unfortunate but true that the trusts must be 
 controlled and that present conditions can be bettered only by 
 finding a solid and lasting remedy for an}' existing evil. . 
 
325 
 
 William J. Farrell, Corks, New York City. 
 
 The greedy, unscrupulous rich must be restrained in some 
 way. The Sherman Law is better than nothing. It is not 
 entirely feasible to attempt to return to old competitive meth- 
 ods. I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license 
 law, and an Interstate Trade Commission. The causes of dis- 
 turbed business conditions are many, from the suspicions of the 
 general public regarding the rich grabbers to the machinations 
 of the grabbers themselves. 
 
 Edward A. Morrison, Retired Dry Goods Merchant, New 
 York City and Larchmont, N. Y. 
 
 The cause of disturbed business conditions is largely the 
 element of fear that prevails in the minds of business men in 
 regard to the action and effect of the Sherman Law; also in a 
 lark of confidence in the courts and the political leaders of 
 the nation. The Sherman Law should be repealed. I favor a 
 national incorporation law. 
 
 M. J. Brandenstein & Co., San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, or possibly amended, 
 by permitting "big business " to be economically so worked 
 that the ultimate consumer will purchase at lowest possible 
 price, and at the same time such " business " can compete with 
 the world's markets. Constant agitation of the tariff and un- 
 certainty as to the legal status of corporations are the causes 
 of disturbance. 
 
 Frank B. Downs, Treasurer, Philadelphia Distributing Com- 
 pany, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Interference originated in the " big stick " has caused pres- 
 ent disturbed conditions in business. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed. It is obsolete as applying to existing conditions. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 Roger Williams, Retired, Providence, R. I. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to permit com- 
 binations under government regulation and supervision. It is 
 only partially clear and workable. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission with very 
 broad powers. 
 
 F. E. Woodward (Woodward & Son), Langdon, Minn. 
 (Retired Farmer, Small Country Store, etc.) 
 
 Living too fast is what is causing business disturbance. Too 
 much time and attention and money are given to sporting and 
 not enough attention given to business, by older people, middle 
 aged people, and young people. They chase around too much 
 and don't attend to work. 
 
326 
 
 Haw and Simmons Company, Wholesale Hardware, Ot> 
 tumwa, Iowa. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business, and am opposed to holding companies. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be 
 applied to interstate corporations. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and federal license. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. The Sherman Law should 
 l>e amended to make it clearer and more stringent. 
 
 Schnull & Co., Wholesale Grocers, Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 Excessively high tariff, disregard of law by the trusts, delay 
 in trials and decisions by the courts, and a weak and ridiculous 
 banking and currency system have all joined in unsettling the 
 stability of business conditions. We consider it feasible to 
 return to old competitive methods, with modifications. The 
 Sherman Law should be made more explicit, and railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 John S. Miller (Westmoreland Grocery Company), Union- 
 town, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make it clear and 
 workable. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. Trade unions should be exceptcd from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act and combinations of farmers 
 should be lawful. I favor national incorporation, Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. O. Barrett, President, Barrett Hardware Company, Joliet, 
 111. 
 
 Labor unions and the agitation against corporations are 
 leading causes of present disturbed conditions. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed as to industrial corporations, but not 
 as to railroads. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates. I favor national incorporation and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 John W. Blodgett, Lumberman, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 Tariff uncertainty first and foremost and adverse legisla- 
 tion are the causes of business disturbance. I favor a national 
 incorporation law with complete publicity. Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law is not 
 clear and workable and should be repealed. 
 
 Boggs & Buhl, General Merchandise, Pittsburg, Pa. 
 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission should be established, with powers not 
 unlike those now used in regulating common carriers by the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
W. V. Snyder Company, Drygoods Merchants, Newark, 
 N. J. 
 
 Too much politics! More paternalism! Less thought of 
 self ! Too many politicians ; too few statesmen, are troubling 
 the business world. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, but 
 if it is to be amended, then it should be considered that mere 
 size should not count against a company, provided the company 
 is honestly conducted. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 George B. Logan, Wholesale Hardware Merchant, Pitts- 
 burg, Pa. 
 
 The article on " Trusts " by Col. Theodore Eoosevelt in 
 " The Outlook " of November 18, 1911, expresses clearly my 
 ideas of the best method of remedying present unsettled condi- 
 tions. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission and Federal 
 incorporation. Federal incorporation should relieve the cor- 
 poration of State control or expense other than taxation of its 
 property. 
 
 James H. Stebbins, Retired from Business, New York. 
 
 A prominent cause of business disturbance is the meddle- 
 someness of the Federal government in the business affairs of 
 the people. I am opposed to a national incorporation law, and 
 I favor repeal of the Sherman Law if a workable law takes its 
 place. If the Sherman Law is to be amended, it should be made 
 clearer to the multitude of business men. 
 
 Edward Hamlin, Metropolitan Coal Company, Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 Two political parties playing for position in the game of 
 
 politics are disturbing business. The Sherman Law should be 
 
 either amended or repealed. The intent of the law should be 
 absolutely clear. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. C. Ulrick, Wholesale Grocer, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 The assaults by the press and by agitators on business have 
 had much to do with present disturbed conditions. I favor 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law, the' enactment of a national 
 incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 Frank Geele Hardware Company, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and a Federal license 
 law. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed, as it is neither 
 clear nor workable. Too much legislation is making trouble for 
 the country. 
 
Henry Koch, Commercial Agent, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a national incorporation law, a Federal license law, and the 
 creation of an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman 
 Act and other laws, vague and difficult of clear construction, 
 and without rule of reason, have caused whatever disturbance 
 exists in business. 
 
 E. D. Whiteside, Lumberman, Columbus, Kan. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to unwarranted tim- 
 idity resulting from the Sherman Law agitation and Canadian 
 Reciprocity agitation. Just waiting to find " where we are at." 
 By the way, locally we have had no disturbance. We have gone 
 steadily forward but then this is the best corner of the world, 
 anyway. 
 
 F. T. Hindman, Manager, Shaw Lumber Company, Retail 
 
 Lumber and Coal, Boise, Idaho. 
 
 The present panic or depression is peculiar, in that while 
 work is scarce, prices in general have not fallen, and in many 
 instances have risen. In my mind business combinations will 
 be much more amenable to both law and reason if their pro- 
 tective tariff bulwark is first removed. 
 
 Ragon Brothers, Wholesale Grocers, Evansville, Ind. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, and do not regard the Sherman Law as 
 having been made clear and workable. Too much political agi- 
 tation regarding so-called trusts is chiefly responsible- for any 
 existing uncertainty. 
 
 W. T. Scott, President, The Scott Lumber Company, 
 Bridgeport, Ohio. 
 
 There are not enough farm producers, and too many non- 
 producers in the cities. There is too much political agitation, 
 and court proceedings are delayed too long. 
 
 A. M. Sheldon, Manager and Treasurer, Imperial Elevator 
 Company, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 There is too much political agitation respecting commercial 
 interests, and this is made worse as to its effects by hesitancy 
 on the part of capital to undertake new business, owing to an 
 unstable currency and banking system. 
 
 V. A. Peterson, Grain Buyer, Shickley, Neb. 
 
 I don't see that any trust is any good to the public. I 
 consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods of 
 business, and I consider the Sherman Law clear and workable. 
 
Arthur C. Smith, Wholesale Dry Goods Merchant, Omaha, 
 Neb. 
 
 Over-speculation, ''trust busting/' tariff agitation and in- 
 surgent heresies generally are disturbing business conditions. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and we should have a 
 national incorporation law. Federal license, and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 James M. Young, President, Fort Pitt Supply Company, 
 Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Watering of stock and abusive power by corporations have 
 led to loss of confidence in some of the great business enter- 
 prises. For the sins of the minority the majority are being 
 made to suffer. The Sherman Law should 'be repealed. L 
 favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 J. Ullman & Co., Live Stock, etc., Appleton, Wis. 
 
 Too much agitation in business for political grandstand 
 play; too much politics in business and too little business in 
 politics, are responsible for existing uncertainty. The Sher- 
 man Law should be made more clear in order that a business 
 man can understand its meaning and effect. 
 
 H. F. C. Dovenmuehle & Son, Wholesale Boots & Shoes, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Too much newspaper talk and wrong impressions or false 
 statements have brought about disturbance in business. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to make it clear, and to cover 
 points that are not now covered. 
 
 Empkie Shugart Hill Company, Wholesale Hardware, 
 Council Bluffs, Iowa. 
 
 Amend the Sherman Law so as to cover the points not 
 covered and to make clear just what is intended by the law. 
 I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law, 
 and am opposed to an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. Q. Carter & Co., Retail Merchants, De Land, 111. 
 
 Over supply of water in corporation stocks is making a good 
 deal of trouble. The Sherman Law should not be repealed 
 but should have necessary amendments. 
 
 A. G. Lamperty, Sales Manager, Wolf & Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be so phrased as to make its 
 meaning clear and concise, instead of being va<rno and subject 
 to many constructions. 
 
330 
 
 A. J. Elias, G. Elias & Bro., Lumber Dealers, Buffalo, N.Y. 
 
 The general enforcement of laws long obsolete and the en- 
 actment of other needed legislation, curbing the reckless and 
 thus preventing more serious consequences later, are causing 
 business disturbance. The Sherman Law should be amended 
 to define just what it does mean so clearly that every one can 
 understand. I regard it as feasible to return to old competi- 
 tive methods. 
 
 Francis H. Southwick, Retired Merchant and Corporation 
 Officer, 31 Pierrepont street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 A very bad monetary system; too much legislation and 
 talking about future legislation, largely for political effect, are, 
 in my judgment, the causes of disturbed business conditions. 
 We ought to elect a president for a seven- or eight-year term 
 and have him ineligible for a second term. The Sherman Law 
 ought to be repealed. I favor a national incorporation law. 
 
 A. F. Clough & Co., Retail Lumber Dealers, Canova, S. D. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed and we should have 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. Doubt as to what is really 
 lawful is the trouble with business. In regard to labor unions 
 and farmers' organizations, it would seem equitable to have 
 them on the same footing as other classes of organizations of 
 the same nature. 
 
 G. C. Sterl & Co. Merchants, Abilene, Kansas. 
 
 President Taft's veto on tariff reductions caused present 
 disturbed conditions. The Sherman Law should be made 
 stronger and more binding. We need a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Lucius M. Stanton, Stanton Bros., Neckwear, New York. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. 
 
 Jay Smith, Marshall- Wells Hardware Company, Portland, 
 Ore. 
 
 Too much agitation against corporations has brought about 
 the present business uncertainty. I favor a repeal of the Sher- 
 man Law, and the enactment of a national incorporation law, 
 and also an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 James Campbell, Hardware Merchant, Seattle, Wash. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, which is shown 
 to be clear and workable. I am in favor of an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
331 
 
 Fred L. Carter, Carter, Carter & Meigs, Wholesale Drug- 
 gists, Boston, Mass. 
 
 The court decisions in regard to the Sherman Law and the 
 uncertainty of merchants as to what they can do and cannot 
 do and the uncertainty of business men, particularly the mill 
 and factory interests, in regard to the tariff, all contribute to 
 business unrest. The Sherman Law should be amended so that 
 business men will know what they can do. We favor a Federal 
 license law. 
 
 Newman Walbridge, Walbridge & Co., Hardware Mer- 
 chants, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Fear of the consequences of the enforcement of the Sher- 
 man Law is the chief cause of business disturbance. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment of a national 
 incorporation law, a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 A. C. Kennett, Lumber, Conway, N. H. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be made so clear that no court 
 will have to add or subtract one word. Wall Street and the 
 Stock Exchange are the causes of existing business disturbance. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 S. L. Allen & Co., Agricultural Implements, Philadelphia, 
 Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable, and we are in doubt 
 as to any need of amending it. The railroads should be allowed 
 io enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 William B. Deming, Export Merchant, New York. 
 
 A general feeling of distrust and uncertainty is caused by 
 the attacks of interested politicians on railwa}^ and on large 
 and well-established business interests. The Sherman Law 
 should be repealed. 
 
 F. Mayer Boot and Shoe Company, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to political agitation. We re- 
 gard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and not in need 
 of amendment. 
 
 H. P. Hale, Manager, John Morrell & Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
 I consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
George L. Fordyce, The Fordyce-Osborne Company, Dry 
 Goods and Millinery, Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 I favor amending the Sherman Law to conform to present- 
 day business conditions. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. In my 
 judgment, the cause of disturbed business conditions is politics. 
 
 Byron Parsons, President, Parsons & Scoville Co., Whole- 
 sale Grocers, Evansville, Ind. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to make its pro- 
 visions clear. I favor national incorporation,, but I have grave 
 doubts if the government should undertake to conserve the 
 interests of private corporations doing interstate business 
 through a commission. Limit capitalization, surplus, ability 
 to 'borrow, and specifically define business. 
 
 R. A. Long, President, The Long-Bell Lumber Company, 
 Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 Under all the circumstances I think it desirable thai the 
 Sherman Law should stand as it now exists. Disturbed bu-> 
 ness conditions, in my judgment, are chiefly due to political 
 agitation or legislation regarding the so-called trusts and large 
 combinations. 
 
 R. O. Bolman, Wholesale Grocer, Coffeyville, Kan. 
 
 Extravagance of the average consumer; indifference of the 
 average wage-earner to financial obligations, thus making him 
 an itinerant beat; unwillingness of the people to live sensible 
 within their means all these tend to cause disturbed business 
 conditions. The poor as well as the well-to-do brag of extrav- 
 agance and deprecate economy. 
 
 H. L. McKibben, Grain and Lumber, Arlington, Neb. 
 
 The Sherman Law is, in my judgment, clear and workable: 
 and it is feasible to return to old competitive methods in busi- 
 ness. Present disturbed conditions are caused by laws defying 
 business interests on account of the action taken against them 
 by the government. 
 
 F. N. Joslin & Co., Merchants, Maiden, Mass. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I am also opposed to holding companies. The 
 government should regulate capitalization, and laws should be 
 passed providing for publicity for commercial corporations. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
George A. Gray (George A. Gray Company, Department 
 Store), Duluth, Minn. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. The causes of disturbed business conditions would 
 make too long a story. Eail roads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, and combinations of farmer- 
 should be permitted. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 
 J. T. Doster, Doster-Northington Drug Company, Whole- 
 sale Druggists, Birmingham, Ala. 
 
 The simple fact that nobody knows or lias any good reasons 
 in Minnise what the law permits them to do in the way of busi- 
 ness, or what it will be permitting them to do to-morrow, is 
 ciiusing present disturbance. The Sherman Law should either 
 be repealed or amended. AVe should have a national incorpora- 
 tion law. 
 
 G. Motley, Givernaud Bros., Silks, New York City. 
 
 AVe believe in individual liberty, in just as lew laws and 
 regulations as possible no paternalism or socialism, be it from 
 up or from down. There may be abuses it is human nature. 
 No laws will ever prevent abuses of one sort or another, and 
 laws often create abuses. 
 
 The Hooven & Allison Company, Xenia, Ohio. 
 
 The only amendment we have to suggest to the Sherman 
 Law i< to eliminate the use of ''reasonable" in interpreting 
 the law. We regard it as feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods in business. 
 
 E. Chamberlin, Mining, New York City. 
 
 Uncertainty is the cause of present business disturbance. The 
 Sherman Law is clear and workable and should not be repealed. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I favor a Federal license law. 
 
Chapter IV. 
 LABOR. 
 
 John Mitchell, former President of United Mine Workers 
 of America, Mount Vernon, N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law lias not been made clear and workable, 
 and I favor its repeal. I do not consider it feasible to attempt 
 to return to what are commonly known as old competitive 
 methods in business. If the Sherman Law is nut repealed, I 
 favor amending it so as to exclude from its operation associa- 
 tions having no capital stock and not organ i/ed for profit. 
 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. Trade unions and combinations 
 of farmers should be exccpted from the Sherman Act. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 uncertainty as to the meaning of the Sherman Law: demand 
 of the people for a greater measure of control and a more direct, 
 voice in the administration of legislative and administrative 
 affairs. 
 
 I believe that Congress should create a commission composed 
 of representatives of wage-earners, employers, legislators and 
 economists, whose duty it should be to make a study of iliis 
 entire subject, and recommend to Congress such reforms in the 
 legislative, administrative and judicial branches of our govern- 
 ment as may seem necessary because of the changes and the 
 development in our industrial and commercial life. 
 
 J. M. Lynch, President International Typographical Union, 
 Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable: 
 nor do I consider it feasible to return to what are commonly 
 known as old competitive methods in business. I favor either 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law or amendments that will make 
 its intention (the intention of Congress) clear. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended to make it a regulation of the combina- 
 tions. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission: and trade unions should be 
 
 334 
 
335 
 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. Combinations 
 of farmers should not come under the Sherman Act. If they 
 or the trade unions must be regulated by law, then it should 
 be by special act. I doubt, however, the necessity for such a 
 law. 
 
 I favor a statute for the regulation of big business that will 
 be clear and workable and prevent extortion. But such a 
 statute must recognize that the trusts, so-called, are an economic 
 development that cannot and should not be legislated out of 
 business. Combinations are inevitable and scientific. But they 
 should benefit in the greatest degree all of the people. 
 
 W. S. Carter, President, Brotherhood of Locomotive Fire- 
 men and Enginemen, Peoria, 111. 
 
 In regard to trades unions, will say that none of the discus- 
 sions or arguments offered in behalf of or against the adoption of 
 the Sherman Anti-Trust Act gives any indication that it was ever 
 intended that trades unions should be regulated by the Sherman 
 Anti-Trust Act and, therefore, there should be no occasion to 
 " except " trades unions from this operation. Had the question 
 been, " Should trades unions have been included in the opera- 
 tion of the Sherman Act by the American judiciary?" I would 
 unhesitatingly have said, " No" 
 
 As to causes of present disturbed business conditions no 
 man can answer this question except to express his own 
 personal views. It seems to me that the present " disturbed 
 business conditions " are largely based upon a doubt as to 
 whether the " common people " will much longer stand for the 
 present high cost of living, which they believe is of artificial 
 creation, and is not a natural economic result of the condition 
 of the country. 
 
 In August of 1909 my business called me to Texas, where 
 I was astonished to observe farmers (or fruit growers) shaking 
 their peach trees so that the peaches would fall off and be con- 
 sumed by their hogs. These peaches were finer than I had ever 
 seen before. I asked many why it was that these peaches were 
 not shipped to the Northern States, where the housewives were 
 paying $2.25 per bushel for an inferior quality. I was told that 
 the farmers could not afford to gather, sort* pack and deliver 
 at the railroad station these peaches for less than sixty cents 
 per bushel, and that they were not offered as much as sixty 
 cents for these peaches. Further investigation showed that a 
 carload of peaches shipped to the City of Chicago in a refrig- 
 erator car would cost about thirty-five cents per bushel. That 
 is, if the farmer got sixty cents and the railroads got thirty- 
 five cents for delivering a carload of peaches into Chicago, the 
 cost. f. o. b. Chicago would have been ninety-five cents per 
 bushel. Yet, at the same time, peaches of inferior quality could 
 not be secured by the citizens of Illinois for less than $2.25 per 
 bushel. I imagine if it now becomes evident that the people 
 
a iv going to demand " \Vlio got the $1.30 1'" that there will be 
 "disturbed business conditions" until the people '"'go to sleep 
 again." I read an article contributed by a leading manufacturer 
 of pianos recently, wherein he protested that the manufacture 
 of pianos was not prosperous, because the consumer had to 
 pay one hundred per cent, more for the piano than the manu- 
 facturer received for the finished article. 
 
 I have been told by those who should know that an auto- 
 mobile that is sold for $2,200 does not net the manufacturer 
 $1,000. 
 
 I might go on indefinitely with almost every article of com- 
 merce and the story would be the same. 
 
 W. G. Lee, President Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 1 do not regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as 
 clear and workable. I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 Law. but believe that it should be amended, making it workable, 
 and in such manner that it will accomplish its original intent, 
 liailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. 
 
 In my opinion, the present law can bo made to answer its 
 original purpose, if properly construed by those elected and 
 appointed for that purpose. It has been warped, bent and almost 
 broken in an attempt to apply it to cases never contemplated 
 bv the :f miners. 
 
 John F. Tobin, General President, Boot and Shoe Workers' 
 Union, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I do not believe that the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, 
 has proved to be 'clear and workable. I do not consider it 
 feasible to attempt to return to what are commonly known 
 as " old competitive methods " in business. I most decidedly 
 favor the repeal of the Sherman Law. I favor the amending 
 of the Sherman Law by striking out all after the first word 
 in the law and substituting therefor a law which will regulate 
 a business, squeeze the water out of corporations and fix a 
 fair return for the material investment, and prohibit the draw- 
 ing of large salaries by officials which makes them a burdensome 
 tax upon the business. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and 
 regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 In accordance with what is said to be a very distinct under- 
 standing previous to the passage of the Sherman Act, trade 
 unions should be exempt from its operation. I can see a vast 
 difference between a combination of workmen maintaining a 
 
337 
 
 certain standard of wages which might be a high standard 
 and a combination of manufacturers or distributors who might 
 maintain a high standard of selling prices for the advantage of 
 a limited number of persons. In the case of trade unions, the 
 high wages would be put into general circulation and have a 
 tendency to stimulate business. I would not favor combinations 
 of fanners to restrict production or hold a crop for higher prices 
 as against the people, but I do justify them in their present 
 combinations against other combinations who seek to exploit the 
 farmers and force them to accept low prices while exacting the 
 highest rates from the people. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission with powers not unlike those now employed by the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 In my judgment, the present disturbed business condition 
 is due to the wide margin that exists between the actual cost 
 of production and the retail selling price to the consumer. 
 The tendency of the times has been to diminish the cost of 
 production and increase the selling price to the consumer, the 
 result of which is more frequent panics or business depressions 
 because of the inability of the people to consume what has been 
 produced. 
 
 AVe are spending valuable time in the pursuit of efficiency 
 in manufacture, and imitators of real efficiency in the manu- 
 facturing field are taking every opportunity to cheapen produc- 
 tion by intensifying labor and reducing wages. The time and 
 effort put into efficiency could be most profitably directed to 
 efficiency in distribution, so that the retail prices might be 
 brought within a closer range of the actual cost of production. 
 In this field, measured by money value, dollars can be saved as 
 against cents in the other field. 
 
 James Duncan, Secretary-Treasurer, The Granite Cutters' 
 International Association of America, Quincy, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is not clear and 
 workable. I would favor a repeal of the Sherman Law only 
 to permit the passage of a practical similar act. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended to bring and keep large financial and 
 transportation corporations under governmental supervision 
 and control, preventing corporation monopolies, and the " freez- 
 ing out " process of small competing concerns should be declared 
 positively criminal. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. They are not in busi- 
 ness, nor arc they nor can they form transportation, interstate 
 or profit-making trusts or corporations; hence are not compre- 
 hended in such an '" act." As to combinations of farmers, re- 
 striction of production should never be " rendered lawful " under 
 the " Sherman " or any other act. Holding crops for higher 
 prices, when done by individuals as such, is not unlawful, but 
 
a combination by farmers to do so simply to force higher prices 
 should be " rendered unlawful." 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law one such as would 
 require publicity of the business, purposes and workings, in- 
 cluding profits, of the concern incorporated, and that all large 
 interstate concerns should come under the law. I consider that 
 some such commission as an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission in relation to common carriers, would be helpful. 
 
 In my judgment, disturbed business conditions are due to the 
 rapacious greed of " big business " to get rich quickly, thereby 
 causing an unprotected public to pay unwarranted and exceed- 
 ingly inflated prices. So-called "watered stock" should be 
 declared a criminal process, and should have heavy penalties. 
 " Watering " stock is dishonest in any event and should be pre- 
 vented in any form. 
 
 Since the recent United States Supreme Court decision 
 reading into the " Sherman Act " certain alleged " reasonable- 
 ness," the law as interpreted is made so elastic that no one, 
 including the Chief Justice, may know what the law means on 
 any subject until a majority of the Supreme Court has decided 
 on every point of interest involved that may be raised under it. 
 It is no longer the "Act" with which the public has to deal, 
 it is what may be construed to be " reasonable," <md the courts 
 hold themselves sole judges of what is or may be " reasonable." 
 This is the boldest of their efforts and attempts to be legislative 
 as well as judicial tribunals and should be speedily corrected. 
 
 G. H. Steele, Chairman General Committee, Order of Rail- 
 way Conductors for Central and Northwestern Rail- 
 way, Clinton, la. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. I do not con- 
 sider it feasible to return to old competitive methods in business. 
 The Sherman Law should either be amended to allow reason- 
 able combinations in the interest of economical production and 
 control of prices within reasonable limits, or it should be re- 
 pealed. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, and trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act. 
 
 I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. Present disturbed business conditions 
 are due to the greed, jiot only of corporate interests, but of the 
 people at large, and to the activity of demagogues and cheap 
 politicians. If all corporations, not only those termed "public 
 service," but others as well, were restricted to a reasonably gen- 
 erous return on the capital actually invested, and subjected to 
 the supervision of an honest board or commission, it would not 
 only make for the betterment of conditions in general, but 
 would also tend to eliminate the "get-rich-quick" concerns 
 which rob the easy ones. 
 
339 
 
 The Central Labor Council (Affiliated with the American 
 Federation of Labor and California State Federation 
 of Labor), Los Angeles, Cal. (E. H. Misner, Presi- 
 dent; L. W. Butler, Secretary-Treasurer). 
 
 First Question Do you believe that the Sherman Law, us 
 HOW interpreted, is made clear and workable? Answer .No. 
 It is very evident to us, as union men, that, as a law, it i- 
 un-American and almost impossible to enforce. 
 
 Second Question Do you consider it feasible to attempt to 
 I'd urn to what are commonly known as old competitive methods 
 in business? Answer In the first place, we believe this would 
 be impossible and absolutely impracticable, and in the second 
 place, we believe that competition sooner or later leads to co- 
 operation, and although at this time a hardship, will become in 
 time a blessing to the world. 
 
 Third Question Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law? 
 . I iifsircr Yes. For the same reasons as given in answer one. 
 
 Fourth Question Do you favor amending the Sherman 
 Law? If so, in what particulars? Answer Xo. 
 
 Fifth Question Should railroads be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to approval and regulation 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission? Answer As applied 
 to passenger and freight rates, we answer no, as we believe that 
 all persons, firms and corporations should pay the same rates as 
 set by the Interstate Commerce Commission. As applied to 
 rates of hours and wages worked and paid by and to employes, 
 we answer yes; we believe that railroad companies should be 
 permitted and encouraged to enter into agreements with their 
 employes. 
 
 Sixth Question Should trade unions be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act? Answer Yes. Trade unions 
 are not in business for profits, but to sell their labor power, and 
 should be permitted to enter into agreements with any person, 
 firm and corporation to collectively to sell their labor to the 
 employers at the best figure possible. 
 
 >'>' rentJi. Question Should combinations of farmers, either 
 to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher prices, be 
 rendered lawful under the Sherman Act? Answer We believe 
 the farmer has, or should have, the right to do as he pleases with 
 his crops, so long as he does not destroy them. Every person 
 should have, to hold his own, the full social product of his 
 Inbors, so long as he does not exploit any other person. 
 
 Eiyhth Question Do you favor a national incorporation 
 law? Anxircr Yes. Provided all State incorporation laws are 
 repealed. 
 
 Ninth. Question Do you favor a Federal license law? 
 Answer The question is not clear to us; however, we might say 
 that labor unions, generally, are not in favor of license in any 
 form, where applying to workmen; in fact, we feel that license 
 
840 
 
 could be substituted for a more equitable taxation on all property 
 and commodities. 
 
 Tenth Question Do you favor an I nterstate Trade Commis- 
 sion with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers : 
 Answer Xo. Interstate Commerce Commissions should be 
 composed of representatives I'mm all States of the Union. 
 
 Klvrentli Question In your judgment what caused or causes 
 tlie present disturbed business conditions? . I murcr Many rea- 
 sons are advanced for the causes of these disturbances, but we 
 do not agree with most of them, as it is our opinion that the real 
 and only reason is, that all the workers are not. because of the 
 present wage system, able to buy the product of their labor. 
 thereby causing a surplus on the markets of the world of all 
 tilings grown and produced, and as this condition is becoming 
 world-wide, it would naturally cause a continual system of 
 panics. 
 
 Charles A. Evans, President of Cigarmakers' Union, Finan- 
 cial Secretary of Saginaw Federation of Labor and 
 Chairman of Legislative Committee, Saginaw, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is neither clear un- 
 workable. This is especially true with reference to the Tobacco 
 case. It is not feasible to return to old competitive methods; 
 but large combinations should be controlled. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended by eliminating the "rule of reason" and 
 by strengthening the criminal penalties'. Trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act any organ i- 
 /ation without capital stock should be exempt. Combinations 
 of farmers should be permitted. Farmers are original pro- 
 ducers; therefore they cannot .ever become a monopoly. The 
 reason for this is obvious. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. In a general way 
 I favor the amendment to the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, about 
 to be introduced by Representative Henry of Texas, which would, 
 in our opinion, restore this law to its original intentions and 
 purposes. 
 
 Fred Brockhausen, Secretary-Treasurer, Wisconsin State 
 Federation of Labor, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law. as now interpreted, a> 
 clear and workable. I favor its repeal. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreement.- alTerting rates, subject to the 
 approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion; trade unions should be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act, and combinations of farmers, either to restrict 
 production or to hold a crop for higher prices should be ren- 
 dered lawful. Disturbed business conditions are caused by rob- 
 bing the people of their purchasing power. I do not favor 
 national incorporation. Federal license ->r an Interstate Trade 
 Commision. 
 
.",41 
 
 Chas. E. Mclntosh, Chairman General Committee of Ad- 
 justment, Order of Railway Conductors, Union 
 Pacific Railway, Council Bluffs, Iowa. 
 
 Tin- Sherman Law is not clear ami workable, and I believe 
 it is a farce. Jf the Tobacco and Oil decisions are the true 
 interpretations of the law. the law should be amended by cut- 
 ting out tlu- criminal penalty or enforcing it, but preferably 
 ilic latter. Moneyed men don't care for a fine usually, if the 
 profits of the illegal combination are satisfactory. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission; Imr I believe that the commission is retarding the 
 economical operation of railways by rulings on detail matters 
 too much red tape. Trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act; if they are not, the members of 
 such unions have no defence against reduction in wages or poor 
 working conditions. Combinations of farmers should be ren- 
 dered lawful under the Sherman Act, because it is practically 
 impossible to organize farmers or workingmen into organiza- 
 tions of large membership and control their actions, when self- 
 interest only is the support of such organizations. 
 
 1 favor a. national incorporation law as a protection to in- 
 vestors, and a. Federal license law to provide revenue only. I 
 do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. There are too 
 many law-administrating bodies at present, and if we get a few 
 more, the government might as well run the entire job. 
 
 The high cost of living, due to much prosperity among the 
 well-to-do and the other fellow endeavoring to follow suit, is 
 among the causes of disturbed busines> conditions. Added to 
 this are vicious combinations of tradesmen and producers to get 
 all the traffic will bear, without regard to the rights of other-: 
 the employment of women and children in manv industries, while 
 the father walks the streets on account of the age limit; the 
 immigration laws that, permit this count ry to be Hooded with 
 newcomers, many of whom are of an undesirable class and 
 whose labor tend- to bring the American down from a comfort- 
 able standard of living to that of the lowest grade of European 
 and Asiatic pariahs. The above are some of the reasons that 
 make the ordinary citizen unhappy when he observes that cor- 
 porations and individuals wax fat on the pelf accumulated bv 
 such means. The result is that many naturally tend toward 
 retaliation against the millionaire class, and the. latter, rudelv 
 disquieted in their heretofore secure possession of wealth and 
 power, give utterance to hostile and unfriendly expressions 
 toward the masses and restrict their investments, thus depriv- 
 ing many of employment. 
 
342 
 
 Ralph V. Brandt, General Secretary-Treasurer, Lathers' 
 International Union, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 1 do not believe that the Sherman Law, a> now intn-pivte.l. 
 is made clear and workable, but I believe it was entirely work- 
 able before the recent impossible Standard Oil and Tobacco 
 cases decisions. I consider it feasible to return to what are com- 
 monly known as old competitive methods in business, with a 
 law that would prevent the control of over '1^ per cent, of any 
 industry in the hands of any corporation. 
 
 With onr consular service taken entirely out of politics and 
 the men appointed to these positions picked, not with ihc inten- 
 tion of paying political debts, but only with the idea of select- 
 ing men who arc peculiarly qualified to advance our commer- 
 cial interests, I am sure that all that can now be accomplished 
 in the way of expanding our trade through great aggregations 
 of capital and industry could be accomplished through trade 
 guilds, with the assistance of such a consular service. In fact, 
 more should be accomplished through these means, for the 
 reason that our wares looking for foreign markets would not 
 have to seek returns on hundreds of millions of dollar- of 
 water-logged capital, such as is now the case with most of the 
 products put on the market by the big industrial corporations 
 now in existence. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended, by cutting out that 
 "unreasonable restraint " interpretation and making provision 
 for criminal punishment of those who violate the provisions of 
 the law. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission; but limit them exclusive! v 
 to the transportation business. Trade unions should be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, be- 
 cause nothing they could do could be justly construed into an 
 act in restraint of trade. Farmers should be allowed to com- 
 bine, but not brokers or speculators. 1 do not believe it would 
 be possible, where there are so many people concerned, for 
 farmers to successfully combine to hold crops for higher price- 
 in such a way as to appreciably affect the price of any par- 
 ticular crop. 
 
 I do not favor a national incorporation law, if that would 
 mean unlimited combination. Yes, if it would not. I make 
 the same answer to Federal license. I do not favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. With a return to a real competitive 
 basis, competition will do the necessary regulating. Stock 
 advertisements should be barred from the mails until approval 
 has been given by a government commission or board, and that 
 approval only given where the stock to be issued will represent 
 tangible assets equal to the amount of stock. 
 
 Present disturbed business conditions arc due to the fact 
 that such large interest have come into the control, directly 
 or indirectly, of a very few men, who are using tbe power 
 
343 
 
 which these large interests give them to frighten the people 
 against the advisability of a change in the conditions which 
 have enabled them, by manipulating the stock market and by 
 other questionable means, to bring this great wealth into their 
 power. 
 
 F. S. Tomlin, Glass Blower and Secretary of the Joint 
 
 Labor Legislative Conference of Greater New York, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Business disturbances are due to uncertainty as to what may 
 happen next, not from natural and unpreventable causes, but 
 such as are being injected into the situation by the President, 
 the Attorney-General and the courts. These may be very able 
 lawyers, but certainly have shown no signs of broad, fair-sided 
 constructive statesmanship. The lack of a sound banking and 
 monetary system is also a cause of business disturbance. 
 
 It is extremely doubtful whether a permanent and continuous 
 condition of moderate but wholesome prosperity, that would 
 permit of a general adjustment of supply to demand and pre- 
 vent " booms " on one hand and panics on the other, can be 
 created and maintained, unless we can realize a higher moral 
 business standard. So long as we pat the man on the back 
 who sells gold brick stocks in a company which has no existence, 
 except in the air, watered stock in an otherwise good company, 
 or any commodity to a person who is defrauded in taking it, so 
 long we encourage crime and wrong-doing and keep down the 
 moral standard in business. I favor a national incorporation 
 law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. The 
 Sherman Law ought to be repealed, the sooner the better. It 
 was passed in the last century as a sop to populism and should 
 be relegated to the political scrap pile. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 G. W. Gibson, Secretary and Treasurer, International Asso- 
 
 ciation of Car Workers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 It seems that the present disturbed business conditions are 
 primarily the result of the general depression caused by rail- 
 roads for what appears to be some unintelligible reason. This 
 depression appears to have reacted upon business conditions 
 throughout the entire country. The Sherman Law does not 
 seem clear enough and should be amended to make it explicit 
 in itself and, if possible, so that only one interpretation can 
 be placed upon it. I certainly believe that trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. I do not 
 believe in the incorporation of labor organizations. Perhaps 
 the formation of an Interstate Trade Commission, acting in 
 junction with the Interstate Commerce Commission, might prove 
 beneficial. 
 
J. N. Faithorn (now out of active business, formerly rail- 
 road work), Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law, in my judgment, is clear and workable; 
 and it is not only feasible but desirable to return to old com- 
 petitive methods in business. Congress should not amend the 
 Sherman Law. The United States Supreme Court will appar- 
 ently amend by further construction ere long. It may even- 
 tually be necessary for Congress to again take a hand, but at 
 present the United States Supreme Court would appeal* to be 
 equal to the situation. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, but simply from the 
 standpoint of simplicity, not because I believe that the national 
 government should run the affairs of the people, in the sense 
 of controlling profits. 
 
 In my judgment, disturbed business conditions arc primarily 
 caused by the shocking action of Congress in regard to the 
 "tariff," so called. The people have at last come to a realizing 
 sense of the fact that Congress has not been legislating for the 
 whole people, but for classes. The presidential election over, 
 with presumably a Democrat as President and naturally cir- 
 cumspect action on the part of the Democrats, for a while at 
 least by the close of 19111 business will probably be booming 
 again, and the country will have forgotten all about these griev- 
 ances. 
 
 J. Pease Norton, Chairman, Section of Economics of the 
 American Association for Advancement of Science, 
 New Haven, Conn. 
 
 I prefer Federal incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce; also .Federal supervision of issues of new 
 securities of any class for all corporations doing an interstate 
 business. 1 believe in holding companies. 1 prefer sta lute- 
 expressly forbidding specified practices for dealing with unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade. The great advantage of 
 doing business on a large scale is the possibility of securing 
 capital at a lower rate of interest when the corporation is big- 
 enough to secure international loans. 1 favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission with powers not unlike those now enjoyed 
 by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common 
 carriers, but the same end may be accomplished by control of 
 new issues of securities. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. which is neither clear 
 nor workable. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, hut com- 
 binations of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold 
 a crop for higher prices, should not be rendered lawful. I con- 
 sider that disturbed business conditions are due to an approach- 
 ing international crisis. 
 
H. H. Weir, Printer, Meridian, Miss. 
 
 .Disturbed business conditions arc due in an important de- 
 gree to the growing intelligence ol; the producing and laboring 
 class, which is demanding more flay by day (and rightfully) . 
 and the struggle of the wealth-accumulating class to combat 
 ibis real sign of advancement. Something is out of balance 
 when the producer and the laborer receives only a small pro- 
 portion of the wealth he produces, and his advancing intelli- 
 gence is telling him that he is not being fairly treated. On 
 the other hand the wealth-accumulating class will not be driven 
 from their position that. " Buy labor as cheap as you can ; sell 
 its products as high as you can; pocket the difference," is the 
 right theory of business. If some principle could be promul- 
 gated which would eventually lead men to tiie feeling that 
 " labor, the producer and the capitalist " were all partners, that 
 they each deserve to share in the producing of wealth, and that 
 neither class should be preferred above the other; that neither 
 abnormally high wages, prices for raw material, nor excessive 
 profits upon the finished product will produce a permanent pros- 
 perity. I believe that disturbed conditions of business would stop. 
 IJrieily. to my mind, high cost of living, slight participation in 
 the accumulations of wealth by those who either supply the 
 material or the labor, and a growing knowledge that these con- 
 ditions exist, together with a determination,, on the one hand, 
 to secure this Jacking participation and, on the other hand, to 
 resist it. is the real cause of the unrest and mistrust which 
 exists. 
 
 Edwin William Weeks, General Secretary-Treasurer, 
 Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America, Kansas 
 City, Mo. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions arc caused b} r too many laws, 
 too many politicians, too much government, too much circum- 
 locution and red tape. We need fewer laws, and those laws 
 more plain; we need fewer lawyers, fewer courts. None of us 
 knows, as it is now. when we are breaking laws. The laws 
 should be few, plain and well-enforced. The injunction law 
 has been worked overtime lately. I know several law-abiding 
 Christian citizens who are trying, like myself,, to serve God, 
 their day and generation; who have never wilfully broken anv 
 lav.-, either human or divine, and who have been recently served 
 with injunctions and cited to appear in court. It's an outrage 
 and a disgrace. This is only one instance. I could cite many 
 more, did time and space permit. Amend the Sherman Law 
 in accordance with the opinion of the late Justice Harlan. of 
 the United States Supreme Court. Railroads should be allowec'l 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, and trade unions should be excepted 
 from the Sherman Law. 
 
346 
 
 A. Downey, Secretary, Trade and Labor Council, Ogdens- 
 burg, N. Y. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions are due to a de- 
 sire on the part. of a comparatively few persons of extraordi- 
 nary wealth to control and monopolize business, and to the 
 fact that in order to achieve their monopoly they have re- 
 sorted to most questionable methods which the government in 
 performing its duty to enforce the law lias brought to the at- 
 tention of the courts. The decisions resulting from this action 
 on the part of the government have led to uncertainty and 
 disquietude injurious to business in general. If statistics are 
 to be credited, an enormous amount of the wealth of this nation 
 is held by a few individuals, and the power which they are en- 
 abled to exert by means of their wealth is a menace even to the 
 general government itself, especially in times of financial dis- 
 tress. The dangerous use to which enormous wealth can he 
 put by those who hold it was shown at the time of the panic 
 of 1907. It had been brought about by Wall street operations. 
 I"( was shown in the matter of the Tennessee Coal & Iron Com- 
 pany, when the laws of the land were suspended at the dicta- 
 tion of financial magnates, who gave it to lie understood that 
 if they could not have their own way. disaster and ruin would 
 be spread throughout the country. It is necessary to curl) 
 wealth under such circumstances, even if curbing it tends to 
 unsettle business. "Railroads sbouTd bo allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Trade unions and combinations of farmers should 
 be excepte-d from the operation of the Sherman Act. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Henry B. Perham, Telegraph Operator (President, Order of 
 Railroad Telegraphers; Chairman, Railroad Em- 
 ployees' Department; Eighth Vice-President, Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labor). 
 
 The Sherman Law as now interpreted is not clear and work- 
 able. I do not consider it feasible to return to what are com- 
 monly known as old competitive methods in business. I favor 
 a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should b& 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. Farmers 
 should not be permitted to combine to restrict production, but 
 should be permitted to hold their crops for higher prices. Dis- 
 turbed business conditions are caused, in my judgment, by the 
 fact that large business interests fear losing some part of their 
 power for profit-making. I favor Federal and State laws pro- 
 viding that no charter snail be granted to any corporation with- 
 out Federal or State supervision. Corporations should not be 
 instituted by the State, and left free to do as they please. I 
 favor Federal and State corporation commissions to compel cor- 
 porations to transact business on an equitable basis. 
 
347 
 
 A. R. Linn, Accountant, and Secretary and Treasurer of 
 New York Division, Order of Railroad Telegraphers, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 1 agree with the late Justice llarlan in bis views on the 
 enforcement of the Sherman Law. The Sherman Law is 0. K. 
 It is the decision of the Supreme Court that I favor amending. 
 Railroads should he allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rate.-,, subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, on a fair basis to the public and to the 
 carriers. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act, as I fail to see where they are formed to 
 "' restrain trade." As to combinations of farmers, the restric- 
 tion of production should be unlawful. Prices are made higher 
 more by the middleman than by the farmer who should get a 
 fair price for his products. I favor a national incorporation 
 law on a proper basis, and Federal license also on a proper 
 basis. I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission if not too 
 much red tape and delay is attached to it. Business disturb- 
 ance is due to persons who make it their business to create such 
 sentiment for their own gain. 
 
 Politics interfere too much in investigations, and if elimi- 
 nated, the issues could be more readily settled and proper legis- 
 lation enacted where there is need for it and for the repeal of 
 unnecessary legislation. 
 
 G. Dal Jones, Chief Telegrapher, Order of Railroad Tele- 
 graphers, Chicago Division No. 91, Chicago, 111. 
 
 In my opinion an honest investigation of Wall Street would 
 bring to the public and to Congress matters which could easily 
 be regulated with fairness to the masses. I am in doubt as to 
 the repeal of the Sherman Law. As to amendment, I would 
 suggest that the punishment for violations should be made more 
 specific. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, under the assumption that 
 the members of the commission will deal honestly in the public 
 interests. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act. I favor a national incorporation law, Fed- 
 oral license and an Interstate Trade Commission. Present busi- 
 ness disturbance is due, in my judgment, to the effort to make 
 so-called fixed charges on highly inflated valuation of capital 
 invested. 
 
 O. O. Wagner, Telegraph Operator, Millerstown, Pa. 
 
 Government ownership of the industries under the recall 
 \vould stop the disturbed business conditions. This would 
 reform the profit-sharing system and give labor a fair equivalent 
 for its services. Trade unions ought to be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act and should not be treated like a 
 trust, and combinations of farmers should be rendered lawful. 
 
848 
 
 Winona Wagon Company, Winona, Minn. 
 
 The Sherman Law. a,- now interpreted, is far from clear 
 and workable to tho ordinary mind. We have based this opinion., 
 not only upon our inability lo comprehend it, but upon expres- 
 sions from others who are connected with larger and more im- 
 portant corporations than ours. 
 
 The old competitive methods are sorely out of date and en- 
 tirely out of harmony with the progress the Tinted States is 
 e\ peeled to make. 
 
 We should be glad to see the Sherman Law repealed, for. a> 
 now interpreted by the administration, it is very detrimental to 
 large business affairs and is a serious impediment to progress 
 If not repealed, it should be amended so as to permit large 
 ;iggregaiions of capital doing business safely and at what might 
 be called a fair, legitimate margin. We favor a national incor- 
 poration act that will regulate large corporations to a reason- 
 aide extent and permit them to do business in all States of -lie 
 Tnion. Corporations now doing an extensive business in this 
 eountrv are entirely "at sea" on many legal points in the 
 various Slates, as well as not being advised a< to their right- 
 under the Sherman I jaw. 
 
 Onnan W. Ewing, Insurance, Officer of Labor Organiza 
 tion, Salt Lake City, Utah. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation, Federal license and Inter- 
 stale Trade Commission. Disturbed business conditions are 
 due to monopolization of large industric- and the working of 
 the same on a much more economical basis than heretofore, 
 the. paving of large profits to the owners or controllers, and 
 the resuhs which would naturally follow: al<o the ac.ion taken 
 by the government against the trusts. 
 
 Jn mv opinion it is not feasible to return to competitive 
 lines. Economy is the watchword of 'he hour with the large 
 corporations, and therefore the public.' with the assistance of 
 the central government, inu<t be economical and see that large, 
 unreasonable profits are not exacted. The railroads and other 
 great industries of the country have become so large that they 
 are quasi-public, and the government, which is the people, musi 
 control or be controlled. 
 
 L. Waldauer, Cigarmaker, Atchison, Kan. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so as to make the 
 executive heads of corporations amenable to the law without 
 (|uestion. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act, but combinations 'of farmers to restrict 
 production or hold a crop for higher prices should not be made 
 lawful. Disturbed conditions of business are due to the un- 
 settled condition of tariff legislation. I am in favor of a 
 national incorporation law, a Federal license law. and an In- 
 terstate Trade Commission. 
 
Thomas J. Hoskins, Locomotive Engineer, Chairman of the 
 State Legislative Board and of the Southeastern As- 
 sociation, Knoxville, Tenn. 
 
 J think the present agitation for control of big business is 
 I mi a natural result. The province of government is to pre- 
 serve the general good; in common with this the country must 
 be developed: but in order to do this, we do not need to permit 
 such a use of the public utilities that immense fortunes will re- 
 sult to those who are in a position to extract unreasonable 
 profits from the public. America should be for its citizens 
 first, the nation should grow greater and stronger, the oppor- 
 tunity of the individual should be preserved, the policing power 
 should be commensurate with the power of working good to the 
 public, and then every national resource, the fortunes of the 
 rich, as well as the life of the humble poor, should be brought 
 to serve the great end. I am in favor of taking no backward 
 step in the eifort to control monopoly in the interest of the 
 public good, but I believe it should be control, effective control, 
 and not destruction. 
 
 Austen Davis, Secretary of the State Federation of Labor, 
 Salt Lake City, Utah. 
 
 The absolute control of the means of production and dis- 
 tribution by about 100 men is the cause of present disturbed 
 business conditions. An Interstate Trade Commission would 
 be acceptable under the referendum and recall. I favor a 
 national incorporation law absolutely, out of control of poli- 
 tics. I am for the repeal of the Sherman Law and the sub- 
 stitution of one that will be enforced without regard to condi- 
 tions. Make a law of common equity that will give benefits to 
 (In- weak and deprive the strong of unequal advantage. To 
 " < > 1 Kick to old competitive methods would be retrogression ; the 
 " interests " have set an example that will be improved upon 
 when fairness and real sanity control. To the question, 
 " Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of the 
 SliiTimin Aci," my answer is, "Not when illegally doing or 
 permitting 1 illegal acts." Combinations of farmers to restrict 
 production or to hold a crop for higher prices should no more 
 ho rendered lawful than a similar combination by the Standard 
 Oil. 
 
 Alexander Ironside, Secretary, Vermont State Branch of 
 the American Federation of Labor, Barre, Vt. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended by adopting changes 
 that will tighten the law, letting corporations know in advance 
 just how far they can go. Trade unions want equality before 
 the law. Combinations of farmers should be rendered lawful. 
 Over-production, and the concentration of wealth in the hands 
 of a few. have caused present disturbed business conditions. 
 
350 
 
 A. B. Garretson, President, Order of Railway Conductors 
 
 of America, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
 
 I do not believe, that the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, 
 is made clear and workable. Bailroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, and trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. It would 
 probably be desirable to create such a tribunal as an Interstate 
 Trade Commission with powers not unlike those now enjoyed 
 by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common 
 carriers, if " reasonable " or " unreasonable " distinctions are to 
 be made. 
 
 Such amendment should be made to the Sherman Law as 
 will make it possible for men of honest purpose to know whether 
 or not they are engaged in acts that are unlawful, while at the 
 same time furnishing the processes for criminally prosecuting 
 and, if found guilty, punishing the predatory element engaged 
 in "big business/' I have no belief in the necessity of stifling 
 proper combination, but under no circumstances should it be 
 permitted to an extent that would control the output or dictate 
 the price of any product. 
 
 B. J. Fitzgerald, Passenger Conductor, and Chairman of the 
 
 Order of Railway Conductors, for Frisco Lines in 
 Texas. 
 
 The present Sherman Law, effectually enforced, seems suf- 
 ficient to protect business conditions generally. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act and combinations of farmers to secure fair prices for their 
 crops should be lawful. I favor national incorporation and 
 Federal license. Disturbed business conditions are due, in my 
 opinion, to too much adverse legislation, particularly as applies 
 to railroads. The Interstate Commerce Commission should be 
 empowered to make rates from an equitable basis that will 
 enable railroads to earn a reasonable profit on the actual capital 
 invested. 
 
 William H. Ross, Secretary Oil City Central Labor Coun- 
 cil, Oil City, Pa. 
 
 We favor repeal of the Sherman Law and the substitution 
 of some provision for the early acquisition by the government 
 of all industries that have reached the stage of monopolies. AVe 
 favor national incorporation as a step in advance, but a short 
 time limit. Disturbed business conditions are caused by the 
 inability of the producers to assimilate what is produced. 
 Another cause lies in the ambiguity of the Sherman Law. 
 Progression is the inevitable law, and will sooner or later be 
 taken up by the whole people. 
 
351 
 
 P. H. Morrissey, President, The American Railroad Em- 
 ployees and Investors' Association, Chicago, 111. 
 
 1 prefer Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 laws should be enacted providing for publicity to apply to com- 
 mercial corporations in the interest of minority stockholders 
 and to prevent the exploitation of investors. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that every person 
 and interest to which it applies will know what it permits and 
 what it prohibits. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Trade unions should be excepted from the opera- 
 tion of the Sherman Act, and combinations of farmers should 
 be rendered lawful. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. Dis- 
 turbed business conditions are due to politics. 
 
 Robert Fechner, Air Brake Machinist (Secretary-Treasurer, 
 Georgia Federation of Labor), Savannah, Ga. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. It is not 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods. I favor amend- 
 ing the Sherman Law along the lines suggested by Samuel Gom- 
 pers. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and combina- 
 tions of farmers should be rendered lawful. 
 
 I am not prepared to state any preference regarding na- 
 tional incorporation or Federal license. I am of opinion that 
 an Interstate Trade Commission might accomplish a great deal 
 of good. Disturbed business conditions are largely due, in my 
 judgment, to the different constructions placed on the Sherman 
 Anti-Trust Act. 
 
 H. A. Albright, Bookkeeper, Robertson & Co., Columbus, 
 Miss. 
 
 An unjust tariff and laxity of principle in business deal- 
 ings are largely responsible for disturbed business conditions. 
 The tariff makes existing abuses generally possible. The pres- 
 ent situation is arbitrarily manufactured by the "powers" to 
 prevent just legislation. A promise to lynch a few of them, 
 like any other traitors to society or State, will facilitate the 
 enactment of laws that would be just to all the people. The 
 present situation is profitable chiefly for the trusts and for the 
 lawyers who get immense fees for telling the trusts how to do 
 it. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, national incorpora- 
 tion, a tariff for revenue only and revenue for legitimate pur- 
 poses only. 
 
A. B. Lowe, President of International Brotherhood of 
 Maintenance-of-Way Employees, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 1 am happj to say that our business, tliat of procuring better 
 conditions for the maintenance of way employees on the railways 
 of the United States and Canada, has. he-Mi \ery good this year, 
 and on every railway on which we applied for an increase in 
 rates, or the improvement in existing rules, we were successful, 
 not only in obtaining the increase, but in obtaining it with the 
 good will and the maintenance of very cordial relations between 
 our committees and the officials of the different, railways, with 
 the one exception * * *. "With that exception our year has 
 been prosperous and peaceful. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 I do not consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. 
 Railroads should be allowed to make agreements affecting rates. 
 The Sherman Law, if not repealed, should be amended so that 
 it should not apply to labor organizations. I can intelligently 
 and confidently recommend an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 judging by the good the Interstate Commerce Commission has 
 done. 
 
 O. Irwin, Railway Conductor, General Chairman, O. R. C., 
 New Castle, Pa. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to large combinations 
 of capital, held by a few men whose purpose it is to control 
 the finances of the nation. The Sherman Law is clear and 
 workable and should not be repealed. It should be amended 
 so as to control the issue of bonds and stocks, and thus operate 
 against and prevent financial piracy. Railroad^ should !> 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. Combina- 
 tions of farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a crop 
 for higher prices, should not be rendered lawful. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law. Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles A. Yates, Clothing Cutter, Central Trades and 
 Labor Assembly, Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 I believe in progress and. therefore, do not favor an attempt 
 to return to old competitive methods. The Sherman Law 
 should not be repealed, but it should be amended in such a 
 war as to carry out the original intention of the framers and 
 also make it plain that it does not apply to labor. Railroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, sub- 
 ject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor a na- 
 tional incorporation law. Disturbed business conditions are 
 due to the operations of high financiers, using their power for 
 their own profit at the expense of the public. 
 
353 
 
 W. H. Hendershot, Carpenter, Foreman, Secretary, Local 
 Union No. 1044, U. B. of C. & J. of A., 814 Fal 
 avenue, Charleroi, Pa. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and that 
 a return to old competitive methods is feasible. Competition 
 is the life of business. The Sherman Law should neither be 
 repealed nor amended. Eailroads should not be allowed to en- 
 ter into agreements affecting rates. I do not see how the Sher- 
 man Law can be applied to trade unions, as they, as I see them, 
 cannot do anything to restrain trade. As to farmers' combina- 
 tions, I think that the commission merchant and the retail 
 stores all over the country are responsible for the present high 
 cost of living, and not the farmers. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, first, to the monopo- 
 lies trying to scare the masses into submission ; second, I think 
 politics are pla}dng an important part. If there is not some- 
 thing done, and done quickly, by Congress, there is going to 
 be a different Congress elected that will SHOW the G-. 0. P. and 
 Miss Democracy where they stand, and then, we know, the 
 trusts will go. 
 
 F. F. Winsor, Railroad Agent, The St. Joseph and Grand 
 Island Railway Company, Hansen, Neb. 
 
 The State has been legislating against railroads, and a good 
 deal of it unjustly, because done without investigation and re- 
 gardless of our interests as a whole. I think the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission should be the only one that has any- 
 thing to say to railroads doing an interstate business. The 
 States should keep off. What is wanted is justice to all. Con- 
 tinued bombarding and legislating against railroads and other 
 corporations is the chief cause of business disturbance. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to allow combinations, pro- 
 vided they are watched over and made to do the right thing. 
 We need combined capita], but not to restrict trade. Live and 
 let live. Eailroads "should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 I think trade unions should be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act. 
 
 C. D. Johnson, Locomotive Engineer, Alta Loma, Texas. 
 
 I believe disturbed business conditions to be caused by the 
 large money interests to further their own welfare. I think 
 an Interstate Trade Commission would be a good plan. The 
 Sherman Law should be made clearer. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Act and combina- 
 tions of farmers should be permitted it is their only salvation. 
 
354 
 
 John O'Brien, Jas. G. McCutcheon and P. J. Nolan, Special 
 Committee, Bradford Trades Assembly, Bradford, 
 Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. We do not 
 consider it feasible to attempt to return to old competitive meth- 
 ods in business. We do not favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 Law; but when guilt is established., enforce the criminal clause 
 by imprisonment. Railroads should not be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. We are not a 
 trust or combination in restraint of trade. We have nothing 
 to sell but our labor. Combinations of farmers, either to re- 
 strict production or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not 
 be rendered lawful. We do not favor national incorporation, 
 Federal license or an Interstate Trade Commission. In our 
 judgment, disturbed business conditions are caused by the mo- 
 nopoly of nature's resources and the ownership of the means 
 of production and distribution by a privileged few for their 
 private gain and the exploitation of the masses. 
 
 O. N. Ament, Painter, Aurora, 111. 
 
 The ownership of the means of production and distribution 
 being in the hands of a few men causes disturbance and uncer- 
 tainty in business circles generally. In my opinion this system 
 is becoming unmanageable and must be taken over by the people 
 and managed by them and for them. That alone will remedy 
 the past and present evils. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to make it a safeguard against corrupt business meth- 
 ods. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act, as the act never was intended for labor unions. 
 Farmers are not so much to blame for high prices as the com- 
 mission men and jobbers; it is sufficiently evident that the evil 
 does not rest with the farmers. 
 
 R. H. Elsworth, Newspaper Worker, Traverse City, Mich. 
 
 I favor national incorporation and publicity of accounts for 
 companies doing interstate business. There should be no hold- 
 ing companies. The government should regulate capitalization. 
 I admit some of the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale but do not admit better wages for labor or better 
 protection against industrial accidents. 
 
 J. Wall, Railroad Conductor, New Haven, Conn. 
 
 I do not consider it feasible to attempt to return to old com- 
 petitive methods in business. I do not favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission, and trade unions should be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act. 
 
355 
 
 Spokane Sectional Central Labor Council, Spokane, Wash. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable, 
 and we favor its repeal. We do not consider it feasible to 
 return to old competitive methods. Eailroads should not be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions 
 should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 Under any reasonable interpretation of the act, trade unions 
 cannot be said to come under its provisions. Combinations of 
 farmers were not contemplated at the time of the passage of the 
 act, and if the " rule of reason " were applied in the interpreta- 
 tion of the act, such combinations would not come under the 
 provisions of the law. We do not favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 J. T. Hughes, General Chairman, Order Railway Conduct- 
 ors on Northern Pacific Railway, Duluth, Minn. 
 
 I believe that the Sherman Law, as interpreted, is made 
 clear; but I cannot say as to its being workable. The Sherman 
 Law should not be repealed; nor should it be amended until 
 in any respect it is found to be unfair. Then it should be 
 changed, and not until then. Railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and farmers 
 should be allowed to combine for higher prices. I favor Federal 
 license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. R. T. Auston, President, Order Railroad Telegraphers, 
 Agents and Signalmen, and Editor " Railroad Wire 
 and Signal," Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 General business seems to be healthy, but " cold storage " 
 and the controlling of the necessary articles of food disturb the 
 consumer and make his pocketbook empty. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended to state plainly what trusts or combinations 
 shall not do, and make the penalty imprisonment instead of a 
 fine. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, and trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act. 
 
 E. G. Pullen, District Lodge No. 20, International Brother- 
 hood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders and Helpers 
 of America, Waterloo, Iowa. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to exclude labor or- 
 ganizations and all other organizations not operated for profit, 
 from the restrictions of the Act. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is 
 not feasible to return to old competitive methods. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, a Federal license law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
356 
 
 A. W. Bennett, Painter and Paper Hanger, Local Union No. 
 1005, Chickasha, Okla. 
 
 What causes the present disturbed business conditions? The 
 private ownership of public utilities and industries upon which 
 the whole people depend for existence. Trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, so long 
 as there are private combinations of capital fighting them. 
 Combinations of farmers should also be excepted under the 
 present system of industry, wherein aggregations of private 
 capital are controlling the markets of the world. The Sher- 
 man Law is not clear and workable. I do not consider it feas- 
 ible to return to old competitive methods. The Sherman Law 
 should be repealed. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, with government ownership only. 
 I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Joseph P. Hunter, President of Trades and Labor Council, 
 Paper Hanger and Decorator, Niagara Falls, N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are clue to the vicious meth- 
 ods of Wall Street. The Sherman Law should be amended by 
 making violation of the law punishable by imprisonment. Trade 
 unions should emphatically be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Law, and farmers should be allowed to combine. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements, subject 
 to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license 
 law, if properly drawn up, and an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 John A. C. Menton, Cigar Maker and Mayor, Flint, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Law should be as dead as Sher- 
 man. To go back to competition is school boy politics. The 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Law should have no place on the statute 
 books. By being there stagnates economic evolution ; and the 
 position taken by President Taft should relegate him to the 
 kindergarten of political economy. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. I favor a 
 Federal license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 L. Bowen, Business Agent of the International Association 
 of Machinists, Birmingham, Ala. 
 
 The unequal distribution of the wealth to-day is what causes 
 disturbed business conditions. The Sherman Law is not clear 
 and workable. The rule of reason is too uncertain. I do not 
 favor a repeal of the Sherman Law as a whole, but the punish- 
 ment should be made certain. The law should be amended so 
 as to read as it was intended when first enacted; that is, it 
 should not apply to organizations of workingmen. 
 
357 
 
 Edmond Turmenne, Weaver in a Cotton Mill, District Or- 
 ganizer, A. F. of L., Lewiston, Me. 
 
 Watered stock has caused the present disturbed business con- 
 ditions. If the corporations would only be satisfied with a rea- 
 sonable interest on their actual capital, I think a great step 
 would be made toward reducing the cost of living, and all in- 
 dustries would have a better opportunity in the field of competi- 
 tion. Therefore, I believe that the first regulation or first law 
 to be enacted, to help along the cause of civilization, in better 
 living conditions for the whole people, would be to make a law 
 that will stop forever the issuing of watered stock, or anything 
 of the kind, which is not actual and real bonafide capital. 
 
 J. W. Hunter, Railroad Yard Foreman, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 I believe that the laws should see to it that every worker 
 could be assured of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, and 
 that investors should receive a reasonable return on their in- 
 vestments. At the same time, capitalists should not be allowed 
 to corner everything in sight at the expense of the general 
 public, and I believe you gentlemen of The National Civic Fed- 
 eration can bring about this equitable ' adjustment between all 
 concerned, provided there is anything like a reasonable willing- 
 ness on the part of those interested to be guided by the prin- 
 ciples of brotherhood which should exist between all mankind. 
 
 C. S. Newcomb, Station Agent, Frankfort, Me. 
 
 Uncertainty due to the Sherman Act and its enforcement 
 is the cause of disturbance in business. The Sherman Law 
 has not been made clear and workable, and it ought to be re- 
 pealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 Trade unions and combinations of farmers should be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act. I favor a national 
 incorporation law. 
 
 J, A. Harrell, Salesman and Secretary, C. L. U., Frankfort, 
 Ind. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to corporate abuse 
 of power. The Sherman Law should receive necessary amend- 
 ments. I do not think it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods. I favor a national incorporation law for interstate 
 business, and also an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Geo. H. Lyon, Chairman, General Committee of Adjust- 
 ment, Order of Railway Conductors, Wabash R. R., 
 Detroit, Mich. 
 
 Prime cause overcapitalization. Overcapitalization made Sher- 
 man Law necessary. Prosecutions under the Sherman Law. These, 
 no doubt, are causes of present disturbed business conditions. 
 
358 
 
 W. T. Brown, General Chairman, The Order of Railroad 
 Telegraphers, C., R. I. & P. Ry., System Division No. 
 126, Marseilles, 111. 
 
 No, to the Sherman Law being clear and workable. No, 
 to old competitive methods. No, to the repeal of the Sherman 
 Law and to a national incorporation law. Yes, to allowing 
 railroads to enter into agreements affecting rates subject to ap- 
 proval and regulation by Interstate Commerce Commission. Yes, 
 to excepting trade unions from the operations of the Sher- 
 man Act. Yes, to excepting combinations of farmers. Yes, 
 to a federal license law; and yes, to an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 G. A. Norton, Conductor, Maine Central R. R., Portland, 
 Me. 
 
 What caused or causes the present disturbed business condi- 
 tions? Graft. I regard it as feasible to return to old com- 
 petitive methods. The Sherman Law should be enforced as 
 it is without amendments, and railroads should be allowed to 
 enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, but com- 
 binations of farmers to restrict production or to hold a crop 
 for higher prices should not be rendered lawful. 
 
 Charles W. Longhead, Linotype Operator, Akron, Ohio. 
 
 The private ownership of those things which are publicly 
 used, and the abuse of power which great combinations of 
 capital are guilty of, have caused the present disturbance of 
 business. The evils which beset the body politic now are an 
 inherent part of the chaotic and anarchistic industrial system 
 we now have, and will endure until that system is displaced 
 by co-operation. All attempts to remove or neutralize the 
 effects will fail as long as the cause remains untouched. 
 
 D. W. Koppikus, R. R. Agent, East Oakland, Cal. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to the trusts and high cost of 
 living and low wages for the workingman. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended, particularly in reference to its present ap- 
 plication to labor organizations. Individual farmers should 
 have the right to hold or sell their crops, but a combination 
 should not be allowed. 
 
 D. R. Dunning, Telegrapher, 208 Bloomer avenue, Elmira, 
 N. Y. 
 
 The I. C. C. pulling the lines on the corporations after so 
 long a time of doing as they liked is the cause of the com- 
 motion. 
 
359 
 
 Joseph B. Bode, General Chairman, Order of Railroad Tele- 
 graphers, Boston & Maine R. R., General Committee, 
 Chelsea, Mass. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to the extent of mak- 
 ing it so clear that corporations will know whether or not they 
 are doing business within the law, thus removing the possi- 
 bility of court proceedings. Trade unions should be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act, because the members 
 are individuals selling their labor at a price which their rep- 
 resentatives (the union) may obtain for them. 
 
 Business disturbance is caused by the uncertainty of the tariff 
 issue and the readjustment of business to the " uninterpreted " 
 Sherman Law. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 J. A. Newman, First Vice-President, Order Railroad Tele- 
 graphers, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Business is very good in this part of the country. I do 
 not see the necessity of an Interstate Trade Commission, but 
 I favor a national incorporation law. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended so as to protect the interests of the people. 
 Trade unions should be excepted from the operation of the 
 Sherman Act, but combinations of farmers, either to restrict 
 production or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not be 
 rendered lawful. 
 
 W. E. Sloan, General Chairman, Order of R. R. Tele- 
 graphers, Division 123, Albert Lea, Minn. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended in any way that will 
 help the wage-earner. I do not consider it clear and workable 
 as now interpreted. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and regula- 
 tion of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and trade unions 
 should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 M. M. O'Mara, Telegraph Operator, Tyrone, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law might as well be repealed, as it never 
 did any good, except in the Danbury hatters' case. It is not 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods. It is better to 
 go forward instead of backward. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, as they will enter into 
 agreements under any circumstances. 
 
 Millard Lowe, Carpenter, Local Union No. 1213, U. B. of 
 C. Q. J. of A., Mystic, Iowa. 
 
 We have no competition. The business of the country is 
 in the hands of a few men. I believe that the Merchants' As- 
 sociation of the State of Iowa ought to be investigated. The 
 Sherman Law should be made more stringent and trade unions 
 excepted from its restrictions. 
 
W. E. McEwen, Secretary-Treasurer, State Federation of 
 Labor, Duluth, Minn. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are the natural consequence of 
 the tardiness of the Federal government in meeting with con- 
 structive legislation, the natural and evolutionary development 
 of industry. People feel that they are being robbed, not be- 
 cause the trusts have raised prices, but because of their immense 
 earnings, which are out of proportion to the wages paid to labor. 
 
 Elimination of watered stock, publicity and price regulation 
 will do much to relieve the present unrest. After this the only 
 thing to be feared will be the immense power that a great cor- 
 poration will be able to wield over its wage earners. 
 
 Some method must inevitably be devised to compel the pay- 
 ment to labor of a living wage in accordance not with European 
 standards, but with the American standard. 
 
 Belleville Trades and Labor Assembly, Edward P. Baum, 
 Secretary, Belleville, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Law should be so amended as to 
 exempt labor organizations. The reason we favor this amend- 
 ment is because labor organizations should not be classed in the 
 same category as trusts. Labor organizations combine for the 
 purpose of bettering their conditions and raise the wages of the 
 toiling millions, the majority of whom have a hard tussle to eke 
 out an existence at the high cost of living, whereas trusts are 
 organized or combined to swell the fortunes of those few who 
 already have millions. 
 
 George Cliften Edwards, Editor, "The Laborer," Dallas, 
 Texas. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. As to an amendment 
 of the Sherman Law, see Congressman Berger's new bill at 
 beginning of the next session (the present session). Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act, and combinations of farmers should be lawful. I favor 
 a -national incorporation law and a Federal license law. Dis- 
 turbed business conditions are due to the fact that the public 
 are awakening to the robbery capitalism visits upon all but the 
 very few. 
 
 Percy Carpenter, Editor, " Labor Leader," Lancaster, Pa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable. It is not feasible 
 to return to old competitive methods. I favor a repeal of the 
 Sherman Law, and am not prepared to discuss its amendment. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 
 trade unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. Control by the "inter- 
 ests" is the cause of business disturbance. 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 EDUCATORS, EDITORS, PUBLICISTS 
 AND OTHERS. 
 
 F. W. Taussig, Professor of Political Economy in Harvard 
 University, Author of " Tariff History of the United 
 States," "Wages and Capital/' "Principles of Eco- 
 nomics," and Editor of the " Quarterly Journal of 
 Economics." 
 
 In addition to the methods of unfair competition, mentioned 
 in the circular, there should be adduced the deliberate sale of a 
 product by a large concern or combination at less than cost, for 
 the purpose of driving smaller competitors out of the business. 
 Mention should be made also of the establishment of bogus com- 
 petitors, in reality controlled by the combination. The whole 
 subject of fair and unfair competition should be newly dealt 
 with by the legislature. Unfair competition should be more 
 carefully denned, and further remedies of a penal sort should 
 be added to the civil remedies which the law now provides. 
 
 The holding-company system is bad. It lends itself to 
 manipulation, fraudulent management and, above all, to con- 
 cealment. Yet, as matters stand, we must move with caution 
 toward getting rid of it. If an Interstate Trade Commission 
 were established, it could appropriately supervise the holding 
 of securities by great corporations, and require from them a full 
 statement of their holdings, direct and indirect. 
 
 Among the advantages on which stress is laid in favor of 
 combinations is the prevention of relentless competition, and 
 thereby of unwholesome alternations of activity and depression. 
 It is not clear how fully an advantage of this sort is attained. 
 Steadier employment of labor, better protection against acci- 
 dent, greater command of international trade may, perhaps, all 
 be secured by large-scale production, not necessarily by combi- 
 nation; and for this phase of the problem we must still await 
 the outcome of experience. 
 
 I favor the creation of an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 which might be developed from the existing Bureau of Corpora- 
 tions. For the present its functions should be limited and 
 should be directed more particularly toward the enrolment and 
 supervision of the great industries which threaten to develop 
 into combinations. In time it will, perhaps, prove expedient to 
 
 361 
 
362 
 
 enlarge its functions. It is not inconceivable that eventually 
 direct control of prices may be entrusted to it, as control over 
 railroad rates is entrusted to the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. But regulative legislation of this sort should proceed 
 tentatively and should begin with the gathering of accurate 
 information. 
 
 Henry R. S eager, Professor of Political Economy, Columbia 
 University, New York City. 
 
 In my opinion the trust movement has been in part arti- 
 ficial, due to opportunities afforded to promoters for large gains. 
 Enforced publicity and fair competition would enable small 
 producers in many lines to hold their own; in some, great mo- 
 nopolistic combinations might prove more efficient, that is, en- 
 able to produce or sell at lower cost than smaller companies. 
 and for them regulative policy might have to include eventually 
 control of prices. I believe, however, that has yet to be demon- 
 strated. 
 
 I prefer Federal incorporation. This might be made op- 
 tional at first and coupled with certain privileges as well as 
 certain responsibilities, but should, I think, eventually be made 
 obligatory on companies engaged in interstate commerce. I do 
 not believe in holding companies. We should have an amend- 
 ment to the Sherman Act, specifying practices in reasonable 
 restraint of trade. The Grerman plan of enforced publicity and 
 limitation of capital to actual bona fide investments appeals to 
 me. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, but do not be- 
 lieve such a commission should have power to fix prices, unless 
 the need of such power under the new system is clearly demon- 
 strated by experience. 
 
 Admitting the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, there are, of course, offsetting disadvantages. 
 If conditions of fair competition were maintained, I believe 
 that the combination movement would be found to have pretty 
 definite limits in most branches of manufacturing. 
 
 Francis W. Kelsey, Author and Professor, University of 
 Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 
 
 I favor Federal control of companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness as more effective in the long run ; but I have an open mind 
 on this point, as I see advantages in properly guarded State 
 incorporation. It seems reasonable to admit the existence of 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale. 
 The larger and abler the staff, the more effective the adminis- 
 tration, and with abundant capital, economies in production, 
 economies in distribution and greater use of by-production, will 
 follow steadier employment of labor and better wages, better 
 protection against industrial accidents, and more command of 
 international trade may be reasonably expected. 
 
363 
 
 In regard to legislation, statutes expressly forbidding spe- 
 cific practices are a better guide to honorable men, and hence 
 preferable. There is less chance for evasion under a specious 
 plea. I favor emphatically government regulation of capitaliza- 
 tion. I also favor an Interstate Commerce Commission, with 
 laws that call for publicity for interstate corporations. Legiti- 
 mate enterprises of large scope have nothing to fear from reason- 
 able publicity. 
 
 Roswell C. McCrea, Professor of Economics, University of 
 Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business as more practicable at present; but I see no vital objec- 
 tion to national incorporation. This might be made optional 
 also for corporations doing an intrastate business. I believe in 
 holding companies with a supervisory commission. I favor more 
 specific legislation, leaving some latitude for the exercise of dis- 
 cretion on the part of a regulative commission. I favor laws 
 providing for government regulation of capitalization, and laws 
 that call for publicity and that apply to commercial corporations 
 through a commission to be appointed for that purpose meth- 
 ods akin to those now used in regulating common carriers and 
 their rates through the Interstate Commerce Commission. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 William Dinwiddie, Chancellor of Southwestern Presbyte- 
 rian University, Clarksville, Tenn. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness. Additional legislation should be enacted only if necessary 
 to make the Sherman Act thoroughly effectual. I am opposed 
 to holding companies. While admitting that advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large scale are potential to large 
 corporate business and are some of them in some cases actual, 
 I believe that they should accrue to the consumer and the laborer 
 and not to the undue profit of the corporation; otherwise it is 
 fallacious to claim that they are advanages to the people of the 
 country. If such business continued, and if the advantages 
 claimed are not actual and general, I should prefer Federal 
 laws permitting agreements which regulate production, prices 
 and the like under suitable public control. 
 
 Charles W. Mixter, Professor of Political Economy, Uni- 
 versity of Vermont, Burlington, Vt. 
 
 Association (combination, agreement, contract) and rivalry 
 (competition, business war) are both essential and irresponsible 
 features of our modern free economic system of things. In 
 one age one force is stronger, and in another age the other; 
 they swing naturally with a wisdom greater than that of any 
 parliament or commission. Not infrequently competition works 
 
364 
 
 badly for the public and ought to be " stifled " and have its 
 " prices controlled." On the whole, combination needs to be 
 favored in this present age to lessen the wastes of competition. 
 What we need in the way of government regulation is a new 
 code of laws defining and prohibiting specific harmful business 
 practices of both the association and the rivalry sort. These 
 should be ordinary statutes revised from time to time as occa- 
 sion arises and administered by the courts. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, because the funda- 
 mental philosophy of the Sherman Act is unsound. Substitute 
 new legislation constructively conceived, facing towards the 
 future, prohibiting alike specific acts of harmful combination 
 and specific acts of unfair competition. They are much alike 
 improper business warfare. 
 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. It was a great error ever prohibit- 
 ing railroad agreements at all. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions are : 
 
 (1) The after-effects of the crisis of 1907, still with us. 
 
 (2) The disconcerting change in the value of money occa- 
 sioned by the excessive output of gold. 
 
 (3) General social unrest and socialistic tendencies caused 
 by the "high cost of living" (brought about by 2) and by 
 the Roosevelt-LaFollette agitation. 
 
 (4) Oppressive regulation of the railroads, especially with 
 respect to rates by the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 (5) An unwise and needlessly aggressive attitude of the 
 administration with respect to enforcement of the Sherman Act. 
 The administration should proceed as regards enforcing this 
 law with a policy of "wise and salutary neglect" until the 
 people and Congress have had time to think and act anew. 
 
 Eugene E. Agger, Assistant Professor of Economics, Co- 
 lumbia University, New York City. 
 
 I prefer Federal incorporation ultimately, but Federal license 
 as a trial step for companies engaged in interstate commerce. 
 I favor laws preventing holding companies. Ownership and 
 control should not be divorced. The Sherman Law seems to 
 me to be adequate to deal with unfair competition and restraint 
 of trade. The government should by all means regulate capital- 
 ization. I favor laws that call for publicity and that apply 
 to commercial corporations, through a commission to be ap- 
 pointed for that purpose. I assent to the statement of advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, but I 
 regard " more command of international trade " as a doubtful 
 advantage, unless based upon equitable distribution of wealth 
 at home. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers 
 not unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. 
 
365 
 
 A sound policy will preserve competition rather than en- 
 deavor to engender it; that is to say, it will not force it, or try 
 to force it, where true economy lies in another direction, but 
 it will always preserve the possibility of competition. 
 
 John H. MacCracken, Professor of Politics, New York 
 University, New York City. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce. Holding companies should be temporary devices to effect 
 mergers, not for continuing ownership. When unfair competi- 
 tion and restraint of trade can be legally formulated and a 
 rule admitting general application is possible we should have 
 specific statutes in addition to the general law. I favor laws 
 providing for government regulation of capitalization and call- 
 ing for publicity to be applied to commercial corporations. Large 
 business has the advantage in economies in production, econo- 
 mies in distribution and more command of international trade. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike 
 those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 relation to common carriers. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable, as now interpreted. 
 It is possible to prevent monopoly in most lines of business. I 
 do not think that the Sherman Law should be amended as yet. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Trade unions should not be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act, and combinations of 
 farmers, either to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher 
 prices, should not be rendered lawful. Unrestrained greed, in 
 my judgment, has been the chief cause of business disturbance. 
 
 T. Morey Hodgman, President of Macalester College, St. 
 Paul, Minn., and George W. Davis, Professor of So- 
 cial and Political Science, Macalester College, St. 
 Paul, Minn. 
 
 We prefer national incorporation of all companies doing 
 interstate business; also supplementary constructive legislation, 
 prescribing conditions on which " big business " shall be organ- 
 ized. We favor laws to prevent one company from holding stock 
 in another company. The remedy for unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade would be afforded in part, at least, by the sup- 
 plementary constructive legislation already indicated. Specific 
 statutes would have to be greatly multiplied and, by technical 
 manoeuvring, could be easily evaded. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and laws should be passed calling for 
 publicity to be applied to commercial corporations, through a 
 commission to be appointed for that purpose. We favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are admitted, but they do not justify large-scale produc- 
 tion if it stifles free competition, as it has been shown to do. 
 
366 
 
 Silas Evans, President, Ripon College, Ripon, Wis. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable, 
 and should be repealed. I am emphatically of opinion that it 
 is not feasible to return to old competitive methods in business. 
 Kailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. Trade unions should be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act, but not from any other act which takes its 
 place. Farmers, trade unions and manufacturers should be on 
 the same basis. I favor a national incorporation law and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. I prefer national incorporation 
 for companies doing an interstate business; also a commission 
 of strong authority and responsibility to regulate the combines 
 within the terms of the incorporation. I think that in many 
 cases the holding company may make for efficiency and economy. 
 However, there should be regulation against abuse. I am decid- 
 edly of opinion that the government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, and it is imperative that publicity should be applied to 
 commercial corporations. I believe all the advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large scale are as stated. In regard 
 to the alleged evils charged against large combinations, I think 
 it improper to make quantitative qualification of moral or eco^ 
 nomic evils. This has already confused popular thought or 
 prejudice. 
 
 The election uncertainties, the tariff in politics, ill-defined 
 trust provisions, militarism and general extravagance are re- 
 sponsible for disturbed business conditions. 
 
 C. H. Spooner, President Norwich University, Northfield, 
 Vermont. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce. I favor laws that will prevent one compamr from hold- 
 ing stock in another company, although it seems difficult to 
 draw a law whose intent would not be easily evaded. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those enjoyed by the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common car- 
 riers. In regard to advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, it is undoubtedly true that they include econo- 
 mies in production, economies in distribution, greater use of by- 
 products, more command of international trade and command 
 of the best ability. It may be questioned whether those advan- 
 tages also include steadier employment of labor and at better 
 wages, or better protection against industrial accidents, unless 
 enforced by legislation or by an enlightened public sentiment. 
 
 E. W. Kemmerer, Economist, Professor, Cornell University, 
 Ithaca, N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due principally to the 
 necessary checking of corporate abuses. It is the price that must 
 
367 
 
 be paid by all for the " public-be-damned " policy of certain 
 large interests of a few years ago. The fact that the cost of 
 living seems destined to continue its upward movement for some 
 time to come (under the stimulus of large gold production) 
 is liable to make the public more exacting, instead of less exact- 
 ing, as time goes on. I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman 
 Law. The work of twenty-one years should not be undone. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to provide for the establish- 
 ment of an Interstate Trade Commission and the requirement 
 of greater publicity in public affairs. 
 
 Albert Charles Muhse, Special Economic Expert, Bureau of 
 Corporations, Washington, D. C. 
 
 I prefer a national incorporation act for companies engaged 
 in interstate commerce. The creation of a national industrial 
 commission with broad powers of regulation and control would 
 enable the government to deal more effectively with the indus- 
 trial situation. As to holding companies, the holding company 
 serves very beneficial economic functions and, if properly regu- 
 lated, need not be considered a menace to society. I prefer the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act for dealing with unfair competition 
 and restraint of trade. In time it will become a more work- 
 able instrument, because of flexibility, than specific legislation 
 or laws. I favor laws providing for government regulation of 
 capitalization, if such laws are carefully drawn and do not 
 attempt to restrict all speculative or risk enterprises. I most 
 decidedly favor laws that call for publicity to be applied to 
 commercial corporations through a commission to be appointed 
 for that purpose, with methods akin to those now used in regu- 
 lating common carriers and their rates through the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. 
 
 Regarding the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, it should be stated that better wages does not 
 always mean more wages for a given amount of work. In large- 
 scale business the relation between machine and employee can 
 be so regulated as to produce a maximum of effort in a given 
 time at really a minimum of labor cost. 
 
 Advantages in addition to those enumerated are, greater uni- 
 formity of product, standardization of output, greater financial 
 security, greater power to obtain advantages from or over pro- 
 ducer of raw materials, of transportation, of distributors or other 
 outside factors. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission with 
 powers already indicated. 
 
 Edward D. Page, Merchant, Fellow of the Royal Statis- 
 tical Society, member of other economic and socio- 
 logical bodies, New York. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission to permit large 
 aggregations of capital under single control, and for the merger 
 from time to time of smaller corporations, or to permit agree- 
 
368 
 
 ments which regulate production, prices and the like under suit- 
 able public control. It would be pernicious if it attempted to 
 fix prices. 
 
 In addition to other advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale may be added more effective appeal to 
 investors controlling free capital for investment and better pro- 
 tection to the income of such capital; also wider market and 
 greater stability of liquidating values for capital invested therein. 
 I prefer a national incorporation for companies doing interstate 
 business. The capital stock of any corporation receiving a 
 national charter should be exempted from taxation by the 
 States. 
 
 I believe holding companies to be beneficial in a vast ma- 
 jority of instances; to make them illegal is to create an arti- 
 ficial crime which will not be supported by the moral sense of 
 the community and ought not, therefore, to be attempted. Over- 
 capitalization can be rooted out by legislation which will wipe 
 the dollar mark off the stock certificate, as it has already been 
 wiped out of the minds of all intelligent men who deal therein. 
 Then the motives and reasons for overcapitalization will be done 
 away with. 
 
 Carroll W. Doten, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts 
 Institute of Technology, Boston, Mass. 
 
 All the distinctive advantages of large-scale business can be 
 obtained without monopoly. Monopoly of interstate business 
 would be impossible in most lines of stockholding by one cor- 
 poration in another and if leases were prohibited. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate business. I do not believe that additional legislation 
 is necessary at present to supplement the Sherman Anti-Trust 
 Act. It maj be necessary some time to undertake to fix prices, 
 but this should be a last resort. The holding companies should 
 be done away with if possible. Mergers through leases should 
 also be prohibited. If these measures were adopted, it would 
 not prevent mergers, but would make it impossible to affect 
 them, except through an out-and-out purchase of the plant. This 
 would greatly lessen the evils of the present system. 
 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade are practices com- 
 mon to both competitive and monopolized business. I don't see 
 how they can be reached directly, except through absolute con- 
 trol of prices. 
 
 Control of capitalization is not necessary, unless the govern- 
 ment should undertake to fix prices. Responsibility of promot- 
 ers and directors should be clearly defined and enforced. The 
 English law is worthy of study in this connection. 
 
 If the holding corporations were eliminated and all holding 
 of stock of one corporation by another, and combinations through 
 leases were absolutely prohibited, this evil the inadequate pro- 
 
369 
 
 lection of minority stockholders and the exploitation of invest- 
 ors would largely disappear. 
 
 In regard to advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale, a distinction should be made between the econo- 
 mies of large-scale business and monopoly. 
 
 Monopoly has some advantages that are not found in large- 
 scale business under competitive conditions. In the absence of 
 rebates and discrimination in transportation rates, economies of 
 distribution are largely due to monopoly and not to large-scale 
 production. It has not been proven that large business provides 
 steadier employment of labor and at better wages, nor is the 
 claim that business on a large scale provides better protection 
 against industrial accidents warranted by any reliable statistics 
 now available. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, but it must not 
 be expected to do too much at the start. It will have to feel 
 its way and be given increased power, as the need and expe- 
 diency of more complete control are manifested through expe- 
 rience. 
 
 William Watts Folwell, Professor Emeritus of Political 
 Economy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 
 Minn. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce; there will be less opposition to the license plan. I 
 prefer conservative legislation, as indicated by experience and 
 reasonable foresight, for dealing with unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade. I would favor laws providing for government 
 regulation of capitalization, if drawn by level-headed lawyers, 
 not under the pay or influence of the trusts. 
 
 All the advantages claimed for those doing business on a 
 large scale exist, and possibly others, but I do not believe that 
 they increase pari passu with the increase of scale or beyond 
 limits to be determined by experience. It will be found that 
 greater economy attends some industries when the scale is mod- 
 erate. Take from corporations the power to exploit, to over- 
 capitalize and monopolize, and " scale " may be left to the opera- 
 tion of economic forces. I favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Frank K. Sanders, President of Washburn College, Topeka, 
 Kans. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation. The Sherman Law seems 
 to me adequate. I think that holding companies afford a useful 
 method of management in some cases. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and an Interstate Trade Commission 
 should be appointed, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed 
 by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common 
 carriers. 
 
370 
 
 Horace Ellis, President, Vincennes University, Vincennes, 
 Ind. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the too marked dis- 
 position of the present administration to disregard the spirit of 
 honest legislation, in order to get votes. I am sure Theodore 
 Roosevelt would unravel this mystery which surrounds our com- 
 mercial life, if the opportunity were his. I cannot express my 
 disappointment with the man who pledged the people to carry 
 out Roosevelt's policies and broke faith with the people. The 
 Wool Trust could never have offered such humiliating insults 
 to the American people with Theodore Roosevelt as chief execu- 
 tive. I dislike to feel that a president of the republic could 
 forget his pledge so suddenly as has Mr. Taft, but my convic- 
 tion is complete to- the effect that our equilibrium cannot be re- 
 stored by him. If given half a chance, the people will recall 
 Roosevelt to the presidency. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as thoroughly clear and workable. 
 I desire to see its provisions enforced firmly, normally even, as 
 its honest author designed it to be. It is by no means feasible 
 to return to old business methods as well to return to the old 
 agricultural implements. The Sherman Law should be amended, 
 as actual and honest testing may show its weaknesses. Just as 
 any other beneficent legislative enactment may occasionally need 
 overhauling, so here. I favor a national incorporation law 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 No student of our country's glorious history can be unmind- 
 ful of the vast beneficial results which have accrued to the 
 nation at large from these combinations of capital. No one 
 would wish their unqualified overthrow, but no one who loves 
 democracy can quiet himself into the belief that these same com- 
 binations have too often disregarded other than selfish interests. 
 Labor is as much a national asset as is capital. My own feeling 
 is that a million happy homes everywhere throughout the land, 
 as a wise result of profit-sharing plans, would mean much more 
 to our country than all the libraries any magnate may build. 
 While these combinations are operating, it should be a funda- 
 mental consideration to live and let live. 
 
 Byron C. Mathews, Teacher of Economics, East Orange, 
 N.J. 
 
 I doubt very much whether laborers fare better under large 
 aggregations of capital. I have very little hope that great ag- 
 gregations of capital will ever be controlled in the interests of 
 the general public while ownership is left in the hands of private 
 individuals. I favor national incorporation. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and capitalization above actual 
 values of real property should be forbidden. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission as a step in the transition from public 
 to private ownership. 
 
371 
 
 Vanderveer Custis, Assistant Professor of Economics, Uni- 
 versity of Washington, Seattle, Wash. 
 
 Do you favor an Interstate Trade Commission? I cannot 
 at present think of any better method of regulation than 
 through an Interstate Trade Commission. Some sort of regula- 
 tion is essential if the organization of industry is to be per- 
 mitted. 
 
 My present position is somewhat tentative. What I say 
 is subject to this qualification. Organization is the outcome 
 of industrial evolution and has great possibilities for efficiency. 
 As it necessarily puts much power in few hands, it requires 
 wise regulation. The first thing is to recognize that an organ- 
 ized industry (not simply the trust) is a " public calling " and 
 subject to the rule of adequate facilities, reasonable charges 
 and no discrimination. This requires extensive regulation on 
 sound, economic principles. Such regulation may extend to all 
 with whom a corporation deals. It should extend to a regula- 
 tion of the corporation itself, affecting the relation of security 
 holders. Quite apart from this the evils of high finance are a 
 part of the corporation problem not merely the trust problem 
 and they are serious. My understanding of the present law 
 is that real, substantial restraint is forbidden; but that the 
 rule of reason is to be applied in determining whether or not 
 there is real restraint. There are probably some real restraint* 
 that should be permitted and regulated. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I am not ready to commit myself finally on 
 the question as to holding companies, but it now seems that 
 there may be proper uses for the holding company, though, 
 as a rule, it is probably better to have one company definitely 
 responsible. In any case, real, substantial regulation is needed. 
 
 It might' be well to have statutes defining better " reason- 
 able restraint," but the general principle is to enforce the 
 obligations of a "public calling." 
 
 James A. B. Scherer, President Throop Polytechnic Insti- 
 tute, Pasadena, Cal. 
 
 You are dealing with the most important single question of 
 government before the American people to-day. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business, and also most decidedly an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. The Sherman Law should be amended or supplemented 
 by explicit additional statutes. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization. I am emphatically in favor of laws to pro- 
 vide for publicity for commercial corporations engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. One of the evils in connection with large com- 
 binations that must be combated and counteracted is corrupt 
 influence in the State and national legislatures. 
 
372 
 
 E. G. Nourse, Professor of Economics, University of South 
 Dakota, Vermilion, S. D. 
 
 It seems that a large measure of publicity and definite 
 restrictions in the matter of capitalization should first be secured 
 as a part of any movement to bring large combinations within 
 proper regulation. Abuses which still persisted, such as unfair 
 methods of competition, should be the subject of investigation 
 by a commission, and their recommendations should be the 
 source of legislative information, as well as mandatory on the 
 corporations in the matter of busines methods. They should 
 under no circumstances be given price-fixing powers. 
 
 Admitting the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, I believe that the claim of steadier employment 
 of labor and at better wages and the claim of better protection 
 against industrial accidents are potential, rather than actual, in 
 many cases. I favor Federal license for companies engaged in 
 interstate business. The Sherman Law should be repealed. 
 Kailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, and combinations of farmers should be permitted. Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Act. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 the unequal incidence of the tariff; to a faulty monetary and 
 credit system, and to a lack of regulation of large business units. 
 The government should regulate capitalization and provide pub- 
 licity for commercial corporations. 
 
 Royal Meeker, Teacher, Princeton, N. J. 
 
 It really makes no difference whether corporations doing an 
 interstate business are dealt with under national incorporation 
 or by Federal license. As to the alleged unconstitutionality of 
 Federal license or incorporation, that is nonsense. The present 
 law requiring air brakes and automatic couplers is a much 
 more drastic " interference " with the inalienable, indefeasible 
 " right " to engage in interstate trade. The " national right " 
 to trade is not an unregulatable "right" any more than any 
 other "right." 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Act should be more clearly defined, 
 so as to make its interpretation less difficult and problematical. 
 If regulated by commission, holding companies might be 
 allowed. I favor laws providing for government regulation of 
 capitalization, although overcapitalization only indirectly affects 
 commodity prices. Such laws would exist to protect investors 
 primarily. I most emphatically favor laws that call for publicity 
 as applied to commercial corporations, through a commission 
 to be appointed for that purpose, methods akin to those now 
 used in regulating common carriers and their rates through the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. I think an Interstate Trade 
 Commission imperative. 
 
373 
 
 Charles A. Blanchard, President Wheaton College, 
 Wheaton, 111. 
 
 I suppose there is no way of preventing able, unscrupulous 
 and powerful men from doing wrong. In the reign of the com- 
 mon people, which is now coming on the earth, we shall have the 
 human, selfish imperfections of the many set against the human, 
 selfish imperfections of the few. The eiforts of the many, while 
 they are confined to legal proceedings, are necessarily slow, and 
 while the legal profession, as at present, holds itself ready to 
 justify any iniquity and to seek the destruction of any law, 
 provided it is paid sufficiently for it, remedies will be slow to 
 operate at best. 
 
 I suppose that the overgrown fortunes -of our time have 
 almost without exception been accumulated in violation both of 
 human and divine law. Everyone who has thought at all, how- 
 ever, knows how difficult or impossible it will be to secure a 
 unanimous opinion in regard to this matter so long as men who 
 are paid to talk and to devise means for avoiding rather than 
 complying with laws exist in such numbers as they do at present. 
 I do not profess to have a settled judgment as to what should 
 be done regarding better enactments. I think they will be 
 thoroughly valueless as long as powerful men wish to transgress 
 them, and able lawyers are willing to be hired to show them 
 how. 
 
 I think the number of bankers who have been imprisoned 
 during the last few years is very encouraging. If they could 
 now imprison all judges and lawyers who seek to break down 
 rather than enforce law, I should have considerable hope, but I 
 imagine that this will be one of the last things which we see 
 done. Still when one considers what has already been accom- 
 plished, one ought not to despair even of this. 
 
 So far as I understand the Sherman Law, it is very simple 
 and plain. Corporations have been working for a stay of pro- 
 ceedings and now that this seems impossible are working for a 
 change in the law, after which, if the new law did not please 
 them, they would set their lawyers to work to delay the trial 
 again. 
 
 I think the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale are actual, except the claims of steadier employ- 
 ment and at better wages and better protection against indus- 
 trial accidents. I think corporations have, as a rule, protected 
 themselves against industrial accidents, but have not protected 
 their workmen or the families of their workmen. I do not be- 
 lieve that the greater corporations have shown a disposition to 
 give laboring men steadier employment at better wages than 
 smaller competing corporations have. The great corporations 
 seem to me to be competing with the people, while the smaller 
 corporations compete with one another. 
 
 I favor national incorporation, but not an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
374 
 
 D. A. Tompkins, Chairman, The D. A. Tompkins Com- 
 pany, Engineers and Contractors, Charlotte, N. C. 
 
 The Sherman Law is all right as far as it goes. When the 
 people who are in big businesses are brought to the same stand- 
 ards of right and wrong as those in little businesses, there will 
 be no difference in the matter of competition and no difference 
 in standards between little and big businesses. Big businesses, 
 including railway transportation, should be put under the same 
 examination, control and regulation as the national banks. If 
 the railroads are put under regulation and control, like the 
 national banks, then there is no objection to their making agree- 
 ments that produce economic results. 
 
 For the promotion of general good and for economic results 
 that don't infringe upon other people's rights, a trade union 
 should be free. They should not be free to violate law and do 
 wrong to others. Associations of farmers to work out general 
 principles for the benefit of farmers would naturally be lawful 
 under the Sherman Act if properly organized for the general 
 good. Combinations of farmers to lower or raise prices against 
 the interest of other people would naturally come under an 
 amended Sherman Act and be prohibited. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law. A good general Fed- 
 eral law, examining, controlling and regulating railroads on 
 the basis of a fixed investment, like the national banking law, 
 would, I think, be sufficient without any special commission. 
 The control would be exercised by the courts, as in the case of 
 the national banking law. Perhaps an intervening commission 
 would be necessary to carry out this law. 
 
 There are many causes of business stability, among the prin- 
 cipal ones of which are, the need of railway regulation and 
 control; the need of a proper tariff reform; the need of mer- 
 chant marine to carry American goods to foreign countries; the 
 need of a banking system that would give safe flexibility to 
 banking and commerce. 
 
 W. W. Hooper, Instructor, University of Chattanooga, 
 Chattanooga, Tenn. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. The Sherman Law should have a trial before 
 we can tell which would be the better the Sherman Law or 
 statutes expressly forbidding specified practices for dealing 
 with unfair competition and restraint of trade. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations. I do not admit the assertion that 
 some provision must be made by Federal law to secure the con- 
 tinuance of the advantages now claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale. Sufficiently large aggregations of capital can 
 be secured under present laws, which laws should not be so 
 changed as to prevent the same, except so far ,as to prevent 
 involuntary mergers. 
 
375 
 
 Allyn Abbott Young, Professor of Economics, Washington 
 University, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Act as thoroughly unscientific in prin- 
 ciple and unsatisfactory in results. Statutes should deal with 
 specific acts of wrongdoing. I favor Federal license for com- 
 panies doing interstate business. Laws ought to be enacted 
 providing for government regulation of capitalization for rail- 
 roads and other public service corporations, not essential for 
 purely private corporations. I favor laws that call for publicity 
 as applied to commercial corporations for the protection of 
 minority interests. Investors can be sufficiently protected by 
 (a.) uniform financial reports, together with (ft) enforced publi- 
 cation of pertinent and authenticated facts about businesses 
 offering their securities for public subscription or for " listing," 
 and (c) enforcement of present statutes against fraud. 
 
 While the advantages claimed for those doing business on a 
 large scale may exist partially and in varying combinations for 
 particular businesses, there is often, however, a limit to the 
 increase of advantage with the increase in the size of the busi- 
 ness, and there are in some cases compensating disadvantages. 
 
 Francis H. McLean, General Secretary, National Associa- 
 tion of Societies for Organizing Charity, etc., New 
 York. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce, because it still leaves in the hands of the State authori- 
 ties large responsibilities. Any atrophy of local responsibility 
 (State or otherwise) would be a serious menace to our political 
 life. Localization of some political functions is a necessity. I 
 am in favor of laws preventing holding companies. The Sher- 
 man Anti-Trust Act should be supplemented by statutes ex- 
 pressly forbidding specified practices not in harmony with just 
 and honest business methods. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 relation to common carriers. 
 
 F. G. Franklin, Professor of History and Political Science, 
 Albany College, Albany, Ore. 
 
 I concede the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, and I also see the associated evils. I prefer 
 national incorporation for companies engaged in interstate com- 
 merce. I also favor additional legislation, providing the full- 
 est measure of government control necessary to produce results 
 and fair prices. Holding companies should be supervised most 
 carefully, the treatment of each case being determined accord- 
 ing to its merits. It is hard to give an absolute disapproval 
 of holding companies. There seems to be need of an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
376 
 
 William De W. Hyde, President of Bowdoin College, 
 Brunswick, Me. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as 
 clear and workable. I do not consider it feasible to return to 
 what are commonly known as old competitive methods in busi- 
 ness. Fixed capital makes it impossible. I favor a repeal of 
 the Sherman Law, or very radical amendment, requiring Fed- 
 eral incorporation as an alternative to rigorous enforcement; 
 and a commission to interpret terms. Kailroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Combinations of farmers, 
 either to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher prices, 
 should not be lawful. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 and a Federal license only as second best, if Federal incor- 
 poration should be found impracticable. The present policy 
 tends to destroy delicate machinery which, under proper regula- 
 tion, can be made to serve the people. 
 
 I favor laws preventing one company from holding stock in 
 another company. All legitimate aims of holding companies can 
 be secured otherwise. I favor government regulation of capi- 
 talization, an Interstate Trade Commission and publicity for 
 commercial corporations. 
 
 Otto E. Kriege, President, Central Wesleyan College, War- 
 renton, Mo. 
 
 I am in favor of Federal legislation providing for the con- 
 trol of companies engaged in interstate commerce and also of 
 laws forbidding the raising of prices, except for real causes. 
 I do not believe in holding companies. Legislation prohibiting 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade should be both gen- 
 eral find specific, and we should have sane courts to uphold the 
 constitutionality of the laws enacted. I question some of the 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale. 
 I doubt that those advantages include better protection against 
 industrial accidents or command of the best ability, and it 
 should also be admitted that monopolies have not lowered the 
 prices of articles of necessity. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 F. W. McNair, President Michigan College of Mines, 
 Houghton, Mich. 
 
 It seems to me the most promising method of dealing with 
 the situation is through some form of Federal trade commission 
 having rather large power of control and somewhat wide lati- 
 tude as to the size and form of corporation doing interstate 
 business. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. As between 
 national incorporation and Federal license I see little choice, 
 provided some effective form of Federal control is made a part 
 of the scheme. 
 
377 
 
 William H. Schaper, Professor of Political Science, Uni- 
 versity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 Our present business policy is unworthy of the nation. We 
 have developed methods of doing business and perfected our 
 industries to a point where we can lay claim to be in the fore- 
 front of the march of nations. In matters of government we 
 have stood still for a century. The very word " statesman " has 
 become a term of derision. We started in the days of Jackson 
 by adopting the principle of frequent rotation in office to prevent 
 an official class from arising. In fact, we have developed the 
 worst official class of any enlightened nation. We call this class 
 of men " politicians/ 7 They do not hold one office for life, but 
 many offices in many jurisdictions. 
 
 Congress should deal with companies doing interstate com- 
 merce by passing a model corporation act, requiring companies 
 engaging in such commerce to incorporate under the law. We 
 shall never solve this problem until the Constitution is amended, 
 authorizing Congress to enact a uniform civil code for the entire 
 nation. We need uniform national laws governing partnerships. 
 " stock companies " or limited partnerships, as well as corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 Rev. John A. Ryan, D. D., Professor of Ethics and Eco- 
 nomics, St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 All the substantial advantages of large-scale production can 
 be had without permitting any corporation to become so large 
 as to exercise monopoly control over any product. At least the 
 contrary of this has not yet been proved. Until such proof is 
 forthcoming, we are entitled to assume that competition is desir- 
 able, not through an indefinite number of small concerns, but 
 through a sufficient number to prevent monopoly in any product. 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate com- 
 merce, in such terms as to prevent overcapitalization, the control 
 of more than 35 per cent, in any product, the holding of stocks 
 in another corporation, etc. I favor laws to prevent holding 
 companies, except in the matter of corporations in the field of 
 natural monopoly, as railroads and other public service corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 D. C. Hull, President, Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss. 
 
 I do not think that the disturbed condition of business is 
 due to any one cause, but rather to a combination of causes. 
 The greed of wealth is, in my judgment, the chief cause. Added 
 to this are the unreasonable demands of labor unions and legis- 
 lative intolerance. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. The chief 
 trouble with the Sherman Law has consisted in the tardiness 
 of judicial machinery. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
378 
 
 William F. Peirce, President, Kenyon College, Gambier, 
 Ohio. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce. I favor laws that will prevent one company 
 from holding stock in another company; also laws directed 
 against practices in restraint of trade, which could apparently 
 be more clearly formulated and more effectively enforced than 
 a general statute. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation. 
 
 Business on a large scale has come to stay. The economic 
 saving, as summarized in the list of advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale, is unquestionable. I am not as 
 yet convinced that the suggested provisions in Federal law are 
 necessary. I doubt whether such laws providing for an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now en- 
 joyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers could be formulated and enforced without 
 economic injury. 
 
 Clarence M. Case, Professor of Economics, Penn College, 
 Oskaloosa, Iowa. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce. I consider the Sherman Anti-Trust Act suf- 
 ficient for the present to deal with the exploitation of producers 
 and consumers. My answer to this question is based on the 
 idea of discretionary power in the hands of the administrative 
 and judicial officers, rather than try to meet every possible con- 
 tingency in advance. I do not favor making certain acts un- 
 lawful in a way so specific as to leave room for evasion or for 
 a free hand on all points not specifically forbidden. I am op- 
 posed to holding companies. The government should regulate 
 capitalization, and laws should be enacted applying publicity 
 to commercial corporations through an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. As for the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale, I doubt if wages are better. 
 
 H. J. Davenport, Professor of Economics, University of 
 Missouri, Columbia, Mo. 
 
 I favor additional legislation providing compulsion of one 
 price (freight being allowed for) and punitive damages for cut- 
 throat competition. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, and laws should be enacted providing for publicity to be 
 applied to commercial corporations, through a commission to be 
 appointed for that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. I am opposed to holding companies. In regard to 
 the advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, 
 they all exist, but are exaggerated. They do not extend so far 
 as to make impossible the existence of competing big plants or 
 businesses. 
 
379 
 
 Edwin S. Todd, Professor of Economics, Miami University, 
 Oxford, Ohio. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation for dealing with companies en- 
 gaged in interstate commerce. The Sherman Law should be 
 repealed, and statutes should be enacted, expressly forbidding 
 specified practices. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, and publicity should be applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions through a commission to be appointed for that purpose. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The sooner the Federal Government repeals the Sherman 
 Law and frankly recognizes the fact that combinations have 
 been a natural growth, in spite of attendant evils, the better off 
 we shall be. Then the Federal government should provide for 
 Federal control through Federal incorporation and commission 
 supervision. 
 
 Alfred T. Perry, President, Marietta College, Marietta, 
 Ohio. 
 
 Combination and even a monopoly may be allowed if only, 
 by suitable legislation, the rights of the public may be safe- 
 guarded. Just how to secure this end is the problem for states- 
 men. I have no specific suggestions. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 business, as conserving the power of the States. I think dis- 
 crimination should be exercised in regard to holding companies, 
 and probably some additional legislation is needed. As to unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade, a general law with " reason- 
 able " interpretation would seem to be better than a multitude 
 of specific enactments. The government should regulate capi- 
 talization, and laws should provide for publicity for commercial 
 corporations. With my present knowledge, I am inclined to 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission, although not fully 
 assured. 
 
 William L. Felter, Principal, Girls' High School, Brooklyn, 
 N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed conditions in business are due, in my judgment, 
 to uncertainty as to the outcome of government suits to dissolve 
 certain corporations and to the knowledge that many of the cor- 
 porations have been guilty of similar practices in restraint of 
 trade and hence are subject to government suits. I prefer 
 national incorporation for companies engaged in interstate com- 
 merce. I do not believe in holding companies. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization and should provide for pub- 
 licity applied to commercial corporations. I would favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission only in case the Sherman Law 
 should be found inadequate. I regard the Sherman Law as 
 clear and workable. 
 
380 
 
 Lewis H. Haney, Professor of Economics, The University 
 of Texas, Austin, Texas. 
 
 Where the business is a natural monopoly or, on account of 
 the general necessity of the product, is affected with the public 
 interest, regulation of capitalization and rates of charge is desir- 
 able. Greater liability and more democratic control by stock- 
 holders are a crying need of corporate life. Eequirements con- 
 cerning publicity of promotion and of affairs of corporations 
 whose stocks are listed on exchanges ; requirements for adequate 
 reserves and accounts in general; dummy directors, abuse of 
 proxies, etc., all need attention. Additional legislation should 
 provide for accounting requirements and publicity in the case 
 of natural monopolies and monopolies in great necessaries of 
 life, and should also provide for tariff modifications. There 
 should be statutory definition of reasonable restraint of trade 
 (based on scientific investigation). I do not favor laws to pre- 
 vent holding companies; but measures should be adopted to 
 insure responsibility in proportion to power. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission and laws for the protection of minority 
 stockholders and of investors. I believe that this head embraces 
 a large number of most serious evils. Eeform incorporation 
 laws and regulation of stock exchanges are most needed. 
 
 T. N. Carver, Secretary-Treasurer, American Economic 
 Association, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. To prevent the exploitation of producers 
 and consumers I favor additional legislation, fixing prices by 
 public commission wherever monopoly exists, or where compe- 
 tition has failed to regulate adequately. I am utterly indiffer- 
 ent to holding companies. If the public will fix prices, I care 
 not how many holding companies there are. The government 
 should regulate capitalization. The price of shares, the valua- 
 tion of such corporations should be regulated. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those 
 now employed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in rela- 
 tion to common carriers. I also favor laws that call for pub- 
 licity and that apply to commercial corporations, through an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. While I admit certain advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale with 
 a query as to how large there are as many corresponding dis- 
 advantages not named. 
 
 Henry W. Elson, Professor of History, Ohio University, 
 Athens, Ohio. 
 
 I favor such amendment of the Sherman Law as would 
 enable an injured corporation to receive redress from an offend- 
 ing corporation, without retrial of the case, when the latter 
 has been convicted under the law similar to that suggested 
 by Senator La Follette. 
 
381 
 
 Oliver C. Lockhart, Teacher, Department of Economics and 
 Sociology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. To guard against reversals of opinion, it might 
 be well to enact additional legislation defining unlawful restraint,, 
 somewhat as now interpreted. Though often subserving a useful 
 purpose, holding companies have been much abused. The con- 
 trol of one company by a minority or bare majority of stock is 
 certainly undesirable. Restraint of trade, as illustrated by refus- 
 ing to furnish goods at prevalent trade rates to merchants who 
 buy anything from rival producers or who refuse to maintain 
 list prices, as required by " sellers' agreements " and by use of 
 patents to protect what is not patented, should be specifically 
 forbidden. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 publicity should be applied to commercial corporations through 
 the Bureau of Corporations. The advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale are not confined to large combi- 
 nations. This applies especially to economies in production, 
 greater use of by-products and better protection against indus- 
 trial accidents. I am not at present in favor of an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles Noble Gregory, Dean of Law School and Professor 
 of Law, George Washington University, Washing- 
 ton, D. C. 
 
 I think no Federal regulation necessary, if a corporation 
 merely does interstate business as a buyer and not a seller, for 
 instance, or if the interstate part of its business is small and 
 incidental. Unfair competition and restraint of trade should 
 be dealt with under the Sherman Act. I favor government 
 regulation of capitalization, but am in doubt as to an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. I think we are somewhat afflicted with 
 commissions, not always actuated by the same sense of justice 
 felt by courts. I favor a national incorporation law, but not 
 obligatory on all companies doing an interstate business, only 
 those of a certain character, and perhaps doing business of a 
 certain amount. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 absolute uncertainty as to the interpretation and enforcement 
 of present laws, and apprehension as to enactments, State and 
 national, in the near future, hostile to property. 
 
 Charles Rochelle, President, Kansas State Society of Labor 
 and Industry, Wichita, Kan. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce, also Federal license in a limited sense and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission with more power than that 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Sher- 
 man Law, in my judgment, is not clear and workable. 
 
382 
 
 M. Wes. Tubbs, Secretary-Treasurer, Wisconsin State 
 Union, American Society of Equity, Madison, Wis. 
 (Executive Board of Wisconsin State Union, Amer- 
 ican Society of Equity Signed: Ira M. J. Chryst, 
 Hudson, Wis.; J. H. Carnahan, Black River Falls, 
 Wis. ; D. O. Mahoney, Viroqua, Wis. ; A. H. Christ- 
 man, Menomonee Falls, Wis.; C. E. Hanson, River 
 Falls, Wis.) 
 
 We prefer, for companies engaged in interstate commerce, 
 national incorporation with strict governmental supervision. 
 We favor additional legislation to deal with the exploitation of 
 producers and consumers. We are opposed to holding companies. 
 We prefer legislation forbidding specific practices, as illustrated 
 by the selling of goods in a given locality where a competitor is 
 operating, at prices below cost of production until the local 
 competitor is ruined; and by the selling of one variety of goods 
 at less than cost for the purpose of driving from the field a 
 rival who produces chiefly this variety. Also, by refusing to 
 furnish goods at prevalent trade rates to merchants who buy 
 anything from rival producers, or who refuse to maintain list 
 prices, as required by "sellers' agreements." Also, by control 
 of sources of raw material, and by use of patents to protect what 
 is not patented. The government should regulate capitalization 
 and laws should be passed calling for publicity, and applying to 
 commercial corporations, through a commission to be appointed 
 for that purpose. 
 
 We recognize the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, when the advantages are properly managed. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is not clear and 
 workable. It should be amended to make it more explicit. Bail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. Combinations of farmers to restrict produc- 
 tion or to hold a crop for higher prices should be lawful up to 
 the limit of average cost of production, with a reasonable profit 
 added. 
 
 We do not consider it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods. We favor a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now en- 
 joyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. 
 
 In our judgment, disturbed business conditions are caused 
 by concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, manipula- 
 tion of the country's finances by the great banking interests, 
 and resistance by commercial interests to tariff and political 
 agitation. 
 
 The Butte Inter-Mountain, Butte, Mont. 
 
 Eegulated combination must supplant competition. Large 
 operations are necessary, and competition as it was once known 
 must yield to progress. 
 
383 
 
 John Bigelow, Publicist, New York City. 
 
 The Sherman Law is very far from being clear and work- 
 able; nearly as far as Sherman always was from being a states- 
 man. I consider it feasible to attempt to return to old com- 
 petitive methods, and the quicker the better. 
 
 " Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law ? " I do. I 
 know of no other law ever enacted for our Federal government 
 that I thought more absurd when enacted, and I still think 
 the same of it. 
 
 " Do you favor amending the Sherman Law ? " As the 
 man shortened the vicious dog's tail by cutting it off close be- 
 hind his ears. There is no amending a law that defies com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 " Should railroads be allowed to enter into agreements af- 
 fecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission ? " If compelled to, but I 
 see no need of an Interstate Commission, except to increase 
 the powers of the central government, and that would be a bad 
 use. 
 
 " Should combinations of farmers be rendered lawful ? " 
 Everybody ought to be at liberty to detain or to sell his prop- 
 erty when he finds an acceptable purchaser. No law to the 
 contrary can be consistent with common sense or human free- 
 dom. 
 
 I would favor a national incorporation law if it does not 
 interfere with the constitutional rights of the States. 
 
 "Do you favor a Federal license law?" Not till I have 
 read it can I tell, but I mistrust any increase of the power 
 of the central government, already excessive. 
 
 " Do you favor an Interstate Trade Commission ?" I do 
 not approve of any Federal government commissions whatever 
 that interfere with trade or commerce. 
 
 " In your judgment, what caused or causes the present 
 disturbed business conditions?" The tariff and the nefarious 
 derangement of all the natural developments of industry and 
 commerce, its inevitable consequences. 
 
 We will never have a just government, nor be a free people, 
 nor an honest people, until we open every port of the country 
 to the commerce of every nation as freely as the port of New 
 York is open to the commerce of New Jersey or Connecticut. 
 
 William J. Wilgus, Eminent Civil Engineer, New York 
 City. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable and a 
 return to old competitive methods as feasible. The Sherman 
 Law should be neither repealed nor amended. I have arrived 
 at no decision regarding national incorporation, Federal license 
 or Interstate Trade Commission. Any existing disturbance in 
 business can be traced to a mixture of causes. 
 
384 
 
 W. G. Langworthy Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Political 
 Economy in University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. It seems to me that Federal incorporation 
 might be required of certain classes of corporations,, especially 
 transportation enterprises, railroads, steamboats, etc. ; but a gen- 
 eral requirement is too sweeping and too much of a concentra- 
 tion for efficiency, or for our ideas of decentralization. I believe 
 I favor laws to prevent holding companies; the complexity 
 favored by the holding company is on the road to fraud. Unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with by stat- 
 utes expressly forbidding specified practices. Careful European 
 legislation is of this nature. The legislature, through work of 
 experts, must follow up all abuses, specifically and unremittingly. 
 The government should regulate capitalization. Over-capital- 
 ization is not necessarily fraudulent, but is a departure from that 
 simplicity which should mark all corporation dealings. Capital- 
 ization in excess of market value is on the road to fraud. 1 
 believe that, in principle, incorporation is for production rather 
 than for distribution. I believe that every officer of a corpora- 
 tion and every person de facto setting up officials of straw should 
 be held as a trustee independently of all corporate forms. Of 
 course a corporation may sometimes be liable for a tort, but 
 the trusteeship of a person employing the corporate form should 
 be affected with a criminal liability in personam. 
 
 I would favor an Interstate Trade Commission if consistent 
 with what I have said on the subject of Federal license and in- 
 corporation. 
 
 Regarding the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, economies in production and economies in 
 distribution are sometimes exaggerated. Steadier employment 
 of labor, and at better wages, is proved by the statistics of the 
 steel trade. 
 
 C. H. Rammelkamp, President, Illinois College, Jackson- 
 ville, 111. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce, as I believe that legislation on that line could be 
 more easily secured. I do not favor additional legislation deal- 
 ing with the exploitation of producers and consumers. On the 
 whole, I favor laws to prevent one company from holding stock 
 in another company. I do not believe in holding companies, 
 unless we are ready to move forward to ultimate socialism; I 
 am not ready for that. The government should regulate capital- 
 ization and laws should be passed applying publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations through a commission to be appointed for 
 that purpose. I admit the advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale. I favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
385 
 
 H. F. Stimpson, Consulting Engineer, Singer Building, New 
 York. 
 
 I believe that the large corporation is an economic develop- 
 ment which cannot be stifled. 
 
 I believe that the Sherman Law is not an adequate remedy. 
 
 I believe in a determination of values on the- basis of the 
 quantity and quality of energy absorbed by the commodity or 
 sold directly. A kilowatt-hour of mechanical energy, at pres- 
 ent, costs two cents; if developed from a two-hundred and 
 fifty dollar horse, it costs fifteen cents; if developed from a 
 man receiving twenty cents per hour it costs two dollars and 
 twenty-eight cents, etc., etc. 
 
 I believe in an exact change of value on such a basis with 
 no margin of profit between individuals after each has been 
 fully compensated for the energy which he has exerted, taking 
 its quality into consideration. 
 
 I believe that the business of transportation of persons and 
 packages should be conducted by the government on the same 
 basis as the Postal Service, i. e., a uniform charge for a uni- 
 form weight of any class irrespective of distance. This would 
 eliminate the fictitious values of certain real estate. 
 
 The important point is an accurate determination of value 
 together with an equitable exchange. 
 
 These opinions are based on an experience as an engineer of 
 twenty-five years plus five years extensive study of economics. 
 
 Carter H. FitzHugh, President Lake Forest College, Lake 
 Forest, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended or revised; it should 
 be so plain that the man of average intelligence may know if 
 his business is run in accordance with law. In regard to trade 
 unions, I have just read British experience with the Federated 
 Unions of Eailway Servants. The unions must be made to 
 incorporate. As to permitting combinations of farmers, either 
 to restrict production or to hold a crop for higher prices, I 
 should say, theoretically, yes. The cotton crop of the South 
 should be so restricted as to make it profitable. The land not 
 used for this purpose can be put to other uses. About seventy 
 per cent, of the cotton is paid for outside of the United States, 
 bringing about seven hundred millions of money to us. The 
 cultivation is better done when prices are good. 
 
 Paul J. Pierce, Student of Political Economies, Iowa City, 
 Iowa. 
 
 The courts have interpreted the Sherman Law to mean 
 "unreasonable" restraint of trade, which is sufficient; and the 
 law should be amended merely to add that word. I favor 
 national incorporation or Federal license. I am decidedly not 
 in favor of an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
386 
 
 Frank J. Sprague, Consulting Engineer, and Vice-President 
 American Institute of Electrical Engineers, New 
 York. 
 
 Fear of government interference, with or without just cause ; 
 the personal ambitions and desire for self-aggrandisement of 
 political office-holders and office-seekers, are disturbing the busi- 
 ness of the country. The general belief that politicians and 
 lawyers and office-holders of chronic character are incapable 
 of judging of the effect of political action as bearing on the 
 delicate structure of business credit, and general uncertainty 
 as to the future, both as to prosecution of large corporations 
 and changes in the tariff, are potent elements in business dis- 
 quietude. The Sherman Law should be amended so as not to 
 be unnecessarily destructive of legitimate effort. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, 
 as they are the worst trusts of all. As to combinations of 
 farmers, they should be excepted only if industrial manufac- 
 turers are. What is the difference whether one has iron or 
 pigs or cotton to sell? I favor a national incorporation law, 
 but do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission with any 
 such plenitude of powers as are claimed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. 
 
 James Ford Rhodes, Author of " History of the United 
 States from the Compromise of 1850," etc., Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 and publicity should be applied to commercial corporations 
 through an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law 
 should be amended, as indicated by former President Roosevelt. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and com- 
 binations of farmers to secure fair prices for their products 
 should be lawful. 
 
 Over-trading caused the panic of 1907, and we are suffer- 
 ing from the consequent depression. 
 
 Franklin H. Head, Manufacturer & Banker, Lawyer and 
 Author, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The widespread feeling of uncertainty as to what the laws 
 and court decisions mean, and how their meaning will be de- 
 cided upon in the future by the courts, are leading causes of 
 present disturbed conditions. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended to permit railroads to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission, and farmers should be permitted 
 to combine. I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal 
 license law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
387 
 
 W. Wilberforce Smith, Professor Economics, James Milli- 
 kin University, Decatur, 111., also former Head Master 
 of Berkeley School, New York. 
 
 The wholesome effect upon United States banking resulting 
 from Federal interference by the National Bank Act, and the 
 experience of Interstate Commerce regulation, which, as pro- 
 vided in the Act of 1887, was ineffective for as long a period 
 as the Sherman Anti-Trust Law has been, but which of late 
 years has been exteremely useful, encourages perseverence ; 
 amendments which the proposed Interstate Trade Commission 
 may frame from time^to time "in the light of reason" being 
 the clue to just rules and decisions. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. As the Federal tax imposed upon bank notes 
 resulted in a standardized system of banks, and the standard 
 has operated not to extinguish but to tone up State and private 
 banking, the regulation of major corporations would tone up 
 the practice of minor (intrastate) business, corporate and pri- 
 vate. Corporations doing interstate business should be treated 
 as quasi-public. I believe in holding companies, if strict con- 
 ditions are imposed protecting minority stock interests. Unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with by 
 statutes analogous to those securing publicity and non-discrim- 
 ination in railway rates. The government should regulate cap- 
 italization, and publicity should be applied to commercial cor- 
 porations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission to control 
 interstate business. 
 
 H. R. De Bra, President, Missouri Wesleyan College, 
 Cameron, Mo. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. Under that system the State can best protect its 
 own interests, and Federal agencies should be employed only 
 to protect the rights of other commonwealths. Holding com- 
 panies might be all right if strictly limited and requirement 
 be made for publicity. The government should regulate capital- 
 ization, and publicity should be applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions through an Interstate Trade Commission. A commission 
 could certainly find out what limits are necessary to conserve 
 proper economies and the laws should be flexible enough for 
 that. 
 
 M. C. Burt, Treasurer and Vice-President, Pennsylvania 
 Military College, Chester, Pa. 
 
 I favor national incorporation of all companies doing inter- 
 state business. Federal incorporation laws should require the 
 greatest possible publicity. Companies that are simply holding 
 companies should be prohibited. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization, and publicity should be applied to commer- 
 cial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
388 
 
 Hunt Engineering Company, Contracting Engineers, Kan- 
 sas City, Mo. 
 
 The competitive system has in the past led to waste or dis- 
 sipation of resources,, which is now contrary to conservation 
 policies of other nations. This inconsistency has eliminated 
 original investors through inefficient methods and necessity for 
 pledging their assets in times of stress. Thus ultimately the 
 developer is eliminated, and the investment goes to the con- 
 sumer through ruinously low prices or is absorbed in liquida- 
 tion. The legal right to merge is the natural remedy and the 
 logical course in the evolution of business. The enactment of 
 a Federal license law for corporations exceeding a fixed capital, 
 with restrictions as to the percentage in one control of any one 
 kind of business, its assets and capital scrutinized to eliminate 
 water, and the licensing by unbiased authority of advisedly 
 located competition, well safeguarded by equitable transportation 
 rates, will take care of prices. Labor and capital could then 
 agree on division of earnings. Also conserve wasted energies 
 for future generations. The amendment of the Sherman Act to 
 conform with the licensing act should restore confidence between 
 the government and capital. 
 
 Samuel T. Howe, Member State Tax Commission, Topeka, 
 Kansas. 
 
 I am not in favor of Federal incorporation ; hence, prefer the 
 Federal license remedy. The exploitation of producers and con- 
 sumers should be prevented by proper legislation. I do not 
 believe in holding companies and am in favor of laws that will 
 prevent one company from holding stock in another company. 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with 
 by statutes expressly forbidding specified practices, with suit- 
 able penalties for violation. The government should regulate 
 capitalization and should apply publicity to commercial corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 I believe large business has advantages from which benefits 
 would result to consumers if the business were reasonably regu- 
 lated as to income. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission 
 for controlling large aggregations of capital engaged in inter- 
 state trade, in the absence of knowledge of a better agency. 
 
 Ogden T. McClurg, Merchant and Publisher, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law would have to be so vitally changed, if 
 touched at all, that it would seem better to repeal it entirely, 
 and, if necessary, pass a new law on the subject. Uncertainty 
 as to the interpretation of the Sherman Law and how far it 
 would be enforced; uncertainty on the tariff question; general 
 uncertainty, have caused, in mv -judgment, the present dis- 
 turbed business conditions. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
389 
 
 Wm. W. Garner, President Borough Park and Martense 
 Subway Association, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business, as there is always an opportunity to question 
 authority with a State corporation also acting under Federal 
 license. The evils of over-capitalization are imaginary and only 
 harped on by the jingoes. I believe every one of the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale exist and are 
 for the benefit of the producers, but the advantages to the 
 consumer are nil. 
 
 Over-capitalization to the lay mind seems, when ordinary 
 business affairs are being considered, of small significance. A 
 corporation starting out with capital stock of any amount, with 
 shares, say $100 each, when placed upon the market will find 
 the general investor placing his own valuation on those shares; 
 and the general public will, through ever-present methods of 
 publicity, be dealing in the same script at ten per cent, or 
 two hundred per cent, of its fair value, as conditions warrant. 
 " Water " will find its own level. Laws on this subject would 
 unnecessarily cumber the statute books. 
 
 J. G. White, Electrical and Civil Engineer, New York. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable. 
 Amendments should make the law so clear and exact that 
 business men may know just what it means and along what 
 lines they may work. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor national incorporation 
 and Federal license; also an Interstate Trade Commission, if 
 its powers are clearly defined and such as not to materially inter- 
 fere with general business. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to too much muck- 
 raking and stirring up of discontent by a sensational press, 
 and too great desire on the part of politicians to appeal to the 
 discontented element, even when at the expense of the country's 
 prosperity, 
 
 H. A. E. Chandler, Professor of Economics, University of 
 Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. 
 
 I favor by all means an Interstate Trade Commission. This 
 Interstate Trade Commission should be given .power to inquire 
 into the acts of corporations; to settle disputed questions with- 
 out much legal red tape, and to enforce its decisions until the 
 corporation has proved its injustice before a court. The mem- 
 bers of this commission should be expert business men of a high 
 type and well paid. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce. I am opposed to holding companies, and favor 
 government regulation of capitalization and publicity applied to 
 commercial corporations. 
 
890 
 
 Jas. W. Cain, President and Professor of Economics, Wash- 
 ington College, Chestertown, Md. 
 
 The Sherman Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, in 
 effect makes the consequences of the act, not the act itself, 
 illegal. No man can intelligently conduct business under such 
 a condition. I think the law should be repealed, and a new 
 statute passed which will clearly state the acts that are pro- 
 hibited. I think we should adhere to incorporation under State 
 laws, but require the corporation to take out a Federal license, 
 if it engages in interstate commerce. The issuance of this 
 license, and the whole business done under it, should be under 
 the control of a Federal Commission. The consolidation of 
 smaller companies should be permitted, but only under the con- 
 dition of an actual purchase, at a fair valuation, of the several 
 smaller companies. This purchase may be made by one of the 
 competing companies buying the others out, or by a new com- 
 pany actually buying out all the old competing companies. 
 
 L. S. Rowe, Economist, Professor of Political Science in 
 University of Pennsylvania, 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I favor additional legislation dealing 
 with the exploitation of producers and consumers positive, con- 
 structive legislation, establishing control by a commission sim- 
 ilar to the Interstate Commerce Commission. Should the above 
 system of control be established, I would not favor laws pre- 
 venting one company from holding stock in another company. 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with 
 by statutes forbidding certain practices. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and laws should be enacted applying 
 publicity to commercial corporations. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are undeniable. 
 
 H. H. Powers, Former Professor of Economics in Leland 
 Stanford University, now President of Bureau of 
 Universal Travel, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I believe in holding companies. The big 
 corporation is both inevitable and potentially beneficial. Its 
 vices are precisely such as law is compelled to deal with every- 
 where. Mere prohibition is a stupid abuse of law. Publicity is 
 the one thing needful to deal with over-capitalization. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, without expecting too much. 
 I believe we should be conservative in the exercise of control. 
 There are few ways in which we can so easily sap the energies 
 of society, and a very considerable degree of abuse, while await- 
 ing the organization of extra legal forces, is better than dis- 
 couragement and frustration. 
 
Charles Whiting Baker, Editor-in-Chief, Engineering 
 News, 220 Broadway, New York. 
 
 METHOD or HANDLING THE PRESENT TRUST SITUATION. 
 
 1. National incorporation. A Federal license for a State 
 corporation would open the door for conflict over jurisdiction 
 of State and National authority and jurisdiction of States other 
 than that in which the company had its charter. 
 
 But not all companies doing interstate business should be 
 required to have a federal charter. Only those which have be- 
 come really national concerns, such as the great railway and 
 industrial corporations and the insurance companies should be 
 placed under Federal jurisdiction at first. If and when the 
 need develops, other State corporations can be placed under 
 Federal control. 
 
 2. Not at the present time. It may develop, however, 
 that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the law in the Stand- 
 ard Oil and American Tobacco cases leaves too indefinite a 
 line between legal and illegal contracts. If so, some amend- 
 ment may become necessary to make more explicit what re- 
 straint of competition should be regarded as incidental and 
 therefore legal. 
 
 3. The holding of stock by one corporation in another 
 should be so restricted as to do away with holding companies 
 whose purpose is the reduction of competition or the swelling 
 of capitalization. A sweeping restriction against all holding 
 of stock by one company in another would work injury as well 
 as benefit. 
 
 4-5. Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be 
 dealt with by special statutes. 
 
 6. Yes. 
 
 7. Yes. 
 
 Advantages of Large Scale Business. All the advantages 
 enumerated may and often do exist; but they may all be neu- 
 tralized by difficulties in securing efficient organization. There 
 are still many lines of business where the alert and experi- 
 enced owner doing business on a moderate scale can success- 
 fully compete with the large combination, provided the latter 
 is not permitted to crush him by taking advantage of its mere 
 size, selling below cost for a limited time in limited territory 
 or other unfair methods of competition. 
 
 I believe a fair experiment should be made of the enforce- 
 ment of the Sherman Law r ,, and the re-establishment of com- 
 petition in manufacturing and commerce by this means, and 
 by the prohibition of unfair competition by special statute. 
 
 Not until this experiment has been tried and failed should 
 we adopt the other course of accepting monopolies in trade as 
 inevitable and applying to them the same laws and methods of 
 enforcement which are now recognized to be necessary for deal- 
 ing with the natural monopolies in transportation. 
 
392 
 
 If an Interstate Trade Commission were established, there- 
 fore, it should stand in a different position from the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, and should endeavor if possible to secure 
 reorganization of industry on such lines as will make detailed 
 government control unnecessary. 
 
 E. O. Eshelby, Publisher, " Cincinnati Commercial Trib- 
 une," Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. Unfair competition and restraint of trade should 
 be dealt with under the .Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be 
 applied to commercial corporations through a commission to be 
 appointed for that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 I believe the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, to be clear 
 and workable. I consider it feasible to return to old competi- 
 tive methods in business. I do not favor either repeal or amend- 
 ment of the Sherman Law. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and regu- 
 lation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions 
 should not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, 
 and combinations of farmers, either to restrict production or to 
 hold a crop for higher prices, should not be rendered lawful. 
 I favor a national incorporation law, a Federal license law and, 
 as already stated, an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 H. E. Newbranch, Editor, "The World-Herald," Omaha, 
 Neb. 
 
 Federal control akin to control of public highways of 
 corporations not quasi-public in their nature tends to the elimi- 
 nation of individualism and the competitive system and the 
 establishment of the socialistic principle. I can see no tenable 
 middle ground between competitive private ownership and con- 
 trol, limited and enforced only to the extent necessary to protect 
 the public, and State ownership. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale exist, except, perhaps, as to better wages and steadier em- 
 ployment, but the benefits are absorbed by the corporations, 
 which do not allow the public its rightful share in them. I 
 favor Federal license for companies engaged in interstate com- 
 merce so as not to supplant State control. I also favor honest 
 enforcement of existing State laws and making State laws more 
 uniform. 
 
 Horace J. Stevens, Editor and Publisher, " The Copper 
 Hand Book," Houghton, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. As to trade unions 
 and combinations of farmers, there should be no class excep- 
 tions to any law, but the act, as I have said, should be repealed. 
 
E. W. Rankin, Manager, " Farmers' Mail and Breeze " 
 (agricultural paper), Topeka, Kan. 
 
 The question of Federal incorporation is a perplexing one. 
 A growing number fear that Federal incorporation or a Federal 
 license would mean control of the government by corporations 
 engaged in interstate commerce to a greater degree than at 
 present I do not know how to answer the question. As to 
 additional legislation dealing with the exploitation of producers 
 and consumers, I believe in price control not a new thing in 
 economic history. I have not come to any definite conclusion 
 as to laws preventing holding companies. The recent Supreme 
 Court decision appears to have made statutes expressly forbid- 
 ding specified practices the desirable course for dealing with 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade. I favor government 
 regulation of capitalization, and I regard the proposed enact- 
 ment of laws calling for publicity to be applied to commercial 
 corporations as an excellent suggestion. I am inclined to favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. 
 
 " Big business " means " powerful " business ; that is, power 
 to be used for the people or against the people. It is practically 
 certain that unrestrained great power will be used against the 
 people's interest and is being so used. Trusts, so called, as often 
 oppose down-to-date methods as approve them. 
 
 With regard to the " advantages " claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale, a monopoly in control of a branch of 
 business does not have to employ these advantages in order to 
 make a profit, and often does not employ them. The Chicago 
 packers, for example, buy animals from the Dakotas, and sell 
 back to the Dakotas the finished product. Prior to this the same 
 animals may have been raised in Missouri and sold as stockers 
 to Chicago, then to western South Dakota on the range, then 
 to eastern South Dakota to be finished. All this more than 
 offsets the disadvantages of the old, so-called " wasteful " meth- 
 ods. The Sherman Law should be amended to make it more 
 specific, and to use the undoubted but seldom used power of 
 Congress to prevent the Supreme Court from nullifying it. I 
 am not sure as to whether railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and regu- 
 lation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions 
 should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act. 
 
 In my judgment, the causes of the present disturbed busi- 
 ness conditions are various crops under average; increasing 
 number of non-producers; middlemen; political apprehension; 
 too high prices ; growing inequality in the distribution of wealth 
 these may all be regarded as causes of existing unsatisfactory 
 conditions. What we need is more democracy, the making of 
 laws from the point of view of all the people and not of special 
 
304 
 
 classes of the people. For instance, the lumber people should 
 not dictate lumber tariffs, nor the bankers dictate all banking 
 laws. 
 
 J. D. Crary, Managing Director, "New York Lumber Trade 
 Journal," New York City. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused by too much legis- 
 lative meddling with business and too much centralization of 
 government. We have got to get back to the old-fashioned 
 democracy, which, in my judgment, as a short interpretation, 
 means the least possible government. 
 
 The great trouble with us all, both so far as national affairs 
 as well as private affairs is concerned, is that we are trying 
 to cure everything by legislation. We are trying to lift ourselves 
 up by our boot straps. The sooner we stop looking to Wash- 
 ington to cure all our ills and let things work themselves out 
 in their own way, as they unquestionably will if let alone, the 
 better. This government is getting to be more inquisitive and 
 more paternal than Russia or any other that I know of. I am 
 opposed to paternalism. I am opposed to so much centraliza- 
 tion. I am opposed to so much of the legal point of view. What 
 we want is a little more common sense and a mighty less num- 
 ber of laws. 
 
 In addition to the evils charged against the large combina- 
 tions we have also the prosecution being conducted by Mr. 
 Wickersham against the lumber trade, which is distinctly dif- 
 ferent from any hitherto brought. All that the lumber trade 
 does is to take what I consider a reasonable position that a 
 wholesaler should not load up a retailer with lumber and then 
 sell the retailer's customers, too, and to that end report all 
 wholesalers who may be selling or quoting consumers; but this 
 carries with it no obligation on the part of the members. The 
 information is simply given them as information, they to act 
 upon it in any way they see fit. 
 
 William L. West, Publisher, West Publishing Company, St. 
 Paul, Minn. 
 
 The causes of present disturbed business conditions cannot 
 be described briefly. In my opinion no one cause is solely 
 responsible for present conditions. Extravagant personal ex- 
 penditures; smaller crops than the average; attacks on cor- 
 porations and the consequent distrust arising; a tariff which 
 hampers foreign trade, and the speculative temperament of the 
 American people, which leads them into periodical excesses, 
 have all contributed to bring about present conditions. The 
 Sherman Law should be repealed. If it remains on the statute 
 books, it should be made to apply to farmers, labor unions 
 and everybody alike. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. 
 
395 
 
 G. D. Raine, Editor, " The News- Scimitar," Memphis, 
 Tenn. 
 
 The larger attention now given to sociology or the science 
 of distribution is only the matter of a greater equipment of 
 the people; of larger responsibilities, and hence larger opportu- 
 nities for thought and development, which are the end of all 
 holdings or management of property, which last is only the 
 means. By way of illustration: If, for instance, Mr. Rocke- 
 feller's income is $15,000,000 a year, the real significance is 
 that he is paid wages of $15,000,000 a year to administer most 
 efficiently for the benefit of all the oil industry and holdings. 
 The final question, through all these arguments and laws, is to 
 determine whether the work can be gotten done properly, and 
 it must be done properly, on less than $15,000,000 wage paid 
 
 the chief of that or such an industry. 
 * * * 
 
 Along with the Oregon case before the Supreme Court, to 
 try whether or not a State can enact and enforce direct legisla- 
 tion, a case from Minnesota is before that court which involves 
 a fundamental question in the matter of charges by quasi-public 
 corporations. 
 
 The Minnesota authorities fixed a rate for the railroads, and 
 the Federal Circuit Court vetoed it on the ground that the rate 
 would not pay 7 per cent, on the present value of the road. 
 The contention of the State of Minnesota is that not the present 
 value, made by increased value of terminals, enhanced by the 
 increase in numbers and energy of all the people, but the actual 
 cost to the railroads, the amount of money actually invested by 
 the owners, or at some point between, the cost and the present 
 value, should be the capital basis for fixing the fair earning rate. 
 This Minnesota case gets down to the root of the question of 
 watered securities, the solution of which is of prime considera- 
 tion in connection with prices and charges by these corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 Is not this Minnesota case, or its contentions, a forerunner 
 and to pave the way gradually for the effect of direct legisla- 
 tion when the latter is more fully developed throughout the 
 country ? 
 
 H. J. D. Stewart, Editor " Censor," St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 The control of commodities and money by a gang of con- 
 scienceless pirates in Wall Street is chiefly responsible for dis- 
 turbed business conditions. Our banking system is also at fault. 
 Blow up the iniquitous tariff wall. Make every product con- 
 trolled by a monopoly absolutely free! Or else make it a 
 criminal offence to maintain or hold stock in any monopoly, 
 save possibly one arising from a patent. The weakness of our 
 system is in our courts. We probably do not need new laws as 
 much as we need properly qualified men on the bench. 
 
H. S. Kneedler, Editor, " The Eldora Ledger," Eldora, 
 Iowa. 
 
 I believe it inevitable that under present economic condi- 
 tions aggregations of capital operating under the specious plea 
 of reduced cost will continue to become larger and more ag- 
 gressive; but that the basis of real national prosperity can only 
 be secured by promoting and distributing to all the opportuni- 
 ties for reasonable success. The trusts make this impracticable. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale are achieved at the expense of the small dealer and the 
 ambitious artisan who might become independent if he had op- 
 portunity, while the few realize an enormous profit. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce; I believe in holding companies so far as 
 they avoid trust evils; and I favor government regulation of 
 capitalization. Further, I favor laws, such as I understand 
 Canada has, for the protection of minor stockholders. Publicity 
 is not adequate. I approve of an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Robert C. Rissler, Editor and Publisher, "The Farmers' 
 Advocate," Charlestown, W. Va. 
 
 The States ought to supervise the incorporation of compa- 
 nies doing business within their limits or outside of those limits. 
 I favor an amendment of the Sherman Law, such as will nullify 
 the " rule of reason " delivered by the United States Supreme 
 Court. I can discern no advantage in holding companies, so 
 far as the plain people, are concerned, that will offset their 
 manifest abuses. Statutes should be enacted forbidding all prac- 
 tices in restraint of trade. The government should regulate 
 capitalization. Laws that call for publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations through a commission to be ap- 
 pointed for that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with powers not unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Overproduction and the high prices demanded by the trusts 
 are the chief causes of business disturbance. Advantages 
 claimed for combinations do exist; but all, or nearly all, inure 
 to the benefit of those owning them. 
 
 R. W. Storrs, Editor, "The Breeze," DeFuniak Springs, 
 Fla. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce and an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission in relation to common carriers. I deny that doing 
 business on a large scale secures steadier employment of labor 
 and at better wages, or better protection against industrial acci- 
 dents. 
 
397 
 
 Stuart H. Perry, Publisher, " The Adrian Daily Telegram " 
 (Independent), Adrian, Mich. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale may be added more uniformity and stand- 
 ardization in products. Also an advantage to the public and 
 to the consumer is found in the fact that the chances of adul- 
 teration, inferior workmanship and other frauds grow less as 
 the size of the business increases. This is due partly to the 
 fact that the danger from detection is greater, partly to the fact 
 that there is more elaborate supervision, also to the fact that 
 the temptation to fraud is less to an individual who has only 
 a small interest in the output than it is to one who has a larger 
 interest, and to the fact that while ability and greater responsi- 
 bility generally carry with them a higher moral standard. 
 
 I do not relish the Interstate Trade Commission idea in 
 itself, but fear some such plan is imperative to appease the 
 demands of radicals on one hand, and to give legitimate indus- 
 try some kind of guarantee of immunity on the other. The 
 penalty statute, such as the Sherman Law, especially when its 
 scope is not absolutely defined, is a disturbing factor and always 
 will remain so. Any kind of a body that could give some sort 
 of an 0. K. to a legitimate enterprise would have a steadying 
 influence. Otherwise we shall have an endless series of prosecu- 
 tions and constant clamor for more prosecutions and more legis- 
 lation, with resulting uncertainty in business. 
 
 C. Meurer, Editor, " Arkansas Echo," Little Rock, Ark. 
 
 Competition in itself has run its course and demonstrated 
 that it is pernicious. Do the workmen want free competition 
 in the labor market? Do the business men want it? Every- 
 where you see organization rising to exclude free competition. 
 Free competition is war of one against all, and every man is 
 but one in a wholly competitive struggle. We need combina- 
 tion, but combination founded on honest methods, and not on 
 huge volumes of watered stocks, on which the public are asked 
 to pay dividends. Watered stock, without basis of real value, 
 is virtually another form of counterfeit money, and the person 
 who issues it should be punished as a counterfeiter. Honest 
 organization is necessary to modern business, but it must be 
 made and kept honest. 
 
 Edwin C. Powell, Editor, " Farm and Home," Springfield, 
 Mass. 
 
 I prefer Federal incorporation for new companies and license 
 for those that are now in business. I favor additional legisla- 
 tion making it easier to deal with the exploitation of producers 
 and consumers, and also providing for stringent regulation. I 
 favor laws providing for government regulation of capitaliza- 
 tion, but am not at present prepared to answer favorably the 
 question regarding an Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
398 
 
 Clarence A. Jones, Editor, " Minnesota Farm Review," 
 State Experiment Farm, St. Anthony Park, St. Paul, 
 Minn. 
 
 The trusts have come to stay. They are necessary to mod- 
 ern commercialism. They should be regulated by the people 
 through the government, for, after all. no country, no govern- 
 ment, no monopoly, no enterprise is greater than the combina- 
 tion of people. 
 
 In regard to the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, I don't believe that large business is conducive 
 to better wages. I think it is vice versa. Economies in produc- 
 tion, economies in distribution and the greater use of by-prod- 
 ucts inure to the benefit of the magnates, not to the benefit of 
 the consumer. I prefer national incorporation for companies 
 engaged in interstate commerce, and don't believe that exploita- 
 tion of producers and consumers can be remedied by legislation. 
 I believe that the producer and consumer must "get together." 
 Government should regulate capitalization, and laws should be 
 passed providing for publicity for commercial corporations, 
 through a commission to be appointed for that purpose. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 A. Ray Mapel, City Editor, " The Democrat," Waynesburg, 
 Pa. 
 
 Capital, with malice aforethought, seeking to scare and force 
 people away from badly needed reform; awakening to the fact 
 that unwarranted extension of credit has led the nation, indi- 
 vidually and collectively, to habits of extravagance; and the 
 shifting of too many producers to consumers' side of account 
 that is, farmers going to the city are among the causes of 
 present disturbed conditions in business. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made to apply to specific cases 
 as much as possible. It is too easily evaded in technicalities. 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and laws should 
 be passed providing for publicity for commercial corporations 
 through a commission to be appointed for that purpose. I favor 
 an_ Interstate Trade Commission as a step in the right direc- 
 tion, and also national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. 
 
 F. A. Miller, " South Bend Tribune," South Bend, Ind. 
 
 I prefer Federal legislation for control of companies engaged 
 in interstate commerce. I am opposed to holding companies 
 and favor laws providing for government regulation of capitali- 
 zation and for applying publicity to commercial corporations 
 through a commission to be appointed for that purpose. I favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those 
 now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation 
 to common carriers. 
 
399 
 
 J. A. McKinley, Editor, "Long Valley Advocate," Rose- 
 berry, Idaho. 
 
 The great consideration is a higher standard of morals in 
 business ; a higher standard of farming methods has been pretty 
 generally brought about in the last quarter century through 
 largely the work of State and Federal government agricul- 
 tural colleges, experimental stations, bulletins, farm institute 
 work; and from the results so far, the promise is very large. 
 Simple and absolute honesty in practice is the great remedy 
 that will cure every evil of the corporation system. A dozen 
 men who are honest as individuals form a corporation and 
 the latter is dishonest. I believe there should be a department 
 of business morals or policy and a thorough campaign of 
 work to build up higher standards, beginning in the primary 
 schools. The world is far enough along, where it should be 
 able to conceive right is right because it is right, not because it 
 means salvation hereafter. 
 
 It would be a step backward to deny the advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large scale. The fair distribu- 
 tion of their results is the only difficulty, and it seems possible 
 to accomplish this. 
 
 Why not vote national incorporation and Federal license 
 to meet all conditions? As to additional legislation, the Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with possibly more stringent legisla- 
 tion requiring reports and examinations perhaps along the line 
 of bank examinations at regular or irregular intervals, would 
 probably answer the desired ends. The holding company might 
 be a useful and economical trade machine, but under the super- 
 vision of the Interstate Trade Commission. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, as overcapitalization is unneces- 
 sary, except for dishonest purposes. I favor laws calling for 
 publicity applied to commercial corporations. 
 
 Howard N. Whitney, Managing Editor, " Iowa State Reg- 
 ister and Farmer," Des Moines, Iowa. 
 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Law is very faulty, and any effort 
 to correct it is to be commended. It requires study and a fami- 
 liarity with all conditions to work out the right sort of a law. 
 I prefer a natidnal incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. The Sherman Law should either be amended 
 so that it shall be clear, definite and fair, or repealed; to be 
 followed by the enactment of a law which will recognize the 
 necessity for combinations, but prevent the evils sometimes con- 
 nected with them. 
 
 I do not believe in holding companies. I see no reason why 
 men should be prohibited from being stockholders in several 
 companies, but cliques should be prevented in some way from 
 gaining control of companies which would amount to a holding 
 company. I favor government control of capitalization. 
 
400 
 
 William Garrott Brown, Journalist, Author, Lecturer, 
 Librarian, Asheville, N. C. 
 
 I am not fully decided as to Federal legislation dealing with 
 companies engaged in interstate commerce. I am not in favor 
 of legislation additional to the Sherman Act until after a full 
 study of the effect of enforcing the act as it stands. I do not 
 think we have a complete programme, and we should go slow till 
 we resolve on one. I doubt if we can eliminate the holding- 
 company principle. In regard to advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale, I believe that, as a rule, there 
 are some decided advantages and some disadvantages; but there 
 are, I think, cases in which independents have the better of it, 
 catering to special demands more successfully by reason of 
 facility in innovations and close personal oversight of the man- 
 ager or owner and his closer relations to employees. As to an 
 Interstate Trade Commission, I think it likely we will have to 
 come to it, but I am not yet ready for final commitment. Why 
 cannot we first have experiments by State commissions? 
 
 To alleged evils of great combinations enumerated on the 
 first page of the " questionnaire," I would add, deliberate chang- 
 ing and lowering of the quality of a product of an independent 
 concern when it is bought by a combination which retains the 
 old trademark. 
 
 I am answering these queries instead of Col. George Harvey, 
 who referred them to me as an editorial writer to " Harper's 
 Weekly/' possibly not noticing the real character of the docu- 
 ment. 
 
 Arthur H. Crist, Newspaper and Magazine Publisher, 
 Coopers town, N. Y. 
 
 There is a strong and growing desire for successful private 
 business enterprises of moderate size to incorporate. But the 
 present laws bear heavily on such enterprises. Too much is 
 required in the way of statements and details of the business. 
 Such burdens and such prying into affairs of small business 
 concerns should scarcely be needed. Then, too, the corporation 
 taxes weigh heavily on small companies. The reason for this 
 is that such taxes are a pure and complete addition to the local 
 taxes. Why not have two distinct kinds of incorporated com- 
 panies? Make one form of incorporation simple and inex- 
 pensive for the small business man. I would like to see uniform 
 laws for all the States, but would also like to see needless 
 restriction done away with. Laws should be passed that would 
 ensure a really competitive market for both producer and con- 
 sumer. I decidedly favor laws providing for government regu- 
 lation of capitalization; also for laws applying publicity to ~big 
 corporations ; but there ought to be a distinction in favor of the 
 small corporations that are formed for the purpose only of giving 
 stability and perpetuity to private business enterprises. 
 
401 
 
 E. B. Kellogg, Editor and Publisher, " Chariton Courier," 
 Keytesville, Mo. 
 
 It occurs to us that a commission with sufficient power to 
 properly regulate the commercial interests of our country, and 
 the establishment of the National Eeserve Association as pro- 
 posed by Senator Aldrich, or approximating his idea, would 
 put the finishing touch on centralization and propagate social- 
 ism. There certainly must be a more direct and effectual way 
 for escape from the trouble we feel is ahead of us. As to the 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, 
 the " greater use of by-products " and " more command of inter- 
 national trade " may be conditionally true ; the other claims can- 
 not be relied on. Enormous salaries, wages, red-tape expense, 
 etc., tend to establish a very reasonable doubt o'f either or all 
 of the claims. 
 
 As to Federal legislation in connection with companies doing 
 interstate business, I favor anything which does not further 
 encroach on the constitutional rights of the States. In regard 
 to laws for the protection of minority stockholders and of 
 subsidiary interests, my reply is that, as a general rule, control 
 by a commission is a failure, if the commissioners are appointed ; 
 but laws which would require publicity to be enforced by public 
 officers elected by vote of the people would doubtless have good 
 results. 
 
 John Thompson, Editor, " Farmer and Breeder," Sioux City, 
 Iowa. 
 
 I believe that the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale are real. I further believe that these big 
 companies furnish one of the best object lessons for the farmers 
 and the public in general of the importance of co-operative effort. 
 If our farmers would co-operate with each other as capital has 
 learned to co-operate, a tremendous saving of labor and money 
 would result. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation for companies engaged in inter- 
 state commerce. With companies doing business under a Fed- 
 eral incorporation act under proper supervision by the govern- 
 ment I can see no objection to holding companies. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 Henry Holt, Publisher, New York. 
 
 Business disturbance is due, in my judgment, to the expecta- 
 tion of tariff changes, more than the newspapers permit to be 
 realized. I want them though, to "have it over with." The 
 Sherman Law is not yet clear and workable, but there is prog- 
 ress. I hardly consider it feasible to attempt to return to old 
 competitive methods. I favor statutes against specific abuses. 
 Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
402 
 
 C. Lombardi, Vice-President Dallas & Galveston News 
 Corporation, Dallas, Tex. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce, provided a charter or license specifies dis- 
 tinctly what a corporation is permitted to do or forbidden to do ; 
 in other words, the conditions under which they may do business. 
 I believe the Sherman Act has proved a failure and should be 
 repealed. A strong commission and the common law should take 
 care of this problem. There is nothing good or bad in the hold- 
 ing companies per se. It depends on how they are used. They 
 should be authorized with proper limit and control. I prefer 
 statutes forbidding specified practices for dealing with unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade. The national Bank Law 
 is a fairly good guide and precedent for other corporations. I 
 favor laws providing for publicity to be applied to commercial 
 corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission and, if 
 the Commission is properly organized and wisely manned, 
 either methods, (a) or (b), or both, may be permitted, accord- 
 ing to circumstances the first permitting large aggregations 
 of capital under single control, and the merger from time to 
 time of smaller corporations, and the second permitting agree- 
 ments which regulate production, prices and the like under suit- 
 able public control. 
 
 Wesley A. Maynard, Editor, " Somerville Reporter," West 
 Somerville, Mass. 
 
 In regard to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale I regard steadier employment of labor 
 and at better wages not substantiated by present statistics of 
 the unemployed. There should be more effective protection 
 against industrial accidents. International trade may be pro- 
 moted by more conscientious manufacture. Some means should 
 be found to make the " best ability " redound more to the profit 
 of its possessors, as in the case of many inventors. 
 
 The rules of the United States Patent Office are especially 
 in need of reform. At present an inventor who is impecunious 
 is at the mercy of any wealthy individual, or corporation, to 
 whom his invention is of value. This fact has been often 
 demonstrated. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. While not believing in "paternalism," I think 
 that to leave the matter to the States would result in complexi- 
 ties inimical to the interests of the people as a whole. 
 
 C. V. Gregory, Editor " Prairie Farmer," Chicago, 111. 
 
 We need constructive legislation. " Trust busting," as prac- 
 ticed by the present administration, helps nobody. Federal in- 
 corporation, Federal control of stock and bond issues, and per- 
 haps Federal control of prices, are some of the things that are 
 badlv needed. 
 
403 
 
 Jean P. Decker, Editor and Publisher " The Pioneer," Big 
 Timber, Mont. 
 
 I prefer Federal incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce, but, if possible, also Federal license. I 
 favor additional legislation to deal with the exploitation of pro- 
 ducers and consumers by making the law so explicit as to 
 effectively curb monopolies, and also by wise tariff revision. 
 I am most assuredly opposed to holding companies. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, and capitalization should 
 represent actual, intrinsic, if not physical value. Publicity 
 should be applied to commercial corporations. 
 
 I don't agree with the proposition that provision must be 
 made by Federal law to permit large aggregations of capital 
 under single control, and for the merger from time to time of 
 smaller corporations, or to permit agreements which regulate 
 production, prices and the like. Neither is necessary and, if 
 permitted, the entire scheme of competition must fail and the 
 country will have embraced socialism in its extremes, as advo- 
 cated by barroom philosophers and dreamers. 
 
 John W. Stahl, Farmer, and Editor of "The Illinois 
 Farmer," Chicago, 111. 
 
 We cannot possibly go back to the doing of things in a small 
 way. It would be extravagant to do so, if we could. The 
 problem presented by the big corporation is not so much of pro- 
 duction as of the just and more equable distribution of the 
 (greater) wealth produced. In the end we will do big business 
 in big ways and we will have enough competition to temper 
 combination and enough combination to restrain competition. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, unless it is 
 replaced by a better law. It should be made definite, precise, 
 positive, plain, but just what should be added to secure this is 
 too hard a problem for the writer or any other ordinary person. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers not unlike 
 those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 relation to common carriers. 
 
 G. C. Mclntosh, Newspaper Editor, Fayetteville, W. Va. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended to provide that no 
 article of commerce or manufacture should be put on the market 
 at a less rate of net profit than from six to ten per cent. Bail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 and combinations of farmers to secure fair prices for their prod- 
 ucts should be permitted. 
 
 In my judgment, the cause of disturbed business conditions 
 is a changed relation between the people and their government, 
 brought on by the business tactics of the big corporations. 
 Should they deal honestly with the people, business, both big and 
 little,, would be more prosperous. 
 
404 
 
 W. D. Crews, Farmer, also Editor and Proprietor, " The 
 Union Farmer," Murphysboro, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law ought to be amended so as to provide, 
 among other provisions in favor of the people, that it shall be 
 lawful for farmers, by and through their organization, to con- 
 trol distribution and marketing of their own products, while 
 those products remain the property of the producers. This to 
 be done in part by the restriction of production when necessary. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be excepted from 
 the operation of the Sherman Act, under proper governmental 
 regulation. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission with powers not unlike those 
 now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in rela- 
 tion to common carriers. 
 
 In my judgment, the present disturbed business conditions 
 are caused fundamentally by the evolution of the human race 
 from old and inadequate conditions to better and more progres- 
 sive conditions. Incidentally, too much selfishness and dollar- 
 chasing. Also a lack of sufficient progressive spirit on the part 
 of the masses to keep up with the classes. 
 
 A tadpole has to change its tail for legs to become a frog. 
 The butterfly must work its way out of the cocoon. A child 
 must experience the pain and inconvenience of teething in order 
 to develop a digestive apparatus sufficient for the needs of an 
 adult. Human progress is somewhat slow and disagreeable, 
 partly because we are not wise enough to lightly adjust our- 
 selves to the great strides of progress from a competitive to a 
 co-operative system of business. 
 
 J. A. Phillips, Publisher (weekly newspaper), Greenville, 
 Tex. 
 
 I regard Federal legislation as desirable for dealing with 
 companies engaged in interstate commerce. Additional legis- 
 lation is necessary, defining "unreasonable" restraint of trade 
 and providing a heavy penalty, also expressly forbidding unfair 
 competition. The government should regulate capitalization and 
 publicity should be applied to commercial corporations through 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 A. G. Johnson, Editor " Svenska Folkets Tidning," Minne- 
 apolis, Minn. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I do not believe in holding companies 
 and favor legislation that will prevent one company from hold- 
 ing stock in another company. The government should regulate 
 capitalization and should provide for publicity for commercial 
 corporations, I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 
405 
 
 Edward K. Titus, Editor, "Gazette and Courier," Green- 
 field, Mass. 
 
 I do not think that corporations can be satisfactorily regu- 
 lated by lawsuits after things have happened. I believe the 
 Sherman Law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, is good 
 as far as it goes. I believe some government tribunal must be 
 created to exercise much greater power over corporations, par- 
 ticularly as respects capitalization, and probably eventually as, 
 respects prices where monopoly exists. I think favorably of a 
 national incorporation law and of a Federal license law, and I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike 
 those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 relation to common carriers. 
 
 It seems to me that much of our troubles arise out of the 
 essential selfishness of human nature. In all business dealings 
 where a party has a monopoly, or something approaching a 
 monopoly, there is a tendency to charge a price for the service 
 rendered that is essentially unfair. If the hotels at the London 
 coronation charged $10 a day when $5 was a fair price for 
 service rendered, public sentiment condemns them as unfair. 
 Similarly, even if prices fall as a result of trust control, the 
 price may be unfair for service rendered. Our capitalists, or 
 many of them, entertain the conception that it is nobody's busi- 
 ness what price they charge, provided they can get it. This 
 false conception creates a great public unrest, with threat of 
 hostile legislation, wise and unwise, which naturally creates dis- 
 turbance in the business world. 
 
 E. S. Drury, Publisher, Encampment, Wyoming. 
 
 Co-operation in business is essential to progress, as natural 
 evolution. Eventually government ownership of public service 
 utilities, and government regulation of other large business, 
 must obtain before settled conditions will again be realized. I 
 favor repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates, under present condi- 
 tions, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor 
 national incorporation; and I think that an Interstate Trade 
 Commission would probably help. Abuses by protected monop- 
 olies, and a revolt of the abused and a determination to stop 
 abuses, both political and commercial, have led to disturbed 
 business conditions. 
 
 W. H. DeRosier, " The Herald," Hudson Falls, N. Y. 
 
 Fictitious values placed upon necessities by capitalists in 
 control and the fact that middlemen handle our entire product 
 are disturbing elements in business. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sher- 
 man Law should be repealed in part. Trade unions and com- 
 binations of farmers should be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act. 
 
406 
 
 Hughes & Wolcott, " The Index," a weekly newspaper, 
 Dover, Del. 
 
 We do not think the Sherman Act sufficiently broad to cover 
 present conditions. Certainly the present practice of the De- 
 partment of Justice in dissolving, or rather pretending to dis- 
 solve companies is ineffective. We see no benefit to consumers 
 and much injury to business. We would help consumers by 
 reduction of tariff duties on trust-made articles, and we would, 
 if necessary, have a commission to fix prices. 
 
 So far as the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale are concerned, observation in Delaware does not 
 convince us that there is steadier employment of labor or better 
 wages. When the Steel Trust took over the mills at New Castle 
 they shut them down, throwing thousands of men out of em- 
 ployment and ruining the town. We favor Federal license by 
 all means, in preference to national incorporation, for companies 
 doing an interstate business. We also favor amendment of the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act to abolish the Supreme Court's " rules 
 of reason," and making imprisonment of offenders compulsory, 
 not optional. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 as a part of the Federal license system. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, with power to fix maximum and minimum 
 prices. 
 
 P. S. Rose, Editor, " The American Thresherman," Madi- 
 son, Wis. 
 
 An increase in supply of gold ; advanced standards of living ; 
 increase of the world's population; education of the masses, 
 creating new desires and intolerance for evils heretofore not 
 realized all contribute to the unrest that prevails in business. 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and should be 
 amended. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. Additional legislation is neces- 
 sary, covering many phases of the exploitation of producers arid 
 consumers. With proper restrictions holding companies might 
 be tolerated. They should not be permitted to operate as they 
 do now. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 minority stockholders and investors should receive protection 
 in addition to that now afforded them. I believe in an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, under proper restrictions. 
 
 G. J. Bradley, Sacramento, Cal. 
 
 I have thought for the last twenty years that overcapitali- 
 zation is the root of the trust evil. Eliminate this, and the 
 solution is found. 
 
 I do not believe that the wage-earner or the consumer de- 
 rives a profit from any of the advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale. 
 
407 
 
 Elmer L. Wirt, Editor, " Herald," Cookeville, Term. 
 
 Corporations dominate the Federal and many State govern- 
 ments and practically all the courts. A thoroughly aroused 
 public sentiment is the only remedy, and that but partially, 
 until the coming of collective ownership by the people them- 
 selves. I favor neither national incorporation nor Federal 
 license for companies doing interstate business. The States 
 can handle the matter more thoroughly and with more regard 
 for the welfare of the public. The exploitation of producers 
 and consumers is a vital point. Make it a penitentiary offense. 
 I do not believe in holding companies, but" no law can prevent 
 a person from investing in any corporation. Imprisonment 
 must be the penalty without the alternative of fines to make 
 the law effective against unfair competition and restraint of 
 trade. Capitalization should be regulated by the States. I am 
 in favor of an Interstate Trade Commission, if honest men can 
 be had for commissioners. All the advantages claimed for 
 those doing business on a large scale result in no good to the 
 public. 
 
 Fred W. Prindle, Editor, Wolfeboro, N. H. 
 
 The Sherman Law seems to be clear and workable. It 
 should not be amended, unless it can be shown that such amend- 
 ment would be better for the masses of the people than in its 
 present form. I would favor a Federal license law, if license 
 is construed as control or regulation, but not if simply for 
 revenue. I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission as 
 long as this is a government by the people; but if it is a gov- 
 ernment of commissions, yes. Eegulation of the large organi- 
 zations ; unequal taxation ; lack of honest competition ; monopo- 
 listic manipulations; high protective tariff; abnormal standard 
 for living all these, in my judgment, have contributed to busi- 
 ness instability. I do not believe in holding companies as 
 such. If the government has the right to say what holdings of 
 individuals or corporations shall be personal property, I would 
 favor laws on that subject; otherwise no. There should be no 
 need for any law regulating capitalization. Overcapitalization 
 is a species of fraud. It is fraud. 
 
 Samuel H. Edes, Editor, " The New Hampshire Argus and 
 Spectator," Newport, N. H. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for big corporations doing 
 interstate business the present system for comparatively small 
 corporations. I prefer regulation to the abolition of holding 
 companies. The government should regulate capitalization. I 
 admit some of the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, but consider that the claims of better protec- 
 tion against industrial accidents and command of the best abil- 
 ity are weakly supported. 
 
408 
 
 George N. Lamphere, Sr., Editor, " The Palouse Republic/* 
 Palouse, Wash. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. There are 
 too many commissions, boards and courts now. Let the laws be 
 made simple, direct, and so plain as to be understood by every 
 intelligent person, and so unambiguous and clear that the exec- 
 utive officers of the government can know when the provisions 
 of the law are violated, and can put the machinery in motion 
 that will speedily punish the guilty and put a stop to unlawful 
 practices. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. Each State might correct the evils complained of 
 to a considerable extent, by refusing to admit bad corporations 
 to do business within its borders. The Sherman Anti-Trust 
 Act is too general. Let Congress provide specifically what is 
 prohibited and what allowed, in so plain terms that the execu- 
 tive officers can enforce the law without interpretation by a 
 court at every step. 
 
 M. W. Camper, Editor, The Florence " Times," Florence, 
 Ala. 
 
 I have a most positive conviction that the government has 
 not adopted the best plan to solve the grave issue now before 
 the country. I believe that if the present policies are con- 
 tinued the country will suffer a prolonged period of depres- 
 sion in all lines of business. The politicians can never settle 
 the questions on an enduring basis. If possible, a department 
 of the government entirely independent of changing political 
 sentiment should be established to regulate the conflicting in- 
 terests of the large corporations and the people. 
 
 The people in this section I believe are losing faith in the 
 ability of Congress to settle these delicate and difficult ques- 
 tions. They see the necessity for " regulation," but they fear 
 the " wild vagaries " of the politicians and distrust them. 
 
 We are hoping that the wisdom of the National Civic Fed- 
 eration may solve the problem. 
 
 John F. Haskett, Publisher, "The Courant," Bottineau, 
 N. D. 
 
 Federal license and a law requiring State corporations to 
 report to a national bureau is my view of legislation governing 
 the incorporation of companies engaged in interstate business. 
 Uniformity in essentials for incorporation should be a condition 
 precedent to issue of Federal license. I favor government regu- 
 lation of capitalization and the creation of an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The claim that doing business on a large scale 
 carries with it more command of international trade, at present, 
 hinges on the exploitation of producer and consumer at home 
 and on that basis is not an advantage. 
 
409 
 
 P. J. Wright, Editor of " Profitable Farming," St. Joseph, 
 Mo. 
 
 I believe that an attempt to destroy and prohibit large aggre- 
 gations of capital is a step backward. I believe that such organi- 
 zation is a natural and progressive evolution in our commercial 
 development. I believe, however, in all proper Federal regula- 
 tic.n and in my opinion the Sherman Anti-Trust Act needs 
 extensive amending or should be replaced entirely by a new 
 act. I favor the creation of an Interstate Trade Commission 
 and prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness. I am inclined to believe in holding companies; I think 
 it probable there is need of Federal regulation in this direction. 
 The government should regulate capitalization. 
 
 M. S. Norelius, Editor, " Chicago County Press*" Lind- 
 strom, Minn. 
 
 Corporations should be forbidden to engage in interstate 
 commerce, unless properly authorized to do so under direct con- 
 trol of the government. They should be required to furnish 
 monthly statements to the government. I am opposed to hold- 
 ing companies and in favor of laws providing for government 
 regulation of capitalization and for an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with provision for publicity applying to commercial 
 corporations. At the same time I recognize that the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale are well taken. 
 
 George J. Smith, Publisher, " The Plaza Pioneer," Plaza, 
 No. Dak. 
 
 I believe that all corporation prosecution should stop until 
 they can be regulated without taking it out of the people. A 
 large corporation fine now means that they will simply raise 
 the price and make the people pay. I am more in favor of 
 criminal prosecutions. I favor further legislation, if that 
 further legislation does not give the large corporations a chance 
 to abrogate the effectiveness of the Supreme Court ruling of 
 late. I also favor national incorporation for companies doing 
 an interstate business. 
 
 Frederick Ornes, Publisher, Mount Vernon, Wash. 
 
 Capital is indeed shortsighted if it cannot see that, unless 
 it is satisfied with a smaller interest on an investment as the 
 size of the investment increases, socialism or something worse 
 will soon overwhelm the country and bring on a condition 
 which all peace-loving Americans would not relish. Capital 
 should at once begin to adjust itself to a radical change. It is 
 courting disaster, right or wrong. I favor uniformity in State 
 laws, or Federal license, for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. 
 
410 
 
 The Thomas D. Murphy Company, Art Publishers, Red 
 Oak, Iowa. 
 
 Suits against trusts and general unsettled political condi- 
 tions are responsible for business disturbance. So far as the 
 old competitive methods are concerned, we are certainly in 
 favor of unhindered competition in all lines of business, except- 
 ing, of course, patented articles, etc. The Sherman Law should 
 not be repealed, unless we have something better to take its 
 place. Eailroad rates should be fixed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. An Interstate Trade Commission might 
 be a good plan. 
 
 George L. Wilkinson, Editor and Publisher, The Burlington 
 " Republican," Burlington, Colo. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 insurgent Eepublican agitation for lower duties, to Canadian 
 reciprocity advocates, to low tariff agitators and to Democratic 
 supremacy in Congress, together with a possible Democratic 
 President and resulting free-trade legislation. I believe the 
 Sherman Law to be clear and workable. Combinations of 
 farmers should be rendered lawful under the Sherman Act, and 
 railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor 
 a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 George B. Fiske, Journalist, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I favor legislation that will provide definite general restric- 
 tion with control under a national commission. I prefer spe- 
 cific statutes dealing with practices amounting to unfair com- 
 petition and restraint of trade. The government should regu- 
 late capitalization. Laws should be enacted providing for pub- 
 licity applied to commercial corporations. In addition to the 
 advantages claimed for those doing business on a large scale 
 may be added greater reliability and stability, standardization 
 of products, repairs and supplies. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 *C. N. Lund, Newspaper Man, Salina, Utah. 
 
 Unwise laws and unwise methods of handling national affairs 
 are responsible for disturbed business conditions. I favor a 
 repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment of a national 
 incorporation law; also Federal license and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. I am opposed to holding companies. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, and laws should be enacted 
 applying publicity to commercial corporations. I stand for all 
 that Insurgency stands for. 
 
411 
 
 Charles H. Levermore, President, Adelphi College, Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y. 
 
 I believe that the general principles of regulative trade 
 legislation need now to be only these: (1) The securing of com- 
 plete publicity concerning prices and charges and concerning 
 capitalization; (2) the securing of governmental control by an 
 interstate commission. I prefer national incorporation for com- 
 panies doing interstate commerce. I accept the claims made 
 of advantages for those doing business on a large scale, except 
 that I believe that better wages are probably insured only by 
 combinations of laborers and better protection only by govern- 
 mental interference. 
 
 E. L. Bailey, M. S., President Greer College, Hoopeston, 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. I regard the Sherman Anti-Trust Act 
 as sufficient to deal with the exploitation of producers and con- 
 sumers. I favor legislation to prevent holding companies. 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with 
 by statutes expressly forbidding specific practices. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be 
 applied to commercial corporations. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission with powers not unlike those now enjoyed 
 by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common 
 carriers. 
 
 George F. Swain, Professor of Civil Engineering, Harvard 
 University, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. In view of the interpretation by the Supreme Court 
 of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, I do not favor additional legis- 
 lation dealing with the exploitation of producers and consumers. 
 I believe in holding companies. I favor laws calling for pub- 
 licity that will apply to commercial corporations. The advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale are real 
 and very great. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission with 
 appeal to the courts or to a special court, as in the case of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 H. L. Bridgman, Business Manager, Standard Union, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions have been caused by official 
 interference with established business and by political agitation. 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and that railroads be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. 
 
412 
 
 H. C. Plumley, Publisher, " Fargo Forum," Fargo, N. Dak. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. There should be additional legislation for the 
 protection of producers and consumers who do not now have 
 adequate safeguards. Federal license and supervision will do 
 much to eradicate the evils of overcapitalization and wrongful, 
 treatment of minority stockholders and subsidiary interests. The 
 advantages enumerated for those doing business on a large scale 
 are no doubt true, but with them also come dangers to those 
 who are unable to secure such large capital. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. Disturbed business conditions are 
 due to uncertainty as to what the law is; overreaching by many 
 large corporations; and the general tendency of the people at- 
 large to rest on present conditions without proposing anything 
 better. 
 
 J. J. Witt, Editor, " Marshall Republican," Marshall, Mo. 
 
 I believe the nation's welfare is best served by the small 
 enterprises, and therefore advocate the extra taxing of all large 
 combinations or capitalizations, to even up the disadvantages 
 of the smaller manufacturer. A Federal law should compel 
 all manufacturers to sell at the same price at all points of the 
 nation, making allowance for transportation and storage costs. 
 Admitting most of the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale, I deny that large business has afforded 
 better protection against industrial accidents. I favor Federal 
 license for companies doing interstate business. I am opposed 
 to holding companies. The government should see that the 
 amount of capitalization is about correct, according to real 
 values. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Edward W. Wild, Editor, Springfield, Vt. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. The law should provide for prohibition of all 
 attempts at cornering raw materials, prohibition of " sellers 7 
 agreements" under severe penalties and prohibition of present 
 abuses under the patent laws. The government should regulate 
 capitalization, and an Interstate Trade Commission should be 
 established, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common car- 
 riers. 
 
 Henry M. White, Publisher, "The Berkshire Gleaner" 
 (Editor, 55 Years), Lee, Mass. 
 
 I believe the true solvent of the complication of difficulties 
 and present disarrangement of business will be found in a law 
 providing national incorporation for corporations doing inter- 
 state commerce. 
 
413 
 
 G. W. Wood, Editor, "Sun," Lewiston, Me. 
 
 I would have no Interstate Commerce Commission or any 
 other United States commission and no statutes regulating inter- 
 state commerce (unless possibly a simple, general statute requir- 
 ing equal treatment of all patrons), leaving to the courts to say 
 what is equal treatment. 
 
 I would leave every citizen who thinks himself wronged to 
 seek redress in the courts. The United States courts should be 
 reorganized so that any citizen, however poor and friendless, 
 may have his complaint heard at once and his rights promptly 
 enforced. My plan would do away with terms of court and 
 money limitations of jurisdiction. Details have been worked out 
 by which the case can be tried, exceptions heard and final de- 
 cision rendered within a few months at the longest. A multitude 
 of decisions would develop a common law of interstate commerce 
 more just than is possible through regulative statutes and com- 
 missions. 
 
 Charles F. Scott, Editor, "Daily Register" and Member 
 of Congress, lola, Kan. 
 
 I believe all the benefits of the trust system could be kept 
 and most if not all of its evils eliminated by a Federal incorpora- 
 tion law which should permit no merger except upon capital- 
 ization representing the actual value of the property, and which 
 would create a commission (perhaps the Bureau of Corporations 
 would do) before which complaints could be brought by any 
 citizen or organization of citizens who believed that a given 
 combination was unfairly restraining trade, just as the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission hears complaints against the rail- 
 roads and makes orders to correct injustice or discrimination. 
 
 Louis McKinstry, Editor and Proprietor, " Fredonia Cen- 
 sor," Fredonia, N. Y. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale should be mentioned that the expense of 
 so many traveling agents is saved; prices are uniform, and em- 
 ployees are better treated. Competition is brutal and unchris- 
 tian, and the workers suffer most by it. I prefer national 
 incorporation for companies doing interstate business, and na- 
 tional control fixing prices and wages. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and laws should be passed applying pub- 
 licity to commercial corporations. 
 
 Geo. G. Wilson, Publicist, and Professor Harvard Uni- 
 versity, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 I favor Federal control of companies doing interstate com- 
 merce. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act should be first enforced 
 before we have additional legislation. I also favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
414 
 
 J. W. Canada, Publisher, Houston, Tex. 
 
 The Sherman Law has not been made clear and workable, 
 and should be amended to make it specific and to provide for 
 the enforcement of criminal penalties. Trade unions should 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, and combi- 
 nations of farmers, to obtain fair prices for their products, 
 should be lawful. I favor a Federal license law for companies 
 engaged in interstate commerce and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Legislation should be made as specific as possible, leaving 
 less to the courts for interpretation. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and publicity should be provided for 
 commercial corporations. 
 
 Carl B. Clark, Editor, " Journal," Gallipolis, Ohio. 
 
 This section of Ohio is exclusively devoted to agricultural 
 interests, and the general sentiment of the people is strongly 
 in favor of a constructive policy of legislation, with a strong 
 curbing and repression of corporate abuses. They believe in a 
 " square deal " for all. I favor national incorporation, which 
 should not interfere with the control by the States of matters 
 which are purely local; but large combinations, so long as law- 
 abiding, should not be harassed. Holding companies are neces- 
 sary under certain conditions of trade and business, and, while 
 carefully supervised, legitimate enterprise should not be inter- 
 fered with. An Interstate Trade Commission is a necessity of 
 the times, necessary to the manufacturer, laborer and consumer. 
 
 ,Ovid Bell, Editor, "Fulton Gazette," Fulton, Mo. 
 
 I do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. It should 
 be amended by getting rid of the " reasonable " interpretation. 
 I probably favor a Federal license law and probably also an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The eagerness of a few rich 
 men to become richer is, in my judgment, a chief cause of dis- 
 turbed business conditions. Deliberate violation of the Sher- 
 man Anti-Trust Act ought to be made a felony. While admit- 
 ting the advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale, the disadvantage is that the individual is submerged and 
 that he becomes merely a part of a huge machine. That is 
 bad for the company, for legitimate business and for the man. 
 
 George C. Chase, President Bates College, Lewiston, 
 Maine. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce and an Interstate Trade Commission, with 
 powers not unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission in relation to common carriers. I favor govern- 
 ment regulation of capitalization and laws for the protection 
 of minority stockholders and of subsidiary interests. 
 
415 
 
 R. L. Kennedy, Editor, " Springfield Leader," Springfield, 
 Mo. 
 
 The general fear that one's money will be confiscated under 
 the guise of regulating corporations is a fruitful cause of busi- 
 ness uncertainty and apprehension on the part of investors. I 
 favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be allowed 
 to enter into agreements affecting rates. 
 
 Trade and commercial problems must largely solve them- 
 selves. The general idea seems to be that a corporation is one 
 thing and the people another, and that the interests of the two 
 must necessarily be conflicting. The corporations were never 
 more owned by the people than now. Protect the stockholder 
 fully, and let the people safely get in on the limits if they are 
 such good things. As it is, the wage-earner was never better off 
 than to-day. Possibly the limit keeps a few men from going 
 into business for themselves, but this is of no importance to the 
 great mass of wage-earners and consumers. 
 
 Harold Scarboro, Lawyer-Editor, " Union News," Towson, 
 Md. 
 
 I deny that the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale exist. Such combinations as the American 
 Sugar Company, the American Tobacco Company, the Steel 
 Trust (United States Steel Company) and many others are 
 merely multiplications of units and cannot produce more eco- 
 nomically than the individual unit. If the so-called trusts were 
 strictly resolved into their units, an Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission would not be necessary. Until that can be done I favor 
 the commission. I prefer Federal license for companies doing 
 an interstate business. I am emphatically opposed to holding 
 companies. The government should regulate capitalization, and 
 laws calling for publicity for commercial corporations ought to 
 be enacted. 
 
 Editor, "Amerikan Untisel " (Finnish newspaper), Calumet, 
 Mich. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt's plan, as outlined in " The Outlook " 
 for November 18, 1911, is all right, and the recommendations 
 made therein should be followed out by the United States gov- 
 ernment. I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 F. S. Luther, President Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 Too much manufacturing and too little food production are 
 causes of disturbed business conditions. I favor the repeal of 
 the Sherman Law and the enactment of a new law. I also favor 
 a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
416 
 
 Powell Glass, Managing Editor, " The News," Lynchburg, 
 Va. 
 
 In regard to advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, it should be pointed out that any commodity 
 demands a higher price where there is competition in the buy- 
 ing. A monopoly can fix its own price on labor. It is also 
 true that where there are competing companies, one cannot 
 afford to pay more for labor than the other; monopoly can 
 pay high wages and add the same to the cost of the finished 
 product if it wants to. I prefer Federal license for corpora- 
 tions doing interstate business. That method would not de- 
 prive the States of the income derived from granting charters 
 and incorporation. One company should not be allowed to con- 
 trol another. Mere ownership of stock in another company is 
 not necessarily an evil; ownership of a majority of stock is. 
 
 C. W. Fraser, Publisher, Menomonee Falls, Wis. 
 
 Big business should not be allowed to cause restraint in 
 trade. Co-operation ought not create monopoly. Competition 
 must be made possible, and my opinion is that it can be best 
 brought about by court orders. Strict enforcement of the Sher- 
 man Law will give us relief. The Sherman Law is clear and 
 workable and should not be amended until conditions declare 
 it necessary. I consider it feasible to return to old competitive 
 methods. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. Disturbed business condi- 
 tions are due to the unwillingness of " big business " to square 
 their methods with the law of the land. 
 
 Eugene T. Giering, Editor, " Record," Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 
 
 I prefer Federal incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I also suggest that the law should prohibit a 
 stockholder in one concern from acquiring large interests in a 
 competitive concern. The exercise of new authority under Fed- 
 eral incorporation ought to be able to deal with unfair competi- 
 tion and restraint of trade. The government should regulate 
 capitalization, and laws should provide for publicity applied to 
 commercial corporations. 
 
 Charles W. Leavitt, Jr., Civil and Landscape Engineer, New 
 York. 
 
 The uncertainty in people's minds as to what the Sherman 
 Law really is, and the confusion brought about by the differences 
 in opinion, not only of laymen but of lawyers, in regard to that 
 enactment, are a potent cause of disturbance in business. The 
 Sherman Law should be made absolutely clear and distinct 
 so that the layman can thoroughly understand what is expected 
 of him and conduct his business according to law, without the 
 aid of so much legal opinion. 
 
417 
 
 F. D. Lander, Editor, " The Hattiesburg News," Hatties- 
 burg, Miss. 
 
 1 have no preference as to Federal legislation dealing with 
 interstate companies; so whatever is done be done quickly. I 
 do not believe in holding companies. The Sherman Law should 
 be enforced, and Congress should quit playing politics and get 
 down to business. 
 
 I believe that the " advantages " claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale do exist. I believe they are likewise a 
 menace and a danger. I think laws should be passed protect- 
 ing the people from the danger of the abuse of these advan- 
 tages. And when these laws are violated, the criminals should 
 be incarcerated, as other criminals are, and not be turned loose 
 upon the country with a fine or reprimand. 
 
 Eugene Blake, President, Hiwassee College, Sweetwater, 
 Tenn. 
 
 It is a very sad comment on our Christian civilization that 
 we must resort to legislation to make our monied men deal 
 honestly with their fellows. The advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale could and should exist; but do 
 they? If not, stop them! I favor additional legislation to pre- 
 vent the exploitation of producers and consumers anything 
 that will stop this rascality. I believe in holding companies, 
 under restrictions. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation, and publicity should be applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions. If I understand the proposition clearly, I think that I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission, to control the large 
 combinations and secure justice for the masses of the people. 
 
 P. E. Burton, Editor, " News Herald," Joplin, Mo. 
 
 There is a strong public sentiment opposed to the sins of 
 large incorporation, or so-called trusts, but the people do not 
 want the day of unrestrained competition again. The tendency 
 towards socialism is so great that the middle ground wherein 
 private companies shall be regulated, instead of owned, seems 
 the best possible solution. Ownership brings stagnation when 
 all the people are concerned. I am undecided as to an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, though the logical outcome of large 
 incorporation is the trade commission; otherwise relief from 
 oppression will come too slowly. 
 
 Clifford W. Barnes, Educator, President of the Legislative 
 Voters' League of Illinois, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Ignorance concerning the meaning of the laws relating to 
 trade and uncertainty as to the government's attitude regarding 
 the enforcement of those laws are causing business disturbance. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed if it cannot be properly 
 amended. I favor a national incorporation law. Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
418 
 
 John Martin, Publicist, Grymes Hill, Stapleton, S. I., N. Y. 
 
 It is impossible and undesirable to restore active competi- 
 tion of a sort to protect consumer and producer and to ensure 
 public welfare. Combination is inevitable. I favor Federal 
 license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. Hold- 
 ing companies should be legal, under government regulation, to 
 ensure similar control as the Interstate Commerce Commission 
 has over railroads. Laws should be enacted providing for gov- 
 ernment regulation of capitalization and for applying publicity 
 to commercial corporations through a commission to be ap- 
 pointed for that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 C. A. Duniway, President, University of Montana, Mis- 
 soula, Mont. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness at least until demonstrated to be inefficient. We need 
 time to see the workings of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and 
 therefore I do not favor additional legislation at present. I am 
 opposed to holding companies, but I do not think the question a 
 very important one now when identical boards of directors and 
 officers can get the results of holding companies. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission, although doubtfully. Federal license and publicity 
 may go far enough. 
 
 Josephus Hopwood, Late President Virginia Christian Col- 
 lege, Lynchburg, Va. 
 
 Let the people of the United States take the coal business, 
 as they have taken the mail business, and conduct it at cost. 
 And certainly they should take the telegraph and telephone busi- 
 ness and conduct them for the good of the people. I favor 
 national incorporation for companies engaged in interstate busi- 
 ness, and my other proposal on this point is national ownership. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers akin to 
 those of the Interstate Commerce Commission in dealing with 
 common carriers. 
 
 Frederick L. Hoffman, Statistician, East Orange, N. J. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 and laws should be passed for the protection of minority stock- 
 holders and subsidiary interests and to prevent the exploitation 
 of investors. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. In 
 addition to the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale, should be added the protection afforded against 
 panic and industrial depression, and acting as a safeguard 
 against overproduction. 
 
419 
 
 Clyde H. Knox, Editor, " Times-Star," Sedan, Kan. 
 
 I believe fully in strict regulation of big corporations, but 
 not in destroying them or their stocks of their business. I know 
 of no means by which a single corporation one company 
 can be limited either in power to underbuy or undersell com- 
 petition or in the extent of its resources. I favor national incor- 
 poration for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I be- 
 lieve in holding companies. Overcapitalization should be regu- 
 lated by the government, and laws should be passed applying 
 publicity to commercial corporations, through a commission to 
 be appointed for that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 Charles Lee Roper, Professor of Economics and Dean of 
 Graduate School, University of North Carolina, also 
 Historian and Lecturer. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation, and regulation by a national 
 commission., for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission, government regulation 
 of capitalization, provided it is on sound principles, and the 
 application of publicity to commercial corporations. The sooner 
 we can come to such national laws, charters and commissions, 
 the better. 
 
 F. R. Clow, Teacher of Economics, State Normal School, 
 Oshkosh, Wis. 
 
 I believe the attempt of the government to suppress the big 
 combinations to be entirely wrong. They should be punishea 
 by fine for unfair treatment of producers, consumers and com- 
 petitors. I believe in holding companies. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 I. Harvey Brumbaugh, President Juniata College, Hunting- 
 don, Pa. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I favor additional legislation supplementing the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act and expressly forbidding specific prac- 
 tices in violation of the rights of the public. I favor govern- 
 ment regulation of capitalization and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Byron S. Adams, Printer and Publisher, Washington, D. C. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended in such a manner 
 that it will not be necessary to retain an attorney to examine 
 every move in business to learn if we are law-breakers. I favor 
 a national incorporation law. 
 
420 
 
 William H. Zeigler, President, i Broadway, New York City. 
 
 Unsettled business conditions are due to political disturb- 
 ances, a tax on corporations and the tariff. Also to high prices, 
 to increase in cost of living, to automobiles and the diversion 
 of hundreds of millions of dollars from investments or savings 
 into that article of luxury, carrying with it great increase in 
 expense of the owners and users. It will take some years for 
 an adjustment of these matters. When bicycles came into 
 common and general use the same disturbance was noted, the 
 difference in the value of the articles being the relative differ- 
 ence in the country's financial ability. The advancement of new 
 ideas in government, such as the ret-all, referendum, etc., has 
 also tended to unsettle the popular mind. 
 
 R. L. Telfer, Manager, Eaton & Co., Printers, San Jose, Cal. 
 
 Business disturbance is due to Wall Street manipulation ; 
 to overproduction and underconsumption caused by unequal 
 conditions, and an unjust tariff in favor of special subsidized 
 interests; a growing demand of the people for more equality 
 in representation, and other conditions too numerous to men- 
 tion here. I favor a national incorporation law and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission if not controlled by special interests; 
 also a Federal license law if approved by a majority of the 
 State legislatures. The Sherman Law should be amended to 
 except labor arid farmers' combinations for self -protection. 
 
 Lawrence Keister, President, Lebanon Valley College, 
 Annville, Pa. 
 
 Business disturbance is caused by the fact that the people 
 lost confidence in " big business." Big business men used their 
 big abilities for their own selfish ends, and not for the welfare 
 of the people and the country. A statesman consecrates his 
 greater talents to the State, and great business men have not 
 learned to do this yet. They are in the lead, but are not leaders 
 with an ethical ideal and a religious purpose. I favor Federal 
 license and also an Interstate Trade Commission, if it is non- 
 partisan and non-purchasable. 
 
 William W. Smith, Chancellor of the Randolph-Macon 
 System of Schools and Colleges, Lynchburg, Va. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act should be amended and 
 approved. Possibly the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale exist, but are not likely to continue when 
 a monopoly has been secured. New machinery, inventions, etc., 
 will then be stifled e. g., the Western Union. I see no better 
 plan for solving business problems than an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
421 
 
 Frank W. Blackmar, Professor of Economics in The Uni- 
 versity of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness because many corporations that start under State laws sub- 
 sequently do interstate business. Their business spreads from 
 State (or local) business to interstate business. Laws should 
 be passed, specifically regulating cold storage plants and produce 
 exchanges (boards of trade). I .do not believe in holding com- 
 panies. I believe in large corporations, but they should pos- 
 sess solidarity and be made easily amenable to regulation by law. 
 
 I favor an 'Interstate Trade Commission. Give the Inter- 
 state Trade Commission power to fix prices in emergency cases 
 when the market is cornered. 
 
 James P. Morrissey, President, Santa Clara College, Santa 
 Clara, Cal. 
 
 The spirit with which law-makers approach the solution of 
 questions of such far-reaching import as these should be sym- 
 pathetic, conciliatory and thoroughly free from that passionate 
 ardor for the disciplining of our great producing and distribut- 
 ing agencies which is essentially narrow-minded and dangerous. 
 I favor Federal license^ and I think the Sherman Anti-Trust Act 
 sufficient. I believe in holding companies with restrictions. 
 Abuses should be prudently eliminated and the proper use of the 
 beneficial power of holding companies encouraged. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 James B. Kennedy, Professor of Economics, Union College, 
 Schenectady, N. Y. 
 
 The ideal condition for companies doing an interstate busi- 
 ness would be uniform State laws with State incorporation and 
 Federal supervision, in such form as to establish full publicity 
 of operation under the direction of the Bureau of Corporations, 
 with increased powers similar to the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. I favor additional legislation giving the Bureau of 
 Corporations power similar to that of the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission in effecting publicity. I believe that one company 
 should not be allowed to hold stock in another company doing 
 the same or a related business. I favor government regulation 
 of capitalization. 
 
 Frank T. Stockton, Instructor in Political Economy, Uni- 
 versity of Rochester, Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. I believe in holding companies. The Sherman 
 Law should be repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
422 
 
 Wm. R. Watson, Librarian, Public Library, San Francisco, 
 Cal. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I am opposed to holding companies. Unfair com- 
 petition and restraint of trade should be reached in part, if 
 not altogether, by statutes expressly forbidding specified prac- 
 tices. The government should regulate capitalization, and laws 
 should be passed calling for publicity applied to commercial 
 corporations, through a commission appointed for that purpose. 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. Disturbed business 
 conditions are due to an unsatisfactory monetary system and to 
 extravagant and wasteful expenditure by the people. 
 
 George A. Harter, President, Delaware College, Newark, 
 Del. 
 
 A national incorporation act for concerns engaged in inter- 
 state business, and an Interstate Trade Commission to whom 
 all complaints of the methods of business of such corporations 
 might be referred, would go far to secure to business conducted 
 on a large scale the economies of a wide organization, together 
 with equitable and fair treatment of everybody interested. The 
 Sherman Law as it stands is a very effective instrument to 
 regulate business. 
 
 Theodore Marburg, Publicist, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. I believe in holding companies. Let companies be 
 as large and organized in any way they have a mind to, and 
 attack the whole problem from the side of conduct. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization and apply publicity to 
 commercial corporations under Federal license. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now 
 enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. 
 
 William F. Seller, Chief Liquidator, Custom House, New 
 York City. 
 
 Not enough reliance is placed on the common law. If all 
 our legislatures could suspend operations for a few years, during 
 which time the innumerable laws we already have could be 
 reviewed and codified, it would be a direct gain. I regard the 
 Sherman Law as clear and workable. It should either be kept 
 as it is, or be repealed. I favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
 John B. Conner, " Indiana Farmer " Company, Indianapolis, 
 Ind. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. I also favor publicity for such companies. 
 
Francis J. McConnell, President, De Pauw University, 
 Greencastle, Ind. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. Unfair competition and restraint of trade 
 should be dealt with by statutes forbidding specified practices, 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and laws should 
 be passed calling for publicity to be applied to commercial cor- 
 porations. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission to control 
 large aggregations of capital engaged in interstate trade, with 
 powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Fred. W. Atkinson, President, Polytechnic Institute of 
 Brooklyn, College of Engineering, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 I prefer Federal legislation dealing with companies doing 
 interstate commerce. Yet such legislation has its limitations. 
 It is the best remedy so far suggested. Advantage of doing 
 business on a large scale is so evident, both to the producer and 
 to the consumer, that some way must be found to permit it. 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and laws should 
 be enacted applying publicity to interstate corporations. 
 
 Olive Otis, Single Taxer and Greenbacker, Printer of " The 
 Rockland Opinion," Rockland, Me. 
 
 Primarily land monopoly and unjust taxation are responsible 
 for disturbed business conditions. Business will never be good 
 until you stop piling burdens of taxation on it and exempting 
 monopoly. A rotten currency system is another, but secondary, 
 disturbing influence. As to railroads being allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates make railroads actually public high- 
 ways and let the companies agree all they please. 
 
 R. E, Stafford, Editor, " The Oklahoman," Oklahoma City, 
 Okla. 
 
 I prefer Federal license, though I am opposed to the States 
 ever surrendering their power over corporations in full to the 
 Federal government. I favor laws to prevent holding companies 
 and I am favorable to existing or, if need be, to additional 
 legislation which will destroy both unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, and I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Edwy C. Reid, Editor, "Allegan Gazette," Allegan, Mich. 
 
 I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. Additional legislation seems to be necessary if 
 the Sherman Law is to stand. I am opposed to holding com-: 
 panics. While I think that all the advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale exist in many cases, they are 
 used (and such is the natural tendency) to unduly increase 
 prices, to the serious detriment of consumers. 
 
424 
 
 Edward A. Ross, Professor of Sociology, University of 
 Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. As to additional legislation, I favor the bill now 
 being worked out in the Legislative Eeference Bureau of Wis- 
 consin. I believe in holding companies, and I prefer statutes 
 dealing with specified practices for the prevention of unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade. The government should 
 regulate capitalization and should apply publicity to commer- 
 cial corporations, through an Interstate Trade Commission. I 
 believe that the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale exist. 
 
 Victor C. Alderson, President, Colorado School of Mines, 
 Golden, Colo. 
 
 It seems to me that the Sherman Act is archaic and should 
 be replaced by a law or laws which recognize economic condi- 
 tions as we find them to-day. The vicious attack on business 
 is the cause of existing uncertainty and anxiety among those 
 engaged in business. The Sherman Law should be repealed. 
 I favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission that is, Federal control adapted to present 
 needs. The government should regulate capitalization, and pub- 
 licity should be applied to commercial corporations. 
 
 Stillman H. Bingham, Editor of the " Duluth Herald," 
 Duluth, Minn. 
 
 Business has become national, and so must control to be ef- 
 fective. Regulation in the interests of the people must take the 
 place of the present blindly destructive effort to cure the evils 
 of monopoly by the impossible remedy of reviving dead com- 
 petition. Legislation is needed that will recognize that progress 
 is involved in the centralization of industry, and which would 
 insure that the many, instead of the few alone, get their fair 
 share of the benefits of centralization. 
 
 J. A. Morgan, Assistant Professor of Economics, Middle- 
 bury College, Middlebury, Vt. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness. As to additional legislation, wrong practices clearly speci- 
 fied, resulting in a monopoly price should be forbidden, with- 
 out hindrance to the savings of organization and large-scale 
 production. The government should regulate capitalization and 
 should apply publicity to commercial corporation?, through an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 William H. Gannett, Publisher, Augusta, Me. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, the enactment of a 
 national incorporation law and the creation of an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
425 
 
 The News Publishing Company, Watertown, So. Dak. 
 
 We favor national incorporation for companies doing an 
 interstate business. We are opposed to holding companies, and 
 advocate additional legislation to deal with the exploitation of 
 producers and consumers. The government should regulate 
 capitalization, and publicity should be applied to commercial 
 corporations through a commission to be appointed for that 
 purpose. We think that an Interstate Trade Commission would 
 be proper. 
 
 J. Eugene Brown, Business Manager and Local Editor, 
 " Chronicle," Farmington, Me. 
 
 I would prefer national incorporation for concerns doing 
 an interstate business. I see no objection to holding companies. 
 The government should regulate capitalization. An Interstate 
 Trade Commission, it seems to me, could do much for busi- 
 ness. There should be laws providing for publicity applied to 
 commercial corporations. I believe the advantages claimed for 
 those doing business on a large scale are all true, and that by 
 centralization of capital and brains, business, etc., the laborer 
 is always benefited if he will allow himself to be. 
 
 T. J. Brooks, Farmer and Journalistic Contributor, Atwood, 
 Tenn. 
 
 There is no great disturbance in business ; there was never a 
 time when there was no disturbance with some kind of business. 
 " Big business " thinks the whole world is disturbed because Taft 
 has tossed a monkey wrench into the machinery. Somebody is 
 liable to get hurt; better stop the machine and adjust it. The 
 Sherman Law should be amended to make it specific and definite. 
 A collateral law is needed to supplement its provisions in the 
 way of government supervision of trusts. I favor a national 
 incorporation law, if not too subject to domination. 
 
 Bronson and Nichols, Editors, "The Thomas Tribune," 
 Thomas, Okla. 
 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates. We favor a national incorporation law. Additional 
 legislation should be enacted to prevent the exploitation of pro- 
 ducers and consumers. The government should regulate capi- 
 talization, and laws should be passed for the protection of 
 minority stockholders and of subsidiary interests and to prevent 
 the exploitation of investors. 
 
 Cast Shober, Publisher, Fort Wayne, Ind. 
 
 I favor only the unprejudiced interpretation and enforce- 
 ment of the Sherman Law. Present disturbed business condi- 
 tions are due to the " right of might." 
 
James W. Mullen, Editor, " Labor Clarion," Official Jour- 
 nal of the San Francisco Labor Council and the Cali- 
 fornia State Federation of Labor, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable. I do not con- 
 sider it entirely feasible to attempt to return to old competi- 
 tive methods in business; but monopoly should be prevented. 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed or amended so as to 
 exempt organizations not formed for profit and having no cap- 
 ital stock, and also exempt agricultural products in the hands 
 of the producers. Trade unions should be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act,, and combinations of farmers, 
 to obtain fair prices for their crops, should be permitted. 
 
 Levi L. Conant, Acting President Worcester Polytechnic 
 Institute, Worcester, Mass. 
 
 Many things are responsible for disturbed business condi- 
 tions overproduction, transition period, distrust on the part 
 of capital. The Sherman Law is not sufficiently clear and 
 workable and ought to be amended. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law or Federal license. In addition to the other advan- 
 tages claimed for those doing business on a large scale, it should 
 be added that the financial and business world is rendered 
 steadier. I believe in holding companies, under proper restric- 
 tion. 
 
 R. G. Caldwell, Professor of Politics and Economics, 
 Wooster, Ohio. 
 
 I favor Federal incorporation for companies doing an inter- 
 state business. As to holding companies, I think that there 
 are many circumstances under which such companies are needed. 
 The government should regulate capitalization, and laws should 
 be passed for the protection of minority stockholders and to 
 prevent the exploitation of investors. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now enjoyed 
 by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to common 
 carriers. 
 
 John C. Hatzel, Hatzel & Buehler, Electrical Engineers and 
 Contractors, New York. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused, first, by definite 
 and unreasonable interpretation of the Sherman Law; second, 
 continual agitation by radicals (or so-called progressives) in 
 both political parties, giving no assurance of a stable and per- 
 manent condition for the investment of capital. I favor amend- 
 ing the Sherman Law, but am not prepared to suggest how it 
 should be amended. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorporation law, 
 Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
427 
 
 Arthur Yager, President Georgetown College, Georgetown, 
 Ky. 
 
 I prefer the Federal license plan as best for dealing with 
 companies engaged in interstate commerce. Additional legisla- 
 tion should not be adopted until we have thoroughly tried out 
 the Sherman Act. While the advantages claimed for those doing- 
 business on a large scale undoubtedly exist, neither monopoly, 
 nor near-monopoly is necessary to secure those advantages. I 
 favor an Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 W. J. Bigelow, Editor and Publisher, "The Caledonian," 
 St. Johnsbury, Vt. 
 
 I believe that large business has come to stay ; that we should 
 not attempt to kill it, but regulate it so that it cannot oppress 
 the producer of raw material or charge the consumer too great 
 a profit on its business. I believe the country is suffering from 
 too expensive distribution. Too large a proportion of the people 
 are engaged in the distributive end of the business. Combina- 
 tions should greatly reduce this expense by limiting the number 
 of distributors. 
 
 Don C. Van Deusen, Editor, " The Pilot," Blair, Neb. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce, also an Interstate Trade Commission to regulate inter- 
 state corporations, with powers similar to those of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Overcapitalization should be dealt with 
 by the national government and by the States, and publicity 
 should be applied to commercial corporations. Admitting all 
 the advantages claimed for .those doing business on a large scale, 
 they must be held down to reasonable profits. 
 
 Walter R. Linn, Editor, " Harrisburg Telegraph," Harris- 
 burg, Pa. 
 
 Extreme caution should characterize legislation on any and 
 all subjects dealing with business, and, above all, we should 
 make it clear in the beginning that we do not consider busi- 
 ness as necessarily criminal because it is extensive and success- 
 ful. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, and I also favor 
 laws to prevent one company holding stock in another com- 
 pany. 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 LAWYERS. 
 
 Edgar H. Farrar, Lawyer, ex-President of American Bar 
 Association, New Orleans, La. 
 
 Unless the Constitution of the United States is amended, the 
 United States cannot incorporate private companies to engage 
 in interstate commerce. In my address before the American 
 Bar Association at Boston, August 29, 1911, 1 pointed ont 
 that the true remedy was a compact between the States, with 
 the consent of Congress, in respect to uniform State corporation 
 laws, and if this could not be done, then that Congress should 
 regulate corporations engaged in interstate cojnmerce. 
 
 I do not favor additional legislation to deal with the ex- 
 poitation of producers and consumers. The present act, as 
 interpreted by the Supreme Court, is good enough. I do not 
 believe in holding companies, they are the source of nearly all 
 the evils. I favor laws that provide for government regulation 
 of capitalization. I favor stringent statutes that will put direc- 
 tors in jail who oppress minority stockholders, and that will 
 make them individually responsible for double damages. I 
 favor State supervision of the organization of corporations which 
 will prevent the issuance of fictitious stocks and bonds, and 
 which will punish by severe jail sentences all fraudulent ex- 
 ploiters of stock. 
 
 There is no objection to doing business on a large scale 
 with large capital, but such capital must not be so large as to 
 enable one concern to swallow up and monopolize all business in 
 its lines; and the business must be conducted without unfair 
 methods of competition. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. I believe 
 in stringent regulation by law so as to maintain competition on 
 a fair basis. Such a commission savors of socialism. I believe 
 in the man against the State. I believe in the distribution and 
 not the concentration of wealth. I am opposed to monopoly, 
 whether under the form of law or not. I deny the power of 
 the State to fix prices in private business, directly or indirectly. 
 
 428 
 
429 
 
 Charles A. Boston, Hornblower, Miller & Potter, Attor- 
 neys-at-Law, New York. 
 
 I do not favor either national incorporation or Federal 
 license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. There 
 is no guaranty that Federal laws would be better or better ad- 
 ministered than State laws, and I do not favor the suppression 
 of State activities by Federal law. Edgar H. Farrar, in his 
 address to the American Bar Association last August, sug- 
 gested the remedy of a treaty between the States under the 
 sanction of Congress, pursuant to the Constitution. I favor 
 trying this remedy. 
 
 The alleged evils charged against large combinations I be- 
 lieve to be true. Overcapitalization I do not regard as a very 
 substantial evil, except in monopolies and public service corpora- 
 tions, and where it may be used to deceive investors. The great- 
 est evil of all is the accumulation of dangerous powers, political 
 and economic, dangerously exercised, in plutocratic hands, tend- 
 ing, as I believe, inevitably either to the overthrow of democratic 
 government, or in revolution, peaceful or otherwise, for its 
 vigorous restoration. I also believe that this tendency has been 
 checked, but not eradicated, by the partial enforcement of the 
 law. 
 
 In general, I do not believe in holding companies. I disap- 
 prove them when they are used for the purpose of the danger- 
 ous growth which I have indicated. When they do not reach 
 this dignity, and there is specific economic advantage, I think 
 they might be authorized in specific instances after proper 
 investigation. I do not favor Federal laws calling for publicity 
 to be applied to commercial corporations. State laws can and 
 should provide for proper publicity. The time does not call 
 for the regulation of prices. Justice demands the protection of 
 minority stockholders and of subsidiary interests in the courts, 
 not by commissions. Courts are more largely responsible than 
 legislatures for the injustice that now prevails, through their 
 almost universal failure to apply to majorities in corporations 
 those principles of equity and good conscience which they apply 
 to all other owners in common. Legislation extending these 
 rules to transactions within a corporation is needed. 
 
 Eegarding the advantages claimed for those doing business 
 on a large scale, economies in production, economies in distribu- 
 tion and greater use of by-products are true. Steadier employ- 
 ment of labor, and at better wages, is largely true not uni- 
 versally. The same statement applies to better protection against 
 industrial accidents. The claim of more command of interna- 
 tional trade is true, but partly through chicanery. Command 
 of the best ability is true within limits; but ability also fails 
 to receive recognition. 
 
 If one does business on such a large scale that he has no 
 need to dread the results of another's achievements, his only 
 incentive is internal, and he is not necessarily alert; there is 
 
430 
 
 a temptation to suppress new inventions and progress, if it takes 
 less capital to do this, than to adopt the new and progressive; 
 the best ability may be commanded when recognized, but its 
 recognition in subordinates is more difficult because of their 
 distance from the seat of power. The grave disadvantage is the 
 eradication of independence and the tendency to develop sullen 
 discontent. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. The time 
 has not yet come when the rights of American citizens should 
 be favors accorded to them from above. Specific misdeeds can 
 be classified, enumerated and penalized by law. The penalty 
 can be visited on the man. If certain things, coming within 
 prohibited categories, are deemed advisable, they can be spe- 
 cifically allowed; but it is unwise to leave these matters to the 
 discretion of a public commission. 
 
 The Sherman Law owes its existence to a spirit which is as 
 old as the English people. Hitherto that spirit has not been 
 quellable. It was manifested in the Charters of Liberties and 
 of the Forests ; in the Statutes of Mortmain and the law against 
 perpetuities; in the deep-rooted objection to the grant of mon- 
 opolies ; in the continual controversies in the American colonies 
 with the royal governors; in the execution of Charles I and 
 the situation which forced the abdication of James II; in the 
 Boston Massacre, so called; in the tea-parties at Annapolis and 
 Boston; in the Acts of Settlement of the English Crown; in 
 the Declaration of Independence ; in the Bills of Eights ; in the 
 American Kevolution and the War of 1812 ; in the refusal to 
 recharter the Second United States Bank, and in the Civil War. 
 The Sherman Law is a historical, political and economic land- 
 mark. It does not oppose big business because it is business, but 
 because it is dangerous. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear, but workable. It is not clear 
 because its reason is the reason of the last judge. It is work- 
 able, if its spirit as well as its letter be observed. I do not 
 favor amending the Sherman Law, and am decidedly opposed 
 to its repeal. I would have no objection to a proper law defin- 
 ing specific penal offenses and visiting the penalties upon the 
 human perpetrator. I would be slow, however, in selecting the 
 acts to be denounced. In other words, I regard the necessary 
 legislation as something to be enacted as a landmark for the 
 ages and, therefore, to be most carefully considered. 
 
 As to railroads being allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission, I do not believe in lodging discre- 
 tionary power with the commission. If the commission is made 
 an administrative body only, to see that principles defined in 
 legislation are actually observed, I would not disapprove such 
 agreements, nor the exercise of such administrative power. 
 
 An Interstate Trade Commission is wholly unnecessary, and 
 we are better off with King Log than we might be with King 
 
431 
 
 Stork. A reform of the tariff and pension laws is a practical 
 impossibility. A reform of abuses introduced under this system 
 would be likewise impossible. The inaction and apparent 
 acquiescence of government officials during the formative period 
 permitted large and dangerous aggregations, and permitted the 
 promoters to offer their " securities " to investors in immense 
 volumes, though not so as to deprive the promoters of control. 
 Xow the investors are frightened, and those whose interest lies 
 that way foment this fear by misrepresenting the causes. "An 
 attack on business " instead of a step to stem revolution, as it 
 is. Of course, an apprehension that vast investments will be 
 rendered less valuable, if not destroyed, affects the spirits of 
 those who have these investments, and the effect is contagious. 
 But business can right itself within lawful limits, whereas, if 
 the tendency toward centralization of power should remain un- 
 curbed it would lead certainly to revolution and very probably 
 to an undesirable form of socialism. 
 
 J. Walter Lord, Lawyer, Baltimore, Md. 
 
 FROM A LEGAL STANDPOINT. 
 
 I think that the objection to the Sherman Law, in so far 
 as it concerns industrial combinations, lies chiefly in the fact 
 that the remedy is not scientifically adjusted to the evils. Many 
 economic advantages accrue as well to consumer and labor as 
 to producer from the fact of combination. Disintegration, if 
 it should prove to be effectual, and not a mere formal process, 
 would destroy these advantages, and, economically speaking, 
 would be reactionary. 
 
 Any amendatory legislation ought to proceed from a primary 
 recognition of the following conditions : That advantages re- 
 sult to the public from industrial combination, even though 
 that combination reaches the point of virtual monopoly, and 
 that the normal trend of business is in this direction; that, on 
 the other hand, there are evils of two classes those incident 
 to the process of combination, and those resulting from a con- 
 dition of virtual monopoly. 
 
 The more serious evil resulting from monopoly is, of course, 
 the power to control prices. Logically, the appropriate remedy 
 would seem to be governmental regulation by restriction of 
 prices. Such a principle is not a new one, but has been part of 
 Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence since the middle ages; and has 
 been called into play, either through judicial or legislative ac- 
 tion, when under prevailing conditions, the economic factor of 
 competition is absent. We find an embodiment of this principle 
 to-day in the case of regulation of the rates of railroads, water 
 and gas companies and other public service corporations. And 
 there would seem to be no difference in its application to a 
 monopoly, whether the monopoly be made such by special fran- 
 chise or arise out of economic conditions. My notion of apply- 
 
432 
 
 iiig this principle would be to create a Commission with inci- 
 dental powers similar to those of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission, and with the principal power to determine, in the first 
 instance, whether a particular combination is a virtual mon- 
 opoly, within the meaning of the Sherman Act, and if so, then 
 to fix the reasonable maximum prices its action to be subject 
 to judicial review both as regard the existence of the monopoly 
 and as to whether the prices fixed are confiscatory. In the ab- 
 sence of substantial objections on practical grounds, I think 
 such a plan would be an improvement upon the remedy now 
 embodied in the Sherman Act. It would afford ample protec- 
 tion to the consuming public, without unduly impeding indus- 
 trial development. 
 
 As regards the evils incident to the process of combination, 
 such as, for example, unfair competition. I believe it would be 
 reasonably practicable by amendment to the Sherman Act, to 
 specify the greater portion of acts constituting these evils, and 
 prohibit them under criminal penalties, as well as provide for 
 civil remedies to injured competitors. Effectual safeguards 
 might also be created by empowering the Commission, where un- 
 fair competition is being conducted, to fix minimum prices, and 
 thus prevent selling below cost; and also by requiring the con- 
 sent of the Commission to the purchase of a competitors 
 property. 
 
 I do not favor National incorporation, nor do I see any par- 
 ticular advantage in requiring a Federal License. The Com- 
 mission should, however, be in a position to exercise intelligent 
 and effective control over corporations engaged in interstate 
 commerce, and to that end these corporations and also com- 
 panies owning stock therein should be required under penalties 
 to register with the Commission, and to file with it informa- 
 tion similar to that filed by common carriers with the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 Frank Bergen, General Counsel, Public Service Corporation 
 of New Jersey, Newark, N. J. 
 
 I prefer to state my views of the Sherman Act and suggest 
 remedies for the present deplorable condition of the law relating 
 to monopoly and restraint of trade in a few paragraphs instead 
 of answering in detail the questions which have been proposed. 
 
 The gentlemen who drew the Sherman Act undoubtedly in- 
 tended to do nothing more than make the common law, relating 
 to monopoly and restraint of trade, part of the statute law of the 
 United States. This, I think, is clearly shown by a statement 
 of the late Senator Hoar in his autobiography, and more dis- 
 tinctly by a legal opinion that he gave about a year after the 
 Sherman Act was passed to one of the iron corporations. Sen- 
 
433 
 
 ator Hoar probably had more 'to do with the choice of language 
 used in the Sherman Act than any other member of the com- 
 mittee that prepared it. 
 
 'i'he language of the act, however, was not happily chosen. 
 It does not express the common law, but lays down harsh and 
 rigid rules instead, and the courts for twenty years have felt 
 constrained to administer the language of the law and not the 
 purpose of the gentlemen who framed it and the Congress that 
 passed it.. 
 
 I think the first paragraph of the annexed document is 
 not a correct statement of the Sherman Act as recently in- 
 terpreted in the Standard Oil and Tobacco cases. The Supreme 
 Court, as I understand its opinions, did not decide that a com- 
 bination in restraint of interstate trade with purpose of con- 
 trolling prices and stifling competition is unlawful. The pur- 
 pose of the combination or of those who organized it, in my 
 judgment, cut but a small figure in the Court's interpretation 
 of the Sherman Act. 
 
 There is, I believe, a quite general misapprehension of the 
 meaning of the Supreme Court in its opinions in the Oil and 
 Tobacco cases. As I understand those opinions, the court held 
 that the Sherman Act must be construed reasonably, or in the 
 light of reason. It did not hold that a combination engaged 
 in interstate trade is lawful if it is reasonable. The court 
 attempted to turn the light of reason on the statute, not on the 
 combination. 
 
 I am in favor of a Federal statute providing for incorpora- 
 tion of parties engaged in interstate commerce. I think the 
 capitalization of such corporations should be controlled by Fed- 
 eral authority, including the right to hold stock in other cor- 
 porations. I do not think holding companies should be pro- 
 hibited, but their holdings should be controlled by Federal 
 authority. I realize that Federal incorporation would add large- 
 ly to the responsibilitv of the Federal Government and to the 
 rl anger 8 that always attend the possession of power over busi- 
 ness and capital, but I do not think there is any way that the 
 benefits of doing business on a large scale can be otherwise ob- 
 tained. 
 
 Augustus P. Loring, Lawyer and Director in Manufactur- 
 ing Enterprises, also President of Plymouth Cordage 
 Company, Boston, Mass. 
 
 I do not favor either national incorporation or Federal 
 license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. In my 
 opinion, the Federal government is less trustworthy than the 
 State governments. I do not believe in holding companies. I 
 rlo believe in co-operation. I favor government regulation of 
 capitalization and publicity applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions. 
 
434 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale should be added that the brains of the 
 best man spread over more ground and that the management is 
 more impersonal and therefore more likely to be actuated by 
 a desire to serve the best interests of all concerned a bad 
 manager is not kept by nepotism in large concerns. I do not 
 favor an Interstate Trade Commission. It is too big a propo- 
 sition for any one set of men to handle. There is too much 
 law-making. Old methods of competition have been eliminated 
 by evolution. 
 
 I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. Railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to the 
 approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion. Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act. Combinations of farmers, either to restrict 
 production or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not be 
 rendered lawful. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to the desire of those 
 who have not saved anything to obtain part of the wealth which 
 others have accumulated, and to political agitation with that 
 fact in view. Better let the strong men make money and take 
 part of it away from them by taxation and otherwise than 
 prevent anyone from being prosperous. 
 
 Amasa M. Eaton, Lawyer- Jurist, Providence, R. I. 
 
 To the alleged evils charged against large combinations 
 should be added the buying of patents to prevent their use, 
 in order that such buyer may continue to supply the market 
 and retain his profits with a poor or clear article or method. 
 
 For companies engaged in interstate commerce a model 
 Federal incorporation law should be framed. All corporations 
 engaged in interstate commerce should be taxed annually by 
 the Federal government (through a license or other tax), and 
 this tax or license should be less much less if such a corpora- 
 tion becomes incorporated under the model Federal incorpora- 
 tion law. 
 
 For dealing with the exploitation of producers and consum- 
 ers let the Sherman Act stand as it is, and pass another act 
 defining crimes under that act. I favor laws that will prevent 
 the evils attendant upon holding companies. Holding com- 
 panies are liable to such abuses they should be illegal. Unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with by legis- 
 lation expressly forbidding specified practices. I favor laws 
 providing for government regulation of capitalization, also laws 
 that call for publicity to be applied to commercial corporations. 
 
 Admitting some of the advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale, I doubt the claim of better wages for 
 labor. Better protection against industrial accidents is not se- 
 cured until public opinion and the law force employers to action. 
 
435 
 
 More command of international trade is at the expense of the 
 American consumer. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers, combined with laws com- 
 pelling publicity by corporations engaged in interstate com- 
 merce. 
 
 R. A. Jackson, General Counsel, Great Northern Railway 
 Company, St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 The causes of disturbed business conditions are: (1) Poli- 
 ticians; (2) yellow newspapers; (3) high cost of living, due, 
 in part, to unlawful combinations; (4) extravagance of the 
 people; (5) trying to run the business of the country from 
 Washington. 
 
 The Sherman Law is reasonably clear as to the law. It is 
 not workable without great sacrifice of business interests. I 
 do not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law. I favor supple- 
 mental legislation, (a) defining legality of corporate organiza- 
 tions of interstate companies; (&) requiring capital stock to be 
 fully paid; (c) supervision b}^ Secretary of Commerce and La- 
 bor as to organization; (d) regulation of conduct under the 
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act as it is now. 
 
 Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission. 
 
 As to a national incorporation law or a Federal license law, 
 I favor one or the other, which will permit a corporation with- 
 out a decree of court to know that it is a legal combination. 
 The Sherman Act will then take care of its conduct. I do 
 not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 John B. Kerr, Vice President, General Counsel and Director, 
 New York, Ontario and Western Railroad Company, 
 New York City. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused by too great increase 
 of productive plant, demagogy and a weak yielding of so-called 
 statesmen who know better, to the discontent incited by the 
 demagogues, and lack of constructive statesmanship. Uncer- 
 tainty about the construction to be given the Sherman Act has 
 also been a factor in checking extension of existing or formation 
 of new industrial enterprises. This, however, is not entirely 
 harmful, in view of the fact that existing plants are sufficient 
 for the time being. The increased cost of all labor has also 
 contributed to the present situation. 
 
 The intention of the Sherman Law has been made clear, 
 but as there are no standards fixed, whether any given combina- 
 tion is a violation, could only be determined by a court. 
 
436 
 
 It is workable to the same extent as before the act. When the 
 common law applied, it was workable. For amendment I sug- 
 gest: Strike out the penal provisions; let the penalty be the 
 money loss resulting from dissolution. The courts would prob- 
 ably be more apt to enforce absolute liquidation hereafter, par- 
 ticularly if there is no penal provision. 
 
 Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be excepted from 
 the operation of the Sherman Act if confined to the combina- 
 tion of men in one trade or industry, so as to permit " collective 
 bargaining " by them in that line with their employers. 
 
 Dunbar F. Carpenter, Counsellor-at-Law, Colorado Springs, 
 Colo. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. A law should be enacted based on modern expe- 
 rience, frankly recognizing the fact of combination and merely 
 restraining the bad features thereof, such as unfair competition 
 and buying off competitors. I do not believe in holding com- 
 panies and see no harm in genuine fusion between competitors. 
 A revision of the Sherman Act, to bring it into harmony with 
 the conditions of modern business, is most desirable. The gov- 
 ernment should regulate capitalization, and laws should be en- 
 acted calling for publicity to be applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions through an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale undoubtedly exist in the main, but the public does not 
 get the benefit. Prices are kept as high as possible regardless 
 of the economies effected. 
 
 In my opinion, the Sherman Law is an attempt to compel 
 business to revert to the days of individualism. Business must 
 combine and will. To say you shall not, as does the Sherman 
 Law, is as fruitless as to forbid the waves to roll in. A frank 
 recognition of the way in which modern business must be car- 
 ried on is the first requisite. Then regulation will logically 
 follow. The Sherman Law is simply driving big business to 
 cover. It benefits no one. We need, not a dissolution of old 
 combinations, nor prohibitions of new ones, but a sane law 
 looking to the prevention of those evils which have made the 
 trusts odious. Unfair competition and discrimination must be 
 prevented. Mere size is not of the least importance ; rather the 
 way the combination behaves. 
 
 Robert B. Woodward, 45 Wall street, New York. 
 
 The Sherman Law should either be repealed or should be 
 subjected to radical amendment in such a manner as not to dis- 
 turb " big business." At present the Sherman Law is not clear 
 and workable either to me or to the general public. 
 
437 
 
 Chas. Robinson Smith, 25 Broad street, New York. 
 
 It seems to me that to the certain advantages claimed for 
 large corporations there should be added the insurance against 
 business risk afforded by large concerns, the decreased business 
 mortality, the lessened risk to capital invested, and the lower 
 rate of interest or dividends at which capital can be commanded 
 an economy which must ultimately go to the advantage of the 
 consumer or of the working people. 
 
 Answering the question whether I should favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission, I should say I do not. I do not agree with 
 the premises on which this question is based. Since the Supreme 
 Court has finally held that the words " restraint of trade " in 
 the Sherman Act have the like significance as at common law, 
 'and since at common law and by the statutes of most of the 
 States competing concerns could unite or consolidate, provided 
 the intent or result were not to restrain trade in an undue de- 
 gree or control prices and stifle competition, it would seem as 
 if this common-law rule is all that large businesses should ask 
 under the Sherman Law. It is not necessary in order to secure 
 the advantages set forth in your Questionnaire that industrial 
 concerns should be as large as the Standard Oil Company or 
 the American Tobacco Company either in capital or in per- 
 centage of trade enjoyed. In almost any trade or industry a 
 concern that can handle from ten to twenty-five per cent, of 
 the trade of the country is large enough to develop for itself 
 and the community the advantages set forth, and this without 
 stifling competition, either actually or potentially. 
 
 It is true that some points in regard to the working and 
 effect of the Sherman Law still need to be elucidated ; but these 
 are in course of being worked out in the various suits pending, 
 and they are much more likely to be logically and satisfactorily 
 settled through the development of the common law as applied 
 to the Federal jurisdiction than they are by fresh legislation 
 which would impose additional burdens on the courts in constru- 
 ing it. 
 
 I do not consider it feasible to return to the old competitive 
 methods of small businesses and small competitors, and, if 
 feasible, I should consider such a return inadvisable; but I do 
 believe that without losing the advantage of production on a 
 large scale trade may be kept exposed to the salutary influence 
 of competition, both actual and potential. Competition need not 
 be actual, and certainly need not be ruinous in order to exercise 
 its regulating force. The " potentiality " of competition, as 
 it was termed by Mr. Justice White, is in most cases sufficient. 
 
 I should not favor a repeal of the Sherman Law until it 
 becomes clear that something better can be devised than the 
 wisdom of the ages as expressed in the common-law rules on 
 restraint of trade as the same are evolved by the courts to meet 
 the changing conditions. 
 
438 
 
 I believe that railroads should be allowed to make agree- 
 ments affecting rates. They do so now in effect, but their action 
 is illegal and is allowed from necessity. 
 
 I think trade unions should not be excepted from the Sher- 
 man Act otherwise than as they are now. They are now free 
 to strike and to combine for higher wages, etc., just as employ- 
 ers are supposed to be free to combine for a lockout. The Sher- 
 man Act prohibits them from boycotting interstate commerce. 
 
 I do not think that farmers as a class should be singled out 
 for special favors of legislation.- 
 
 I think that a corporation bureau or commission empowered 
 to pass on Federal charters, to collect annual reports and insist 
 upon publicity, and empowered to investigate, but without the 
 power to regulate prices, could be made useful both in the em 
 forcement of the Sherman Law and in protecting corporations 
 against unjust attempts to pervert it. 
 
 In conclusion, my judgment is that one of the potent causes 
 of the present disturbed business conditions is the enforcement 
 of the Sherman Law, necessary as that seems to be ; but I think 
 that a more important cause is the violent discussion of the 
 whole subject and the attempts of large numbers of politicians 
 to make the law more drastic. The alternative seems to be 
 presented either of a Sherman Law which will go so far as to 
 prohibit even two interstate expressmen from uniting, or one 
 that will practically fix prices. These are threats that will con- 
 tinue to keep business agitated until they are settled. 
 
 Robert . Wheeler, Lawyer, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law will not be workable until it is clearly 
 established what are and what are not reasonable combinations. 
 A return to old competitive methods is clearly not feasible 
 through preventing combinations; but it is feasible to attempt 
 to prevent abuses arising through combinations. 1 do not 
 favor amending the Sherman Law until we have a great deal 
 more interpretation of the present law by the courts. Amend- 
 ing now would be like trying to patch imaginary holes in the 
 dark. Trade unions should not be excepted from the opera- 
 tion of the Sherman Act. Sympathetic strikes are clearly as 
 bad, if not worse, than combinations of capital. I favor a 
 national incorporation law, if we have to , have corporations for 
 pecuniary profit. Disturbed business conditions are due to a 
 combination of European conditions, the action of Federal ex- 
 ecutives, and, most of all, the unstable condition of the aver- 
 age corporation for pecuniary profit. 
 
 The foregoing answers express my general opinion as 
 formed by my professional experience and general environ- 
 mental influences. Being connected with the law firm of Mil- 
 ler, Starr, Packard & Peckham, Mr. Miller being senior coun- 
 sel in the case of IT. S. vs. Swift, Armour, et al., I am more 
 or less influenced by that relation. 
 
439 
 
 Francis Beidler, 72 West Adams street, Chicago, 111. 
 
 (1) Do you believe that the Sherman Law, as now inter- 
 preted, is made, clear and workable ? 
 
 Answer: The Sherman Law has been on the books so long 
 that I think it would be exceedingly dangerous to attempt to 
 amend it; at least since Koosevelt's reign has begun to teach 
 the people that freedom does not mean license. It is time that 
 all men (if they will not do it of their own volition) are forced 
 to do business based on conscience. If it is possible to develop 
 a Federal Government Act, as proposed by President Taft, to 
 avoid possible misapprehensions and weaknesses of the Sherman 
 Act, I think it would be wise to place same on the statute book. 
 The so-called lack of understanding as to what business men 
 may do under the Sherman Law I deem more the result of rest- 
 lessness on account of government control of business men who 
 have never known what it was to be restricted to a basis of what 
 was right, rather than what they thought or desired to do. 
 
 (2) Do you consider it feasible to attempt to return to what 
 are commonly known as old competitive methods in business? 
 
 Answer: I have done business since 1873 on the basis of 
 open competition, on the principle that the best man wins and 
 the survival of the fittest, and it is inequitable, in my judgment, 
 to the young man or the struggling man without influence or 
 capital that any other process should prevail; and it is inequi- 
 table to the consumer that excessive profits should prevail. The 
 so-called regulation of prices by the Federal government is too 
 absurd to consider as a means of protection. No condition is 
 practical or just which attempts to make profitable any line of 
 business other than laws which give equal opportunity to all. 
 This government cannot maintain itself if classes are favored. 
 
 (3) Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law? 
 Answer: I certainly do not. It should be enforced without 
 
 fear or favor. 
 
 (4) Do you favor amending the Sherman Law in any way? 
 If so, in what particulars? 
 
 Answer: No. It is dangerous to play with it. Men who 
 wish to ignore it or evade it are the ones who would repeal or 
 amend it in order to indulge further complications of which we 
 know not. 
 
 (5) Should railroads bo allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission ? 
 
 Answer : They certainly .should not be. If the management 
 is not able to maintain rates on individual lines that are remu- 
 nerative and are running around with a chip on their shoulder, 
 it is time the stockholders found new managers. There must 
 be open competition and a fair field for all lines of business. 
 
 (6) Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of 
 the Sherman Act? 
 
440 
 
 Answer : No. They should be amenable to law just as every 
 other line of trade, employment, or business is, and they could 
 be made to be were it not for the corrupting influence of poli- 
 ticians who seek their vote and influence. 
 
 (7) Should combinations of farmers, either to restrict pro- 
 duction or to hold a crop for higher prices, be rendered lawful 
 under the Sherman Act? 
 
 Answer: No. They should also be in the same position as 
 all other lines of employment, trade and commerce, and it is 
 not practical even if they were allowed. The agricultural pro- 
 duction of the country could not combine; it is too vast. It is 
 utterly absurd to think of it. The same is true of lines of busi- 
 ness such as I am engaged in that of lumber manufacturing. 
 There are thousands of institutions throughout the country, and 
 no control of them is practical or possible. It is indefensible 
 to allow lines such as steel, oil, tobacco, or lines which on ac- 
 count of the enormous capital required, to handle the product 
 and to reduce their numbers to a minimum and thereby com- 
 bine and force the balance of the community to pay excessive 
 prices for their product and enrich themselves at the expense 
 of the masses of the people. 
 
 Remarks-' When the time comes that no man or combina- 
 tion of men are allowed to issue a security, a bond or a stock 
 certificate which does not represent absolute moneyed investment ; 
 or if such are issued, they are forced to print across the face 
 " This issue made on earning power and not on investment " ; 
 when no man is allowed to combine in any way to restrict pro- 
 duction or control prices; when every corporation is forced to 
 buy its goods on the basis of lowest prevailing market, or be 
 punished as the result of favoritism and indirect division of 
 profits; when no official of a railroad company or big corpora- 
 tion is allowed to be directly or indirectly interested in any 
 supplies furnished to such corporation, and criminal action is 
 the punishment for such interest; when every man or woman in 
 the country is t>laced on equal footing, then we will have Eoose- 
 velt's square deal to which every one is entitled. Labor methods 
 rule by muscle. The trusts and the classes, to the extent that 
 they evade the law, rule by brain and money. The laboring 
 men have been taught by the classes how to do it. All should 
 be reformed. The lawyers should change their ethics to finding 
 out what the law is and teach their clients to abide by it, rather 
 than, as now is the practice, to find a technicality whereby 
 they may evade it. 
 
 This course may result in temporary continued depression 
 in business, but the country is too rich for it to have any serious, 
 permanent effect; and when interests which have been evading 
 the law realize that they cannot continue, they will soon adapt 
 themselves to the law. and the country will be vastly benefited 
 by the new order of things. 
 
441 
 
 Albert N. Merritt, LL. B., Ph. D., Secretary Wholesale 
 Grocers' Exchange of Chicago, and Professor of 
 Interstate Commerce Law in the Chicago Law 
 School, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as 
 clear and workable. I do not consider it feasible to return to 
 old competitive methods in business. I favor either a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law or proper amendment. If amended, it 
 should be made clear. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates, subject to the approval and 
 regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. They find 
 it necessary to do this at present, at least in eifect. Better have 
 such agreement above-board and subjected to proper supervision 
 I think there should be no exceptions to the Sherman Act, 
 either for trade unions or for farmers' combinations. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not 
 unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion in relation to common carriers. I do not favor Federal 
 incorporation or Federal license tax for corporations. Each 
 State can properly protect itself by requiring foreign corpora- 
 tions doing business within its limits to conform to State re- 
 quirements. I favor additional legislation which will make un- 
 lawful any combination which directly affects prices at which 
 goods are bought or sold, or limits output, or limits purchases. 
 If holding companies are subjected to proper governmental 
 supervision I think they will work no harm. 
 
 The law should be made clear, so that the average business 
 man will know what acts are forbidden and what permitted; 
 it should therefore define what shall be considered " restraint 
 of trade." I think that the regulation of capitalization prop- 
 erly belongs to the State. Undoubtedly some action along the 
 lines of publicity for commercial corporations would be bene- 
 ficial, but such regulation should be made by the States rather 
 than by the Federal government. 
 
 I think the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale may be had by large combinations under Federal 
 supervision. There should be, however, no tariff on articles pro- 
 duced by such large combinations, and the public will thus be 
 protected, not only by direct Federal supervision, but by for- 
 eign competition. No combinations with foreign manufactur- 
 ers or producers should be allowed, as the economic savings 
 brought about by such combination are a negligible quantity, 
 and they are purely for the exploitation of consumers and pri- 
 mary producers. 
 
 I do not favor paternalism, but there should be some gov- 
 ernmental body to which business men might appeal for authori- 
 tative determination as to whether proposed acts are in restraint 
 of trade. 
 
 I would emphasize the one point, that what we need is som 
 way of determining what acts are unlawful. Under the present 
 
442 
 
 law we cannot tell till suit is brought. We think that 99 per 
 cent, of the business men of this country are earnestly endeav- 
 oring to comply with the law as far as possible, but at present the 
 advice of attorneys is absoluely valueless. We want the law 
 made so clear that everybody will be able to judge for himself 
 as to the lawfulness or unlawfulness of his acts. Especially in 
 view of the fact that this is a criminal statute, it ought to be so 
 clear that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the unlawful 
 intent of the man who is convicted of violating its provisions. 
 
 Horace P. Glover, Attorney-at-Law, Mifflinburg, Pa. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, in my judgment, to 
 ( 1 ) the effort of certain groups of men to get an unearned share 
 of the profits of business and trade; (2) the efforts of wage- 
 earners to prevent this; (3) doubt as to the immediate result 
 of the contest; (4) the intrenchment of so much large business 
 behind tariffs which are too high; (5) the growing power of 
 organized labor. I do not consider it feasible to return to old 
 competitive methods. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act; neither should combinations of 
 farmers, to restrict production or to hold crops for higher prices, 
 be allowed. Why should there be another commission? Could 
 not the scope and powers of the present commission be enlarged 
 to deal with the industrial situation? 
 
 There are too many middlemen. Producer and consumer 
 are too far apart. I can suggest no legal remedy. I am not 
 convinced that a holding company is bad per se. They seem 
 to me not necessary in any case, however, and tend to restrain 
 competition. Overcapitalization should not be permitted. Its 
 tendency is to injure the creditor rather than the stockholder. 
 I have little actual faith in legislation for the protection of 
 minority stockholders and subsidiary interests. If those who 
 control forget the minority or subsidiary interests and design 
 to plunder them, it looks like a condition without remedy. 
 
 I recognize all the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale; but the consumer gets little benefit from 
 them. Those interested in the production and distribution are 
 chiefly enriched. Exploitation, unfair competition and restraint 
 of trade are the evils chiefly responsible. 
 
 I am not expert in these matters, though I have read and 
 thought much about them to little purpose. We may be near 
 the day when we must choose between oppression by the few 
 and paternalism (government control, if not ownership) of the 
 many. Macaulay once predicted the day when we should be glad 
 to turn from the tyranny of the many to the tyranny of fhe few, 
 but we shall have to learn that the latter form of tyranny is, 
 after all, less benevolent than the former. 
 
443 
 
 L. W. Tuesburg, Attorney-at-Law and Secretary Pontiac 
 Commercial Club, Pontiac, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law is reasonably clear and workable. I do 
 not consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods. 
 I do not know of any amendment that should be made to the 
 Sherman Law except the so-called La Toilette amendment, put- 
 ting the burden of proving reasonableness on the alleged trust: 
 This will make the law clearer. I cannot see any serious objec- 
 tion to railroads being allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission, if the 
 rates do not go into effect while an appeal is pending. My 
 approval of a national incorporation law would depend upon 
 the terms; in a limited way I do. My position is the same as 
 to Federal license. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. In 
 my judgment, disturbed business conditions are due to the 
 uncertainty of political conditions, particularly as to tariff 
 changes. 
 
 I do not believe in holding companies with no other func- 
 tion than to hold the stock of other companies to prevent com- 
 petition. I believe competitive and non-competitive corpora- 
 tions can and should be discriminated. The holding of stock 
 in one company by another should probably be prohibited to 
 competing concerns and others regulated. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, and I am inclined 
 to believe that this is the best solution of the question as a 
 whole. It may become necessary for the government to assume 
 the right to fix prices for concerns of a monopolistic nature, 
 or at least to regulate prices as railroad rates are now regulated. 
 If such a commission were created, with the power to regulate 
 commodity prices for all corporations which would voluntarily 
 submit to its jurisdiction, at the same time removing all re- 
 strictions upon the consolidation of concerns so submitting, and 
 permitting them to make trade agreements only subject to the 
 supervision and control of such commission, I believe that many 
 corporations would make such voluntary submission in order 
 to secure freedom from prosecution for past, present and future 
 violations of the Sherman and other anti-trust laws, and I 
 believe that such supervision would remove most, if not all, of 
 the objections to combinations and trade agreements and at the 
 same time permit the advantages of doing business on a large 
 scale to be attained. 
 
 Mark W. Sheafe, Lawyer, Capitalist and Real Estate, 
 Watertown, S. D. 
 
 Give us a tariff for revenue, with incidental protection, and 
 the so-called trusts or combinations will not need to be legis- 
 lated against. Give us the world for a market in which to 
 buy as well as sell, and let business take care of itself. 
 
444 
 
 Dan H. Ball, Attorney-at-Law, Marquette, Mich. 
 
 The Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is fairly clear and 
 workable, but it might be improved by making it more specific. 
 It is neither feasible nor desirable to return to old competitive 
 methods. The Sherman Law should be amended, among other 
 things by particularly specifying practices that are made crim- 
 inal and providing a commission to enforce the law, with powers 
 similar to those of the Commerce Commission. Eailroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, subject to 
 the Interstate Commerce Commision. Trade unions should not 
 be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act; but trade 
 unions and other business concerns, individually, should be 
 allowed to agree on a scale of prices, subject to approval by the 
 commission. Combinations of farmers should be subject to the 
 same approval. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, and if we do not have 
 that, then I would favor a Federal license law. I am also in 
 favor of an Interstate Trade Commission. With reference to 
 the. holding company, I would have been opposed to permitting 
 corporations to hold stock in other corporations in the first place. 
 The large corporation should not have the right to control 
 smaller corporations by buying a majority of the stock. But the 
 practice has been allowed to such an extent that I doubt the 
 propriety of overturning it, at least as to stocks already held. 
 A Federal incorporation law, if adopted, should regulate capi- 
 talization. I think regulation of corporations engaged in inter- 
 state commerce is far preferable to compelling them to keep up 
 ruinous competition. Just how this is to be done will require 
 careful study, but probably a commission with powers similar 
 to those of the Interstate Commerce Commission would be best 
 as a part of the plan. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due, to some extent at least, 
 ,to proceedings of the government against so-called trusts and to 
 oversensitiveness of the financial barometer. 
 
 Blewett Lee, General Solicitor, Illinois Central Railroad 
 Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I suspect that disturbed business conditions are due in part 
 to enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law. It is essentially destructive legislation, 
 for which constructive legislation should be substituted. Kail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. I think any 
 scheme of constructive legislation should go as far as to give 
 a creative control over prices of articles moving in interstate 
 commerce or foreign commerce, similar to control over railroad 
 rates exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission. I favor 
 a national incorporation law, Federal license and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
445 
 
 H. M. Aubrey, Aubrey & King, Attorney s-at- Law, San 
 Antonio, Tex. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended so that it may pre- 
 vent such abuse of power as would crush competition or result 
 in excessive prices. The Sherman Law is not clear and work- 
 able, because the interpretation is too largely left to the courts. 
 A wickedly foolish financial system, and the struggle for wealth 
 and power between the financial controllers of the country, are 
 chiefly responsible for disturbed business conditions. 
 
 I fear the centralization of power involved by either Federal 
 incorporation or Federal license. Experience has shown us that 
 it might be easily possible for a charter permit to be held up 
 under various pretenses for an injurious, possibly a ruinous 
 period, and the injured parties be without remedy. It would 
 be comparatively easy, and far safer, to obtain such amendments 
 to the corporation laws of the various States as to render them 
 fairly accordant, without stripping the State of its power to 
 amend when rendered necessary by local conditions. 
 
 I favor such curtailment of the power of the courts as will 
 deprive them of the power of making laws. I see no objection 
 to one corporation holding stock in another, if the corporations 
 are properly controlled. The ownership is immaterial, so long 
 as the power is not exercised injuriously to the interests of the 
 public. 
 
 Both unfair competition and restraint of trade should be 
 forbidden under such penalties, and with such probability of 
 punishment, as would render the practices too dangerous. No 
 capitalization should be permitted except for full value actually 
 received by the corporationpmd that value should be properly and 
 strictly proven to the State, with penal punishment for fraud. 
 
 The only doubt in my mind regarding the correctness of 
 the claims of advantages for those doing business on a large 
 scale is the following question: To what extent will the indi- 
 vidualistic spirit be checked, discouraged, rendered disinclined 
 to do its best work? Man's best work has always been done 
 for glory, not for money or power. There is little hope for 
 glory, for a widespread and high-sounding name, held out to 
 a corporation employe. The founder of a great corporation is 
 long remembered; the fame of his successes is buried with him. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission with such 
 powers as would deprive the States of any now enjoyed by them. 
 I fear the centralization of power now rapidly and steadily 
 carrying the country toward Socialism; and the insane folly 
 shown in the conduct of the lords of finance during the past 
 fifty years too closely resembles the conduct of the French 
 nobility of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to inspire 
 us with such confidence in their future actions as to render us 
 willing to part with any weapon of defense still possessed by 
 the individual State. That is why I fear the Aldrich Bill; it 
 
446 
 
 looks good, very good, but the reputation (well-founded) of 
 the men behind it causes the bill to bear a striking resemblance 
 to the wooden horse of Troy. 
 
 Andrew R. Sheriff, Attorney-at-Law, Chicago, 111. 
 
 . The Sherman Law should be amended by further Federal 
 legislation, confining its application to real economic evils, which 
 I think are fully comprised by the description "unfair com- 
 petition." Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Trade unions should be ex- 
 cepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, but they should 
 be dealt with quite as drastically by legislation applying espe- 
 cially to them. Combinations of farmers, either to restrict pro- 
 duction or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not be ren- 
 dered lawful. Farmers are no more entitled to corner or restrain 
 the market than any other class of citizens, and they should 
 be compelled to liberate their products naturally and in the 
 usual course of trade, without the protection of any extensive 
 combination. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, to be available to cor- 
 porations engaged in interstate commerce. I do not see how 
 it would be constitutional for other classes of corporations in 
 general. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to distrust of the indi- 
 viduals controlling large capital and corporations, usually the 
 subjects of popular investment ; uncertainty of government 
 policy in relation to proposed dissolution of corporate combina- 
 tions; widespread extravagance and consequent impairment of 
 confidence among all classes having Imy surplus money or means 
 of raising it. 
 
 William M. Crockett, Attorney-at-Law, La Fayette, Ind. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for State corporations doing an 
 interstate business. Laws should be enacted to prevent corners, 
 and express statutes should deal with unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion. Laws should be enacted calling for publicity to be applied 
 to commercial corporations ; or a Federal enactment similar to 
 the Kansas statute, which requires the State auditor to look 
 into the affairs of companies proposing to market their stock 
 with the public. 
 
 I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission; competi- 
 tion is sufficient. As to the advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale, I think that such advantages could 
 exist, but do not exist. I believe those doing business on a 
 large scale are not doing business in order that these advantages 
 may obtain. They urge these possible advantages in order that 
 they may not be disturbed in business relations they no doubt 
 find highly profitable. 
 
447 
 
 Charles Matteson, Retired Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of Rhode Island. 
 
 I believe the evils charged against large combinations are in 
 need of correction. It seems to me that a Federal license law 
 would be preferable to the requirement of national incorpora- 
 tion for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I am of 
 opinion that the Sherman Law should remain as at present until 
 the courts have passed upon the questions that may arise under 
 it. Then,, if amendments are needed, they can be made more 
 intelligently. I am most decidedly opposed to holding com- 
 panies, and favor legislation that will prevent their existence. 
 In regard to unfair competition and restraint of trade, I am 
 not in favor, as above stated, of additional legislation, until the 
 Sherman Act has been construed by the courts, except perhaps 
 the passage of a law defining more specifically the offenses under 
 that act. I favor laws providing for government regulation of 
 capitalization, and laws that would call for publicity to be ap- 
 plied to commercial corporations through a commission to be 
 appointed for that purpose. 
 
 I believe that all the advantages claimed for those doing 
 business on a large scale exist, and that they are advantages of 
 the greatest importance. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission w r ith powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 Charles W. Smith, Judge, Stockton, Kan. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. The efficiency of the Sherman Act should 
 be fully tested and, if found inefficient to meet the situation, 
 should be made specific in its prohibitions. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and publicity should be applied 
 to commercial corporations. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, with powers not unlike those enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 In addition to the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale should be mentioned better opportunity 
 for development along the line of special aptitude of workmen, 
 and thus greater efficiency in individual workmanship. 
 
 I think one of the greatest demands is some method of pre- 
 venting overcapitalization and the protection of the rights of 
 stockholders against the acts of managing officers. The cor- 
 poration, being created by the State, should be forced by law 
 to conduct its business in such a way as to insure fair treatment 
 of the public and its stockholders. The law should be specific 
 in its methods to reach these results. If necessary, the viola- 
 tion of the laws, enacted to reach these ends, should be made 
 criminal and applied to the managing officers. The specific 
 manner of doing this is a matter of legislative detail. 
 
448 
 
 Morris L. Johnston, Lawyer and Capitalist, Chicago Stock 
 Exchange Building, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear and workable, but can be made 
 more specific. Amend it so that any combination of compet- 
 ing concerns can be approved in advance by the government; 
 then penalize criminally for a violation. While old competitive 
 methods are undesirable, we must have competition. Unit 
 growth should be encouraged. Growth by combination should 
 be permitted only as it is relative to general growth of business. 
 1 favor national incorporation, Federal license and an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission. 
 
 The fundamental cause of disturbed business conditions is 
 the inherent activity of our people in the development of won- 
 derful natural resources, which has produced both real and 
 apparent prosperity. This has led to overspending and over- 
 straining by individuals and corporations, necessitating rest 
 and recuperation. To this basic cause may be traced most of the 
 aggravating effects, thought to be fundamental causes, such as 
 politics, tariff, governmental influences, etc. Also we are doing 
 business upon a margin of surplus banking credits, which is so 
 small at all times that a period of liquidation to free enough 
 credits to expand again is necessary more frequently than a 
 good banking system would require. The Aldrich plan is a 
 step in advance, but the composition and manner of choosing 
 its board of directors is unsound financially, politically and 
 economically, as would so prove if adopted. 
 
 The political agitations, tariff discussions, anti-trust prosecu- 
 tions, etc., as well as labor demands, are, in my young judg- 
 ment, effects of our great prosperity and are efforts toward 
 advancement and progress. They should not be changed only 
 regulated and supervised, as they are natural workings of the 
 people toward better things. These commissions, which I look 
 to see extended in number and influence, are valuable, ulti- 
 mately, as a check and regulation to our too rapid progress 
 which our nature and resources would otherwise make inevitable. 
 Too rapid progress, unhampered, would make us morally retro- 
 gressive. 
 
 Aldis B. Browne, Attorney-at-Law, Washington, D. C. 
 
 An Interstate Trade Commission of real men (not poli- 
 ticians), with laws which rigidly control but as firmly protect 
 the corporations, will largely solve present difficulties, in my 
 view. I favor national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state business. I believe the present Sherman Act all-sufficient, 
 if properly enforced, to deal with the conditions it is intended 
 to control. I believe in holding companies, if all subject to 
 Federal supervision. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission and publicity 
 for commercial corporations. 
 
449 
 
 William M. Hall, Pittsburg, Pa. 
 
 I believe the large accumulation* of capital and the ease 
 and rapidity of concerted action due to modern inventions make 
 for an enormous increase of combinations and of joint actions 
 to advance prices and to speculate in the now many necessities 
 of life. The principles and practice of the common law are 
 based on the idea that the correction of social ills arising out of 
 such combinations is a judicial function of government. To 
 make this correction an administrative or executive function, 
 with the riglit of appeal to the judicial branch of the govern- 
 ment, seems to be a necessary step, inviting trouble, but to avoid 
 known troubles. Apparently the judicial branch of the govern- 
 ment is not able to cope with the problem. It is too pressing; 
 may not be strictly judicial. In Pennsylvania the Supreme 
 Court has allowed a good deal of executive function to be put 
 on the Common Pleas courts. The people have a great respect 
 for any rule or law issuing out of courts. Let us hope that this 
 will continue and that the courts will not abuse this respect. 
 The civil service of England and its dependent nations has done 
 a great work to show mankind that the Anglo-Saxon can hon- 
 estly govern himself. Let us hope that we can do as much in 
 ill is land. 
 
 F favor an Interstate Trade Com mission as an expedient for 
 trial and as an effort to do something to steady affairs. I 
 believe the Sherman Law will prevent real and substantial 
 monopoly or actions feuding that wav. I believe that is what 
 is meant by the "rule of reason." I believe that decisions of 
 the Supreme Court in the last two cases will be great landmarks 
 in the law. 
 
 J. C. Harper, Attorney-at-Law, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Dissatisfaction with the administration of justice and with 
 the fact that courts, having practically usurped legislative as 
 well as executive authority, have proved their inability to ad- 
 minister business affairs, as witness conflicting opinions in the 
 Tobacco Trust reorganization, account for the present disturbed 
 business conditions. I favor Federal license for companies doing 
 interstate business. Congress, under its power to regulate inter- 
 state commerce, can prescribe the conditions under which cor- 
 porations may engage in interstate business and can, by visitorial 
 power, compel obedience. The Sherman Act should be made 
 more specific and should require publicity. The government 
 should regulate capitalization. 
 
 There are advantages in doing business on a large scale 
 and in the corporate form, and the public are entitled to share 
 those advantage.-. Therefore "watering" of capital should be 
 prevented and income limited. It would be advantageous to 
 permit im-rea-r of income for certain definite public gain- if 
 practicable along Bo<lon Ga< Franchise lines lower prices, 
 higher dividend. 
 
450 
 
 Stephen H. Allen, Attorney-at-Law, Topeka, Kan. 
 
 The efficient remedy for preventing monopoly is to take the 
 management of the vicious combinations out of the hands of 
 the men who are responsible for their misdeeds. The convic- 
 tion of the corporation should be a sufficient conviction of the 
 directors and officers of it to require their removal from office. 
 The head of a corporation or combination is always the guilty 
 party, and his punishment should be not a fine, but loss of 
 power to repeat his offense. All the advantages claimed for 
 those doing business on a large scale are true generally, as 
 applied to business carried on under substantially uniform con- 
 ditions as to details of operation, such as transportation, manu- 
 facturing requiring costly plants, mining under conditions 
 requiring costly machinery or other great outlay of money. 
 They are not true generally, as applied to agriculture or any 
 other business calling for economy and intelligent management 
 of small affairs under a great diversity of changing conditions. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. Uniform State incorporation laws are preferable to 
 Federal. Federal licenses should not override reasonable State 
 requirements, but the Federal law should provide for financial 
 statements and submission to local courts in each State. Legis- 
 lation ought to be enacted in addition to the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Act, providing for the removal of officers and directors 
 of corporations violating the Act, and the election of new 
 officers and boards. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation. 
 
 Ralph R. Lounsbury, Attorney-at-Law, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed, and in its place a 
 law enacted forbidding specific practices, so that a business 
 man may not first have to get himself indicted before he knows 
 exactly what he can do, and what he cannot do, under the law. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce, with powers of visitation, by Federal offi- 
 cials, similar to that of the comptroller of the currency and 
 bank examiners over national banks. 
 
 The advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale certainly do exist for the trust and should be encour- 
 aged. I believe in the trust principle, or trust method, of doing 
 business because it is the economical method. I see nothing 
 harmful in mere combination, per se. However, the public 
 should have some of the benefits of the economies effected. 
 
 I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not un- 
 like those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission 
 in relation to common carriers; and combinations, or mergers, 
 should be permited, under proper regulation, of course. Legis- 
 lation should be directed towards preventing, or regulating, the 
 evils of. or possibilities for evil in, the combination not pre- 
 venting the combination itself. 
 
451 
 
 E. W. Browne, Attorney-at-Law and President of Shreve- 
 port Bar Association, Shreveport, La. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to various causes 
 prosecution of the trusts; the presidential election of 1912; the 
 retrenchment policy adopted by railroads; unrest and dissatis- 
 faction among the masses. The Sherman Law should be 
 amended by adding a penal clause, instead of punishment by 
 fines only. I favor national incorporation for companies doing 
 an interstate business. I am opposed to holding companies. I 
 prefer competition, but it is questionable whether the old com- 
 petitive methods could be restored or, if restored, would be de- 
 sirable. The government should regulate capitalization of con- 
 cerns doing an interstate business and should provide for pub- 
 licity for commercial corporations. I don't believe that the 
 advantages enumerated for those doing business on a large scale, 
 if they do exist, compensate for the evils of vast industrial com- 
 binations. Some of these evils are restriction of individual 
 effort; also power on the part of the corporate combinations to 
 control prices. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission in the 
 event that large aggregations of capital cannot be dealt with 
 under proper legislation. 
 
 Charles W. Moores, Attorney-at-Law, Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. I am opposed to holding companies. Capitalization 
 should be regulated by the States. Would Federal regulation 
 be constitutional? I favor laws that would provide for a proper 
 degree of publicity for commercial corporations. Kegarding 
 the advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale, I doubt whether steadier employment of labor and at 
 better wages and better protection against industrial accidents 
 are effected by the so-called " trusts." The powers of an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, if created at all, should be restrictive 
 rather than permissive. I favor the Sherman Law, and be- 
 lieve it should be enforced. 
 
 Murry Nelson, Jr., Attorney-at-Law, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I do not believe in restrictive legislation i. e., I do not 
 believe in sumptuary laws or usury laws. I also do not believe 
 in a protective tariff, nor in government by injunction or pro- 
 hibition against picketing. I am not an anarchist, and for that 
 reason I believe it very important to enforce laws and not have 
 laws which cannot be enforced. For my part, I know of no 
 " trust " which has been evil merely because it is big, and most 
 of the " trusts " are good which have not some special privi- 
 lege or exemption created by law. I think if the duty were 
 taken off iron and its manufactures, there would be no com- 
 plaint from the consumer, even though the capital of theL^nited 
 States Steel Corporation were doubled, which it would not be. 
 
452 
 
 Charles E. Shepard, Attorney-at-Law, Seattle, Wash. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. In connection with the question relating to restraint 
 of trade,, I favor a Federal statute compelling sale or use of 
 patents, under penalty of revocation. The Federal government 
 should regulate capitalization as to interstate corporations, and 
 a uniform State law should regulate as to intrastatc corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 I favor adequate protection of minority stockholders, their 
 fraudulent exploitation by the "" control " being one of the worst 
 corporate evils of the day. But I am not now prepared to ap- 
 prove any new Federal commissions. I think the remedy is 
 rather to be found in brief and plain statutes, giving .speedy and 
 drastic remedies, vigorously enforced by competent and courage- 
 ous courts. Let us have less government by commissions and 
 more by courts. 
 
 To a certain extent of "bigness/' not yet fully determined 
 by experience, all the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale some more, some less do inhere in ei big 
 business." The wrong is not in size, but in the immoral uses 
 made of the power which size confers. The evils and the prob- 
 lems are moral, not material, and should be studied from that 
 standpoint. 
 
 E. Clarence Aiken, Attorney-at-Law, Auburn, N. Y. 
 
 Lack of confidence, occasioned by enforcement of the Sher- 
 man Law, has caused anxiety and uncertainty among business 
 men. The Sherman Law cannot be regarded as clear and work- 
 able and cannot be enforced without injury to legitimate busi- 
 ness. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law and the enactment 
 of a law making criminal certain specified practices. Kailroads 
 should bo allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade 
 unions should be excepted from the operation of the Sherman 
 Law, and combinations of farmers, to secure fair prices for pro- 
 ductions, ought to be permitted. T favor Federal license and 
 an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 H. B. Anderson, Attorney-at-Law, Memphis, Tenn. 
 
 Where there is neither fraud contemplated against investors 
 nor oppression against the public, merger of corporations and 
 trade agreements should be permitted as a matter of course. 
 Fraud and oppression should be the two questions looked into 
 by the regulating authorities. Modern machinery makes busi- 
 ness on a large scale, under one management, inevitable. 
 
 I favor Federal license, provided national presidential poli- 
 tics be kept out. I believe in government regulation and in 
 publicity. Under proper supervision holding companies are a 
 needed modern convenience. 
 
453 
 
 C. S. Thomas, Attorney-at-Law, Denver, Col. 
 
 I favor Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. Let each State make and enforce its own laws deal- 
 ing with foreign corporations doing business within its bounds, 
 without any Federal interference. 
 
 I do not regard the Sherman La\v as clear and workable. 
 The courts are now the arbiters of business and have assumed 
 the right to determine each combination on its own merits. The 
 Sherman Law should either be repealed or radically amended. 
 I believe that Mr. Samuel Untermyer has outlined the course 
 which legislation should take upon this subject. I would favor 
 an Interstate Trade Commission, provided it could be free from 
 the interference of the courts. Disturbed business conditions 
 are due, in my judgment, to many causes. Those which inevi- 
 tably bring about business reaction from active times predomi- 
 nate. The pendulum must swing as far on one side as it swung 
 on the other. 
 
 Will J. Watson, Attorney-at-Law, Chattanooga, Tenn. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation for companies doing an 
 interstate business. State legislatures have been just about as 
 great competitors in the proposed methods of incorporation as 
 the average corporation themselves. This should not be per- 
 mitted. The government should grant all charters for inter- 
 state corporations. I am not opposed to holding companies, 
 but think they should be controlled by national legislation or a 
 strict enforcement of existing laws. I favor government regula- 
 tion of capitalization, publicity for commercial corporations 
 and an interstate Trade Commission. On the subject of " better 
 protection against industrial accidents," one of the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale, there should 
 be national legislation requiring the defense of contributory 
 negligence to be specifically pleaded to make it available in 
 interstate railway cases. 
 
 Joseph Hansell Merrill, Attorney-at-Law and ex-Judge of 
 Circuit Court, Thomasville, Ga. 
 
 Real value of all stocks, for all bonds, honesty, publicity, 
 and only a revenue tariff on articles competing with the large, 
 strong corporations, are the great needs of the country to-day. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ni'ss, and the arousing of the States to their duty. Unfair com- 
 petition and restraint of trade should be dealt with by laws 
 forbidding specified practices. Put in what we know are bad 
 now and add to them as experience prompts. 
 
 Admitting that the advantages claimed for those doing busi- 
 ness on a large scale are all real, the only danger is to deter 
 individual effort, personal initiative, which is the best char- 
 acteristic of the Anglo-Saxon. 
 
454 
 
 Robert E. Huff, Attorney-at-Law, Wichita Falls, Tex. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, as clear and 
 workable, and I am not in favor of amending it. I consider it 
 feasible to return to old competitive methods in business. Bail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the approval and regulation of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission if the agreements are reasonable. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act. Farmers should be permitted to combine, if necessary, 
 to secure fair prices for their products. 
 
 I am not in favor of either national incorporation or Fed- 
 eral license for companies engaged in interstate commerce. I 
 think the United States government has too much power now. 
 Unfair competition and restraint of trade should be dealt with 
 by statutes expressly forbidding specific practices. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization; corporations of over 
 $100,000,000 should be prohibited. I favor laws for the protec- 
 tion of minority stockholders and to prevent the exploitation of 
 investors. 
 
 Frederick F. Faville, Attorney-at-Law, Storm Lake, Iowa. 
 
 I favor a Federal incorporation act by which the government 
 will have the power to ascertain the true conditions of corpora- 
 tions engaged in interstate business; to ascertain the truth as 
 to overcapitalization, etc., and to ascertain the facts as to earn- 
 ings on a true basis of value. While admitting the advantages 
 claimed for those doing business on a large scale, still the " busi- 
 ness on a large scale" should be under Federal supervision. 
 Whether national incorporation or Federal license is adopted, 
 there must be a system of Federal supervision and publicity as 
 to true values of corporate stocks. I favor increased penalties 
 under the Sherman Act and special statutes prohibiting certain 
 definite practices. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion and provide for publicity applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Ike W. Crabtree, Attorney-at-Law, Memphis, Tenn. 
 
 I am opposed to large aggregations of capital under one con- 
 trol, except such as may be the natural and legitimate increase 
 incident to the operations of a single business or enterprise. 
 Mergers are dangerous to the people and should not be allowed. 
 Public control of production and prices is much to be desired. 
 Under proper legislation it can be had. 
 
 I prefer national incorporation under laws giving the Fed- 
 eral or National Government absolute power to regulate. 
 
 State legislatures are more susceptible of domination by 
 the " interests " than Congress ; and the Congress is made up 
 of higher class men than legislatures, so that the people get 
 better service from Congress than from their own legislatures. 
 
455 
 
 Jonathan Taylor, City Solicitor, Akron, Ohio. 
 
 My judgment is that there is needed, not so much additional 
 legislation, as the maintenance in office of good men devoted 
 to the interests of the State as a whole, rather than to the inter- 
 ests of individuals. In short, we need less legislation and more 
 enforcement of existing laws. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies in interstate business, 
 additional legislation supplementing the Sherman Act and im- 
 posing jail sentences upon its violators. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and laws should be enacted calling for 
 publicity applied to commercial corporations. I favor an Inter- 
 state Trade Commission, with powers not unlike those now en- 
 joyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in relation to 
 common carriers. In regard to advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale, I question the claim of steadier 
 employment and at better wages ; I also doubt better protection 
 against accidents. 
 
 Cecil Barnes, Attorney-at-Law, Miller, Starr, Packard & 
 Peckham, Chicago, 111. 
 
 The uncertainty as to how much regulation the "trusts" 
 will finally be subjected to and as to what combination is law- 
 ful under the present laws is largely responsible, in my judg- 
 ment, for disturbed business conditions. So far as the amount 
 of regulation of large corporations goes, I should favor more 
 regulation than is now attempted, but along other lines. I am 
 against the Sherman Act not as too radical, but as at once unfair 
 to capital and not radical enough to really protect the rest of 
 the community. I favor national incorporation, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. The Sherman Law should 
 be repealed, provided other regulation be substituted. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act. Combinations of farmers should be permitted under 
 proper restrictions. 
 
 Everett W. Pattison, Attorney-at-Law, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 In my opinion, combinations have come to stay. Further- 
 more, I don't believe that business methods can be eradicated 
 by legislation. Some way will ultimately be found by such 
 combinations to evade the most carefully worded laws and the 
 most stringent provisions of such laws. Publicity, control, super- 
 vision in that direction lies the remedy for the evils of com- 
 bination. In my opinion, the advantages claimed for those 
 doing business on a large scale are probably all valid, and should 
 not be lightly rejected. I believe they may all be retained 
 through proper governmental control. I am in favor of an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. I know of no better way in 
 which the government can exercise the necessary control. 
 
456 
 
 C. P. Black, Attorney-at-Law, Lansing, Mich. 
 
 While I believe there should be laws enacted to prevent the 
 strong from oppressing the weak, 1 still believe there is great 
 danger in the enactment of statutes until it is generally de- 
 manded that such statutes should be enacted. In all hasty legis- 
 lation we find that the ones for whom such legislation is 
 intended usually are left outside the breastworks. 
 
 I certainly -do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 No commission can ever overcome the law of gravitation, nor 
 can they regulate prices for the benefit of " all the people." I 
 would prefer, if necessary, that corporations doing interstate 
 business should take out a Federal license, but I am opposed 
 to Federal incorporation. I do not believe in holding companies, 
 as the inevitable result is to give some one an unfair advantage. 
 I am opposed to every species of combination which may result 
 in a monopoly. 
 
 John S. Sheppard, Jr., Lawyer, 26 Liberty Street, New York 
 City. 
 
 Business disturbance is due principally to the great dis- 
 turbance of credit necessarily incident to continuous govern- 
 mental attack on what has come to be regarded as the only 
 feasible method of doing business, i. e., combination. 
 
 The history of all attempts to make or stop competition 
 by governmental mandate, seems to demonstrate conclusively 
 the futility of any such effort. Moreover, the competitive sys- 
 tem has not produced good results where it has thriven nat- 
 urally. The natural current being now against that system 
 and toward combination, we should allow the combinations. 
 1 T we do allow them, we must see to it that their tremendous 
 power is not abused. The only method of accomplishing that 
 socms to me to be Federal regulation as suggested in Question 
 10, notwithstanding the enormous strain added to our already 
 overworked Federal government. 
 
 Edgar Watkins, Lawyer, not employed by any trust, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 The so-called trusts are but the result of an economic desire 
 and necessity to reduce cost. These organizations have reduced 
 cost to themselves, and sometimes to the public; but they have 
 gained great power which they have frequently abused, to the 
 injury of their legitimate competitors and the public. Let us 
 retain the economic advantage and prevent the injury. I favor 
 a national incorporation for companies doing an interstate busi- 
 ness and national regulation by a commission. Transportation 
 corporations should have no interest in anything but transporta- 
 tion. Holding companies for industrial or mercantile corpora- 
 tion?, with proper regulation, would not be objectionable. 
 
457 
 
 Herbert L. Satterlee, Lawyer and Manufacturer, 120 Broad- 
 way, New York City. 
 
 In your judgment, what caused or causes the present dis- 
 turbed business conditions? 
 
 The lack of intelligence or honesty, or both, with which a 
 majority of the newspapers of the country have presented busi- 
 ness questions to the people, thus creating a public opinion, 
 which has influenced men in political life during the past ten 
 years. The modern business corporation is as much a necessary 
 product of 20th century development as the 20-story building 
 20 separate one story buildings would mean high rents. 
 
 Business associations are at present the only ones penalized. 
 
 There is already too great a tendency to increase governmen- 
 tal control and create artificial limitations to trade. 
 
 C. A. Miller, Attorney-at-Law, Bolivar, Tenn. 
 
 I think the greatest mistake our government has made since 
 its inception is allowing private or corporate ownership of the 1 
 railroads, telephones and telegraphs. The United States Con- 
 stitution, article I, section 8, sub-section 7, gives Congress 
 power over post-offices and post-roads. I think that it was 
 intended by the fathers of this republic that the post-roads 
 should belong to the government, and the railroads are the mod- 
 ern post-roads. Therefore it would have been best for the gov- 
 ernment to have owned the same. But inasmuch as the other 
 is now a fixed policy, I am opposed to hampering the free 
 exercise of franchises, on the principle that the least of statutory 
 government is the best for business, as well as for the people. 
 I am opposed to any further extension of bureaucracy. 
 
 Nelson W. Evans, Attorney-at-Law, Portsmouth, Ohio. 
 
 I favor national -incorporation for companies doing interstate 
 business. I am opposed to holding companies. Congress should 
 enact laws providing for government regulation of capitaliza- 
 tion and also for publicity as applied to commercial corporations 
 through a commission to be appointed for that purpose. I favor 
 allowing all manner of combinations and regulating them as in 
 Canada. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates, and I see no objection to combinations on the 
 part of farmers, if regulated. ' I favor a national incorporation 
 law, Federal license and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Charles M. Wilson, Attorney-at-Law, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. At the same time I suggest that if the Commission 
 on Uniform State Laws would take up the subject of a uniform 
 incorporation act, something might be accomplished. I am 
 opposed to holding companies. Each State should regulate 
 capitalization. I do not favor an Interstate Trade Commis- 
 sion. 
 
45S 
 
 William Edenborn, Louisiana Railway and Navigation 
 Company, Shreveport, La. 
 
 I prefer a Federal license for companies doing interstate 
 business. As State and interstate commerce is interdependent, 
 the Federal law should require State railroad commissions io 
 obtain approval from the Interstate Commission of proposed 
 changes in rates. Where over 40 per cent, of a raw material 
 is under one control, the price of its product should be fixed 
 by the Commerce Court. I favor laws preventing holding com- 
 panies, or that holding companies sell at prices fixed by the 
 Commerce Court. The government should regulate capitaliza- 
 tion, but with a liberal construction toward new enterprises. 
 
 R. H. Sansom, Attorney-at-Law, Knoxville, Tenn. 
 
 I do not favor Federal legislation, when possibly avoidable, 
 on subjects adequately controllable by uniform State legislation. 
 Xor do I favor commissions where possibly avoidable. These 
 matters, where possibly within the bounds of practical accom- 
 plishment, should be left where in my judgment they properly 
 J3elong, with the legislative and judicial departments of govern- 
 ment for enactment, construction and enforcement. 
 
 I am impressed with the feasibility of a uniform incorpora- 
 tion act by all the States, broad enough and strong enough to 
 afford ample remedy for the correction of evils now existing. 
 
 J. Walter Lord, Keech, Wright & Lord, Lawyers, Balti- 
 more, Md. 
 
 I regard the holding company as an essential factor in indus- 
 trial development. The evils incidental to holding companies 
 could, I think, be prevented by subjecting companies owning 
 stock in a company doing interstate trade to the supervision 
 and control of a commission like the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission. I would favor express prohibition of specified prac- 
 tices amounting to unfair competition, but not restraint of trade. 
 I think the courts afford sufficient protection to minority inter- 
 ests. 
 
 John W. Green, Attorney-at-Law, Knoxville, Tenn. 
 
 The States have demonstrated, by their legislation and by 
 their non-enforcement of such legislation as they have, their 
 inability to properly control and regulate big corporations. It 
 is as necessary to regulate these powerful interests as it is to 
 regulate railroads, and an Interstate Trade Commission would 
 seem to be the proper method. I favor Federal incorporation 
 and publicity for companies doing an interstate business. The 
 government should regulate capitalization and should provide 
 adequate protection for minority stockholders of interstate cor- 
 porations. 
 
459 
 
 Allen Hollis, Attorney-at-Law, Concord, N. H. 
 
 The Sherman Law is clear but not workable, so far as pre- 
 venting or correcting the trust evil. The Sherman Law should 
 be amended to define unlawful acts and, if possible, to provide 
 for conviction of individual violators. Trade unions should be 
 excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act, but should be 
 restricted by some similar law. I favor a Federal license law 
 for regulation purposes, and an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 if made up of uncontrolled men. Political agitation, and 
 anxiety about the tariff, has caused an unsettled feeling among 
 business men. 
 
 Marquis Eaton, Attorney-at-Law, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for interstate business. As to hold- 
 ing companies, I do not believe in incorporation for the sole 
 purpose of holding the stocks of other companies, but the inci- 
 dental power to hold stocks should not be denied to corporations. 
 ] prefer the Sherman Law, as recently interpreted, for dealing 
 with unfair competition and restraint of trade. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization, but along broad lines. Pub- 
 licity should be applied to commercial corporations through an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Hollis R. Bailey, Attorney-at-Law, Boston, Mass. 
 
 AY hen corporations become very large the public welfare de- 
 mands that they be under government control. I favor national 
 incorporation and an Interstate Trade Commission. I am op- 
 posed to holding companies. The Sherman Law should be 
 repealed, and legislation should be enacted providing for gov- 
 ernment regulation. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation, and publicity should be applied to commercial corpora- 
 tions. 
 
 Charles L. Jewell, Attorney-at-Law, New Albany, Ind. 
 
 I favor Federal legislation for companies doing interstate 
 business. I am opposed to holding companies. The government 
 should regulate capitalization, and laws should be passed call- 
 ing for publicity for commercial corporations. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. I regard the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Act as adequate to deal with unfair competition and 
 restraint of trade. 
 
 Tom J. McGrath, Lawyer, St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 I favor Federal supervision, which will adequately control 
 the actions of corporations doing an interstate business. If 
 not repealed, the Sherman Law should be amended to obviate 
 the possibility of usurpation of legislative powers by the judi- 
 f-iar} r . Uncertainties in the laAv are the causes of any existing 
 disturbance. 
 
400 
 
 Charles H. Hamill, Attorney-at-Law, Rosenthal & Hamill, 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to arrested inflation; 
 an unwise currency system; extravagant living. The Sherman 
 Law has not been made clear and workable, and I favor its 
 repeal. If the Sherman Law is to be amended, combinations 
 should be allowed, with only enough governmental regulation 
 to prevent gross abuse of the power of great capital. How this 
 is to be done I am the only man who does not know. Eailroads 
 should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I 
 favor a national incorporation law, but not an Interstate Trado 
 Commission. 
 
 Dwight Lawrence, Lawyer, Chicago, 111. 
 
 A widespread feeling throughout the country that before 
 any sound basis can be reached an extensive and radical re- 
 vision of the tariff downward must be effected, also an exact 
 definition, either by Congress or the courts, of the rights of 
 individuals and corporations to unite to avoid ruinous condi- 
 tions, keeps business in an unsettled state. Whether these 
 definitions would be wise and proper, would not be of -as much 
 importance as that they shall be established with as little delay 
 as possible, and with the maximum precision. 
 
 Joseph H. Defrees, Lawyer, Chicago. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to a feeling of un- 
 certainty both on the part of large concerns engaged in inter- 
 state commerce and of the public, including the public's rep- 
 resentatives, as to their respective rights and duties under the 
 Sherman Law. This brings fear to business, which is aided, 
 owing to our wretched currency system, by keen recollection 
 of the helplessness of business in times of financial panic. 
 
 T. P. Warlow, Attorney-at-Law, Orlando, Fla. 
 
 Laws, no matter how good, will never work as they should 
 until we have judges who are as tender of the rights of humanity 
 as they are of moneyed interests. We have no evidence down 
 here of disturbed business conditions. Of course the uncertainty 
 of the application of the Sherman Law to big interests is un 
 .settling. I favor a Federal license law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. 
 
 J. C. Hutchins, Law Offices, Hutchins & Baird, Chicago, 
 111. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended by defining the par- 
 ticular things which constitute undue restraint of trade, and 
 by providing whether or not there is any limit on the propor- 
 tion of the total business in any line which a concern may do, 
 or on the growth or "size of an organization. 
 
40 L 
 
 C. W. Dillon, Lawyer, Fayetteville, W. Va. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the powers of big corporations and over- 
 conservatism following a wild period of speculation, during 
 which speculators and promoters strained their credit and many 
 men tried to get rich on borrowed capital, accounts sufficiently 
 for any present disturbance in business. Less radicalism in all 
 our legislation would be better for the country. The Sherman 
 Law should be amended to -make violations more definite and 
 specific, and should only prohibit unreasonable restraint of 
 trade. 
 
 H. G. Wagner, Lawyer, Temple, Texas. 
 
 Concentration of wealth; stock gambling; trusts and monop- 
 olies are the causes of business disquietude. There should be a 
 law confining anyone in the penitentiary, let it be one or more, 
 who combine their wealth for the purpose of restraining trade. 
 There should be more strict compulsory educational laws; also 
 laws against child labor; there should be a limit to the number 
 of acres that one man could own; also be a limit to a man's 
 wealth, but it should not prohibit him from making more than 
 the limit if he so desired. 
 
 Clarence A. Burley, Lawyer, Chicago, 111. 
 
 For a number of years past more ways of investing money 
 have been offered than ever before, and more stocks, bonds, etc., 
 have been offered than the annual fund for investments could 
 take. Some retrenchment is necessary in governmental, mu- 
 nicipal and all other expense, until the world's fund for invest- 
 ment overtakes the cost of enterprises already started. Busi- 
 ness disturbance is due partly to governmental interference, 
 partly overproduction, but mostly excessive borrowings for mu- 
 nicipal and corporate undertakings. 
 
 William Dillon, Lawyer, Dean of Law Department of 
 Loyola University, Chicago, 111. 
 
 I favor the Federal license plan for companies engaged in 
 interstate commerce. There should be additional legislation, 
 defining what corporations may and may not do. I favor laws 
 to prevent one company from holding stock in another company. 
 I favor, an Interstate Trade Commission, with powers not unlike 
 those now enjoyed by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 
 relation to common carriers. 
 
 Duff Merrick, Merrick & Barnard, Attorneys-at-Law, Ashe- 
 ville, N. C. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as now interpreted as clear and 
 workable, and I consider that a return to old competitive 
 methods in business is feasible. I favor a national incorporation 
 law and Federal license. 
 
Alex. W. Smith, Lawyer, Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Unrestrained competition has given way to combination and 
 co-ordinate effort. The problem is to regulate combination so 
 as to encourage co-ordinate effort, but require a fair division of 
 the fruits thereof to all concerned. 
 
 This republic never confronted a more serious crisis than 
 present business conditions present. It will require the best 
 brains and truest patriotism at our command to readjust our 
 constitutional limitations to the incredible expansion of civiliza- 
 tion,, following the subjugation of steam and electricity. 
 
 W. R. Hammond, Lawyer and ex-Judge of Superior Court, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 I prefer a national incorporation for companies doing inter- 
 state commerce. I think that to require national incorporation 
 the company should have at least a million dollars capital stock. 
 I am emphatically opposed to holding companies. The govern- 
 ment should regulate capitalization. I think a wise and prudent 
 regulation would do good. I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 George S. Payson, Counselor-at-Law, Western Railroad As- 
 sociation, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Uncertainty as to what " big business " can lawfully do and 
 threats of almost universal prosecution of a general character 
 are the causes of disturbed business conditions. I favor a repeal 
 of the Sherman Law, and believe that railroads should be 
 allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. I am not in 
 favor of an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 Walter S. Penfield, Penfield & Penfield, Attorneys-at-Law, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing interstate busi- 
 ness, because it will secure better control of all corporations. I 
 am opposed to holding companies, and I favor laws providing 
 for government regulation of capitalization and for an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 COMMERCIAL, AGRICULTURAL AND OTHER 
 ORGANIZATIONS. 
 
 Roland B. Woodward, Secretary of the Rochester (N. Y.) 
 Chamber of Commerce, writes: 
 
 We have members who are perfectly willing to answer the 
 questions submitted in your questionnaire, but believe that the 
 position taken by this board of trustees is sufficiently explicit 
 and constructive to voice our sentiments. 
 
 At a meeting of the board of trustees of the Rochester Cham- 
 ber of Commerce at the Chamber of Commerce rooms on Tues- 
 day, September 26, 1911, the following questions were put to 
 the trustees by President Albert B. Eastwood: 
 
 1. What effect, if any, do you think the congressional investi- 
 gations into corporations and other business are going to have 
 on the business and financial outlook and situation? 
 
 2. What effect, if any, are the recent tariff discussions and 
 the certainty of more tariff legislation next winter having? 
 
 3. What effect, if any, have the Supreme Court decisions in 
 the Oil and Tobacco cases had, and what is the effect on busi- 
 ness of the anti-trust law as these decisions leave it? 
 
 4. Is credit too much concentrated in the great financial 
 centres to the detriment of legitimate business men and busi- 
 ness uses throughout the country? 
 
 5. Most of all, what would you suggest as the best help now 
 toward permanent, stable and good business conditions, what 
 constructive policy or plan? 
 
 The matter proved of such interest to the trustees that the 
 following answers were formulated by five of the leading mem- 
 bers of the chamber and unanimously accepted as an expression 
 of opinion by the board of trustees of this chamber. Out of the 
 fifty-four trustees thirty-two were present at this meeting. 
 
 1. These investigations in themselves will only retard for 
 the moment the natural progress of evolution which has been 
 going on in adapting the business of the country to take full 
 advantage of the improved methods of communication which 
 now exist. Whether or not this evolution will be permanently 
 interfered with will depend upon the plan which is to be imposed 
 by the court upon the Tobacco Company to carry out the recent 
 Supreme Court decision. 
 
 2. Tariff discussions at best tend to unsettle business. Where 
 there is, however, certainty in tariff legislation, its effects on 
 
 463 
 
business are not bad. In the case of schedule X, for instance, 
 the clothing man knows that there is going to be a large reduc- 
 tion of the tariff. How much he does not know. The only 
 effect it will have on the clothing business will be to make the 
 clothing man more conservative in his purchases. 
 
 3. The decisions have caused the managers of concerns to 
 which the Sherman Act may possibly be applied to cease all 
 efforts towards betterments or extensions until they know where 
 they stand. This curtails business. As the anti-trust law stands 
 to-day it furnishes Congress the excuse for harassing every busi- 
 ness the other authorities may have overlooked. Under such 
 circumstances the prudent man will call in his outstanding cred- 
 its, reduce his organization to the minimum and await evidences 
 of returning sanity; at least one will. 
 
 4. The concentration of capital in large financial centres is 
 not detrimental to legitimate business at large. At different 
 seasons of the year money distributed all over the country could 
 not be. used locally for legitimate business purposes, therefore 
 there must be an outlet for surplus funds, and these outlets are 
 through our reserve cities where credit can be extended on de- 
 mand. Credit for legitimate business purposes must be on a 
 time basis. 
 
 5. The heroic measures of the government under the Sher- 
 man Act, if they were necessary, have served their purpose. 
 What we need now is a more constructive policy. If a corpora- 
 tion is acting in restraint of trade, treat it constructively; its 
 organization has an economic value to the whole field in which 
 it operates. Locate and correct the offending details; do not 
 disrupt the organization. Apply corrective measures where 
 needed; do not dimmish general efficiency by forcing disso- 
 lution. 
 
 Thomas G. Boggs, Secretary, Merchants & Manufacturers 
 Association and also Editor of " Baltimore," a maga- 
 zine of commerce, industry and civics, Baltimore, 
 Md. 
 
 In my humble capacity and observation, which has had some 
 advantages from my position and training, I am convinced that 
 great corporations have come to stay. They must be regulated, 
 and with publicity and proper regulation they will be all right. 
 I prefer Federal license, under suitable conditions, for com- 
 panies doing an interstate business, as I believe in the preserva- 
 tion of State rights. I am utterly opposed to holding companies. 
 It is a great scheme to beat the public. Overcapitalization is 
 the greatest evil, and capitalization should, therefore, be subject 
 to government regulation. I would like to see the same laws 
 applied to all corporations as are applied to railroads and 
 publicity, publicity, publicity! I favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
465 
 
 L. A. Jester, Real Estate, and Secretary, East Des Moines 
 Commercial League, Des Moines, Iowa. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not altogether clear and workable and 
 should be amended to make it more specific in its application. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. I believe in holding companies, with proper 
 restrictions. The government should regulate capitalization, 
 and laws should be enacted applying publicity to commercial 
 corporations through an Interstate Trade Commission. I believo 
 that the advantages claimed for those doing business on a large 
 scale may be secured, and that laws should be enacted to ensure 
 those advantages. 
 
 H. G. Krake, Commissioner, Business Men's League, St. 
 Joseph, Mo. 
 
 The readjustment of larger business combinations to more 
 practical methods ; the rearrangement of railroad rates and oper- 
 ating practices, together with a tendency toward greater con- 
 servatism in business, and the effect on employed classes and 
 others of small means of the advanced cost of living, are, in 
 my judgment, responsible for business disturbance. I prefer 
 Federal license for companies doing an interstate business. As 
 to holding companies, there is both good and evil in them; 
 under close Federal supervision, as would probably obtain under 
 license for interstate business, I would not favor going further 
 at present. I believe the Sherman Act is now exercising restraint 
 of unfair competition and restraint of trade and may prove suf- 
 ficient. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, in a broad 
 sense. 
 
 George B. Cardwill, Attorney-at-Law and Secretary of New 
 Albany Commercial Club, New Albany, Ind. 
 
 Bad banking laws; non-enforcement of the Sherman Law in 
 the past; political manoeuvring; lack of due publicity in regard 
 to the affairs of business corporations all these tend to create 
 disturbed business conditions. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and I 
 think it should not be amended at present. Combinations of 
 farmers for the purpose of securing fair prices for their prod- 
 ucts should be permitted. Railroads should be allowed to enter 
 into agreements affecting rates. I favor a national incorpora- 
 tion law and an Interstate Trade Commission. 
 
 I believe that the time has come for the national government 
 to more largely control industrial activities. Economically we 
 are now a nation and not a league of States. The national 
 incorporation law, if enacted, should be similar to that now 
 in use in England. I am inclined to favor holding companies, 
 incorporated by the national government. The government 
 
should regulate capitalization, but national incorporation can 
 and should cover this point and also cover publicity for com- 
 mercial corporations, the protection of minority stockholders, 
 etc. I admit the advantages claimed for those doing business on 
 a large scale. 
 
 George W. Pratt, for Boston Stationers' Association, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 We favor a national incorporation act for companies doing 
 an interstate business. We are opposed to laws preventing one 
 company from hol'ding stock in another company. A proper 
 national incorporation act ought to take care of capitalization 
 and also of the protection of minority stockholders and investors. 
 
 C. F. Grantz, Clerical Agent and Secretary of the Civil Im- 
 provement Commission of the Moline Club, Moline, 
 111. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and be- 
 lieve that it should be amended to provide for more publicity. 
 Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 rates. I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license 
 and an Interstate Trade Commission. I do not believe in hold- 
 ing companies. It is most important for the general welfare 
 that laws should be passed calling for publicity for commer- 
 cial corporations, so far as the public are entitled to know what 
 they are doing. These are only my personal opinions. 
 
 Walter F. Hayhurst, Attorney-at-Law and Secretary of 
 Lambertville Business League, Lambertville, N. J. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are caused by (1) overcapi- 
 talization, which is in effect at its best a capitalization of the 
 future and tends to promote speculation; (2) speculation in gen- 
 eral; (3) the Stock Exchange methods of dealing in "futures," 
 which tend to prevent the regulation of prices by " supply and 
 demand." 
 
 The great need is a new principle of personal conscience 
 in business, in place of certain artificial rules that are in gen- 
 eral practice. Legislation cannot provide this fully, but may 
 promote the idea. 
 
 There is room for further clarification and later amendment 
 of the Sherman Act. I prefer no amendment for at least an- 
 other year or two. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, under further limitations. I favor a national incor- 
 poration law, with Federal license as an alternative. 
 
 Ultimately the Interstate Trade Commission may be a neces- 
 sity, but I am not ready for it. If all the advantages claimed 
 for those doing business on a large scale can be relied upon, 
 then competition between the large and small operator is out 
 
467 
 
 of the question; but I believe that the personal element results 
 in certain economies, skill and betterments that are distinctly 
 advantageous to smaller concerns. 
 
 I. C. Shinn, Farmer, Niles, Cal. 
 
 I find a very great change in the spirit of business from, say, 
 twenty-five years ago. Then there was a desire to " live and let 
 live," which is almost totally absent now. It may have been 
 merely the pioneer expression of liberality and fairness, which 
 has been now displaced by newcomers and harder conditions. 
 Retailers' combines raise the price of farmers' products and 
 restrict consumption, and often prevent the farmer from getting 
 a fair or living price. 
 
 I favor national as well as State incorporation in the case 
 of companies transacting interstate business. Every State should 
 make combinations in restraint of trade illegal and criminal. 
 I see no advantage in a holding company, in reducing expenses 
 of operation that cannot be attained in other ways. The hold- 
 ing company is really formed to get .some advantage of the con- 
 sumer. The government should regulate capitalization. The 
 great abuse of overcapitalization should be corrected by national 
 and State laws. I favor laws that would apply publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations. 
 
 I believe there is generally very great loss in many ways in 
 very large combinations, and that the economies are not greater 
 than in concerns of reasonable size. It is not by economies that 
 these immense concerns make their great profits, but by control 
 of the markets both sides of them I mean. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be amended in any particular 
 shown to be necessary, to enable it to reach all kinds of unfair 
 trade. Trade unions should not be excepted from the operation 
 of the Sherman Act. I can see no evil in allowing farmers to 
 join in _ warehousing products and securing loans on the same. 
 A holding company, or agreement to hold for a certain price, 
 should subject farmers to the same provisions of law which gov- 
 ern other similar agreements. Disturbed business conditions 
 arc due to artificially high prices caused by import duties, by 
 <?reat business combines in restraint of trade and Almost equally 
 bv retailers' combines. I favor an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers. 
 
 I. B. Blackstock, Farming and Manufacturing, Springfield, 
 
 Rank political meddling with business affairs is making the 
 trouble. I favor a repeal of the Sherman Law, and if "it is 
 not to Be repealed, then make it apply to everybody. It is 
 unfair as it is^ now. As to combinations of farmers', I don't 
 believe it possible to get an effective combination of farmers 
 sufficient to raise prices generally. 
 
468 
 
 O. Owen, Secretary, Board of Trade, Port Arthur, Tex. 
 
 I favor repeal of the Sherman Law in favor of a more in- 
 telligent but equally stringent substitute. The law should go 
 into greater detail, define its object better, put less strain on 
 the discretion of the court, recognize modern conditions which 
 have arisen since its enactment, and provide for Federal regu- 
 lation similar to public utility commissions. Railroads should 
 be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates. Trade 
 unions should not be excepted from the operation of the Sher- 
 man Act; but the principle of no-unfairness should be safe- 
 guarded by clauses recognizing that labor is not the same as 
 merchandise. I favor a national incorporation law; but leave 
 room for State activity, somehow, also. I favor a Federal license 
 law, but dot not tie the State's hands too much. I favor an 
 Interstate Trade Commission, twenty times over : we must come 
 to it and try to get honest men. 
 
 The wrongs done by greedy men of wealth and brains have 
 only been identified as crimes very recently by our courts; pos- 
 sibly those men themselves did not realize they were committing 
 crimes. Hence mere punishment, as for things always classed 
 as crimes, is not proper, nor is it sufficient. A burglar's jimmy 
 should be destroyed, but a mill should not be destroyed, nor an 
 intricate business organization. An intelligent correction should 
 be made by able men. whereby the mill and its management 
 shall go on, but without doing unfair, inhuman acts. 
 
 George A. Silsby, Secretary, Mitchell Commercial Club, 
 Mitchell, So. Dak. 
 
 The Sherman Law is, generally speaking, clear and work- 
 able; it takes time to fully prove any Jaw. hi many instances 
 it would not be feasible to return "to old competitive methods; 
 but competition should not be stifled by combinations. Let the 
 courts interpret the Sherman Law for two years longer, then 
 decide what changes, if any, should be made to produce proper 
 results to all in interest. " Should trade unions be excepted 
 from the operation of the Sherman Act?" Xo! N"o greater 
 menace to business threatens, and they should be amenable to 
 law, I favor a national incorporation law, if drawn on lines 
 not too rigid, and a Federal license law, not as a revenue pro- 
 ducer, but large enough to cover the expense of handling it. I 
 do not favor an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 
 Business disturbance is undoubtedly caused by the suits 
 instituted. That, temporarily, puts " big business " in a quan- 
 dary, not knowing just " where they are at/' When the courts 
 finally reach agreement, then all will know just how to proceed. 
 The sooner the status of all large corporations (and we need 
 them!) is fully established in law, the sooner adjustment can be 
 had, and everybody go to work intelligently and with full under- 
 standing of his vested rights. 
 
460 
 
 Milton T. Small, Farmer, Kalispell, Mont. 
 
 Because some receive what they don't earn and others earn 
 what they don't receive, business is not in the condition which 
 it ought to be. This condition, however, has always existed 
 to a certain extent, but only vaguely understood. Now we have 
 moved out into the light and see each the other as one really is. 
 The condition is plain; the remedy is still hidden. 
 
 Under the head of general remarks I move the election of 
 Robert La Follette as President and the creation of the office of 
 general superintendent and promiscuous adviser, and I move to 
 install therein William Jennings Bryan. I believe then we 
 would have something doing. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies engaged in interstate 
 commerce. Federal laws should only govern in a general way, 
 leaving to the State the details and local regulations. 
 
 I favor strict enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 
 criminal clause and all. Then we will see whether other legisla- 
 tion is needed. I believe that holding companies, or something 
 answering the same purpose, are necessary in order to make 
 the machinery of commerce run smoothly. They should be kept 
 under government supervision, and all their acts should be sub- 
 ject to public inspection and inquiry. 
 
 A. C. Pleydell, Secretary, New York Tax Reform Associa- 
 tion and National Tax Association, New York City. 
 (This reply is not official.) 
 
 I do not believe in either national incorporation or Federal 
 license for companies doing an interstate business. The States 
 can attend to this; besides, mere incorporation gives no power 
 to oppress. I believe in holding companies for public service 
 corporations only, under regulations, because of the difficulty 
 otherwise of consolidating franchises and getting unified serv- 
 ice. I do not favor laws providing for government regulation 
 of capitalization. There is no harm in so-called overcapitaliza- 
 tion, which in itself gives no power of extortion. Perhaps laws 
 for the protection of minority stockholders might be desirable. 
 Let investors look out for their own investments so far as earn- 
 ing power and risk are concerned. I do not favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. 
 
 F. L. Yale, Secretary, Commercial Club, Joplin, Mo. 
 
 I prefer Federal license for companies doing an interstate 
 business. I am in favor of additional legislation explaining 
 the meaning of the Sherman Law to the United States Supreme 
 Court. I am opposed to holding companies. I prefer statutes 
 expressly forbidding specified practices in connection with unfair 
 competition and restraint of trade. The government should 
 regulate capitalization, and laws should be passed calling for 
 publicity applied to commercial corporations. 
 
470 
 
 Kilpatrick Bros., by R. J. Kilpatrick, General Contractors, 
 Farmers and Stock Raisers, Beatrice, Neb. 
 
 Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law? Yes. Enact 
 a law, in lieu of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, under which 
 business could be transacted at home and abroad of any magni- 
 tude, encouraging honest enterprise and the upbuilding of our 
 institutions in the largest possible way. Kestore confidence; 
 employ capital and labor, and give our people the great pros- 
 perity they are entitled to. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to lack of confidence, 
 caused largely by the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, under which it 
 seems impossible to do a legitimate business. Capital seems to 
 prefer to remain idle rather than to be put into business that 
 might result in a loss of the original investment and perhaps 
 place the owner in the penitentiary. If the United States Steel 
 Company is an illegal combination, it would seem impossible to 
 form a legal corporation under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 
 We favor national incorporation and an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission. 
 
 W. B. Dickerman, Farmer, Mamaroneck, N. Y. 
 
 The Sherman Law is not clear and workable and should be 
 repealed. Eailroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act, and combinations of farmers 
 to restrict production or to hold a crop for high prices should 
 not be rendered lawful. The suggestion that farmers and labor 
 unions should be exempted from the operation of the law, and 
 should enjoy freedom from prosecution, shows at once how un- 
 willing politicians are to attack any organization which con- 
 tains a large aggregation of voters. If politicians are to super- 
 vise business, to whom shall we look to supervise the supervisors? 
 Business conditions are disturbed owing to the endeavor by men 
 in public life, irrespective of party, to bring every branch of 
 business under political supervision and control. To this end 
 a false belief has been created and fostered that business men 
 if successful are not honest, and that the greater their success 
 the more dishonest they are. 
 
 E. L. Terry, Secretary, Yazoo Commercial Club, Yazoo 
 City, Miss. 
 
 I consider it feasible to return to old competitive methods 
 in business. It is being done in Europe. Trade unions should 
 not be excepted from the operation of the Sherman Act; com- 
 binations of farmers should be lawful. I favor an Interstate 
 Trade Commission. Complete control of the markets by large 
 combinations of capital is the principal cause of disturbance in 
 business. I favor laws for the protection of minority stock- 
 holders and to prevent the exploitation o"f investors. 
 
471 
 
 H. M. Pratt, Attorney-at-Law and Secretary of Fort Dodge 
 Commercial Club, Fort Dodge, Iowa. 
 
 I regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable and do 
 not favor its repeal. Railroads should be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting rates, subject to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. Trade unions should not be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act; nor should combinations of 
 farmers be permitted to restrict production or to hold crops for 
 higher prices. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law, Federal license and an 
 Interstate Trade Commission. The government should regulate 
 capitalization. 
 
 Godfrey Durst, Miller and Farmer, Danbury, Iowa. 
 
 The unprecedented number of middlemen, caused by the un- 
 warranted movement from country to town; the excessive tariff, 
 not only causing great accumulations of wealth and padded 
 prices, but tending to unduly overbalance investments in manu- 
 factures and manufacturing, as compared with investments in 
 actual producing enterprises, such as farming in every detail; 
 displacement of money from regular to extraordinary channels, 
 such as the automobile industry; and many other causes that 
 might be suggested, have let! to the present business disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 Wheeler & Dusenbury, Lumbermen and Farmers, En- 
 deavor, Forest County, Pa. 
 
 Business is fairly good with us, but so far as any trouble 
 exists in other directions, the attack on large corporations by 
 government authorities no doubt has something to do with if. 
 We regard the Sherman Law as clear and workable, and be- 
 lieve that it should be neither repealed nor amended. Rail- 
 roads should be allowed to enter into agreements affecting rates, 
 subject to the Interstate Commerce Commission. 
 
 L. A. Beebe, Secretary, Hutchinson Commercial Club, 
 Hutchinson, Kan. 
 
 To the question as to whether 1 favor an Interstate Trade 
 Commission, my answer is, yes. Herein is the key to the whole 
 trouble. Disturbed business conditions are largely caused by. 
 the banking interests. A half dozen men in New York can 
 start a panic any time they choose to clo so. 
 
 A. A. Webber, Secretary, The Batesville Board of Trade, 
 Batesville, Ark. 
 
 A Democratic House of Representatives and uncertainty as 
 to the coming election of 1912, are among the causes of the 
 present uncertainty. I favor a national incorporation law and 
 a Federal license law; also an Interstate Trade Commission, 
 with full and absolute power to regulate. 
 
472 
 
 L. L. McKim, Secretary, Ottawa Commercial Club, Ottawa, 
 Kan. 
 
 The timidity of capital in seeking investments where there 
 is prospect of radical changes that may affect the value of the 
 investment is largely the cause of business uncertainty. I favor 
 Federal regulation and publicity for companies doing interstate 
 business. The Sherman Law should not apply to trade unions 
 or to corporations operated without profit. I am opposed to 
 holding companies. The government should regulate capitali- 
 zation, and laws should be enacted applying publicity to com- 
 mercial corporations through a commission to be appointed for 
 that purpose. I favor an Interstate Trade Coin mission. 
 
 George R. Brown, Secretary of the Board of Trade, Little 
 Rock, Ark. 
 
 Inability to properly construe and execute the Sherman Law 
 so as to permit the great business interests of the country to 
 conduct their affairs without being dragged into the courts on 
 some " reasonable " construction of the law, is a cause of dis- 
 turbed business conditions. The Sherman Law should be amend- 
 ed so as to eliminate the trusts that operate in violation of com- 
 mon business methods, and at the same time to afford a fair 
 chance to those corporations which are conducted fairly and 
 honestly. 
 
 R. B. Eldridge, Secretary, Lead Commercial Club, Lead, 
 S. D. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be made more definite, more ap- 
 plicable to present conditions, etc. Present disturbance in busi- 
 ness is the natural accompaniment of the evolution through 
 which the country is passing, in the adjustment of " big busi- 
 ness" to right and justice, and the greatest welfare of the 
 greatest number. It is necessary that when a change is made 
 from sort of a laissez faire policy to one in which the general 
 good is considered, some friction, some distress, some disturb- 
 ance will accompany. 
 
 Thomas W. Hine (Humboldt County Good Roads Club), 
 Eureka, Cal. 
 
 I favor a national incorporation law and an Interstate Trade 
 Commission. The Sherman Law should lie repealed or radically 
 amended. Railroads should be allowed to enter into agreements 
 affecting rates. Business is disturbed by uncertainty as to the 
 tariff; by attacks on established business; unwarranted agitation 
 in the magazines and press, and by stirring up of class preju- 
 dices, producing distrust and uncertainty on the part of capital 
 and unrest in the labor world. 
 
473 
 
 J. F. Culver, Stark Bros.' Nurseries and Orchards Com- 
 pany, Louisiana, Mo. 
 
 The disturbing conditions exist only in the money centers; 
 the farmers have plenty of money ; the small tradesman is doing 
 well, and the banking situation is good. Hence, the disturb- 
 ance is merely among the money centers, which are subjected 
 to the rules of the Sherman Act. The same interests are also 
 affected to a certain extent by the agitation regarding tariff 
 legislation. 
 
 John E. Calhoun, Farmer, Cornwall, Conn. 
 
 Uncertainty as to the action of the government is disturb- 
 ing business. The Sherman Law ought to be repealed. A 
 national incorporation law should be enacted and also a Fed- 
 eral license law. Combinations of farmers, either to restrict 
 production or to hold a crop for higher prices, should not be 
 rendered lawful. 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 
 SOME EXTENDED DISCUSSIONS-INTERESTING 
 CONTRIBUTIONS BY LEADERS IN AMERI- 
 CAN THOUGHT AND ACTION WHO GO 
 MORE INTO DETAIL IN TREATING OF 
 THE REGULATION PROBLEM. 
 
 John Hays Hammond, Mining Engineer, Washington, D. C. 
 
 The magnitude of the corporation was in itself formerly 
 regarded as deserving of condemnation, but to-day corporations 
 are judged by their dominant purposes, their methods, and how 
 those affect the welfare of the people. The problem is, how 
 may the beneficial features of big business be maintained, its 
 inherent dangers be eliminated. 
 
 To remedy the potential evils of trusts the Federal anti-trust 
 law the Sherman Act was passed in 1890. With the vicis- 
 situdes of the operations of the trusts under that Act, down to 
 comparatively recent times, all are familiar. This much might 
 be said in general, that as far as the law affected combinations 
 in restraint of trade, the stifling of competition and the con- 
 trolling of prices, it has been during that period in a state of 
 somewhat innocuous desuetude. Under the present national ad- 
 ministration the enforcement of the anti-trust law has been un- 
 questionably more effective than during any preceding period 
 of its history. 
 
 It is not my purpose to discuss the aspects of present litiga- 
 tion incident to the enforcement of the anti-trust law, but rather 
 from the point of view of a business* man an advocate of large- 
 scale production to discuss a plan whereby the unquestioned 
 benefits of large-scale production could be preserved and the 
 danger of its abuse minimized, if not eliminated. 
 
 First of all, I believe that the basic principle of the Sher- 
 man Act should be maintained certainly until a new substan- 
 tive law shall be enacted to protect the interests of the public 
 against possible aggression on the part of big business. I do 
 not believe, however, there is need of a new law to supersede 
 the Sherman Act. While this act may be regarded as the key- 
 stone of the law governing modern industrial development, it 
 does need, I think, further definition and amplification by sup- 
 plemental legislation. Further definition is required because of 
 
 474 
 
475 
 
 existing uncertainty as to the legality of corporate procedure. 
 Amplification is necessary to prevent practices which may not be 
 inhibited by the present law, but more particularly for the pur- 
 pose of increasing the elasticity of the law to permit corporate 
 practices when of undoubted value to industry and not detri- 
 mental to the general public. 
 
 For the administration of the laws controlling industrial 
 corporations, I believe a Federal commission is necessary, such 
 as the Interstate Commerce Commission, which has so satisfac- 
 torily regulated interstate railway traffic. This commission 
 should consist chiefly of business men, and with them should be 
 associated experts on economic subjects and lawyers who have 
 had extensive corporation practice. To this commission consid- 
 erable latitude should be given in the exercise of its discretion 
 as to economic questions ; but there should be, at the same time, 
 a legal tribunal to which appeal could be made, especially on 
 legal issues, from the decisions of the Commission. 
 
 One of the most important benefits of Federal incorporation 
 would be the protection of the investing public, and, conversely, 
 the publicity connected with enterprises incorporated under such 
 act would be of undoubted advantage to the corporations them- 
 selves, in that cheaper capital could be obtained from the invest- 
 ing public for industrial development because of confidence in- 
 spired among investors. Publicity in corporate practice, as has 
 been said, "is what sunshine is to sanitation." We could with 
 great advantage adopt some of the features of the corporation 
 laws of other countries. 
 
 Competition is often called the life of trade, but excessive 
 competition results in violent fluctuation in prices and paralyzes 
 business; but a reasonable stability of prices is indispensable to 
 flourishing trade, to steady employment and fair wages. 
 
 One example of ruinous competition is that in the coal-min- 
 ing industry. The entire coal-mining industry, from the Mis- 
 sissippi to Virginia, is being conducted in many instances with- 
 out any, and in general without adequate, profit. We are ship- 
 ping and selling to-day to Canada and other countries millions 
 of tons of coal yearly at an actual loss to the operators. As a 
 consequence of this kind of competition, the operators are com- 
 pelled to leave unmined and irretrievably lost upwards of 40 
 per cent, of the coal in the beds. A far worse feature as the 
 result of this policy is the appalling loss of life in the mines 
 because of enforced economies in operation. If the government 
 were to regulate the price of coal so as to admit of an increase 
 of not more than from 15 to 20 per cent., by sanctioning an 
 agreement among mine operators as to the selling price, more 
 than one-half of the coal now lost would be conserved for future 
 generations. In view of the limited coal area of this country 
 und of the concern professed for the welfare of future genera- 
 tions, as evidenced by the popularity of the movement for the 
 conservation of our natural resources, such a policy would, I 
 
476 
 
 believe, be justified. Germany and Belgium have passed through 
 a similar crisis in their coal histor} r , but by the adoption of the 
 legalized " Kartell " system the industry in those countries is 
 not only now on a profitable basis, but is able to exploit nearly 
 all the coal in the coal measures, and with a greatly reduced loss 
 of life in mining operations. 
 
 The increased price of from 15 to 20 per cent, of the coal at 
 the pit's mouth would, in itself, be but an insignificant factor 
 in the total cost of the coal when delivered to the consumer, as 
 much of this coal, now sold at the pit's mouth for a dollar per 
 ton, after the cost of transportation and distribution is paid, 
 is sold to the consumer at from four to six dollars per ton. 
 
 This is one of many instances I could give where I believe 
 that government regulation would be of great value to industry. 
 
 In conclusion I would say that by legislation supplemental 
 to the Sherman Act, by Federal incorporation and by the crea- 
 tion of a Federal Industrial Commission. I believe that the 
 interests of the general public would be adequately safeguarded 
 and that the present uncertainty among business men and 
 investors would be dispelled, with the result of revived activity 
 in the industrial development of the country and the general 
 prosperity of the nation. 
 
 From an Address by George W. Perkins to the Chamber of 
 Commerce, Youngstown, Ohio. 
 
 It is within the memory of men now of middle age that 
 riots and bloodshed followed the introduction of steam and 
 electrical machinery that curtailed the use of hand labor because 
 workingmen had an ocular demonstration of the fact that these 
 machines would do with one or two men the work that had 
 previously been done by five or ten men. Therefore, they did 
 not guess or think; they knew that these machines were going 
 to throw men out of work. How could it be otherwise? There- 
 fore these machines were a menace to the workmen. They were 
 afraid of their power and far-reaching, harmful influence; they 
 were the invention of the evil one himself, and the only thing 
 to do was to destroy them, else they would work great harm to 
 the workmen and bring great benefit to the capitalist. 
 
 What happened? At first fear and prejudice got the upper 
 hand. Some of these machines were destroyed, but these ma- 
 chines stood for progress, and ultimately it was seen that in 
 place of their being a bane to the workingman they were a bless- 
 ing; they gave him shorter hours, better pay, less drudgery in 
 his^work, with more work for more men under more favorable 
 conditions; and now, almost without exception, the laboring 
 man is as much interested in the introduction of a new labor- 
 saving machine as is the capitalist. Reason and foresight have 
 overcome prejudice and fear. This will always be so, for fear is 
 founded on emotion, while reason is based on fact. 
 
477 
 
 That light has been won; that situation has been cleared up, 
 and now, at this moment, we are passing through almost a 
 parallel experience with our corporations; for, after all, they 
 are nothing more than great machines invented for doing busi- 
 ness more economically and expeditiously. They have created 
 fear and apprehension among the people, just as the other ma- 
 chines did, but in place of being destroyed by the workingman 
 these corporate machines are actually being torn asunder by 
 the Federal government itself. But reason and foresight will 
 again triumph over prejudice and fear, and ultimately the cor- 
 porate machine, which also stands for progress, will come to 
 be regarded not as a bane but as a blessing. As the steam and 
 electrical machines stood for progress in manufacture, so the 
 corporate machine stands for progress in method: one has fol- 
 lowed the other as a natural result and necessity. It is no 
 more possible to stop progress by legislation than it is to make 
 men efficient by law. 
 
 The development* of the last six months alone have made it 
 possible for us to see things a little more distinctly. The fog 
 lias lifted slightly, and at least three things are now becoming 
 clearer to all of us : 
 
 First That dissolution is not a solution, because we are 
 after substance, not form. 
 
 Second That the United States of America, in its quest 
 for commerce in the twentieth century, must have large business 
 concerns. 
 
 Third That the people are not afraid of the size of these 
 concerns, but are afraid of the methods and practices pursued 
 in the past, and determined that these methods and practices 
 shall not be pursued in the future. 
 
 Dissolution is not a solution; it may be a distribution; it is 
 a delusion. This fact is being demonstrated in such a practical 
 way by currgnL events that the utter futility of dissolution must 
 speedily become apparent to everyone, making it plain that we 
 must look in some other direction for relief and protection. 
 Therefore, if dissolution does not solve our problem, and we 
 must have large business organizations to cope with the large 
 affairs of the world, the question that confronts us is how we can 
 have large business organizations with justice to one and all, 
 with fairness to capital, to labor, to ability, to the consumer. 
 
 Our people have abundant and just cause for the deep- 
 seated feeling of hostility they entertain toward many of the 
 business practices of the past, and they are determined to put 
 a stop, among other things, to the exploitation of the many for 
 the onrich.ment of the few. The discussion of the last few 
 months makes it perfect! v clear that some of the practices that 
 nm<t stop are the following: 
 
 Firxt -Overcapitalization and stock watering of corpora- 
 tions. 
 
47S 
 
 Second The unbridled control by a few men of huge aggre- 
 gations of capital in business. 
 
 Third Secret, unscrupulous, blind-pool methods. 
 
 Fourth Unfair distribution of profits between capital, labor 
 and consumer. 
 
 Our people are intelligent, fair-minded and ambitious. While 
 they have determined that the practices above enumerated must 
 stop, they do not, for one minute, mean to put a stop to the 
 growth of American commercial development either at home or 
 abroad, and they look to the national Congress and to the great 
 business congress of this country to co-operate immediately in 
 finding a way to solve these problems, so that the evils of the 
 past can be eliminated and the benefits of doing business on 
 a large scale can be maintained. 
 
 At least two things must be done : Business must give up its 
 improper, harmful practices, and the law must readjust itself 
 to modern economic conditions. 
 
 Nearly everything in this country has been revised during 
 the past twenty years to meet changing conditions, except the 
 Sherman Law. It cannot escape; it must take its turn and be 
 revised not downward, but upward to a higher order of 
 efficiency and justice. The present chaotic condition must not 
 only be mended, it must be ended. 
 
 With all the decisions on the Sherman Law by various courts, 
 and with all the suits by the Attorney General, it is a startling 
 commentary on the utter futility of the whole programme that 
 within a few days after the filing of the last great suit the daily 
 papers announced that a certain business interest was going 
 to organize a company by putting six hundred stores together; 
 that this company was to be capitalized for $50,000,000 of com- 
 mon stock and $15,000,000 of preferred stock presumably for 
 the purpose of enlisting the public as stockholders. The com- 
 pany, on organization, would enter upon its career as a great 
 interstate and international business concern. 
 
 Under our present system there is nothing to prevent this. 
 In some one of several States there can be found a law under 
 which a company of this kind can now, at any time, be organ- 
 ized, its stock underwritten and sold to the public, and every- 
 thing will go along swimmingly until some one files a bill of 
 complaint against it because of some of its methods, and then 
 Federal authorities can swoop down upon it and rend it limb 
 from limb : but by that time who will be injured ? The men 
 who conceived the plan, who issued the stock and sold it to the 
 public? Not at all; the injury will come to the innocent third 
 parties, viz., a host of small stockholders; and the public has 
 made up its mind that it is precisely this sort of injury that 
 has got to stop, ancl they look to our Federal government to 
 stop it. 
 
 These people who are going to organize this company of six 
 hundred store?, our State officials and our Federal officials all 
 
479 
 
 know perfectly well that this company is not being organized 
 to do business in just one State or with the people of one State 
 or with the money of one State and that their customers are 
 not going to be from one State. They contemplate not only 
 an interstate but an international business, with stockholders 
 all over the world and with customers all over the world. Is 
 it not perfectly plain, therefore, that they should do business 
 with Federal and not State authorities? They should, there- 
 fore, be required by law to go to Washington, lay their plan 
 before some Federal bureau, have their capitalization and entire 
 purpose passed upon, and be given a Federal charter or license 
 under which they can proceed. 
 
 Once having been allowed to proceed, the people who buy 
 the stock will know that it is issued for full value; that the 
 business is a legitimate business, and that it has got to make 
 regular reports to the government. Then, later on, if a bill of 
 complaint is filed against this company, in place of proceeding 
 to disrupt the company and having the hardship fall on the 
 innocent stockholders, the law should be so plain that if the 
 complaints are well founded the officers, directors or employees 
 of the concern can be imprisoned exactly as we now do in case 
 of wrongdoing under our Federal system of bank supervision 
 and control. 
 
 The time to lock the stable door is before the horse is stolen. 
 
 We now have at Washington a Department of Commerce and 
 Labor. This department is just as much a part and parcel of 
 our Federal government as is the State Department, the Post- 
 Office Department, the Treasury Department or the Department 
 of Justice. Its head is a cabinet member, as are the heads of 
 the other departments; and yet in the turmoil of recent times 
 we seem to have almost entirely lost sight of this department. 
 Tt has been in Existence for nine years. It has what is known 
 as the Bureau of Corporations, which has amounted to little 
 more than a statistical bureau, gathering information for the 
 President and the Attorney General. 
 
 We should build up and strengthen this branch of the gov- 
 orninent by such legislation as will give it actual, live control 
 over interstate and international industrial companies. Such 
 companies should be required to obtain a charter or license from 
 this department before they could do business. As a condition 
 to obtaining such charter or license they should be required to 
 satisfy this department as to their capitalization. They should 
 be required to submit to the department, at frequent intervals, 
 exhaustive statements and reports as to their methods of doing 
 business, cost of production, price of marketing product, treat- 
 ment of competitors, compensation and treatment of labor and 
 treatment of consumer. In short, they should be required to 
 lav bare to this department all transactions of every kind and 
 nature. This department, in turn, should make public, at fre- 
 
480 
 
 queii t intervals, its findings regarding these corporations, under 
 u regular system of inspection and report. 
 
 As one industrial business varies so much from another, 
 the only way we can finally settle many questions that are bound 
 to arise continually in undertaking the Federal regulation of 
 industrials is to establish at Washington, in connection with the 
 Department of Commerce and Labor, a court, commission or 
 board of some sort that will have large, broad powers to pass 
 upon the various complex and intricate questions that must 
 necessarily arise from day to day in the changing conditions that 
 surround business affairs in the progress and evolution of the 
 world. These questions will not necessarily be legal questions. 
 
 The questions in this department having to do witli indus- 
 trial affairs will be practical business problems rather more 
 than technical legal problems, and therefore this board should 
 be composed of practical business men. We should make mem- 
 bership on this board just as much the goal and ambition of 
 such men as the Supreme Court is the goal and ambition of our 
 lawyers; so that appointment to such a board would be regarded 
 by our young men, when they enter business, as the greatest 
 honor that could ultimately come to them. 
 
 This would soon give us in Washington a board of business 
 managers equipped by training and experience to deal with our 
 great domestic and foreign trade problems in the same broad, 
 constructive way that our Supreme Court deals with our larger 
 legal problems. Business questions need business men, just as 
 medical questions need medical men. 
 
 The situation demands immediate relief, and if Congress 
 cannot promptly formulate a new and comprehensive programme, 
 then the President, with the consent of Congress, should at once 
 appoint a commission to take up the great problem that con- 
 fronts us, and no further steps of a nature disturbing to busi- 
 ness should be taken by the government until that commission 
 has made its report. We have had commissions on the tariff, 
 on railroad capitalization, on postal matters, etc., and none of 
 these questions, when the commissions were appointed, were 
 as burning and vital as is this business question at the present 
 hour. 
 
 This commission should not be composed solely of business 
 men from New York or statesmen from Washington, but should 
 bo representative of all sections of the country and all interests, 
 because the question affects us all. 
 
 James M. Head, Lawyer, 59 Temple Place, Boston. 
 
 In answer to Question 1, will say that in my opinion the 
 Sherman Law as now interpreted is made clear and workable, 
 but whether or not this is the best method of dealing with the 
 problems presented admits of very serious doubt. As at pres- 
 ent construed, the courts must assume the duty and responsi- 
 bility of determining in every case upon the particular facts 
 
4S1 
 
 presented, whether or not in the exercise of the particular acts 
 complained of the trust, corporation, association or individual 
 has actually used its power either to so restrict competition 
 or to engage in such ruinous competition as to injure the pub- 
 lie or destroy a competition, both of which acts are made illegal 
 by this statute. 
 
 It is the use made of the powers which the trust, corpora- 
 tion, association or individual possesses, which makes its con- 
 duct criminal under this statute, and such conduct the courts 
 may be called upon both to prevent and punish. It is not the 
 mere possession of the power to injure which the courts can be 
 called upon to destroy in the absence of its abuse. 
 
 The enforcement of all criminal laws, and the restraint of 
 all abuses of power must be left to the courts, either upon the 
 government's initiative through the instrumentalities provided 
 for that purpose, or upon such information as may be furbished 
 by individuals. 
 
 There are any number of criminal offenses to which neither 
 the courts nor the legislature have been able to give specific 
 definitions, but which are well understood, and punishment in- 
 flicted for their violation when the facts are proven. Criminal 
 laws usually contain express prohibitions, and few, if any of 
 them, set out affirmative acts as not coming within their pro- 
 vision. 
 
 In answer to Question 2, would say by no means. Com- 
 bination and co-operation is fast taking the place of compe- 
 tition. No law which has ever yet been devised can force people 
 to compete who do not desire to do so. 
 
 Commercial warfare through competition is fast becoming 
 a thing of the past, and can be shown to be more destructive of 
 legitimate business than international warfare is of national 
 existence. 
 
 The business of this country having been built up dur- 
 ing the past thirty-five years on the co-operative plan, and on 
 a large scale must be continued along these lines and all efforts 
 to force a return to old competition methods is doomed to 
 failure, and can only result in hindering the onward march 
 of development, and retarding for a time that progress and 
 prosperity to which we are justly entitled. While old competi- 
 tion methods are out of date, modern monopoly methods can- 
 not longer be endured. Business must continue to be conducted 
 on a big scale for the benefit of and not to the injury of the 
 general public. 
 
 In answer- to Questions ,> and 4, the repeal of the Sherman 
 Law. without putting something better in its place, would be 
 n eriovons mistake. It rmVht, however, be so amended as to 
 <Vfme more clearly, if possible, the line of demarkation between 
 tho proper use and the nbuso of the great powers possessed by 
 trusts, corporations and individual. It must be made clear 
 that the mere possession of power to do wrong should not be 
 
4S2 
 
 made illegal, while those entrusted with unusual powers should 
 be held to the very highest criminal responsibility ror their 
 abuse. It is all nonsense to say that intelligent men do not 
 know whether or not they are intentionally using their power 
 to injure either the public or their rivals in business. Under 
 the competitive system the right to injure a rival in business 
 is regarded as' legal and a part of the game. Under the co- 
 operative system the exaction of an unreasonable profit, or the 
 destruction of a rival's business, are wrongful, and under the 
 Sherman Act are made criminal, and should be so continued 
 by making the directors of corporations personally responsible, 
 both civilly and criminally, for every illegal act permitted to 
 be done in the name of the corporation. 
 
 In answer to Questions 5, '6 and 7, railroads should be al- 
 lowed to enter into agreement affecting freight rates, subject 
 to the 'approval and regulation of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission, and the pity is that we have no similar tribunal to 
 which agreements affecting trade unions, and combinations of 
 farmers could also be referred for regulation and approval. 
 
 The whole trouble is that we have been taught to look 
 upon government either as an instrument of oppression or as 
 an instrument to be used for personal, selfish ends, instead of a 
 partnership in which we are all equally interested, organized 
 if or th'eir mutual protection .and benefit, and not intended 
 to be used to favor one class or set of men at the expense of 
 others. 
 
 When we learn to take this view of our government, the 
 recent decision of the Supreme Court in the Standard Oil and 
 Tobacco cases will come to be regarded as the most important 
 decision ever handed down by that great tribunal. It sounds 
 the death- knell of the competitive system of doing business 
 and ushers in the co-operative plan, in which all participate 
 to a greater or less extent through the restrainins;, regulating 1 , 
 and controlling , powers of government, in which all of us should 
 be equal partners, and none of us special beneficiaries. 
 
 Marvin A. Dean, Wholesale Grocer, Chicago, 111. 
 
 While doubtless the Supreme Court in its decisions affect- 
 ing the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Com- 
 pany, had a clear conception of the situation and believed it 
 had made clear to the commercial world that organization and 
 co-operation were permissible within reasonable restrictions, 
 and if the general public were able to interpret with any de- 
 gree of certainty the plan of operation the Court had in view, 
 it might be possible to adjust conditions to the necessary re- 
 quirements in such a way as not to limit the scope of business 
 enterprises of the country ; but it is our belief that to the aver- 
 age business man there is more of quiddity than certainty in 
 the regulations that are now being appli/d to business. 
 
483 
 
 A legitimate incentive to promote and support any desirable 
 business enterprise should be safeguarded, for the reason that 
 as soon as there is a lack of confidence, any enterprise depend- 
 ing upon general support will fail. 
 
 Interrogatory 2 : Do you consider it feasible to attempt to 
 return to what are commonly known as old competitive meth- 
 ods in business? 
 
 Answer: Co-operation, controlled by good business sense, 
 will secure better results for both dealer and consumer than the 
 competitive plan, for the reason that, under the former plan, 
 quality will be foremost in the mind of the manufacturer or 
 producer, while in the latter case quantity regardless of quality 
 would be the principal desideratum in most transactions. 
 
 Interrogatory 3 : Do you favor repeal of the Sherman Law ? 
 
 Answer: If an amendment to the law could be enacted, so 
 that all uncertainty in reference to the application of it could 
 be removed, and a working plan made clear so that all agencies 
 for the furtherance of the common good should be encouraged, 
 and a conscientious and persistent endeavor to work in har- 
 mony with Federal and State regulations should be prima-facie 
 evidence of a disposition to comply strictly with the law, then 
 we believe it would be much better to work under the law so 
 amended than to repeal it, as the public generally has come 
 to regard the law as furnishing protection in a measure against 
 the inroads of unscrupulous organizations. 
 
 Interrogatory 4 : See answer to Interrogatory 3. 
 
 Interrogatory 5 : Should, railroads be allowed to enter into 
 agreements affecting ra 1 es, subject to the approval and regula- 
 tion of the Interstate Commerce Commission? 
 
 Answer : The transportation problem is one of the most 
 difficult questions to be solved. Common carriers should be at 
 liberty to indicate the tariff necessary to cover their require- 
 ments. Some system should be devised whereby the relative 
 cost of equipment, operation and maintenance should be con- 
 sidered in fixing rates. Railroad officials are best qualified to 
 determine what the rates should be, but to prevent any excess- 
 ive charges for service, or the unfair treatment of any locality, 
 all tariff schedules should be approved by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission. 
 
 Interrogatory G : Should trade unions be excepted from the 
 operation of the Sherman Act? 
 
 Answer : There should be no exceptions in the matter of 
 Interstate Commerce, and the situation as it exists to-day does 
 not require that any exceptions be made. 
 
 Interrogatory 7: Answered as Xo. (>. 
 
 Interrogatory <S : Do you favor a national incorporation 
 law? 
 
 Answer: A corporation bcin^ a fictitious entity and, when 
 engaged in ordinary merchandising, is employed cither for one 
 or two reasons. 
 
484 
 
 First To enlist the support of capital without the assump- 
 tion of liability or responsibility; or 
 
 Second To perpetuate an industry. 
 
 Under the former head will be found combinations where the 
 unification of power has reached a point that the organization 5s 
 styled a trust. Such combinations are a menace to the common 
 welfare when by such organizations undue advancement of prices 
 are effected, and so long as the incentive for subscribing to the 
 capital stock of such organizations is the prospective liberal 
 return in the form of dividends, so long will there be danger in 
 permitting the incorporation of corporations in trafficking in 
 goods necessary for the common maintenance. Corporations 
 therefore should be confined strictly to public utility organiza- 
 tions and to the manufacture and distribution of patented 
 articles or articles where inventive genius has produced some- 
 thing useful and which has not been preceded by any article 
 similar. 
 
 Interrogatory 9 : Do you favor a Federal license law ? 
 
 Answer: A national incorporation law should be based on 
 a Federal license law, which should furnish sufficient revenue 
 to enable the government to examine carefully into the affairs 
 of every corporation, and to have the same control over all cor- 
 porations that it now exercises over the national banks. 
 
 Interrogatory 10 : Do you favor an Interstate Trade Com- 
 mission, etc., etc.? 
 
 Answer : Rivalry between sections would make it exceed- 
 ingly difficult to appoint a trade commission that could be 
 trusted to regulate commerce. Carefully prepared National 
 Incorporation Law with a general supervision and periodical 
 examinations, with provisions for the proper conduct of all 
 corporations, would be all that Avould be necessary. 
 
 Interrogatory 11: In your judgment, what caused or causes 
 the present disturbed business conditions? 
 
 Answer: Uncertainty. The people generally have no clear 
 understanding of the rights of traders doing an interstate com- 
 merce business. There is no encouragement for the employ- 
 ment of any endeavor in the matter of building up of an inter- 
 state business. Some plan must be devised that will lend to 
 our economic forces every inducement to develop. Ambiguity 
 should be eliminated from the law, and every enterprise for the 
 development of trade and commerce, without monopolistic tend- 
 ency, should be encouraged. 
 
 If the avenues of trade can be so clearly defined that one 
 can conduct an interstate commerce business with the certainty 
 of no interruption, then the energy and the ambition of the 
 people will hold this country in its proper place among the 
 advanced nations of the world ; but whatever action mav be 
 taken, the people should be i aught that while government super- 
 vision and regulation of commerce is desirable, it will neces- 
 sarily tend to the higher cost of living. 
 
485 
 
 C. W. Post, Postum Cereal Company, Ltd., Battle Creek, 
 Mich. 
 
 Cognizant of the importance of the movement for considera- 
 tion of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, I am impelled to treat 
 the subject more in detail^ and thus in part explain the con- 
 densed replies to your condensed questions. 
 
 The findings of the Supreme Court that combinations in 
 restraint of trade, with the purpose of controlling prices and 
 stifling competition, are unlawful, seems clearly defined as an 
 act in the interests of the people at large. 
 
 I can understand that it might be desirable for the govern- 
 ment to fix prices of transportation and perhaps of labor, but if 
 the combinations, either of capital or labor, were allowed to fix 
 prices for their own combinations, or organizations, and to kill 
 off all other combinations, or competing individuals, it would 
 result in a desperate form of slavery. 
 
 It probably would be desirable for the government to fix 
 maximum and minimum rates for transportation, based upon 
 an equitable income for the investors, but it would be unfair 
 to allow a combination of trunk lines to fix their own rates and 
 when other investors finished a competing line, the original com- 
 bination be permitted to put the rates down so low as to ruin 
 the new road. 
 
 I think shippers and the public generally would be satisfied 
 with fixed and dependable rates, even if they appeared a little 
 high, but it will not be safe to allow any organization in the 
 railroad or other business to dominate the situation and ruin 
 competitors. 
 
 This fact is even more apparent than we consider the organi- 
 zation of labor. 
 
 It is a desperate situation when a man cannot obtain em- 
 ployment without first making peace with the big labor trust 
 and paying in a weekly or monthly stipend, and being subjected 
 to the fines and other petty indignities imposed by the leaders. 
 
 As an illustration certain labor unions in Chicago call 
 strikes on buildings, because other labor unions have done part 
 of the work, or perhaps because individual workmen, not mem- 
 bers of unions, have worked on material entering into the con- 
 struction of the buildings. 
 
 Thus the builders are subjected to loss, the public subjected 
 to inconvenience and loss, and the workingmen tyrannized over 
 and prevented from earning a living. Such interference with 
 the business and constitutional rights of others is contrary to 
 the present laws, and no destruction of such laws should be per- 
 mitted. 
 
 An example of trust methods is shown in the typographical 
 union label affixed to the stationery used by the Civic Federar 
 tion. That label notifies the world that no printers outside 
 the trust would be allowed to print the stationery. 
 
486 
 
 Men who attempted to work independently in the New York 
 printing industry were harassed, assaulted and much violence 
 committed in desperate efforts to suppress all business and labor 
 outside the trust. 
 
 It is extremely doubtful that equitable consideration of this 
 question could come from men on the Civic Federation, com- 
 mitted heart and soul to the policy of dominating workingmen 
 and attacking those they cannot control. 
 
 The condition becomes even more deplorable when a com- 
 bination of men like the public servants of New York City com- 
 bine to force the people of New York to obey any and every 
 command of the Garbage Men's Union, and prevent the removal 
 of garbage by assaulting other workmen, until the public health 
 is menaced, hoping that under this pressure the city must yield. 
 
 Combination in restraint of trade is much more glaringly 
 exemplified by unions in attempting to stop the running of rail- 
 way trains, involving untold loss of property and lives. 
 
 Many business enterprises have been utterly destroyed by 
 boycotts, assaults and dynamiting of property by men " combin- 
 ing" and acting to restrain trade. 
 
 Such acts by the Labor Trust have been committed perhaps 
 a hundred or five hundred times, where like acts were com- 
 mitted ten times by combinations of capital. 
 
 All such acts, by men of any class whatsoever, are selfish 
 and tyrannical. They seek to deprive some other man of income 
 and to gather the extra dollars or emoluments to themselves. 
 
 Think it over and it will be seen that if either combinations 
 of labor or of capital were permitted to dominate the affairs of 
 mankind, as their leaders seek, then the things of this world 
 would only be enjo} r ed by the trust members and all others must 
 go without. 
 
 Labor unions or railroad combinations might fix their own 
 prices for their own service, but they should both be so abso- 
 lutely surrounded that it would be impossible for either of them 
 to control or dictate the acts of other combinations or indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 There are a good many things in favor of regulating the 
 railroad rates and the regulation by law of wages, so that when 
 a man desires to ship any commodity he will know what is nec- 
 essary to pay, and also when any. employer seeks the service of 
 a workingman he will know, without question, what rate will 
 be expected. I am not to be understood as advocating this 
 procedure, but refer to it as entitled to careful onsideration. 
 
 Naturally, the character of the services would be considered 
 in the fixing of the various rates in both instances. 
 
 You doubtless realize that when any change is proposed in 
 the conduct of social life, the effect of the change is liable to 
 be so far reaching that in order to do justice to all and injustice 
 to none the best intelligence the human race is possessed of must 
 be enlisted. 
 
487 
 
 Wm. H. Butler, Manufacturer, 142 West 2ist street, New 
 York. 
 
 With regard to the exploitation of producers and consum- 
 ers, my experience is that one of the greatest evils which small 
 businesses have to deal with is the free gift of articles or goods 
 (or certificates calling for them), to induce purchasing goods. 
 This is not fair competition nor is it fair to the community. 
 One instance will suffice to show why it is not. A manufac- 
 turer or seller of, say, dry goods, gives away with his goods a 
 gift of a lamp. This places the other manufacturers of lamps 
 at a distinct disadvantage, because if the manufacturer or seller 
 of dry goods is sufficiently large to make a great gift of lamps 
 it injures, if not destroys, the business of lamp manufacturers 
 other than the one whose lamps are being given away. It also 
 injures or destroys the business of the competing dry goods 
 manufacturers or sellers. A community is supported by its 
 trade and its taxes. There may be one hundred manufacturers 
 of lamps and one is making a good profit for the above rea- 
 son, and the other 99 are not. The favored manufacturer, by 
 reason of this unfair advantage, can "cut" into the trade of 
 the other lamp manufacturers. The taxes which should have 
 been paid by the 99 must be borne by the rest of the com- 
 munity, and in the event of any one of the 99 being by this 
 method driven out of business the workers must find other 
 positions or be supported by the community. I would cer- 
 tainly favor a law prohibiting giving away goods or articles 
 other than those manufactured or dealt in by the seller. 
 
 I believe that the law should say that the purchase of other 
 businesses should be for cash and not for stock, and that com- 
 panies should not be permitted to issue more stock than suf- 
 ficient to reimburse themselves for their cash outlay for such 
 purchases. 1\believe in laws that call for publicity for cor- 
 porations, and that all corporations should be compelled to rec- 
 ognize the rights of the minority by having incorporated in their 
 by-laws cumulative voting. 
 
 There is economy in producing large quantities and in dis- 
 tribution, which gives steadier labor and obtains the services 
 of able men, and large corporations having the advantage of 
 capital can purchase and control labor saving devices. The 
 small manufacturer can grow if permitted to buy these labor 
 saving devices and sell his goods. There are many labor sav- 
 ing devices which, patented or not, are purchased and con- 
 trolled by large corporations and which cannot be obtained by 
 the smaller manufacturer. Laws should be passed prohibiting 
 the control of any labor saving device, whether patented or 
 not, by any one concern, except where it was developed by that 
 concern. This in fairness they should be entitled to. Patent 
 laws should be so changed that the owner of a patent should 
 be compelled to sell everyone who wishes to use his patent at 
 
488 
 
 a price which would not be prohibitive, as the intention of 
 the law in granting a patent and giving the owner an ex- 
 clusive right to use it was that the community shall be bene- 
 fited,, and the owner giving exclusive rights in it to one person 
 or corporation does not benefit the general community. 
 
 I believe that many laws would be made unnecessary by 
 having a more correct method of taxation in the United States. 
 I believe that a majority of corporations evade proper taxa- 
 tion in the several States to such an extent and under such 
 circumstances as to make the publication of this evasion a na- 
 tional scandal. By reason of our complex government allow- 
 ing each State to .tax whatever it can find, corporations doing 
 interstate business largely escape taxation to the detriment of 
 those not doing interstate business. The tax laws should be 
 changed so that the tax should be on the gross output of a 
 manufacturer or merchant, whether that output was sold by 
 him or given away. As it is now, the tax is on the net result, 
 which, every business man knows, entices manipulation. This 
 would result in benefit to the smaller man who cannot afford 
 free gifts. I would not discriminate in this law, as I would 
 make it to cover all corporations and individuals. In addition, 
 this method of collecting taxes would be so simple that there 
 would be no likelihood of manipulation, and the correct tax 
 would always be collected. A manufacturer or seller who gave 
 away his own or other goods would pay the same taxes on 
 them as if they were sold, and this, to my mind, is apparent 
 as being of advantage to the community, as a manufacturer who 
 has a large stock of goods or advertising matter which he in- 
 tends to make free gifts of, expects the same protection of 
 the State for their value, even though he considers them of 
 no value to himself except in an advertising sense, and he 
 should pay taxes on them. It is a common practice to charge 
 all advertising matter or goods intended for free gifts on hand 
 as expense and thus reduce amount of earnings for taxation. 
 
 It is a common practice for large businesses in order to ob- 
 tain control of a trade in a certain section to reduce the sell- 
 ing price . of their product for a time in order to injure or 
 drive out competition, and then when the desired result has 
 been accomplished to restore the same prices or increase them. 
 This could be corrected, if not entirely stopped, by compelling 
 the seller to make all reductions apply to the entire United 
 States. 
 
 In my judgment, base'd on past experience and backed by 
 statistics, the one thing that is responsible now and always for 
 bad business in this country is the continuous agitation of the 
 tariff, and this can be remedied or corrected to a large extent 
 by having a law providing- that the tariff shall not be changed 
 but once in, say, every ten years. This would give us at least 
 eight years of good business. 
 
489 
 
 Amos K. Fiske, Associate Editor, " The Journal of Com- 
 merce and Commercial Bulletin," New York. 
 
 It will be more convenient to treat the claims of large scale 
 business first and the evils of combination and their remedies 
 as a single topic afterwards. 
 
 Nobody denies the advantage of large scale business in econ- 
 omy of production and distribution, if the scale is not too large. 
 There is a limit beyond which watchful supervision and effective 
 direction cannot go, under the best management,,, toward secur- 
 ing these results. The motive of self-interest becomes dissi- 
 pated and high salaries will not fully supply its place. More- 
 over a sufficiently large scale for the best efficiency does not 
 imply monopoly or the paralysis of reasonable competition. 
 
 A number of large, strong concerns in the same field under 
 fair competitive conditions may be even more effective, and that 
 without maintaining high prices for inordinate profit, arrogat- 
 ing all the advantage to the capitalists and swelling their wealth 
 at the cost of the community. All the advantages of improved 
 methods and utilizing by-products are quite as likely to be 
 secured under such conditions. Because some great trust has 
 grown up in control of an industry as it developed, and in the 
 process of slaughtering others has used the highest skill for 
 its own benefit in securing these economic results, it does not 
 follow that they would not have been attained by a large and 
 reasonably restrained competition in quite as great measure 
 without the attendant wrongs. Even if there were not quite 
 as great economic results so unequally shared, the benefit would 
 have been more widely diffused; and in any case the end does 
 not justify monopoly methods of attaining it. 
 
 The same argument seems to me to apply to the other 
 " claims/' The scale may be sufficiently large for efficiency 
 and economy without the " advantages " of monopoly for mon- 
 opolists, and under such competition as would properly go with a 
 large but not excessive scale there could be just as steady employ- 
 ment and good wages for labor, just as good protection against 
 industrial accidents, just as much command of foreign trade 
 probably more and better distributed and fully as high abil- 
 ity employed. Under the circumstances in which our great 
 combinations have grown up and secured advantages by keeping 
 others out of them, there is much fallacious post hoc ergo prop- 
 ter hoc arguing in regard to results, which might have been 
 quite as good from an economic and material point of view, 
 and much better from the ethical and social point of view 
 without them. 
 
 Turning now to alleged evils and proposed remedies. 
 The competition of States in bidding for the revenue to 
 be derived from incorporation by means of lax laws has been 
 a crying disgrace to our dual system of Republican Govern- 
 ment; and, unless it can be stopped and reasonably uniform or 
 harmonious State legislation based upon sound principles and 
 
490 
 
 methods can be obtained,, Federal incorporation will become 
 inevitable. Necessity will compel it in the interest of our in- 
 dustry and trade ; but the centralization of power in the Federal 
 Government is to be deprecated, and to be avoided if fairly 
 satisfactory results can be otherwise attained. It is a matter 
 to be treated with prudence, soberness and caution, and not 
 in a partisan spirit for political capital. There is no occasion 
 for haste until we see how a consistent application of the exist- 
 ing anti-trust law is to work out. If there should be a Fed- 
 eral incorporation act there would have to be an adminis- 
 trative board to see that the prescribed regulations were ob- 
 served. I see no reason why the plan of admitting State cor- 
 porations under the saine regulations by license for interstate 
 commerce should not go with it. One need not exclude the 
 other, and a test of both together might be well unless both 
 can be safely avoided. 
 
 The holding company inevitably tends to monopoly and a 
 scale of management beyond the limit of effective direction for 
 the best results. It is not necessary to business on a suf- 
 ficiently large scale. There are greater possibilities of evil 
 than of good in it. I do not believe that holding companies 
 are either necessary or desirable for the highest and best in- 
 dustrial and commercial development. 
 
 It is not yet demonstrated whether the present anti-trust 
 law, as now construed and being applied, is sufficient for pre- 
 venting unfair competition and undue restraint of trade, with- 
 out further legislation; and, until the problem is fairly worked 
 out on the terms now presented, I do not believe in complicat- 
 ing it with new and uncertain factors. I do not believe it 
 practicable specifically to define practices which are to be deemed 
 unfair, injurious, unreasonable, etc. And the contention that 
 men forming combinations or agreements cannot tell whether 
 they are violating the intent of the law or not seems to me 
 to be, consciously or unconsciously, sheer pretense. Men com- 
 monly know what they are intending or trying to do, and they 
 know whether it is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, and a 
 capable lawyer can tell them whether it is lawful or unlawful. 
 If they wish to observe the law they will find no great diffi- 
 culty in doing so. 
 
 I do not see how overcapitalization is to be remedied ex- 
 cept through regulation by law ; but it is always a serious 
 question what " overcapitalization " is. Every excess of capital 
 securities over actual capital in casli or value invested is not 
 overcapitalization. Sometimes to accomplish a great, perfectly 
 legitimate and exceedingly valuable enterprise which will re- 
 quire much time and heavy expense and a gradual develop- 
 ment of results to insure a return, it is necessary to capitalize 
 future prospects in order to induce the taking of risk. The 
 money may have to be borrowed on bonds on which interest 
 must be paid annually, and stock upon which no dividends 
 
491 
 
 can be expected for years may have to be offered far below par, 
 or even as a bonus, to induce the taking of the bonds. But 
 this is a question not to be left to the promoters or exploiters, 
 but determined by competent public authority under judicious 
 legal requirements. 
 
 I do not believe that present conditions would justify the 
 creation of a commission to administer new laws for regulating 
 commercial corporations engaged in interstate business, for the 
 protection of minority stockholders and subsidiary interests or 
 the prevention of " exploitation " of investors. It is doubtful 
 how far it could constitutionally be done. It is quite as doubt- 
 ful whether its working would be practicable, or beneficial if 
 practicable. It would be an experiment for which there is no 
 present occasion. Better " try out " such means as we have for 
 protecting against such abuses as are implied in this question, 
 or strengthen! them by judicious amendment, before resorting to 
 any such drastic bureaucratic measure, which would probably 
 prove either impotent or pernicious. It is always perilous to 
 try to do too much. One may succeed, -with disastrous con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Presumably what is meant by " exploitation " of producers 
 and consumers is, by means of combination or unlawful methods 
 extorting profit from the former by putting down prices of 
 materials and supplies, and from the latter by putting above 
 a normal level prices of finished products or articles dealt in 
 in trade. If this is not what is meant I do not understand the 
 proposition. If it is, it seems to be included under other 
 topics, and I would leave it to the application of existing laws 
 or such improvements in them as experience may suggest. I 
 see nothing specific to suggest now. 
 
 T. S. Adams^ Wisconsin Tax Commission, Madison, Wis, 
 
 A PLAN FOR REGULATING TRUSTS AND AMENDING THE SHER- 
 MAN ANTI-TRUST ACT. 
 
 I. 
 
 The fundamental desiderata of trust legislation at the pres- 
 ent time are as follows : 
 
 1. The legislation must be politically possible, i. e., some- 
 thing which the people will accept. 
 
 2. It must involve governmental regulation and hence the 
 creation of a new commission or the enlargement of the powers 
 of some existing commission, but the duties imposed upon 
 such commission must be limited in scope. Commissions are 
 neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor do they provide a cure-all 
 for all political evils. 
 
 3. There is abundant evidence that in some industries 
 monopoly is pratically unavoidable and that in others compe- 
 tition may be trusted to keep conditions wholesome. Both these 
 facts must be taken into account. 
 
492 
 
 II. 
 
 The plan hastily sketched- below is believed in a general 
 way to meet the conditions above laid down: 
 
 1. Permit the Sherman anti-trust act to stand substan- 
 tially as now framed with the modifications suggested below. 
 
 2. These modifications would provide that any combina- 
 tion or company should be exempt from the penalties and dis- 
 abilities provided in the anti-trust act, and should not be un- 
 lawful merely because in restraint 'of trade, if it submitted to 
 regulation and obeyed the following conditions : 
 
 (a) Promise to refrain from (or, if deemed better, fur- 
 nish evidence that it is not employing) unfair sellers' agree- 
 ments, unfair factors' agreements, malicious price discrimina- 
 tion, price discrimination between retailers who handle the 
 products of their business competitors and those who do not, 
 grant the use of ^heir patents on reasonable terms and with- 
 out discrimination, and in general refrain from a variety of 
 unfair practices which would have to be specifically defined and 
 enumerated. 
 
 (b) Submit to inspection by the commission hereafter pro- 
 vided for, and agree to keep its accounts in the form and man- 
 ner prescribed by said commission. 
 
 (c) If without indulging in the unfair business practice 
 above described it still retains control of more than, say, 40 
 per cent, of the business of the industry in which it is engager], 
 it shall submit to the regulation of its prices by the commis- 
 sion. 
 
 3. To enforce the above provisions a commission with pow- 
 ers similar to those exercised by the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission (or better, the Wisconsin Rate Commission), and tak- 
 ing over the functions of the Bureau of Corporations, should 
 be created. It would be desirable but I do not see that it 
 is essential to invest such commission with the power to is- 
 sue licenses to ensfa^e in interstate commerce. This feature, 
 I say, is not essential because even though the license device be 
 not employed there will still he sufficient inducement to bring 
 large business concerns under the law voluntarily, in the pro- 
 visions of the Sherman anti-trust act itself. Combinations 
 which accepted the conditions of the above act would he ex- 
 empt from the Sherman anti-trust act; combinations which did 
 not accept the above conditions should he vigorously prosecuted, 
 and if found to he in violation of the Sherman anti-trust act, 
 should he dissolved. 
 
 III. 
 
 The plan above suggested has the following negative fea- 
 tures which are believed to he important. 
 
 1. It does not bring every business concern engaged in 
 interstate commerce automatically under the control of the com- 
 
493 
 
 mission. 'To do so, it is believed, would be to impose upon a 
 board of fallible human beings an impossible task. It affects 
 only those companies liable to prosecution or which believe 
 themselves liable to prosecution under the Sherman anti-trust 
 act. 
 
 2. It calls for no repeal of the Sherman act a great po- 
 litical virtue while it does recognize in a sane way the fact 
 that there may be " good combinations " which are perfectly 
 willing to abide by reasonable regulation, provided they are not 
 attacked in an indiscriminate and unintelligent way. 
 
 3. It specifically refrains from taking up at this time the 
 intricate and difficult task of correcting at every point the exist- 
 ing corporation law. It may be wise eventually to provide for 
 federal incorporation and thus go far to rectify in a single law 
 the multitudinous defects of state corporation laws. But in all 
 probability no legislation so sweeping in character could be car- 
 ried through at the next session of Congress, whereas the trust 
 situation as distinct from the corporation problem is at an 
 acute stage. 
 
 Addendum : In view of the fa,ct that monopoly may occa- 
 sionally be established by processes other than contracts in re- 
 straint of trade or by the combination of business concerns 
 theretofore competitive, the Sherman act itself ought to be 
 amended by a brief statement to the effect that any corporation, 
 however created, which shall have acquired control of more 
 than 40 per cent, of the business of any industry shall ipso 
 facto be regarded as a combination in restraint of trade. 
 
 F. Conlin, Pres., S. L. Moore & Sons Corp., Elizabeth, N. J. 
 
 Should railroads be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission? The question is too broad to 
 admit of concise answer. The element of control of railroad 
 rates is to give all the same rates, and by so establishing uni- 
 form rates all are under the same conditions of competition. 
 It is better that all can figure on the same rate basis of freight, 
 and by so doing there will be a greater stability of prices. 
 The aim of the law should be for the greatest good ito the great- 
 est number and equitable treatment to both railroads and pub- 
 lic, giving the railroad fair opportunity for returns to the cap- 
 ital involved and the public the right to be treated on exactly 
 the same basis, whether a large shipper or a small shipper. 
 
 Farmers should be under the same control for the protec- 
 tion of the common good that now exists with railroads, and 
 that should exist with labor and with manufacturing interests. 
 There should be no class exempt from government control for 
 the common good. This ultimately means that our entire gov- 
 ernment and communities of interest shall become sooner or 
 later under government control of intelligent commissions, 
 
494 
 
 \vhose powers and standing should be equal to that of the Su- 
 preme Court. The money power of this country is becoming 
 so great that the possibility of that money power getting in 
 the hands of unscrupulous people requires a curb of some sort, 
 but this curb should not be a club, for there is a difference 
 between a big business taken care of by broad, able men, and 
 a big business run by men who have only one object in view 
 the grinding out of dollars regardless of the common good. 
 These conditions cannot be offset automatically by a law. They 
 must be controlled by the judgment of able commissions. 
 
 Excess in expenditures for development of railroad and 
 manufacturing facilities beyond the earning or investing power 
 of the country was the beginning of the present trouble with 
 business. Want of confidence on the part of the people, in the 
 money control, due to lack of integrity on the part of some 
 of the large capital interests, created a loss of buoyancy which 
 is essential to progress. The great rise in prices of commodi- 
 ties through a desire of everyone to get rich at once, and the 
 great extravagance created through inflated prices has put the 
 man of average income in a position where his expenses, if they 
 do not exceed, fully equal his income, so that his spending 
 power and investing power has been reduced to a minimum. 
 The adjustment of the ratio between earning power and spend- 
 ing power must become normal before the country itself is 
 normal. The capitalists, through dread of legislation and with 
 the desire of curbing it, have restricted developments both with 
 railroads and elsewhere, to such an extent that the manufactur- 
 ing interests of the country are suffering severely through lack 
 of orders. If the railroads should be allowed to go ahead and 
 spend money on necessary improvements, the manufacturing 
 interests of the country would revive to a point equal to their 
 present facilities. The farmer has been very prosperous, due 
 to high prices. Manufacturing interests have suffered, due to 
 restriction of developments. The present conditions of the 
 country are not balanced as regards these two earning powers. 
 The workmen for the manufacturing interests are presumably 
 far in excess of the number employed in the farming interests. 
 The essential conditions toward prosperity are so disturbed at 
 present that no one man can see the future very clearly, and 
 the forces at work must solve the problem in time through 
 adjustments. Labor cannot take lower wages because costs of 
 living will not permit it. This means that the dollar will not 
 buy as much as it would a decade ago, and we must recognize 
 that labor is becoming more and more in control of its own 
 market value. The creation of a Labor Commission, adjusting 
 differences between the employer and the laborer on a fair basis, 
 is as essential to the prosperity of this country as a Railway 
 Commission or a Trade Commission. While this might mean 
 bad politics and may possibly be one reason why the Labor 
 Commission has not been discussed, it belongs to the keystone 
 
495 
 
 of the structure as much as the other two elements. The prog- 
 ress of the country demands a new vision of the control and 
 operation of its affairs one which must be broad enough to 
 recognize equally the .value of all the factors which enter into 
 the ways of life. Accordingly it is our judgment that the 
 present disturbed business conditions are due to the fact that 
 we are in an era of readjustment or evolution which requires 
 the elimination of a mass of unwieldy laws and the enactment 
 of new laws which will recognize our present development and 
 treat with conditions as they now are, and not what they were 
 when the Sherman Law was enacted in the last generation. 
 
 We are suffering from a reaction of a great inflation, where 
 the manufacturing interests overdeveloped their facilities to 
 cope with the great demand, which was really in excess of what 
 might be considered an average demand. While the manufac- 
 turing interests of the country are producing barely 60 per 
 cent, of its facilities, that 60 per cent, is now equal to the 
 maximum facilities of, say, five years ago, but does not by any 
 means represent the profit or earning power of that time. 
 Labor has advanced more rapidly than the price of manufac- 
 tured product. It is a question if the manufacturing interests 
 should have a demand equal to their full facilities that there 
 would be sufficient workmen available to meet such demand. 
 This is a condition which in the near .future will bring about 
 further labor complications, unless there is some control, like 
 a Labor Commission, brought into use, with power to adjust 
 differences without resort to lockouts and strikes. 
 
 The Sherman Law should be repealed. It belongs to the 
 past generation. A law to cope with the present conditions 
 would be more desirable. 
 
 From a leading Oil and Natural Gas Producer, Pittsburgh, 
 Pa. 
 
 Question Do you believe that the Sherman Law, as now 
 interpreted, is made clear and workable? Answer N"o. This 
 law as now construed will become a destructive and not a regu- 
 lative force, and therefore is not workable, because the thing 
 sought for is regulation and not destruction. It has now a 
 heretofore undreamed of force. It gives the courts, and indeed 
 thrusts upon them, the power of (in effect) incorporating com- 
 panies with the power hereafter to tear apart what they them- 
 selves put together. Whatever legal right of existence the Amer- 
 ican Tobacco Company now has is born by virtue of the action 
 of the Federal courts and not by virtue of an act of any State 
 or of Congress. Thus the Federal courts become an uncontrol- 
 lable power either for good or evil; but even if for good, the 
 action of the court is revolutionary in the highest degree and 
 should receive the serious and sober attention of all our people. 
 But the Federal Courts are not to be blamed. They were forced 
 
40G 
 
 by the inaction of Congress in trying to do what the Congress 
 should have done, and I have not the slightest doubt that they 
 approached the business with great reluctance. 
 
 Question Do you consider it feasible to attempt to return 
 to what are commonly known as old competitive methods in 
 business? Answer No. Because it would be impossible to 
 get back to them and it is not at all likely that one man in a 
 thousand would go back if he could. 
 
 Question Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law? 
 Answer Yes. Because the law expressly prohibits any restraint 
 of trade without defining what is meant by restraint of trade. 
 The Supreme Court splits this idea into two parts reasonable 
 and unreasonable restraint permitting the former and prohib- 
 iting the latter, but the Court, like Congress has failed to define 
 what it prohibits and what it permits, thus instead of clarifying 
 the situation it has added one more element of confusion, for 
 while Congress put the burden on the people of defining restraint 
 of trade only, the Court now puts upon them the double burden 
 of defining what is reasonable and w r hat is unreasonable re- 
 straint of trade. By this reasoning Congress and the Supreme 
 Court has said to the individual and the corporation you are 
 wiser than we are so go ahead, but keep in mind that some 
 day we may change our minds, and if we do we will tear your 
 business apart, and put it together again in our own way, regard- 
 less of the effect upon investors who have put in their money 
 in good faith. This may be an extreme view, but it is one 
 widely entertained. As matters now stand, people already in 
 business w^ill be obliged to blunder along in the dark as best 
 they can, but those not committed will stay out until some 
 better chart for their guidance than the Sherman Act is fur- 
 nished by Congress and not by the courts, for while all men 
 obey and respect the courts in the highest degree, yet they look 
 to Congress in a matter so vital as interstate commerce to formu- 
 late laws, and such laws as the courts can enforce without being- 
 obliged to go to every possible source of light except the law 
 itself to determine what a law means. There is no escape from 
 this conclusion no reading in or reading out no exercise of 
 implied powers, no strained interpretation will satisfy the people. 
 If it is not possible to legislate clearly on the subject of restraint 
 of trade (and it appears to be so) then quit, and throw the 
 whole question back upon the common law, where, indeed, it 
 practically is now, but badly involved by the Sherman Law. 
 A judgment of the court based upon common law principles 
 would be accepted by the people as a finality, because it could 
 be built up logically, but a judgment of the court based upon 
 an unintelligible statute is not satisfactory to any one proba- 
 bly not to the court. 
 
 Question Do you favor amending the Sherman Law? If so. 
 in what particulars. Answer Being for repeal. I would not 
 favor amendment. 
 
497 
 
 Question Should railroads be allowed to enter into agree- 
 ments affecting rates subject to the approval and regulation of 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission? Answer Yes. 
 
 Question Do you favor a National Incorporation Law? 
 Answer There appears to be no escape from it, if it were desir- 
 able to escape. Only a few years ago such a suggestion would 
 not have been considered by the people at large at all, but now 
 that we are a nation and not a group of contending States, and 
 further, because interstate commerce in its largest sense is 
 carried on as it only can be carried on by corporations of large 
 capital, it is becoming more apparent that such corporations 
 should arise out of and be regulated and controlled by the 
 Federal government. Without Federal incorporation and regu- 
 lation the confusion arising out of the inefficiency and conflict 
 of the laws of the several States relating to interstate commerce, 
 as well as to many other things (quarantine among them), will 
 still be with us to the great detriment of the people. It is 
 illogical for the several States to give the Federal government 
 the power to regulate commerce between the States and at the 
 same time withhold the most effective powers for such regula- 
 tion. It is now plain that the Federal government cannot regu- 
 late commerce between the States to the satisfaction of the whole 
 people unless it is given the power to regulate at their incep- 
 tion the chief agencies of interstate commerce, viz. : large cor- 
 porations. 
 
 Question Do you favor a Federal License Law? Answer 
 As I understand it, Federal incorporation would include Federal 
 license. 
 
 Question Do you favor an Interstate Trade Commission 
 with powers not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission in relation to common carriers? 
 Answer I would favor it if there were any necessity for it. 
 A Federal incorporation act would probably afford all the safe- 
 guards now required. 
 
 Question In your judgment what caused or causes the 
 present disturbed business conditions? Answer There are 
 many contributing causes. One of them is the bad corpora- 
 tion laws of the several States, among other things, uncontrolled 
 issuance of stock for property. Another is the conflict of these 
 laws. Another is the inability of States to cope with the large 
 corporations. Remove a few of these troubles arising out of 
 the old doctrine of State rights and the remaining causes are 
 only those which arise out of the natural fluctuations of the 
 development of a large and comparatively new country. 
 
498 
 
 John C. Freund, Editor of " The Music Trades," N. Y. City. 
 
 It is characteristic of American life that business suffers 
 when a feeling of uncertainty pervades the community when 
 even men of large enterprise as well as those who are engaged 
 in humbler efforts, feel called upon to be careful and go slow. 
 This feeling of uncertainty, it must be admitted, prevails to-day. 
 Some of it may be ascribed to that bugaboo, a coming " presi- 
 dential year," when busy men feel disposed to hesitate because 
 they do not know which way the cat is going to jump politically, 
 especially when the tariff is an issue. 
 
 At the present time to this must be added, as a considerable 
 factor, the suits that have recently been brought by the govern- 
 ment against certain of the large industrial organizations known 
 as the " trusts." 
 
 The natural discussion which lias followed in the press re- 
 garding the future of these organizations, the possibility of 
 adjusting their affairs to the law, as it exists in the Anti-Trust 
 Sherman enactment, and the not unnatural fear that it will be 
 difficult, under recent decisions of the courts, for almost any 
 corporation to know what it can do and yet not incur legal 
 penalties, make it opportune to consider big combinations. I 
 shall endeavor to do so from a viewpoint which I believe to be 
 new and which has not yet been generally thought of. 
 
 It will be my purpose to show that we have reached a point 
 where business will no longer be conducted on the old lines and 
 methods, but on broader lines, and hence, in order to emerge 
 from the present condition of disorder and uncertainty, what we 
 need is not "trust busting," but a rational, intelligent attitude 
 to the new conditions which have arisen, in order that we may 
 so influence legislation that legitimate business functions may 
 not be interfered with, and the business world may before long 
 be assured of that peace and freedom from interference which 
 are absolutely necessary to progress and success. 
 
 To start with, I will admit that, as Mr. Leon Meyer, a promi- 
 nent lawyer, recently said : " There is something fundamentally 
 wrong in our present system of corporate control." But I will 
 not admit, as Mr. Leon Meyer also said, that "combinations 
 are bred bv the avarice of men." 
 
 In the mind of the average man who gives the matter but 
 little consideration, and has probably gotten his views of great 
 combinations from what he has read in some of the yellow jour- 
 nals any large organization in industry or commerce is detri- 
 mental to the general welfare and militates against social well- 
 being. 
 
 I will not revert to the fact that combinations were known 
 AS far back as the times of the Egyptians, Phoenicians and 
 others, and therefore they are not anything new; nor will I take 
 up the point, made by many, that there is a no more radical 
 
409 
 
 and offensive trust than the labor trust, and that it is no more 
 illegal for a trust" to raise the prices of its products than it is 
 illegal for the labor organizations to raise the price of labor. 
 I do not propose to enter upon these phases of the subject. 
 
 In this article I shall endeavor to show that to-day doing 
 business by means of large combinations is a natural evolution 
 and furthermore, when subject to proper restrictions and con- 
 ducted on proper and honest lines, it is a benefit to the general 
 business world, also to our social life and because it is beneficial 
 it has come to stay. 
 
 In olden days all affairs, whether industrial or commercial, 
 were conducted by individuals; then came partnerships; from 
 these came the corporation by which a number of people could 
 get together, each with small or large holdings of capital, to 
 undertake operations which could not have been attempted other- 
 wise. Even then competition was severe, the waste of effort 
 and money to do business was enormous. As profits were grad- 
 ually reduced by competition, it became evident that business 
 was not being conducted on economic lines, and so brainy men, 
 seeing that even with labor-saving machinery the cost of pro- 
 duction had about reached bed rock, concluded that it was neces- 
 sary to formulate better and cheaper methods, not only of dis- 
 posing of products, but of conducting service, whether in indus- 
 trial, commercial or financial life. 
 
 The natural evolution was the combination of corporations, 
 which w)ien first undertaken was done to make money by the 
 reduction of cost of production, as well as cost of marketing, 
 and so to gain a larger market by cheaper prices. 
 
 It does not militate against the truth and value of this nat- 
 ural evolution from crude to scientific methods that unscrupu- 
 lous men used the new force to create virtual monopolies to con- 
 trol sources of supply, to raise prices, to capitalize industry to 
 the limit of its interest-bearing power, which has been the source 
 of colossal fortunes of Carnegie and most of our multi-million- 
 aires. 
 
 Fair-minded men even those who have been prejudiced 
 against trusts and large combinations must admit that there 
 is a broad line of difference between large combinations of 
 capital, brains and labor (for when we speak of combinations 
 of capital and labor, we must also include brains, as without 
 them both capital and labor are incompetent), which are made 
 for the purpose of controlling all sources of supply, raising 
 prices of products, creating a virtual monopoly, and so exploit- 
 ing the public for the benefit of the few; and large combina- 
 tions of capital, brains and labor, which are made- to win profits 
 by the elimination of waste, by better methods, by doing -busi- 
 ness on broader lines, and so give the public the advantage of 
 goods of better quality at lower prices, as well as better service 
 
500 
 
 in transportation, telegraph, telephone and other utilities at 
 cheaper rates, and thereby benefit humanity. 
 
 If this be admitted, it will be at once apparent that it is 
 not the large combination as such that we have to fear, but the 
 large combination which is wrongly directed for the enrichment 
 of the few at the expense of the people, instead of heing, as it 
 should be, for the benefit of the people, with a fair return on 
 the capital actually invested. 
 
 Eight here we will be met by the objection made so gen- 
 erally, that these large combinations eliminate competition, the 
 liberty of the individual 'to do business; even if, as in many 
 cases we know they do, they bring about a general lowering of 
 prices and raising of quality. 
 
 This suggests the question, not alone as to whether unre- 
 stricted competition is a benefit, not alone as to whether the 
 opportunity for individual enterprise should be absolutely free, 
 but it brings up the very serious issue, which so few have ever 
 discussed, and which, indeed, is the principal point of this 
 article, namely, "After all, what does a man desire to do with 
 his life? Are we here to work to live? or, are we here to live 
 to work? What is the object and aim of the average man? 
 What does he want to do with his life ? " 
 
 I regret to say few average men could answer. Their best 
 reply would probably be to the effect that they expect to go into 
 business or to do something or other in a profession or to work 
 in a factory or to be connected with some corporation, because 
 they have to live. 
 
 If you ask them, however, what they get out of their daily 
 work personally, most of them would throw up their hands and 
 say : " Indeed, very little ! " 
 
 Now, it is my conviction that the whole aim and purpose of 
 an intelligent man should be, through labor, in whatever line 
 he uses that labor, to win social freedom, the opportunity and 
 means to marry, settle down, raise a family, have time to spend 
 with his children, time as well as money to get and read books ; 
 to give his family, as well as himself, some vacation each year; 
 to be able to attend a dramatic or musk-al performance occa- 
 sionally; to have a comfortable home; to wear decent clothes, 
 and to have plenty of good, wholesome food. 
 
 In other words, the man who makes business or work an 
 end in itself misses all there is in life, while the man who makes 
 his work, his business, or whatever his activities are, simply 
 a means to the social end, even if he does not get very far, gets 
 out of life the real things that life has to give, namely, health, 
 a home, personal liberty, family life and opportunity for self- 
 culture, as well as for giving his children advantages which he 
 himself, perhaps, did not enjoy. 
 
 Now, if this be the better life, what logically follows? That 
 he must use his effort? to make money, to the best advantage. 
 Can ho do this when business is conducted on large and broad 
 
501 
 
 lines better,.. or can he do it with unrestricted competition when 
 every man virtually is his own boss, and the community is 
 divided up into so many warring, conflicting, competing in- 
 fluences, where only the very best can win even a fair compe- 
 tence. 
 
 Is the social life, or higher life, as I would call it, best 
 served by having a grocery store on every block, a butcher on 
 every two blocks, dry goods and other stores at almost every 
 corner, when a quarter of these stores would be sufficient? 
 
 And is it not obvious that as each of these stores has to 
 live, to pay rent, salesmen, that we must have unnecessarily high 
 prices? Is not the conviction forcing itself upon the commu- 
 nity that it is not so much the trusts or big combinations or 
 the large stores and their demands which are increasing the cost 
 of living, but the multiplicity of middle men, of little stores, 
 all of which have to live, which have brought up the cost of the 
 average man's housekeeping until, if he has but a moderate 
 income, he can often no longer afford even some of the necessi- 
 ties of life? 
 
 Would it be a calamity if manv of these stores were put out 
 of business as indeed many are being put out of business? 
 
 That the public is not always best served by the small enter- 
 prise is shown by the horrible revelations recently made as to 
 the filthy and unsanitary conditions of the small bakeries on 
 the East Side in New York, and what is true of the poorer dis- 
 tricts in New York is true of the same districts in every city 
 of any size. 
 
 And if you ask, " What is the condition of the average man 
 who runs such a store ? " What is it ? From early morning till 
 late at night he barely knows whether he will take in enough 
 money to pay his rent. His family sees very little of him. 
 When he does get home he is tired to death. Cooped up in a 
 more or less small place, he does not get even the proper amount 
 of good air to breathe or adequate sleep. Harassed with serious 
 cares because of lack of sufficient capital and proper help, he 
 never really knows, from week-end to week-end, w r here he stands. 
 And if he does pay his bills with anything like promptness he 
 has always before him the nightmare of the man in competition 
 on the other side of the street or on the next block who offers 
 goods at lower prices because the day of his failure is already 
 certain, and he is not always paying for his goods. 
 
 And what is true of the man with the little store is true of 
 the man in any other line of business or endeavor. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood to say that I am in any way 
 advocating the elimination of all little stores or little efforts. 
 There are many which, in their proper place and under proper 
 conditions, are a benefit to those who run them, as well as to 
 the community. There are small stores which, by intelligent 
 buying, promptness of service and fair prices, cannot only make 
 
502 
 
 9 
 
 a living and do well, but can do it right up against the bigger 
 stores. 
 
 And what is true of most little stores is also true of many 
 big stores, where there is not sufficient brains or capital to run 
 them, successfully. It is true even of many corporations, whose 
 stockholders never get a dollar. Is not the competition of such 
 concerns ruinous, by their failure, to well-conducted enterprises ? 
 Think of the factories which arc always throwing goods on the 
 market at less than cost to stave off for a time the inevitable 
 end? 
 
 Is not such competition ruinous to the well-run concerns 
 which must get a profit to live? 
 
 I ask in all fairness, " What does the average man who runs 
 such a business, with failure hanging over his head all the time, 
 get out of life ? " And I will go even further and ask, " What 
 does a man, even if he wins a moderate success, get out of life ? " 
 
 That is my point ! 
 
 He thinks himself a "boss." lie thinks himself the owner 
 of the business. As a matter of fact, he is a poor, miserable 
 slave to his landlord, to the jobber or merchant from whom he 
 buys or to whom he sells, while his family sees little of him, 
 and his opportunities for rest, not to speak of social enjoyment, 
 are almost nil. 
 
 If, therefore, we consider, as the statistics will show us 
 beyond the question of dispute or cavil, that the majority of 
 men who go into independent efforts in business or any line of 
 work, do not even make both ends meet, when we know that 
 even many large businesses, corporations, do not succeed, is it 
 not clear that these men would be far better off if they had a 
 position with some large combination run with big brains, ample 
 capital, where when five or six o'clock came they were through 
 for the day, free from anxiety, and could devote themselves to 
 their families or something like getting a reasonable return 
 in the way of rest, enjoyment and culture from the day's work 
 they had done? 
 
 * * * 
 
 The order of the day is, therefore, co-operation of effort in 
 industry, commerce, transportation and finance to produce the 
 best results. 
 
 And while this co-operation of effort may involve the sacri- 
 fice of some men's vanity, or what some men are pleased to call 
 their " independence," the real thing to be sought, namely, a 
 healthy, sane personal and social life, will be won. But with the 
 great majority it can only be won by the sacrifice of a certain 
 amount of so-called freedom, which, if we consider it righth r 
 and know the facts and tell the truth, is indeed nothing but 
 industrial slavery. 
 
503 
 
 If these views be sound it follows, logically, that the great 
 combinations have come to stay. Because they can produce bet- 
 ter results with the least friction, the least loss of human effort, 
 which is a benefit to all; but this should not mean monopoly 
 or the big trust which defies the law. It follows also, logically, 
 that business is not going to be conducted in the future, as I 
 have already said, on the old lines and with the old methods, 
 and consequently it is up to the intelligent man not to oppose 
 combination of effort, capital and brains in itself as being funda- 
 mentally wrong, but to see to it that this new force is honestly 
 used, that it is properly controlled by legislation, so that, instead 
 of being dishonestly used for the benefit of the grasping, 
 greedy few, with labor ground to the earth, it may, while pro- 
 ducing ample returns for the capital and brains actually in- 
 vested, and with large wages paid to labor, inure to the benefit 
 of the whole people, by freeing them more and more from toil, 
 so as to open to them the larger, saner, nobler life, which is 
 the social life, won honestly and without condemning others to 
 misery or sacrifice. 
 

 APPENDIX. 
 
507 
 
 THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST LAW. 
 
 ' ' JL Bill to Protect Trade and Commerce against Unlawful Restraints and 
 Monopolies.' ' 
 
 (The Sherman Act, so-called because the original measure was introduced 
 by Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, was really the work of Senator Hoar, of 
 Massachusetts, and of Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, who co-operated in pre- 
 paring the Senate Judiciary Committee substitute for the Sherman bill. This 
 substitute was finally passed without any change by both houses of Congress, 
 and approved by President Harrison, July 2, 1890.) 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
 States of America in Congress assembled: 
 
 Section 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, 
 or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or 
 with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall 
 make jinj such contract, or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, 
 shall /be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be 
 punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment 
 not exceeding one, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. 
 
 Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, 
 or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize any 
 part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign 
 nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, 
 shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprison- 
 ment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discertion of 
 the court. 
 
 Sec. 3. Every contract, combination in form of trust or otherwise, or 
 conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce in any Territory of the United 
 States, or the District of Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce 
 between any such TeTritory and another, or between any such Territory or 
 Territories and any State or States or the District of Columbia, or with 
 foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia and any State or States 
 or foreign nations, is hereby declared illegal. Every person who shall make 
 any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be 
 deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished 
 by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding 
 one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. 
 
 Sec. 4. The several circuit courts of the United States are hereby in- 
 vested with jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations of this act; and 
 it shall be the duty of the several district attorneys of the United States, 
 in their respective districts, under the direction of the Attorney-General, to 
 institute proceedings in equity to prevent and restrain such violations. Such 
 proceedings may be by way of petition setting forth the case and praying 
 that such violation shall be enjoined or otherwise prohibited. When the pai'ties 
 complained of shall have been duly notified of such petition the court shall 
 proceed, as soon as may be, to the hearing and determination of the case; 
 and pending such petition ank before final decree, the court may at any time 
 make such temporary restraining order or prohibition as shall be deemed just 
 in the premises. 
 
 Sec. 5. Whenever it shall appear to the court before which any pro- 
 ceeding under section 4 of this act may be pending, that the ends of justice 
 require that other parties should be brought before the court, the court 
 may cause them to be summoned, whether they reside in the district in which 
 the court is held or not ; and subpoenas to that end may be served in any 
 district by the marshal thereof. 
 
 Sec. 6. Any property owned under any contract or by any combination, 
 or pursuant to any conspiracy (and being the subject thereof) mentioned 
 in section one of this act, and being in the course of transportation from one 
 State to another, or to a foreign country, shall be forfeited to the United 
 States, and may be seized and condemned by like proceedings as those 
 provided by law for the forfeiture, seizure and condemnation of property 
 imported into the United States contrary to law. 
 
 Sec. 7. Any person who shall be injured in his business or property b^ 
 any other person or corporation by reason of anything forbidden or declared 
 to be unlawful by this act may sue therefor in any Circuit Court of the 
 United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found, 
 without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the 
 damages by him sustained, and the costs of suit, including a reasonable at- 
 torney's fee. 
 
 Sec. 8. That the word "person" or "persons" wherever used in thit 
 act shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under or 
 authorized by the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the 
 Territories, the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign country. 
 
508 
 
 THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY OF NEW 
 JERSEY FS. UNITED STATES. 
 
 Mr. Chief Justice White delivered the opinion of the court: 
 The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and thirty-three 
 other corporations, John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller and 
 five other individual defendants prosecute this appeal to reverse 
 a decree of the court below. Such decree was entered upon 
 a bill filed by the United States under authority of section 4 
 of the act of July 2, 1890, known as the anti-trust act, and had 
 for its object the enforcement of the provisions of that act. The 
 record is inordinately voluminous, consisting of 23 volumes of 
 printed matter, aggregating about 12,000 pages, containing a 
 vast amount of confusing and conflicting testimony relating 
 to innumerable, complex and varied business transactions ex- 
 tending over a period of nearly 40 years. In an effort to pave 
 the way to reach the subjects which we are called upon to con- 
 sider, we propose at the outset, following the order of the bill, 
 to give the merest possible outline of its contents, to summarize 
 the answer, to indicate the course of the trial, and point out 
 briefly the decision below rendered. 
 
 The bill and exhibits, covering 170 pages of the printed 
 record, was filed on November 15, 1906. Corporations known 
 as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Standard Oil Com- 
 pany of California, Standard Oil Company of Indiana, Stand- 
 ard Oil Company of Iowa, Standard Oil Company of Kansas, 
 Standard Oil Company of Kentucky, Standard Oil Company of 
 Nebraska, Standard Oil Company of New York, Standard Oil 
 Company of Ohio and 62 other corporations and partnerships, 
 as also seven individuals, were named as defendants. The bill 
 was divided into thirty numbered sections and sought relief 
 upon the theory that the various defendants were engaged in 
 conspiring " to restrain the trade and commerce in petroleum, 
 commonly called ' crude oil/ in refined oil and in the other prod- 
 ucts of petroleum among the several States and Territories of 
 the United States and the District of Columbia and with for- 
 eign nations, and to monopolize the said commerce." The con- 
 spiracy was alleged to have been formed in or about the year 
 1870 by three of the individual defendants, viz., John D. Rocke- 
 feller, William Rockefeller and Henry M. Flagler. The detailed 
 averments concerning the alleged conspiracy were arranged with 
 reference to three periods the first from 1870 to 1882, the 
 second from 1882 to 1899, and the third from 1899 to the time 
 of the filing of the bill. 
 
509 
 
 The general charge concerning the period from 1870 to 1882 
 was as follows : 
 
 " That during said first period the said individual defend- 
 ants, in connection with the Standard Oil Company of Ohio^ 
 purchased and obtained interests through stock ownership and 
 otherwise in and entered into agreements with various persons, 
 firms, corporations and limited partnerships engaged in pur- 
 chasing, shipping, refining and selling petroleum and its prod- 
 ucts among the various States for the purpose of fixing the 
 price of crude and refined oil and the products thereof, limit- 
 ing the production thereof and controlling the transportation 
 therein, and thereby restraining trade and commerce among the 
 several States and monopolizing the said commerce.'-' 
 
 To 7 establish this charge it was averred that John D. and 
 William Rockefeller and several other named individuals who, 
 prior to 1870, composed three separate partnerships engaged in 
 the business of refining crude oil and shipping its products in 
 interstate commerce, organized in the year 1870 a corporation 
 known as the Standard Oil Company of Ohio and transferred 
 to that company the business of the said partnerships, the mem- 
 bers thereof becoming, in proportion to their prior ownership, 
 stockholders in the corporation. It was averred that the other 
 individual defendants soon afterwards became participants in 
 the illegal combination and either transferred property to the 
 corporation or to individuals to be held for the benefit of all 
 parties in interest in proportion to their respective interests in 
 the combination; that is, in proportion to their stock owner- 
 ship in the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. By the means thus 
 stated it was charged that by the year 1872 the combination 
 had acquired substantially all but three or four of the thirty-five 
 or forty oil refineries located in Cleveland, Ohio. By reason 
 of the power thus obtained and in further execution of the intent 
 and purpose to restrain trade and to monopolize the commerce, 
 interstate as well as intrastate, in petroleum and its products, 
 the bill alleged that the combination and its members obtained 
 large preferential rates and rebates in many and devious ways 
 over their competitors from various railroad 'companies, and that 
 by means of the advantage thus obtained many, if not virtually 
 all, competitors were forced either to become members of the 
 combination or were driven out of business; and thus, it was 
 alleged, during the period in question the following results were 
 brought about: (a) That the combination, in addition to the 
 refineries in Cleveland which it had acquired as previously 
 stated and which it had either dismantled to limit production 
 or continued to operate, also from time to time acquired a large 
 number of refineries of crude petroleum situated in New York, 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere. The properties thus acquired, 
 like those previously obtained, although belonging to and being 
 held for the benefit of the combination, w.ere ostensibly diver- 
 gently controlled, porno of them being put in the name of the 
 
510 
 
 Standard Oil Company of Ohio, some in the name of corpora- 
 tions or limited partnerships affiliated therewith, or some being 
 left in the name of the original owners who had become stock- 
 holders in the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, and thus mem- 
 bers of the alleged illegal combination, (b) That the combina- 
 tion had obtained control of the pipe lines available for trans- 
 porting oil from the oil fields to the refineries . in Cleveland, 
 Pittsburg, Titusville, Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey. 
 (c) That the combination during the period named had obtained 
 a complete mastery over the oil industry, controlling 90 per cent, 
 of the business of producing, shipping, refining and selling 
 petroleum and its products, and thus was able to fix the price 
 of crude and refined petroleum and to restrain and monopolize 
 all interstate commerce in those products. 
 
 The averments bearing upon the second period (1882 to 
 1899) had relation to the claim: 
 
 " That during the said second period of conspiracy the de- 
 fendants entered into a contract and trust agreement, by which 
 various independent firms, corporations, limited partnerships 
 and individuals engaged in purchasing, transporting, refining, 
 shipping and selling oil and the products thereof among the 
 various States turned over the management of their said busi- 
 ness, corporations and limited partnerships to nine trustees, com- 
 posed chiefly of certain individuals defendant herein, which 
 said trust agreement was in restraint of trade and commerce 
 and in violation of law, as hereinafter more particularly 
 alleged." 
 
 The trust agreement thus referred to was set out in the 
 bill. It was made in January, 1882. By its terms the stock 
 of forty corporations, including the Standard Oil Company of 
 Ohio, and a large quantity of various properties which had been 
 previously acquired by the alleged combination and which was 
 held in diverse forms, as we have previously indicated, for the 
 benefit of the members of the combination, was vested in the 
 trustees and their successors, " to be held for all parties in 
 interest jointly." In the body of the trust agreement was con- 
 tained a list of the various individuals and corporations and 
 limited partnerships whose stockholders and members, or a por- 
 tion thereof, became parties to the agreement. This list is in 
 the margin.* 
 
 *First. All the stockholders and members of the following corporations and 
 limited partnerships, to wit: Acme Oil Co., New York; Acme Oil Co., Penn- 
 sylvania; Atlantic Refining Co. of Philadelphia; Bush & Co. (Ltd.); Camden 
 Consolidated Oil Co.: Elizabethport Acid Works; Imperial Refining Co. (Ltd.); 
 Charles Pratt & Co. ; Paine, Ablett & Co. ; Standard Oil Co., Ohio ; Standard 
 Oil Co., Piltsbui-gh; Smiths Ferry Oil Transportation Co.; Solar Oil Co. (Ltd.); 
 Stone & Fleming Manufacturing Co. (Ltd.). Also all the stockholders and 
 members of such other corporations and limited partnerships as may hereafter 
 join in this agreement at the request of the trustees herein provided for. 
 
 Second. The following individuals, to wit: W. C. Andrews, John D. 
 Archbold, Lide K. Arter, J. A. Bostwick, Benjamin Brewster, D. Bushnell, 
 Thomas C. Bushnell, J. N. Camden, Henry L. Davis, H. M. Flagler, Mrs. H. M'. 
 John Flager, John Huntington, H. A. Hutchins, Charles F. G. Heye, A. B. Jen- 
 nings, Charles' Lockhart, A. M. McGregor, William H. Macy, William H. Macy, 
 
511 
 
 The agreement made provision for the method of con- 
 trolling and managing the property by the trustees, for the 
 formation of additional manufacturing, etc., corporations in 
 various States, and the trust, unless terminated by a mode speci- 
 fied, was to continue " during the lives of the survivors and sur- 
 vivor of the trustees named in the agreement and for twenty-one 
 years thereafter." The agreement provided for the issue of 
 Standard Oil Trust certificates to represent the interest arising 
 under the trust in the properties affected by the trust, which, 
 of course, in view of the provisions of the agreemen and the 
 subject to which it related, caused the interest in the certificates 
 to be coincident with and the exact representative of the interest 
 in the combination that is, in the Standard Oil Company of 
 Ohio. Soon afterwards it was alleged the trustees organized 
 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the Standard 
 Oil Company of New York, the former having a capital stock 
 of $3,000,000 and the latter a capital stock of $5,000,000, sub- 
 sequently increased to $10,000,000 and $15,000,000, respectively. 
 The bill alleged " that pursuant to said trust agreement the said 
 trustees caused to be transferred to themselves the stocks of all 
 corporations and limited partnerships named in said trust agree- 
 ment, and caused various of the individuals and copartnerships, 
 who owned apparently independent refineries and other proper- 
 ties employed in the business of refining and transporting and 
 selling oil in and among said various States and Territories of 
 the United States as aforesaid, to transfer their property 
 situated in said several States to the respective Standard Oil 
 Companies of said States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
 vania and Ohio, and other corporations organized or acquired 
 by said trustees from time to time * * '*" For the stocks 
 and property so acquired the trustees issued trust certificates. 
 It was alleged that in 1888 the trustees " unlawfully controlled 
 the stock and ownership of various corporations and limited 
 partnerships engaged in such purchase and transportation, refin- 
 
 Jr. ; estate of Josiah Macy, William H. Macy, Jr., executor; O. II. Payne, A. J. 
 Pouch, John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, Henry H. Rogers, W. P. Thomp- 
 son, J. J. Vandesrift, William T. Wardell, W. G. Warden, Joseph L. Warden, 
 Warden, Frew & Co., Louise C. Wheaton, H. M. Hanna, and George W. 
 Chapin, D. M. Harkness, D. M. Harkness, trustee; S. V. Harkness. O. H. 
 Payne, trustee; Charles Pratt, Horace A. Pratt, C. M'. Pratt, Julia H. York, 
 George H. Vilas, M. R. Keith, trustee; George F. Chester. Also all such 
 individuals as may hereafter join in the agreement of the request of the 
 trustees herein provided for. 
 
 Third. A portion of the stockholders and members of the following cor- 
 porations and limited partnerships, to wit: American Lubricating Oil Co., 
 Baltimore United Oil Co., Beacon Oil Co., Bush & Denslow Manufacturing Co., 
 Central Refining Co. of Pittsburg, Chesebrough Manufacturing Co., Chess Carley 
 Co., Consolidated Tank Line Co., Inland Oil Co., Keystone Refining Co., Maverick 
 Oil Co., National Transit Co., Portland Kerosene Oil Co., Producers' Consoli- 
 dated Land and Petroleum Co., Signal Oil Works (Ltd.), Thompson & Bedford 
 Co. (Ltd.), Devoe Manufacturing Co., Eclipse Lubricating Oil Co. (Ltd.), 
 Empire Refining Co. (Ltd.), Franklin Pipe Co. (Ltd.), Galena Oil Works 
 (Ltd.), Galena Farm Oil Co. (Ltd.), Germania Mining Co., Vacuum Oil Co. 
 H. C. Van Tine & Co. (Ltd.), Waters-Pierce Oil Co. Also stockholders and 
 members (not being all thereof) of other corporations and limited partnerships 
 who may hereafter join in this agreement at the request of the trustees herein 
 provided for. 
 
512 
 
 ing, selling and shipping of oil," as per a list which is excerpted 
 in the margin.* 
 
 The bill charged that during the second period quo war- 
 ranto proceedings were commenced against the Standard Oil 
 Company of Ohio, which resulted in the entry by the Supreme 
 Court of Ohio, on March 2, 1892, of a decree adjudging the 
 trust agreement to be void, not only because the Standard Oil 
 Company of Ohio was a party to the same, but also because the 
 agreement in and of itself was in restraint of trade and 
 amounted to the creation of an unlawful monopoly. It was 
 alleged that shortly after this decision, seemingly for tjie pur- 
 pose of complying therewith, voluntary proceedings were had, 
 apparently to dissolve the trust, but that these proceedings were 
 
 *List of corporations the stocks of which were wholly or partially held by 
 the trustees of Standard Oil Trust: 
 
 Capital 
 stock. 
 
 Standard Oil 
 Trust Ownership. 
 
 New York State: 
 
 Acme Oil Co., manufacturers of petroleum 
 
 products $300,000 Entire. 
 
 Atlas Refining Co., manufacturers of petro- 
 leum products 200,0)0 do. 
 
 American Wick Manufacturing Co., manu- 
 facturers of lamp wicks 25,000 do. 
 
 Bush & Denslow Manufacturing Co., manu- 
 facturers of petroleum products 300,000 50 per cent. 
 
 Chesebrough Manufacturing Co., manu- 
 facturers of petroleum 500,000 2,661-5,300. 
 
 Central Refining Co. (Ltd.), manufacturers 
 
 of petroleum products 200,'DOO 1-67 2 per cent. 
 
 Devoe Manufacturing Co., packers, manu- 
 
 ufacturers of petroleum 300,000 Entire. 
 
 Empire Refining Co. (Ltd.), manufacturers 
 
 of petroleum products 130,000 80 per cent. 
 
 Oswego Manufacturing Co., manufacturers 
 
 of wood cases 100,000 Entire. 
 
 Pratt Manufacturing Co., manufacturers of 
 
 petroleum products 500,030 do. 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of New York, manufacturers 
 
 of petroleum products 5,000,000 do. 
 
 Stone & Fleming Manufacturing Co. (Ltd.), 
 
 manufacturers of petroleum products... 250,000 do. 
 
 Thompson & Bedford Co. (Ltd.), manu- 
 facturers of petroleum products 250,003 80 per cent. 
 
 Vacuum Oil Co., manufacturers of petro- 
 leum products 25,000 75 per cent. 
 
 New Jersey: 
 
 Eagle Oil Co., manufacturers of petroleum 
 
 products 350,000 Entire. 
 
 McKirgaii Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum 
 
 products 75, 300 do. 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, manufac- 
 
 tureres of petroleum products 3,000,000 do. 
 
 Pennsylvania : 
 
 Acme Oil Co.., manufacturers of petroleum 
 
 products 300,000 do. 
 
 Atlantic Refining Co., manufacturers of 
 
 petroleum products 400,000 do. 
 
 Galena Oil Works (Ltd.), manufacturers of 
 
 petroleum products 150,000 86 1 A per cent. 
 
 Imperial Refining Co. (Ltd.), manufacturers 
 
 of petroleum products 300,'300 Entire. 
 
 Producers' Consolidated Land & Petroleum 
 
 Co., producers of crude oil 1,000,000 65/132 per cent. 
 
 National Transit Co., transporters of crude 
 
 oil 25,455,200 94 per cent, 
 
 Standard Oil Co., manufacturers of petro- 
 leum products , 400,000 Entire. 
 
 Signal Oil Works (Ltd.), manufacturers of 
 
 petroleum products 100,000 38% per cent. 
 
513 
 
 a subterfuge and a sham, because they simply amounted to a 
 transfer of the stock held by the trust in sixty-four of the com- 
 panies which it controlled to some of the remaining twenty 
 companies, it having controlled before the decree eighty-four in 
 all, thereby, while seemingly in part giving up its dominion, yet 
 in reality preserving the same by means of the control of the 
 companies as to which it had retained complete authority. It 
 was charged that especially was this the case, as the stock in 
 the companies selected for transfer was virtually owned by the 
 nine trustees or the members of their immediate families or 
 associates. The bill further alleged that in 1897 the attorney- 
 general of Ohio instituted contempt proceedings in the quo 
 warranto case, based upon the claim that the trust had not been 
 dissolved as required by the decree in that case. About the same 
 time, also, proceedings in quo warranto were commenced to 
 forfeit the charter of a pipe line known as the Buckeye Pipe 
 Line Company, an Ohio corporation, whose stock, it was alleged, 
 was owned by the members of the combination, on the ground 
 of its connection with the trust, which had been held to be 
 illegal. 
 
 Capital 
 Stock. 
 
 Standard Oil 
 Trust Ownership 
 
 Ohio: 
 
 Consolidated Tank Line Co., jobbers of 
 
 petroleum products 1,030,000 57 per cent. 
 
 Inland Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum 
 
 products 50,000 50 per cent. 
 
 Standard Oil Co., manufacturers of petro- 
 leum products . . 3,500,000 Entire. 
 
 Solar Refining Co., manufacturers of petro- 
 leum products 500,000 do. 
 
 Kentucky: 
 
 Standard Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum 
 
 products 600,000 do. 
 
 Maryland: 
 
 Baltimore United Oil Co., manufacturers of 
 
 petroleum products 600,000 5,059-6,000. 
 
 West Virginia: 
 
 Camden Consolidated Oil Co., manufac- 
 turers of petroleum products 200,000 51 per cent. 
 
 Minnesota: 
 
 Standard Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum 
 
 products 100/000 Entire. 
 
 Missouri: 
 
 Waters-Pierce Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum 
 
 products 400,000 50 per cent. 
 
 Massachusetts: 
 
 Beacon Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum pro- 
 ducts 100,000 Entire. 
 
 Maverick Oil Co., jobbers of petroleum 
 
 products 100,000 do. 
 
 Maine: 
 
 Portland Kerosene Oil Co., jobbers of 
 
 petroleum products 200,000 do. 
 
 f etr eUm 00,000 60 per cent. 
 
 300,000 62% per cent. 
 
514 
 
 The result of those proceedings, the hill charged, caused a 
 resort to the alleged wrongful acts asserted to have been com- 
 mitted during the third period, as follows: 
 
 " That during the third period of said conspiracy and in 
 pursuance thereof the said individual defendants operated 
 through the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, as a hold- 
 ing corporation, which corporation obtained and acquired the 
 majority of the stocks of the various corporations engaged in 
 purchasing, transporting, refining, shipping and selling oil into 
 and among the various States and Territories of the United 
 States and the District of Columbia and with foreign nations, 
 and thereby managed and controlled the same, in violation of 
 the laws of the United States, as hereinafter more particularly 
 alleged." 
 
 It was alleged that in or about the month of January, 1899, 
 the individual defendants caused the charter of the Standard 
 Oil Company of New Jersey to be amended so that the busi- 
 ness and objects of said company were stated as follows, *to wit : 
 " To do all kinds of mining, manufacturing and trading busi- 
 ness; transporting goods and merchandise by land or water in 
 any manner; to buy, sell, lease and improve land; to build 
 ) louses, structures, vessels, cars, wharves, docks and piers ; to lay 
 and operate pipe lines; to erect lines for conducting electricity; 
 to enter into and carry out contracts of every kind pertaining 
 to its business; to acquire, use, sell and grant licenses under 
 patent rights ; to purchase or otherwise acquire, hold, sell, assign 
 and transfer shares of capital stock and bonds or other evidences 
 of indebtedness of corporations, and to exercise all the privi- 
 leges of ownership, including voting upon the stock so held; to 
 carry on its business and have offices and agencies therefor in 
 all parts of the world; and to hold, purchase, mortgage and 
 convey real estate and personal property outside the State of 
 New Jersey." 
 
 The capital stock of the company which since March 19, 
 1892, had been $10,000,000 was increased to $110,000,000; 
 and the individual defendants as theretofore, continued to be 
 a majority of the board of directors. 
 
 Without going into detail it suffices to say that it was alleged 
 in the bill that shortly after these proceedings the trust came 
 to an end, the stock of the various corporations which had been 
 controlled by it being transferred by its holders to the Stand- 
 ard Oil Company of New Jersey, which corporation issued there- 
 for certificates of its common stock to the amount of $97,250,000. 
 The bill contained allegations referring to the development of 
 new oil fields, for example, in California, southeastern Kansas, 
 northern Indian Territory and northern Oklahoma, and made 
 reference to the building or otherwise acquiring by the combi- 
 nation of refineries and pipe lines in the new fields for the pur- 
 pose of restraining and monopolizing the interstate trade in 
 petroleum ;UK! its products. 
 
515 
 
 Reiterating in substance the averments that both the Stand- 
 ard Oil Trust from 1882 to 1899 and the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany of ISTew Jersey since 1899 had monopolized and restrained 
 interstate commerce in petroleum and its products, the bill at 
 great length additionally set forth various means by which dur- 
 ing the second and third periods, in addition to the effect occa- 
 sioned by /the combination of alleged previously independent 
 concerns,/the monopoly and restraint complained of was con- 
 tinued. Without attempting to follow the elaborate averments 
 on these subjects, spread over 57 pages of the printed record, 
 it suffices to say that such averments may properly be grouped 
 under the following heads: Rebates, preferences and other dis- 
 criminatory practices in favor of the combination by railroad 
 companies ; restraint and monopolization by control of pipe lines 
 and unfair practices against competing pipe lines; contracts 
 with competitors in restraint of trade; unfair methods of com- 
 petition, such as local price cutting at the points where neces- 
 sary to suppress competition; espionage of the business of com- 
 petitors, the operation of bogus independent companies and pay- 
 ment of rebates on oil, with the like intent; the division of the 
 United States into districts, and the limiting of the operations 
 of the various subsidiary corporations as to such districts, so 
 that competition in the sale of petroleum products between such 
 corporations had been entirely eliminated and destroyed; and 
 finally reference was made to what was alleged to be the " enorm- 
 ous and unreasonable profits " earned by the Standard Oil Trust 
 and the Standard Oil Company as a result of the alleged mo- 
 nopoly, which presumably was averred as a means of reflexly 
 inferring the scope and power acquired by the alleged combi- 
 nation. 
 
 Coming to the prayer of the bill, it suffices to say that in 
 general terms the substantial relief asked was, first, that the 
 combination in restraint of interstate trade and commerce and 
 .which had monopolized the same, as alleged in the bill, be found 
 to have existence and that the parties thereto be perpetually 
 enjoined from doing any further act to give effect to it; second, 
 that the transfer of the stocks of the various corporations to the 
 Standard Oil Company of ISTew Jersey, as alleged in the bill, 
 be held to be in violation of the first and second sections of 
 the anti-trust act, and that the Standard Oil Company of New 
 Jersey be enjoined and restrained from in any manner con- 
 tinuing to exert control over the subsidiary corporations by 
 moans of ownership of said stock or otherwise; third, that 
 specific relief by injunction be awarded against further viola- 
 tion of the statute by any of the acts specifically complained 
 of in the bill. There was also a prayer for general relief. 
 
 Of the numeroi33 defendants named in the bill the Waters- 
 Pierce Oil Company was the only resident of the district in 
 which the suit was commenced and the only defendant served 
 with process therein. Contemporaneous with the .filing; of the 
 
516 
 
 bill the court made an order, under section 5 of the anti-trust 
 act, for the service of process upon all the other defendants 
 wherever they could be found. Thereafter the various defend- 
 ants unsuccessfully moved to vacate the order for service on non- 
 resident defendants or filed pleas to the jurisdiction. Joint 
 exceptions were likewise* unsuccessfully filed, upon the ground 
 of impertinence, to many of the averments of the bill of com- 
 plaint, particularly those which related to acts alleged to have 
 been done by the combination prior to the passage of the anti- 
 trust act and prior to the year 1899. 
 
 Certain of the defendants filed separate answers, and a joint 
 answer was filed on behalf of the Standard Oil Company of 
 New Jersey and numerous of the other defendants. The scope 
 of the answers will be adequately indicated by quoting a sum- 
 mary on the subject made in the brief for the appellants : 
 
 " It is sufficient to say that, whilst admitting many of the 
 alleged acquisitions of property, the formation of the so-called 
 trust of 1882, its dissolution in 1892 and the acquisition by 
 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey of the stocks of the 
 various corporations in 1899, they deny all the allegations re- 
 specting combinations or conspiracies to restrain or monopolize 
 the oil trade; and particularly that the so-called trust of 1882, 
 or the acquisition of the shares of the defendant companies by 
 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in 1899, was a com- 
 bination of independent or competing concerns or corporations. 
 The averments of the petition respecting the means adopted to 
 monopolize the oil trade are traversed either by a denial of the 
 acts alleged or of their purpose, intent or effect." 
 
 On June 24, 1907, the cause being at issue, a special exa- 
 miner was appointed to take the evidence, and his report was 
 filed March 22, 1909. It was heard on April 5 to 10, 1909, 
 under the expediting act of February 11, 1903, before a circuit 
 court consisting of four judges. 
 
 The court decided in favor of the United States. In the 
 opinion delivered all the multitude of acts of wrongdoing 
 charged in the bill were put aside, in so far as they were alleged 
 to have been committed prior to the passage of the anti-trust 
 act, " except as evidence of their (the defendants') purpose, of 
 their continuing conduct and of its effect." (173 Fed. Eep., 
 177.) 
 
 By the decree which was entered it was adjudged that the 
 combining of the stocks of various companies in the hands of 
 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in 1899 constituted a 
 combination in restraint of trade and also an attempt to mo- 
 nopolize and a monopolization under section 2 of the anti- 
 trust act. The decree was against seven individual defendants, 
 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey thirty-six domestic 
 companies and 1 foreign company, which the Standard Oil Com- 
 pany of New Jerse_y controls by stock ownership ; these thirty- 
 
517 
 
 eight corporate defendants being held to be parties to the com- 
 bination found to exist.* 
 
 The bill was dismissed as to all other corporate defendants, 
 thirty- three in number, it being adjudged by section 3 of the 
 degree that they "have not been proven to be engaged in the 
 operation or carrying out of the combination."! 
 
 The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was enjoined 
 from voting the stocks or exerting any control over the said 
 thirty-seven subsidiary companies, and the subsidiary companies 
 were enjoined from paying any dividends as to the Standard 
 Company or permitting it to exercise any control over them 
 by virtue of the stock ownership or power acquired by means 
 of the combination. The individuals and corporations were 
 also enjoined from entering into or carrying into effect any 
 like combination which would evade the decree. Further, the 
 individual defendants, the Standard Company and the thirty- 
 seven subsidiary corporations were enjoined from engaging or 
 continuing in interstate commerce in petroleum or its products 
 during the continuance of the illegal combination. 
 
 At the outset a question of jurisdiction requires considera- 
 tion, and we shall, also, as a preliminary, dispose of another 
 question, to the end that our attention may be completely con- 
 centrated upon the merits of the controversy when we come to 
 consider them. 
 
 First We are of opinion that in consequence of the presence 
 within the district of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company the court, 
 under the authority of section 5 of the anti-trust act, rightly 
 took jurisdiction over the cause and properly ordered notice to 
 be served upon the non-resident defendants. 
 
 Second The overruling of the exceptions taken to so much 
 of the bill as counted upon facts occurring prior to the passage 
 of the anti-trust act whatever may be the view as an orginal 
 question of the duty to restrict the controversy to a much nar- 
 rower area than that propounded by the bill we think by no 
 possibility in the present stage of the case can the action of the 
 court be treated as prejudicial error justifying reversal. We 
 say this because the court, as we shall do, gave no weight to the 
 testimony adduced under the averments complained of, except 
 in so far as it tended to throw light upon the acts done after 
 the passage of the anti-trust act and the results of which it was 
 charged were being participated in and enjoyed by the alleged 
 combination at the time of the filing of the bill. 
 
 *Counsel for appellants says: "Of the 38 (37) corporate defendants 
 named in section 2 of the decree, and as to which the judgment of the court 
 applies, 4 have not appealed, to wit: Corsicana Refining Co., Manhattan Oil 
 Co., Security Oil Co., Waters-Pierce Oil Co., and 1, the Standard Oil Co. of 
 Iowa, has been liquidated and no longer exists.'' 
 
 tOf the dismissed defendants 16 were natural gas companies and 10 were 
 companies which were liquidated and ceased to exist before the filing of the 
 petition. The other dismissed defendants, 7 in number, were : Florence Oil 
 Refining Co., United Oil Co., Tidewater Oil Co., Tide Water Pipe Co., (Ltd.), 
 Platt & Washbnrn Refining Co., Franklin Pipe Co., and Pennsylvania Oil Co. 
 
518 
 
 We are thus brought face to face with the merits of the 
 controversy. 
 
 Both as to the law and as to the facts the opposing conten- 
 tions pressed in the argument are numerous and in all their 
 aspects are so irreconcilable that it is difficult to reduce them 
 to some fundamental generalization, which by being disposed of 
 would decide them all. For instance, as to the law. While both 
 sides agree that the determination of the controversy rests upon 
 the correct construction and application of the first and second 
 sections of the anti-trust act, yet the views as to the meaning 
 of the act are as wide apart as the poles, since there is no real 
 point of agreement on any view of the act. And this also is 
 the case as to the scope and effect of authorities relied upon, 
 even although in some instances one and the same authority 
 is asserted to be controlling. 
 
 So also is it as to the facts. Thus, on the one hand, with 
 relentless pertinacity and minuteness of analysis, it is insisted 
 that the facts establish that the assailed combination took its 
 birth in a purpose to unlawfully acquire wealth by oppressing 
 the public and destroying the just rights of others, and that its 
 entire career exemplifies an inexorable earning out of such 
 wrongful intents, since, it is asserted, the pathway of the com- 
 bination from the beginning to the time of the filing of the bill 
 is marked with constant proofs of wrong inflicted upon the 
 public and is strewn with the wrecks resulting from crushing 
 out, without regard to law, the individual rights of others. 
 Indeed, so conclusive, it is urged, is the proof on these subjects 
 that it is asserted that the existence of the principal corporate 
 defendant the Standard Oil Company of l^"ew Jersey with the 
 vast accumulation of property which it owns or controls, because 
 of its infinite potency for harm and the dangerous example 
 which its continued existence affords, is an open and enduring 
 menace to all freedom of trade and is a byword and reproach 
 to modern economic methods. On the other hand, in a power- 
 ful analysis of the facts, it is insisted that they demonstrate 
 that the origin and development of the vast business which the 
 defendants control was but the result of lawful competitive 
 methods, guided by economic genius of the highest order, sus- 
 tained by courage, by a keen insight into commercial situations, 
 resulting in the acquisition of great wealth, but at the same 
 time serving to stimulate and increase production, to widely 
 extend the distribution of the products of petroleum at a cost 
 largely below that which would have otherwise prevailed, thus 
 proving to be at one and the same time a benefaction to the 
 general public as well as of enormous advantage to individuals. 
 It is not denied that in the enormous volume of proof contained 
 in the record in the period of almost a lifetime to which that 
 proof is addressed, there may be found acts of wrongdoing, but 
 the insistence is that they were rather the exception than the 
 rule, and in most cases were either the result of too great indi- 
 
519 
 
 vidual zeal ill the keen rivalries of busines or of the methods 
 and habits of dealing which, even if wrong, were commonly 
 practiced at the time. And to discover and state the truth con- 
 cerning these contentions both arguments call for the analysis 
 and weighing, as we have said at the outset, of a jungle of con- 
 flicting testimony covering a period of forty years, a duty diffi- 
 cult to rightly perform and, even if satisfactorily accomplished, 
 almost impossible to state with any reasonable regard to brevity. 
 Duly appreciating the situation just stated, it is certain that 
 only one point of concord between the parties is discernible, 
 which is, that the controversy in every aspect is controlled by 
 a correct conception of the meaning of the first and second 
 sections of the anti-trust act. We shall therefore departing 
 from what otherwise would be the natural order of analysis 
 make this one point of harmoney the initial basis of our exami- 
 nation of the contentions, relying upon the conception that by 
 doing so some harmonious resonance may result adequate to 
 dominate and control the discord with which the case abounds. 
 That is to say, we shall first come to consider the meaning of 
 the first and second sections of the anti-trust act by the text, 
 and after discerning what by that process appears to be its true 
 meaning we shall proceed to consider the respective contentions 
 of the parties concerning the act, the strength or weakness of 
 those contentions, as well as the accuracy of the meaning of 
 the act as deduced from the text in the light of the prior deci- 
 sions of this court concerning it. When we have done this we 
 shall then approach the facts. Following this course we shall 
 make our investigation under four separate headings: First, 
 the text of the first and second sections of the act originally 
 considered anri its meaning in the light of the common law and 
 the law of this country at the time of its adoption; second, 
 the contentions of the parties concerning the act, and the scope 
 and effect of the decisions of this court upon which they rely; 
 third, the application of the statute to facts; and, fourth, the 
 remedy, if any, to be afforded as the result of such application. 
 First The text of the act and its meaning. 
 
 We quote the text of the first and second sections of the act, 
 as follows : 
 
 " Section 1. Every contract, combination in the form of 
 trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or com- 
 merce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is 
 hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any 
 such contract, or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, 
 shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and, on conviction 
 thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $5,000 or by 
 imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punish- 
 ments, in the discretion of the court. 
 
 "Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt 
 to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person 
 
520 
 
 or persons to monopolize, any part of the trade or commerce 
 among the several States or with foreign nations shall be deemed 
 guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be 
 punished by fine not exceeding $5,000 or by imprisonment not 
 exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discre- 
 tion of the court." 
 
 The debates show that doubt as to whether there was a 
 common law of the United States which governed the subject 
 in the absence of legislation was among the influences leading 
 to the passage of the act. They conclusively show, however, 
 that the main cause which led to the legislation was the thought 
 that it was required by the economic condition of the times; 
 that is, the vast accumulation of wealth in the hands of corpora- 
 tions and individuals, the enormous development of corporate 
 organization, the facility for combination which such organiza- 
 tions afforded, the fact that the facility was being used, and 
 that combinations known as trusts were being multiplied, and 
 the wide-spread impression that their power had been and would 
 be exerted to oppress individuals and injure the public generally. 
 Although debates may not be used as a means for interpreting 
 a statute (United States vs. Trans-Missouri Freight Association, 
 166 U. S., 318, and cases cited) that rule in the nature of things 
 is not violated by resorting to debates as a means of ascertain- 
 ing the environment at the time of the enactment of a par- 
 ticular law; that is, the history of the period when it was 
 adopted. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the sole subject with which the 
 first section deals is restraint of trade, as therein contemplated, 
 and that the attempt to monopolize and monopolization is the 
 subject with which the second section is concerned. It is cer- 
 tain that those terms, at least in their rudimentary meaning, 
 took their origin in the common law and were also familiar in 
 the law of this country prior to and at the time of the adoption 
 of the act in question. 
 
 We shall endeavor, then, first to seek their meaning, not by 
 indulging in an elaborate and learned analysis of the English 
 law and of the law of this country, but by making a very brief 
 reference to the elementary and indisputable conceptions of both 
 the English and American law on the subject prior to the pass- 
 age of the anti-trust act. 
 
 (a) It is certain that at a very remote period the words con- 
 tract in restraint of trade in England came to refer to some 
 voluntary restraint put b} r contract by an individual on his 
 right to carry on his trade or calling. Originally all such con- 
 tracts were considered to be illegal, because it was deemed they 
 were injurious to the public as well as to the individuals who 
 made them. In the interest of the freedom of individuals td 
 contract this doctrine was modified so that it was only when a 
 restraint by contract was so general as to be coterminus with 
 the kingdom that it was treated as void. That is to say, if the 
 
521 
 
 restraint was partial in its operation and was otherwise reason- 
 able the contract was held to be valid. 
 
 (&) Monopolies were defined by Lord Coke as follows: 
 
 "A monopoly is an institution, or allowance by the king by 
 his grant, commission or otherwise to any person or persons, 
 bodies politic or corporate, of or for the sole buying, selling, 
 making, working or using of anything, whereby any person or 
 persons, bodies politic or corporate, are sought to be restrained 
 of any freedom or liberty that they had before, or hindered in 
 their lawful trade." (3 Inst., 181.) 
 
 Hawkins thus denned them : 
 
 "A monopoly is an allowance by the king to a particular 
 person or persons of the sole buying, selling, making, working 
 or using of anything whereby the subject in general is restrained 
 from the freedom of manufacturing or trading which he had 
 before." (Hawk. P. C. bk. 1 c. 79.) 
 
 The frequent granting of monopolies and the struggle which 
 led to a denial of the power to create them, that is to say, to the 
 establishment that they were incompatible with the English con- 
 stitution, is known to all and need not be reviewed. The evils 
 which led to the public outcry against monopolies and to the 
 final denial of the power to make them may be thus summarily 
 stated: (1) The power which the monopoly gave to the one 
 who enjoyed it to fix the price and thereby injure the public; 
 (2) the power which it engendered of enabling a limitation on 
 production; and (3) the danger of deterioration in quality of 
 the monopolized article which it was deemed was the inevitable 
 resultant of the monopolistic control over its production and 
 sale. As monopoly, as thus conceived, embraced only a conse- 
 quence arising from an exertion of sovereign power, no express 
 restrictions or prohibitions obtained against the creation by an 
 individual of a monopoly as such. But as it was considered, at 
 least so far as the necessaries of life were concerned, that indi- 
 viduals by the abuse of their right to contract might be able 
 to usurp the power arbitrarily to enhance prices, one of the 
 wrongs arising from monopoly, it came to be that laws were 
 passed relating to offenses such as forestalling, regrating and 
 engrossing, by which prohibitions were placed upon the power 
 of individuals to deal under such circumstances and conditions 
 as, according to the conception of the times, created a presump- 
 tion that the dealings were not simply the honest exertion of 
 one's right to contract for his own benefit, unaccompanied by a 
 wrongful motive to injure others, but were the consequence of 
 a contract or course of dealing of such a character as to give 
 rise to the presumption of an intent to injure others through 
 the means, for instance, of a monopolistic increase of prices. 
 This is illustrated by the definition of engrossing found in the 
 statute (5 and 6 Edw. VI. ch. 14) as follows: 
 
 " Whatsoever person or persons * * * shall engross or 
 get into his or their hands by buying, contracting or promise 
 
522 
 
 taking, other than by demise, grant, or lease of land, or tithe, 
 any corn growing in the fields, or any other corn or grain, 
 butter, cheese, fish, or other dead victual, whatsoever, within 
 the realm of England, to the intent to sell the same again, shall 
 be accepted, reputed and taken as an unlawful engrosser or en- 
 grossers." 
 
 As by the statutes providing against engrossing the quantity 
 engrossed was not required to be the whole or a proximate part 
 of the whole of an article, it is clear that there was a wide dif- 
 ference between monopoly and engrossing, etc. But as the prin- 
 cipal wrong which it was deemed would result from monopoly 
 that is, an enhancement of the price was the same wrong 
 to which it was thought the prohibited engrossment would give 
 rise, it came to pass that monopoly and engrossing were regarded 
 as virtually one and the same thing. In other words, the pro- 
 hibited act of engrossing because of its inevitable accomplish- 
 ment of one of the evils deemed to be engendered by monopoly, 
 came to be referred to as being a monopoly or constituting an 
 attempt to monopolize. Thus, Pollexfen, in his argument in 
 East India Company vs. Sandys (Skin., 165, 169), said: 
 
 "By common law, he said that trade is free, and for that 
 cited 3 Inst., 81 ; F. B., 65 ; 1 Roll., 4 ; that the common law 
 is as much against ' monopoly ' as ' engrossing ' ; and that they 
 differ only that a 'monopoly' is by patent from the king, the 
 other is by the act of the subject between party and party; but 
 that the mischiefs are the same from both, and there is the same 
 law against both. (Moore, 673; 11 Rep., 84.) The sole trade 
 of anything is ' engrossing ' ex rei ratura, for whosoever hath 
 the sole trade of buying and selling hath ' engrossed ' that trade ; 
 and whosoever hath the sole trade to any country hath the sole 
 trade of buying and selling the produce of that country at his 
 own price, which is an f engrossing/ ' 
 
 And by operation of the mental process which led to con- 
 sidering as a monopoly acts which, although they did not con- 
 stitute a monopoly, were thought to produce some of its baneful 
 effects, so also because of the impediment or burden to the due 
 course of trade which they produced, such acts came to be re- 
 ferred to as in restraint of trade. This is shown by my Lord 
 Coke's definition of monopoly as being " an institution or allow- 
 ance * whereby any person or persons, bodies politic 
 or corporate, are sought to be restrained of any freedom or lib- 
 erty that they had before or hindered in their lawful trade." 
 It is illustrated also by the definition which Hawkins gives of 
 monopoly wherein it is said that the effect of monopoly is to 
 restrain the citizen " from the freedom of manufacturing or 
 trading which he had before." And see especially the opinion 
 of Parker, C. J., in Mitchell vs. Reynolds (1711, 1 P. Williams, 
 181), where a classification is made of monopoly which brings 
 it generically within the description of restraint of trade. 
 
523 
 
 Generalizing these considerations,, the situation is this: (1) 
 That by the common law monopolies were unlawful because of 
 their restriction upon individual freedom of contract and their 
 injury to the public; (2) that as to necessaries of life the free- 
 dom of the individual to deal was restricted where the nature 
 and character of the dealing was such as to engender the pre- 
 sumption of in'-ent to bring about at least one of the injuries 
 which it was deemed would result from monopoly, that is, an 
 undue enhancement of price; (3) that to protect the freedom 
 of contract of the individual not only in his own interest, but 
 principally in the interest of the common weal, a contract of 
 an individual by which he put an unreasonable restraint upon 
 himself as to carrying 011 his trade or business was void. And 
 that at common law the evils consequent upon engrossing, etc., 
 caused those things to be treated as coming within monopoly 
 and sometimes to be called monopoly, and the same considera- 
 tions caused monopoly because of its operation and effect, to be 
 brought within and spoke of generally as impeding the due 
 course of or being in restraint of trade. 
 
 From the development of more accurate economic concep- 
 tions and the changes in conditions of society it came to be recog- 
 nized that the acts prohibited by the engrossing, forestalling, 
 etc., statutes did not have the harmful tendency which they were 
 presumed to have when the legislation concerning them was en- 
 acted, and therefore did not justify the presumption which had 
 previously been deduced from them, but, on the contrary, such 
 acts tended to fructify and develop trade. See the statutes of 
 12 George III., chapter 71, enacted in 1772, and statute of 7 
 and 8 Victoria, chapter 24, enacted in 1844, repealing the pro- 
 hibitions against engrossing, forestalling, etc., upon the express 
 ground that the prohibited acts had come to be considered as 
 favorable to the development of and not in restraint of trade. 
 It is remarkable that nowhere at common law can there be found 
 a prohibition against the creation of monopoly by an individual. 
 This would seem to manifest, either consciously or intuitively, 
 a profound conception as to the inevitable operation of economic 
 forces and the equipoise or balance in favor of the protection 
 of the rights of individuals which resulted. That is to say, 
 as it was deemed that monopoly in the concrete could only arise 
 from an act of sovereign power, and, such sovereign power being 
 restrained, prohibitions as to individuals were directed not 
 against the creation of monopoly, but were only applied to such 
 acts in relation to particular subjects as to which it was deemed, 
 if not restrained, some of the consequences of monopoly might 
 result. After all, this was but an instinctive recognition of the 
 truisms that the course of trade could not be made free by ob- 
 structing it, and that an individual's right to trade could not 
 be protected by destroying such right. 
 
 From the review just made it clearly results that, outside of 
 the restrictions resulting from the want of power in an indi- 
 
524 
 
 vidual to voluntarily and unreasonably restrain his right to 
 carry on his trade or business, and outside of the want of right 
 to restrain the free course of trade by contracts or acts which 
 implied a wrongful purpose, freedom to contract and to abstain 
 from contracting and to exercise every reasonable right incident 
 thereto became the rule in the English law. The scope and effect 
 of this freedom to trade and contract is clearly shown by the 
 decision in Mogul Steamship Company vs. McGregor (1891, 
 A. C., 25). While it is true that the decision of the House of 
 Lords in the case in question was announced shortly after the 
 passage of the anti-trust act, it serves -reflexly to show the 
 exact state of the law in England at the time the anti-trust 
 statute was enacted. 
 
 In this country also the acts from which it was deemed there 
 resulted a part, if not all, of the injurious consequences ascribed 
 to monopoly came to be referred to as a monopoly itself. In 
 other words, here, as had been the case in England, practical 
 common sense caused attention to be concentrated not upon the 
 theoretically correct name to be given to the condition or acts 
 which gave rise to a harmful result, but to the result itself and 
 to the remedying of the evils which it produced. The statement 
 just made is illustrated by an early statute of the Province of 
 Massachusetts that is, chapter 31 of the laws of 1778-79, by 
 which monopoly and forestalling were expressly treated as one 
 and the same thing. 
 
 It is also true that while the principles concerning contracts 
 in restraint of trade that is, voluntary restraint put by a person 
 on his right to pursue his calling, hence only operating sub- 
 jectively came generally to be recognized in accordance with 
 the English rule; it came, moreover, to pass that contracts or 
 acts which, it was considered, had a monopolistic tendency, espe- 
 cially those which were thought to unduly diminish competition 
 and hence to enhance prices in other words, to monopolize 
 came also in a generic sense to be spoken of and treated as they 
 had been in England, as restricting the due course of trade, 
 and therefore as being in restraint of trade. The dread of mo- 
 nopoly as an emanation of governmental power, while it passed 
 at an early date out of mind in this country, as a result of the 
 structure of our government, did not serve to assuage the fear 
 as to the evil consequences which might arise from the acts of 
 individuals producing or tending to produce the consequences 
 of monopoly. It resulted that treating such acts as we have said 
 as amounting to monopoly, sometimes constitutional restrictions, 
 against legislative enactments or judicial decisions, served to 
 enforce and illustrate the purpose to prevent the occurrence of 
 the evils recognized in the mother country as consequent upon 
 monopoly, by providing against contracts or acts of individuals 
 or combinations of individuals or corporations deemed to be 
 conducive to such results. To refer to the constitutional or 
 legislative provisions on the subject or the many judicial de- 
 
cisions which illustrate it would unnecessarily prolong this 
 opinion. We append in the margin a note to treaties, etc., 
 wherein are contained references to constitutional and statutory 
 provisions and to numerous decisions, etc., relating to the 
 subject.* 
 
 It will be found that as modern conditions arose the trend 
 of legislation and judicial decision came more and more to adapt 
 the recognized restrictions to new manifestations of conduct 
 or of dealing which it was thought justified the inference of 
 intent to do the wrongs which it had been the purpose to pre* 
 vent from the beginning. The evolution is clearly pointed out 
 in National Cotton Oil Co. vs. Texas (197 U. S., 115) and 
 Shawnee Compress Co. vs. Anderson (209 U. S., 423) ; and, 
 indeed, will be found to be illustrated in various aspects by the 
 decisions of this court which have been concerned with the en- 
 forcement of the act we are now considering. 
 
 Without going into detail and but very briefly surveying the 
 whole field, it may be, with accuracy, said that the dread of en- 
 hancement of prices and of other wrongs which it was thought 
 would flow from the undue limitation on competitive conditions 
 caused by contracts or other acts of individuals or corporations, 
 led, as a matter of public policy, to the prohibition or treating 
 as illegal all contracts or acts which were unreasonably restrict- 
 ive of competitive conditions, either from the nature or char- 
 acter of the contract or act or where the surrounding circum- 
 stances were such as to justify the conclusion that they had not 
 been entered into or performed with the legitimate purpose of 
 reasonably forwarding personal interest and developing trade, 
 but, on the contrary, were of such a character as to give rise 
 to the inference or presumption that they had been entered into 
 or done with the intent to do wrong to the general public and 
 to limit the right of individuals, thus restraining the free flow 
 of commerce and tending to bring about the evils, such as en- 
 hancement of prices, which were considered to be against public 
 policy. It is equally true to say that the survey of the legisla- 
 tion in this country on this subject from the beginning will 
 show, depending, as it did, upon the economic conceptions which 
 obtained at the time when the legislation was adopted or ju- 
 dicial decision was rendered, that contracts or acts were at one 
 time deemed to be of such a character as to justify the infer- 
 ence of wrongful intent which were at another period thought 
 not to be of that character. But this again, as we have seen, 
 simply followed the line of development of the law of England. 
 
 Let us consider the language of the first and second sections, 
 guided by the principle that where words are employed in a 
 statute which had at the time a well-known meaning at com- 
 mon law or in the law of this country they are presumed to 
 
 *Purdy's Beach on Private Corporations, vol. 2, pp. 1403 et seq., chapter 
 on Trusts and Monopolies; Oooke on Trade and Labor Combinations, App. 
 II., pp. 194-195; Am. & Eng. Ency. Law, 2d ed., article " Monopolies and 
 Trusts," pp. 844 et seq. 
 
52(> 
 
 have been used in that sense, unless the context compels to the 
 contrary.* 
 
 As to the first section, the words to be interpreted are : 
 " Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, 
 or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce * * * is 
 hereby declared to be illegal." As there is no room for dispute 
 that the statute was intended to formulate a rule for the regu- 
 lation of interstate and foreign commerce, the question is. What 
 was the rule which it adopted? 
 
 In view of the common law and the law in this country as 
 to restraint of trade, which we have reviewed, and the illumi- 
 nating effect which that history must have under the rule to 
 which we have referred, we think it results: 
 
 (a) That the context manifests that the statute was drawn 
 in the light of the existing practical conception of the law of 
 restraint of trade, because it groups as within that class not only 
 contracts which were in restraint of trade in the subjective 
 sense, but all contracts or acts which theoretically were attempts 
 to monopolize, yet which in practice had come to be considered 
 as in restraint of trade in a broad sense. 
 
 (6) That in view of the many new forms of contracts and 
 combinations which were being evolved from existing economic 
 conditions, it was deemed essential by an all-embracing enumera- 
 tion to make sure that no form of contract or combination by 
 which an undue restraint of interstate or foreign commerce 
 was brought about could save such restraint from condemna- 
 tion. The statute under this view evidences the intent not to 
 restrain the right to make and enforce contracts, whether result- 
 ing from combinations or otherwise, which did not unduly 
 restrain interstate or foreign commerce, but to protect that com- 
 merce from being restrained by methods, whether old or new, 
 which would constitute an interference that is an undue restraint. 
 (c) And the contracts or acts embraced in the provision 
 were not expressly defined, since the enumeration addressed itself 
 simply to classes of acts, those classes being broad enough to 
 embrace every conceivable contract or combination which could 
 be made concerning trade or commerce or the subjects of such 
 commerce, and thus caused any act done by any of the enumer- 
 ated methods anywhere in the whole field of human activity to 
 be illegal if in restraint of trade, it inevitably follows that the 
 provision necessarily called for the exercise of judgment which 
 required that some standard should be resorted to for the pur- 
 pose of determining whether the prohibitions contained in the 
 statute had or had not in any given case been violated. Thus 
 not specifying, but indubitably contemplating and requiring a 
 standard, it follows that it was intended that the standard of 
 reason which had been applied at the common law and in this 
 
 *Swearingen vs. United States (161 U. S., 466): United States vs Won?: 
 Kim Ark (169 U. S., 649); Keck vs. United States (172 U. S., 440): Kepner 
 vs. United States (195 U. S., 126). 
 
527 
 
 country in dealing with subjects of the character embraced by 
 the statute was intended to be the measure used for the purpose 
 of determining whether in a given case a particular act had 
 or had not brought about the wrong against which the statute 
 provided. 
 
 And a consideration of the text of the second section serves 
 to establish that it was intended to supplement the first and to 
 make sure that by no possible guise could the public policy 
 embodied in the first section be frustrated or evaded. The pro- 
 hibitions of the second embrace " Every person who shall mo- 
 nopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with 
 any other person or persons to monopolize, any part of the trade 
 or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations 
 * * *." By reference to the terms of section 8 it is certain 
 that the word " person " clearly implies a corporation as well 
 as an individual. 
 
 The commerce referred to by the words "in part" be con- 
 strued in the light of the manifest purpose of the statute has 
 both a geographical and a distributive significance that is, it 
 includes any portion of the United States and any one of the 
 classes of things forming a part of interstate or foreign com- 
 merce. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the words " to monopolize " and " monopo- 
 lize " #s used in the section reach every act bringing about the 
 prohibited results. The ambiguity, if any, is involved in deter- 
 mining what is intended by monopolize. But this ambiguity 
 is readily dispelled in the light of the previous history of the law 
 of restraint of trade to which we have referred and the indica- 
 tion which it gives of the practical evolution by which monopoly 
 and the acts which produce the same results as monopoly 
 that is, an undue restraint of the course of trade all came to 
 be spoken of as and to be, indeed, s}^nonymous with restraint 
 of trade. In other words, having by the first section forbidden 
 all means of monopolizing trade that is, unduly restraining 
 it by means of every contract, combination, etc. the second sec- 
 tion seeks, if possible, to make the prohibitions of the act all 
 the more complete and perfect by embracing all attempts to 
 reach the end prohibited by the first section that is, restraints 
 of trade by any attempt to monopolize, or monopolization 
 thereof, even although the acts by which such results are 
 attempted to be brought about or are brought about be not 
 embraced within the general enumeration of the first section. 
 And, of course, when the second section is thus harmonized with 
 and made, as it was intended to be, the complement of the first, 
 it becomes obvious that the criteria to be resorted to in any 
 given case for the purpose of ascertaining whether violations 
 of the section have been committed is the rule of reason guided 
 by the established law and by the plain duty to enforce the 
 prohibitions of the act and thus the public policy which its 
 restrictions were obviously enacted to subserve. And it is worthy 
 
528 
 
 of observation, as we have previously remarked concerning the 
 common law, that although the statute, by the comprehensive- 
 ness of the enumerations embodied in both the first and second 
 sections, makes it certain that its purpose was to prevent undue 
 restraints of every kind or nature, nevertheless, by the omis- 
 sion of any direct prohibition against monopoly in the concrete, 
 it indicates a consciousness that the freedom of the individual 
 right to contract, when not unduly or improperly exercised, 
 was the most efficient means for the prevention of monopoly, 
 since the operation of the centrifugal and centripetal forces 
 resulting from the right to freely contract was the means by 
 which monopoly would be inevitably prevented if no extraneous 
 or sovereign power imposed it and no right to make unlawful 
 contracts having a monopolistic tendency were permitted. In 
 other words, that freedom to contract was the essence of free- 
 dom from undue restraint on the right to contract. 
 
 Clear as it seems to us is the meaning of the provisions of 
 the statute, in the light of the review which we have made, 
 nevertheless before definitely applying that meaning it behooves 
 us to consider the contentions urged on one side or the other 
 concerning the meaning of the statute, which, if maintained, 
 would give to it in some aspects a much wider and in every 
 view at least a somewhat different significance. And to do this 
 brings us to the second question, which, at the outset, we have 
 stated it was our purpose to consider and dispose of. 
 
 Second The contentions of the parties as to the meaning 
 of the statute and the decisions of this court relied upon con- 
 cerning those contentions. 
 
 In substance, the propositions urged by the government are 
 reducible to this: That the language of the statute embraces 
 every contract, combination, etc., in restraint of trade, and hence 
 its text leaves no room for the exercise of judgment, but simply 
 imposes the plain duty of applying its prohibitions to every case 
 within its literal language. The error involved lies in assum- 
 ing the matter to be decided. This is true because, as the acts 
 which may come under the classes stated in the first section 
 and the restraint of trade which that section applies are not 
 specifically enumerated or defined, it is obvious that judgment 
 must in every case be called into play in order to determine 
 whether a particular act is embraced within the statutory classes 
 and whether, if the act is within such classes, its nature or effect 
 causes it to be a restraint of trade within the intendment of the 
 act. To hold to the contrary would require the conclusion either 
 that every contract, act, or combination of any kind or nature, 
 whether it operated a restraint on trade or not, was within the 
 statute, and thus the statue would be destructive of all right 
 to contract or agree or combine in any respect whatever as to 
 subjects embraced in interstate trade or commerce, or if this 
 conclusion were not reached, then the contention would require 
 it to be held that as the statute did not define the things to 
 
529 
 
 which it related and excluded resort to the only means by which 
 the acts to which it relates could be ascertained the light of 
 reason the enforcement of the statute was impossible because 
 of its uncertainty. The merely generic enumeration which the 
 statute makes of the acts to which it refers and the absence of 
 any definition of restraint of trade as used in the statute leaves 
 room for but one conclusion, which is that it was expressly 
 designed not to unduly limit the application of the act by precise 
 definition, but while clearly fixing a standard that is, by defin- 
 ing the ulterior boundaries which could not be transgressed with 
 impunity to leave it to be determined by the light of reason, 
 guided by the principles of law and the duty to apply and 
 enforce the public policy embodied in the statute in every given 
 case, whether any particular act or contract was within the con- 
 templation of the statute. 
 
 But, it is said, persuasive as these views may be, they may 
 not be here applied, because the previous decisions of this court 
 have given to the statute a meaning which expressly excludes 
 the construction which must result from the reasoning stated. 
 The cases are United States vs. Freight Association (166 IT. S., 
 290) and United States vs. Joint Traffic Association (171 U. S., 
 505). Both the cases involved the legality of combinations or 
 associations of railroads engaged in interstate commerce for the 
 purpose of controlling the conduct of the parties to the asso- 
 ciation or combination in many particulars. The association 
 or combination was assailed in each case as being in violation 
 of the statute. It was held that they were. It is undoubted that 
 in the opinion in each case general language was made use of 
 which, when separated from its context, would justify the con- 
 clusion that it was decided that reason could not be resorted to 
 for the purpose of determining whether the acts complained of 
 were within the statute. It is, however, also true that the nature 
 and character of the contract or agreement in each case was 
 fully referred, to and suggestions as to their unreasonableness 
 pointed out in order to indicate that they were within the pro- 
 hibitions of the statute. As the cases can not by any possible 
 conception be treated as authoritative without the certitude that 
 reason was resorte'd to for the purpose of deciding them, it 
 follows as a matter of course that it must have been held by 
 the light of reason, since the conclusion could not have been 
 otherwise reached, that the assailed contracts or agreements 
 were within the general enumeration of the statute, and that 
 their operation and effect brought about the restraint of trade 
 which the statute prohibited. This being inevitable, the de- 
 duction can, in reason, only be this: That in the cases relied 
 upon, it having been found that the acts complained of were 
 within the statute and operated to produce the injuries which 
 the statute forbade, that resort to reason was not permissible 
 in order to allow that to be done which the statute prohibited. 
 This being true, the rulings in the cases relied upon, when 
 
530 
 
 rightly appreciated, were therefore this and nothing more : That 
 as considering the contracts or agreements, their necessary effect 
 and the character of the parties by whom they were made, they 
 were clearly restraints of trade within the purview of the statute, 
 they could not be taken out of that category by indulging in 
 general reasoning as to the expediency or non-expediency of 
 having made the contracts or the wisdom or want of wisdom 
 of the statute which prohibited their being made. That is to 
 say, the cases but decided that the nature and character of the 
 contracts, creating as they did a conclusive presumption which 
 brought them within the statute, such result was not to be dis- 
 regarded by the substitution of a judicial appreciation of what 
 the law ought to be for the plain judicial duty of enforcing the 
 law as it was made. 
 
 But aside from reasoning it is true to say that the cases 
 relied upon do not, when rightly construed, sustain the doctrine 
 contended for is established by all of the numerous decisions of 
 this court which have applied and enforced the anti-trust act, 
 since they all in the very nature of things rest upon the premise 
 that reason was the guide by which the provisions of the act 
 were in every case interpreted. Indeed, intermediate the deci- 
 sion of the two cases that is, after the decision in the freight 
 association case and before the decision in the joint traffic case 
 the case of Hopkins vs. United States (171 U. S., 578) was 
 decided, the opinion being delivered by Mr. Justice Peckham, 
 who wrote both the opinions in the freight association and in 
 the joint traffic cases. And, referring in the Hopkins case to 
 the broad claim made as to the rule of interpretation announced 
 in the freight association case, it was said (p. 592) : 
 
 " To treat as condemned by the act all agreements under 
 which, as a result, the cost of conducting an interstate com- 
 mercial business may be increased would enlarge the application 
 of the act far beyond the fair meaning of the language used. 
 There must be some direct and immediate effect upon interstate 
 commerce in order to come within the act." 
 
 And in the joint traffic case this statement was expressly 
 reiterated and approved and illustrated by example. Like limita- 
 tion on the general language used in freight association and 
 joint traffic cases is also the clear result of Bement vs. National 
 Harrow Company (186 United States 70, 92), and especially 
 of Cincinnati Packet Company vs. Bay (200 U. S., 179). 
 
 If the criterion by which it is to be determined in all cases 
 whether every contract, combination, etc., is a restraint of trade 
 within the intendment of the law is the direct or indirect effect 
 of the acts involved, then, of course, the rule of reason becomes 
 the guide, and the construction which we have given the statute, 
 instead of being refuted by the cases relied upon, is by those 
 cases demonstrated to be correct. This is true, because as the 
 construction which we have deduced from the history of the act 
 and the analysis of its text is simply that in every case where 
 
531 
 
 it is claimed that an act or acts are in violation of the statute 
 the rule of reason, in the light of the principles of law and 
 the public policy which the act embodies, must be applied. From 
 this it follows, since that rule and the result of the test as to 
 direct or indirect, in their ultimate aspect, come to one and the 
 same thing, that the difference between the two is therefore 
 only that which obtains between things which do not differ 
 at all. 
 
 If it be true that there is this identity of result between 
 the rule intended to be applied in the freight association case 
 that is, the rule of direct and indirect, and the rule of reason 
 which, under the statute as we construe it, should be here ap- 
 plied it ma}' be asked how was it that in the opinion in the 
 freight association case much consideration was given to the 
 subject of whether the agreement or combination which was 
 involved in that case could be taken out of the prohibitions of 
 the statute upon the theory of its reasonableness? The ques- 
 tion is pertinent and must be fully and frankly met, for if it 
 be now deemed that the freight* association case was mistakenly 
 decided or too broadly stated, the doctrine which it announced 
 should be either expressly overruled or limited. 
 
 The confusion which gives rise to the question results from 
 failing to distinguish between the want of power to take a 
 case which by its terms or the circumstances which surrounded 
 it, considering among such circumstances the character of the 
 parties, is plainly within the statute, out of the operation of 
 the statute by resort to reason in effect to establish that the 
 contract ought not to be treated as within the statute and the 
 duty in every case where it becomes necessary from the nature 
 and character of the parties to decide whether it was within the 
 statute to pass upon that question by the light of reason. This 
 distinction, we think, serves to point out what in its ultimate 
 conception was the thought underlying the reference to the rule 
 of reason made in the freight association case, especially when 
 such reference is interpreted by the context of the opinion and 
 in the light of the subsequent opinion in the Hopkins case and 
 in Cincinnati Packet Company vs. Bay. 
 
 And in order, not in the slightest degree to be wanting in 
 frankness, we say that in so far, however, as by separating the 
 general language used in the opinions in the freight association 
 and joint traffic cases from the context and the subject and 
 parties with which the cases were concerned, it may be conceived 
 that the language referred to conflicts with the construction 
 which we give the statute, they are necessarily now limited and 
 qualified. We see no possible escape from this conclusion if 
 we are to adhere to the many cases decided in this court in 
 which the anti-trust law has been applied and enforced and if 
 the duty to apply and enforce that law in the future is to con- 
 tinue to exist. The first is true, because the construction which 
 we now give the statute does not in the slightest degree conflict 
 
532 
 
 with a single previous case decided concerning the anti-trust 
 law aside from the contention as to the freight association and 
 joint traffic cases, and because every one of those cases applied 
 the rule of reason for the purpose of determining whether the 
 subject before the court was within the statute. The second is 
 also true, since, as we have already pointed out, unaided by the 
 light of reason it is impossible to understand how the statute 
 may in the future be enforced and the public policy which it 
 establishes be made efficacious. 
 
 So far as the objections of the defendants in error are con- 
 cerned, they are all embraced under two headings: 
 
 (a) That the act, even if the averments of the bill be true, 
 cannot be constitutionally applied, because to do so would ex- 
 tend the power of Congress to subject dehors the reach of its 
 authority to regulate commerce, by enabling that body to deal 
 with mere questions of production of commodities within the 
 States. But all the structure upon which this argument proceeds 
 is based ivoon the decision in United States vs. E. C. Knight 
 Company (156 U. S., 1). The 'view, however, which the argu- 
 ment takes of that case and the arguments based upon that view 
 have been so repeatedly pressed upon this court in connection 
 with the interpretation and enforcement of the anti-trust act, 
 and have been so necessarily and expressly decided to be un- 
 sound as to cause the contentions to be plainly foreclosed and 
 to require no express notice (United States vs. Northern Securi- 
 ties Company, 193 U. S., 334; Loewe vs. Lawler, 208 TJ. S., 
 274; United States vs. Swift & Co., 196 TJ. S., 375; Montague 
 vs. Lowry, 193 U. S., 38; Shawnee Compress Co. vs. Anderson, 
 209 U. S., 423). 
 
 (6) Many arguments are pressed in various forms of state- 
 ment which in substance amount to contending that the statute 
 cannot be applied under the facts of this case without impairing 
 rights of property and destroying the freedom of contract or 
 trade, which is essentially necessary to the well-being of society 
 and which it is insisted is protected by the constitutional guar- 
 anty of due process of law. But the ultimate foundation of all 
 these arguments is the assumption that reason may not be 
 resorted to in interpreting and applying the statute, and there- 
 fore that the statute unreasonably restricts the right to contract 
 and unreasonably operates upon the right to acquire and hold 
 property. As the premise is demonstrated to be unsound by the 
 construction we have given the statute, of course the propositions 
 which rest upon that premise need not be further noticed. 
 
 So far as the arguments proceed upon the conception that 
 in view of the generality of the statute it is not susceptible of 
 being enforced by the courts because it cannot be carried out 
 without a judicial exertion of legislative power, they are clearly 
 unsound. The statute certainly generically enumerates the 
 character of acts which it prohibits and the wrong which it was 
 intended to prevent. The propositions therefore but insist that 
 
533 
 
 consistently with the fundamental principles of due process of 
 law never can be left to the judiciary to decide whether in a 
 given case particular acts come within a generic statutory pro- 
 vision. But to reduce the propositions, however, to this their 
 final meaning makes it clear that in substance they deny the 
 existence of essential legislative authority and challenge the 
 right of the judiciary to perform duties which that department 
 of the government has exerted from the beginning. This is 
 so clear as to require no elaboration. Yet, let us demonstrate 
 that which needs no demonstration by a few obvious examples. 
 Take, for instance, the familiar cases where the judiciary is 
 called upon to determine whether a particular act or acts are 
 within a given prohibition, depending upon wrongful intent. 
 Take questions of fraud. Consider the power which must be 
 exercised in every case where the courts are called upon to deter- 
 mine whether particular acts are invalid which are, abstractly 
 speaking, in and of themselves valid, but which are asserted 
 to be invalid because of their direct effect upon interstate com- 
 merce. 
 
 AVe come, then, to the third proposition requiring considera- 
 tion, viz.: 
 
 Third The facts and the application of the statute to them. 
 
 Beyond dispute the proofs establish substantially, as alleged 
 in the bill, the following facts : 
 
 (1) The creation of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. 
 
 (2) The organization of the Standard Oil Trust of 188.2, 
 and also a previous one of 1879, not referred to in the bill, and 
 the proceedings in the Supreme Court of Ohio, culminating in 
 a decree based upon the finding that the company was unlaw- 
 fully a party to that trust ; the transfer by the trustees of stocks 
 in certain of the companies; the contempt proceedings; and, 
 finally, the increase of the capital of the Standard Oil Company 
 of New Jersey and the acquisition by that company of the shares 
 of the stock of the other corporations in exchange fbr its cer- 
 tificates. 
 
 The vast amount of property and the possibilities of far- 
 reaching control which resulted from the facts last stated are 
 shown by the statement which we have previously annexed con- 
 cerning the parties to the trust agreement of 1882, and the 
 corporations whose stock was held by the trustees under the trust 
 and which came therefore to be held by the New Jersey corpo- 
 ration. But these statements do not with accuracy convey 
 an appreciation of the situation as it existed at the time of the 
 entry of the decree below, since during the more than ten years 
 which elapsed between the acquiring by the New Jersey corpo- 
 ration of the stock and other property which was formerly held 
 by the trustees under the trust agreement, the situation, of 
 course, had somewhat changed, a change which, when analyzed 
 in the light of the proof, we think, establishes that the result 
 
534 
 
 of enlarging the capital stock of the ISTew Jersey company and 
 giving it the vast power to which we have referred produced 
 its normal consequence ; that is, it gave to the corporation, despite 
 enormous dividends and despite the dropping out of certain 
 corporations enumerated in the decree of the court below, an 
 enlarged and more perfect sway and control over the trade and 
 commerce in petroleum and its products. The ultimate situa- 
 tion referred to will be made manifest by an examination of 
 sections 2 and 4 of the decree below, which are excerpted in the 
 margin.* 
 
 *Sec. 2. That the defendants John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, 
 Henry H. Rogers, Henry M'. Flager, John D. Archbold, Oliver H. Payne, and 
 Charles M. Pratt, hereafter called the seven individual defendants, united with 
 the Standard Oil Company and other defendants to form and effectuate this 
 combination, and since its formation have been and still are engaged in 
 carrying it into effect and continuing it ; that the defendants Anglo-American 
 Oil Co. (Ltd.), Atlantic Refining Co., Buckeye Pipe Line Co., Borne-Scrymser 
 Co., Chesebrough Manufacturing Co. (Consolidated), Cumberland Pipe Line Co., 
 Colonial Oil Co., Continental Oil Co., Crescent Pipe Line Co., Henry C. Folger, 
 Jr., and Calvin N. Payne (a copartnership doing business under the firm 
 name and style of Corsicana Refining Co.), Eureka Pipe Line Co., Galena 
 Signal Oil Co., Indiana Pipe Line Co., Manhattan Oil Co., National Transit 
 Co., New York Transit Co., Northern Pipe Line Co., Ohio Oil Co., Prairie Oil & 
 Gas Co., Security Oil Co., Solar Refining Co., Southern Pipe Line Co., South 
 Penn Oil Co., Southwest Pennsylvania Pipe Lines Co., Standard Oil Co. of 
 California, Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, Standard Oil Co. of Iowa, Standard 
 Oil Co. of Kansas, Standard Oil Co. of Kentucky, Standard Oil Co. of 
 Nebraska, Standard Oil Co. of New York, Standard Oil Co. of Ohio, Swan & 
 1' inch Co., Union Tank Line Co., Vacuum Oil Co., Washington Oil Co., Waters- 
 Pierce Oil Co., have entered into and become parties to this combination and 
 are either actively operating or aiding in the operation of it; that by means 
 of this combination the defendants named in this section have combined and 
 conspired to monopolize, have monopolized and are continuing to monopolize 
 a substantial part of the commerce among the States, in the Territories, and 
 with foreign nations, in violation of section 2 of the anti-trust act. 
 
 Sec. 4. That, in the formation and execution of the combination or con- 
 spiracy the Standard Co. has issued its stock to the amount of more than 
 $90,000,000 in exchange for the stocks of other corporations which it holds, 
 and it now owns and controls all of the capital stock of many corporations, a 
 majority of the stock or controlling interests in some corporations, and stock 
 in other corporations as follows: 
 
 Names of Companies. 
 
 Total 
 Capital 
 Stock. 
 
 Owned by 
 Standard 
 Oil Co. 
 
 Anglo-American Oil Co (Ltd ) 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 999,740 
 
 \tlantic Refining Co 
 
 $5,000,000 
 
 $5,000,000 
 
 Borne-Scrymser Co 
 
 2JO.OOO 
 
 199,700 
 
 Buckeye Pipe Line Co 
 
 10,000,000 
 
 9,999,700 
 
 Chesebrough Manufacturing Co Consolidated 
 
 500,000 
 
 277,700 
 
 Colonial Oil Co . . 
 
 250,000 
 
 249,300 
 
 Continental Oil Co 
 
 300,000 
 
 300,000 
 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 .Eureka Pipe Line Co 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 4,999,400 
 
 Galena-Signal Oil Co . 
 
 10,003,000 
 
 7,079,500 
 
 Indiana Pipe Line Co 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 999,700 
 
 
 450,000 
 
 450,0 DO 
 
 Mahoning Gas Fuel Co 
 
 150,000 
 
 149,900 
 
 Mountain State Gas Co 
 
 500,000 
 
 530,000 
 
 National Transit Co 
 
 25,455,200 
 
 25,451,650 
 
 New York Transit Co 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 Northern Pipe Line Co . 
 
 4,000,000 
 
 4,003,000 
 
 Northwestern Ohio Natural Gas Co 
 Ohio Oil Co 
 
 2,775,250 
 10,000,000 
 
 1,649,450 
 9,999,850 
 
 People's Natural Gas Co. . 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 1,000,000 
 
535 
 
 Giving to the facts just stated the weight which it was 
 deemed they were entitled to, in the light afforded by the proof 
 of other cognate facts and circumstances, the court below held 
 that the acts and dealings established by the proof operated to 
 destroy the "potentiality of competition" which otherwise 
 would have existed to such an extent as to cause the transfers 
 of stock which were made to the New Jersey corporation and 
 
 Names of Companies. 
 
 Total 
 Capital 
 Stock. 
 
 Owned by 
 Standard 
 Oil Co. 
 
 Pittsburg Natural Gas Co 
 
 $310 000 
 
 $310 000 
 
 Solar Refining Co 
 
 500 000 
 
 499 400 
 
 Southern Pipe Line Co 
 
 10 000*'300 
 
 10 000 000 
 
 South Penn Oil Co 
 
 2 500 000 
 
 2 500 000 
 
 Southwest Pennsylvania Pipe Lines 
 
 3 500 030 
 
 3 500 000 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of California 
 
 17 000 000 
 
 16 999 500 
 
 Standard Oil Co of Indiana 
 
 1 000 000 
 
 999 'JOO 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of Iowa . 
 
 1 000 000 
 
 1 000 003 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of Kansas 
 
 1,000 000 
 
 '999*330 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of Kentucky 
 Standard Oil Co. of Nebraska . . 
 
 1,000,000 
 600 030 
 
 997,200 
 599 500 
 
 Standard Oil Co. of New York 
 
 15,000 000 
 
 15 000 000 
 
 Standard Oil Co of Ohio 
 
 3 500 300 
 
 3 499 400 
 
 Swan & Finch Co 
 
 100 000 
 
 100 000 
 
 Union Tank Line Co 
 
 3,500,000 
 
 3,499,430 
 
 V T acuum Oil Co 
 
 2 500 000 
 
 2 500 000 
 
 Washington Oil Co 
 
 100,300 
 
 71,480 
 
 Waters-Pierce Oil Co 
 
 400,000 
 
 274,700 
 
 
 
 
 That the defendant National Transit Co., which is owned and controlled by 
 the Standard Oil Co. as aforesaid, owns and controls the amounts of the 
 capital stocks of the following-named corporations and limited partnerships 
 state'd opposite each, respectively, as follows : 
 
 Names of Companies. 
 
 Total 
 Capital 
 Stock. 
 
 Owned by 
 
 National 
 
 Transit Co. 
 
 Connecting Gas Co 
 
 Cumberland Pipe Line Co. 
 
 East Ohio Gas Co 
 
 Franklin Pipe Co. (Ltd.). 
 Prairie Oil & Gas Co 
 
 $825,000 
 
 1,003,000 
 
 6,000,000 
 
 50,000 
 
 10,'300,000 
 
 $412,000 
 
 998,500 
 
 5,999,500 
 
 19,500 
 
 9,999,500 
 
 That the Standard Co. has also acquired the control, by the ownership of 
 its stock or otherwise, of the Security Oil Co., a corporation created under 
 the laws of Texas, which owns a refinery at Beaumont, in that State, and the 
 Manhattan Oil Co., a corporation which owns a pipe line situated in the States 
 of Indiana and Ohio; that the Standard Co. and the corporations and partner- 
 ships named in section 2 are engaged in the various branches of the business 
 of producing, purchasing and transporting petroleum in the principal oil- 
 producing districts of the United- States, in New York, Pennsylvania, West 
 Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louis- 
 iana, Texas, Colorado, and California, in shipping and transporting the oil 
 through pipe lines owned or controlled by these companies from the various oil- 
 producing districts into and through other States, in refining the petroleum and 
 manufacturing it into various products, in shipping the petroleum and the 
 products thereof into the States and Territories of the United States, the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia, and to foreign nations, in shipping the petroleum and its 
 products in tank cars owned or controlled by the subsidiary companies into 
 various States and Territories of the United States and into the District of 
 Columbia, and in selling the petroleum and its products in various places in t 
 States and Territories of the United States, in the District of Columbia, and 
 in foreign countries ; that the Standard Co. controls the subsidiary companies 
 and directs the management thereof so that none of the subsidiary cornpaniei 
 competes with any other of those companies or with the Standard Co., but 
 their trade is all managed as that of a single person. 
 
536 
 
 the control which resulted over the many and various subsidiary 
 corporations to be a combination or conspiracy in restraint of 
 trade in violation of the first section of the act, but also to be 
 an attempt to monopolize and a monopolization bringing about 
 a perennial violation of the second section. 
 
 We see no cause to doubt the correctness of these conclu- 
 sions, considering the subject from every aspect that is, both 
 in view of the facts established by the record and the necessary 
 operation and effect of the law as we have construed it upon 
 the inferences deducible from the facts for the following 
 reasons : 
 
 (a) Because the unification of power and control over petro- 
 leum and its products which was the inevitable result of the 
 combining in the New Jersey corporation by the increase of its 
 stock and the transfer to it of the stocks of so many other cor- 
 porations, aggregating so vast a capital, gives rise, in and of 
 itself, in the absence of countervailing circumstances, to say the 
 least, to the prima facie presumption of intent and purpose to 
 maintain the dominancy over the oil industry, not as a result 
 of normal methods of industrial development, but by new means 
 of combination which were resorted to in order that greater 
 power might be added than would otherwise have arisen had 
 normal methods been followed, the whole with the purpose of 
 excluding others from the trade and thus centralizing in the 
 combination a perpetual control of the movements of petroleum 
 and its products in the channels of interstate commerce. 
 
 (&) Because the prima facie presumption of intent to t re- 
 strain trade, to monopolize and to bring about monopolization 
 resulting from the act of expanding the stock of the New Jersey 
 corporation and vesting it with such vast control of the oil 
 industry, is made conclusive by considering (1) the conduct 
 of the persons or corporations who were mainly instrumental 
 in bringing about the extension of power in the New J'ersey 
 corporation before the consummation of that result, and prior 
 to the formation of the trust agreements of 1879 and 1882 ; 
 (2) by considering the proof as to what was done under those 
 agreements and the acts which immediately preceded the vest- 
 ing of power in the New Jersey corporation, as well as by weigh- 
 ing the modes in which the power vested in that corporation has 
 been exerted and the results which have arisen from it. 
 
 Recurring to the acts done b}^ the individuals or corporations 
 who were mainly instrumental in bringing about the expansion 
 of the New Jersey corporation during the period prior to the 
 formation of the trust agreements of 1879 and 1882, including 
 those agreements, not for the purpose of weighing the substan- 
 tial merit of the numerous charges of wrong-doing made during 
 such period, but solely as an aid for discovering intent and pur- 
 pose, we think no disinterested mind can survey the period in 
 question without being irresistibly driven to the conclusion that 
 the very genius for commercial development and organization 
 
537 
 
 which, it would seem, was manifested from the beginning soon 
 begot an intent and purpose to exclude others which was fre- 
 quently manifested by acts and dealings wholly inconsistent with 
 the theory that they were made with the single conception of 
 advancing the development of business power by usual methods, 
 but which, on the contrary, necessarily involved the intent to 
 drive others from the field and to exclude them from their right 
 to trade, and thus accomplish the mastery which was the end in 
 view. And, considering the period from the date of the trust 
 agreements of 1879 and 1882, up to the time of the expansion 
 of the New Jersey corporation, the gradual extension of the 
 power over the commerce in oil which ensued, the decision of 
 the Supreme Court of Ohio, the tardiness or reluctance in con- 
 forming to the commands of that decision, the method first 
 adopted and that which finally culminated in the plan of the 
 New Jersey corporation, all additionally serve to make manifest 
 the continued existence of the intent which we have previously 
 indicated and which, among other things, impelled the expan- 
 sion of the New Jersey corporation. The exercise of the power 
 which resulted from that organization fortifies the foregoing 
 conclusions, since the development which came, the acquisition 
 here and there which ensued .of every efficient means by which 
 competition could have been asserted, the slow but resistless 
 methods which followed by which means of transportation were 
 absorbed and brought under control, the system of marketing 
 which was adopted, by which the country was divided into dis- 
 tricts and the trade in each district in oil was turned over to a 
 designated corporation within the combination and all others 
 were excluded, all lead the mind up to a conviction of a purpose 
 and intent which we think is so certain as practically to cause 
 the subject not to be within the domain of reasonable conten- 
 tion. 
 
 The' inference that no attempt to monopolize could have been 
 intended, and that no monopolization resulted from the acts 
 complained of, since it is established that a very small percent- 
 age of the crude oil produced was controlled by the combination, 
 is unwarranted. As substantial power over the crude product was 
 the inevitable result of the absolute control which existed over 
 the refined product, the monopolization of the one carried with 
 it the power to control the other, and if the inference which this 
 situation suggests were developed, which we deem it unneces- 
 sary to do, they might well serve to add additional cogency to 
 the presumption of intent to monopolize which we have found 
 arises from the unquestioned proof on other subjects. 
 
 We are thus brought to the last subject which we are called 
 upon to consider, viz. : 
 
 Fourth The remedy to be administered. 
 
 It may be conceded that ordinarily where it was found that 
 acts had been done in violation of the statute adequate measure 
 of relief would result from restraining the doing of such acts 
 
538 
 
 in the future. (Swift vs. United States, 96 U. S., 375.) But 
 in a case like this, where the condition which has been brought 
 about in violation of the statute, in and of itself, is not only a 
 continued attempt to monopolize, but also a monopolization, the 
 duty to enforce the statute requires the application of broader 
 and more controlling remedies. As penalties which are not 
 authorized by law may not be inflicted by judicial authority, it 
 follows that to meet the situation with which we are confronted 
 the application of remedies twofold in character becomes essen- 
 tial: (1) To forbid the doing in the future of acts like those 
 which we have found to have been done in the past which would 
 he violative of the statute; (2) the exertion of such measure 
 of relief as will effectually dissolve the combination found to 
 exist in violation of the statute, and thus neutralize the exten- 
 sion and continually operating force which the possession of 
 the power unlawfully obtained has brought and will continue 
 to bring about. 
 
 In applying remedies for this purpose, however, the fact must 
 not be overlooked that injury to the public by the prevention 
 of an undue restraint on or the monopolization of trade or 
 commerce is the foundation upon which the prohibitions of the 
 statute rest, and, moreover, that one of the fundamental pur- 
 poses of the statute is to protect, not to destroy, rights of 
 property. 
 
 Let us then, as a means of accurately determining what 
 relief we are to afford, first come to consider what relief was 
 afforded by the court below, in order to fix how far it is neces- 
 sary to take from or add to that relief, to the end that the 
 prohibitions of the statute may have complete and operative 
 force. 
 
 The court below, by virtue of sections 1, 2 and 4 of its 
 decree, which we have in part previously excerpted in the mar- 
 gin, adjudged that the New Jersey corporation in so far as it 
 held the stock of the various corporations, recited in sections 
 2 and 4 of the decree, or controlled the same, was a combina- 
 tion in violation of the first section of the act, and an attempt 
 to monopolize or a monopolization contrary to the second sec- 
 tion of the act. It commanded the dissolution of the combina- 
 tion and therefore, in effect, directed the transfer by the New 
 Jersey corporation back to the stockholders of the various sub- 
 sidiary corporations entitled to the same of the stock which had 
 been turned over to the New Jersey company in exchange for 
 its stock. To make this command effective, section 5 of the 
 decree forbade the New Jersey corporation from in any form 
 or manner exercising any ownership or exerting any power 
 directly or indirectly in virtue of its apparent title to the stocks 
 of the subsidiary corporations, and prohibited those subsidiary 
 corporations from paying any dividends to the New Jersey cor- 
 poration or doing any act which would recognize further power 
 in that company, except to the extent that it was necessary to 
 
539 
 
 enable that company to transfer the stock. So far as the owners 
 of the stock of the subsidiary corporations and the corporations 
 themselves were concerned after the stock had been transferred, 
 section 6 of the decree enjoined them from in any way conspir- 
 ing or combining to violate the act or to monopolize or attempt 
 to monopolize in virtue of their ownership of the stock trans- 
 ferred to them, and prohibited all agreements between the sub- 
 sidiary corporations or other stockholders in the future tending 
 to produce or bring about further violations of the act. 
 
 By section 7, pending the accomplishment of the dissolution 
 of the combination by the transfer of stock and until it was 
 consummated, the defendants named in section 1, constituting 
 all the corporations to which we have referred, were enjoined 
 from engaging in or carrying on interstate commerce. And 
 by section 9, among other things, a delay of 30 days was granted 
 for the carrying into effect of the direction of the decree. 
 
 So far as the decree held, that the ownership of the stock 
 of the New Jersey corporation constituted a combination in 
 violation of the first section and an attempt to create a mo- 
 nopoly or to monopolize under the second section and com- 
 manded the dissolution of the combination, the decree was clearly 
 appropriate. And this also is true of section 5 of the decree, 
 which restricted both the New Jersey corporation and the sub- 
 sidiary corporations from doing anything which would recog- 
 nize or give effect to further ownership in the New Jersey cor- 
 poration of the stocks which were ordered to be retransf erred. 
 
 But the contention is that, in so far as the relief by way of 
 injunction which was awarded by section 6 against the stock- 
 holders of the subsidiary corporations or the subsidiary corpora- 
 tions themselves after the transfer of stock by the New Jersey 
 corporation was completed in conformity to the decree, that the 
 relief awarded was too broad : (a) Because it was not sufficiently 
 specific and tended to cause those who were within the embrace 
 of the order to cease to be under the protection of the law of 
 the land and required them to thereafter conduct their business 
 under the jeopardy of punishments for contempt for violating 
 a general injunction. (New Haven E. E. vs. Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, 200 U. S., 404.) Besides, it is said that 
 the restraint imposed by section 6 even putting out of view 
 the consideration just stated was moreover calculated to do 
 injury to the public, and it may be in and of itself to produce 
 the very restraint on the due course of trade which it was 
 intended to prevent. We say this since it does not necessarily 
 follow because an illegal restraint of trade or an attempt to 
 monopolize or a monopolization resulted from the combination 
 and the transfer of the stocks of the subsidiary corporations to 
 the New Jersey corporation that a like restraint or attempt to 
 monopolize or monopolization would necessarily arise from agree- 
 ments between one or more of the subsidiary corporations after 
 the transfer of the stock by the New Jersey corporation. For 
 
940 
 
 illustration, take the pipe lines. By the effect of the transfer 
 of the stock the pipe lines would come under the control of 
 various corporations, instead of being subjected to a uniform 
 control. If various corporations owning the lines determined 
 in the public interests to so combine as to make a continuous 
 line, such agreement or combination would not be repugnant to 
 the act, and yet it might be restrained by the decree. 
 
 As another example, take the Union Tank Line Company, 
 one of the subsidiary corporations, the owner practically of all 
 the tank cars in use by the combination. If no possibility 
 existed of agreements for the distribution of these cars among 
 the subsidiary corporations, the most serious detriment to the 
 public interest might result. Conceding the merit, abstractly 
 considered, of these contentions, they are irrelevant. We so 
 think, since we construe the sixth paragraph of the decree not 
 as depriving the stockholders or the corporations, after the dis- 
 solution of the combination, of the power to make normal and 
 lawful contracts or agreements, but as restraining them from, 
 by any device whatever, re-creating, directly or indirectly, the 
 illegal combination which the decree dissolved. In. other words, 
 we construe the sixth paragraph of the decree not as depriving 
 the stockholders or corporations of the right to live under the 
 law of the land, but as compelling obedience to that law. As, 
 therefore, the sixth paragraph as thus construed is not amenable 
 to the criticism directed against it and cannot produce the harm- 
 ful results which the arguments suggest, it was obviously right. 
 We think that, in view of the magnitude of the interests involved 
 and their complexity, the delay of thirty days allowed for exe- 
 cuting the decree was too short and should be extended so as to 
 embrace a period of at least six months. So also, in view of 
 the possible serious injury to result to the public from an abso- 
 lute cessation of interstate commerce in petroleum and its prod- 
 ucts by such vast agencies as are embraced in the combination, 
 a result which might arise from that portion of the decree which 
 enjoined carrying on of interstate commerce not only by the 
 New Jersey corporation but by all the subsidiary companies until 
 the dissolution of the combination by the transfer of the stocks 
 in accordance with the decree should not have been awarded. 
 
 Our conclusion is that the decree below was right and should 
 be affirmed, except as to the minor matters concerning which 
 we have indicated the decree should be modified. Our order 
 will therefore be one of affirmance, with directions, however, 
 'to modify the decree in accordance with this opinion; the court 
 below to retain jurisdiction to the extent mve^ary to compel 
 compliance in every respect with its decree. 
 
 And it is so ordered. 
 
541 
 
 DISSENTING OPINION OF MR. JUSTICE HARLAN. 
 
 Mr. Jiistice Harlan, concurring in part and dissenting in 
 part: 
 
 A sense of duty constrains me to express the objections which 
 I have to certain declarations in the opinion just delivered on 
 behalf of the court. 
 
 I concur in holding that the Standard Oil Company of New 
 Jersey and its subsidiary companies constitute a combination 
 in restraint of interstate commerce, and that they have attempted 
 to monopolize and have monopolized parts of such commerce 
 all in violation of what is known as the anti-trust act of 1890. 
 (26 Stat, 209, ch. 647.) The evidence in this case overwhelm- 
 ingly sustained that view and led the circuit court, by its final 
 decree, to order the dissolution of the New Jersey corporation 
 and the discontinuance of the illegal combination between that 
 corporation and its subsidiary companies. 
 
 In my judgment the decree below should have been affirmed 
 without qualification. But the court, while affirming the decree, 
 directs some modification in respect of what it characterizes as 
 " minor matters." It is to be apprehended that those modifica- 
 tions may prove to be mischievous. In saying this I have par- 
 ticularly in view the statement in the opinion that " it does not 
 necessarily follow that because an illegal restraint of trade or 
 an attempt to monopolize or a monopolization resulted from 
 the combination and the transfer of the stocks of the subsidiary 
 corporations to the New Jersey corporation that a like restraint 
 of trade or attempt to monopolize or monopolization would nec- 
 essarily arise from agreements between one or more of the sub- 
 sidiary corporations after the transfer of the stock by the New 
 Jersey corporation." Taking this language in connection with 
 other parts of the opinion, the subsidiary companies are thus, 
 in effect, informed unwisely, I think that, although the New 
 Jersey corporation, being an illegal combination, must go out 
 of existence, they may join in an agreement to restrain com- 
 merce among the States if such restraint be not " undue." 
 
 In order that my objections to certain parts of the court's 
 opinion may distinctly appear, I must state the circumstances 
 under which Congress passed the anti-trust act and trace the 
 course of judicial decisions as to its meaning and scope. This 
 is the more necessary because the court, by its decision, when 
 interpreted by the language of its opinion, has not only upset 
 the long-settled interpretation of the act, but has usurped the 
 constitutional functions of the legislative branch of the gov- 
 ernment. With all due respect for the opinions of others, I 
 feel bound to say that what the court has said may well cause 
 some alarm for the integrity of our institutions. Let us see how 
 the matter stands. 
 
 All who recall the condition of the country in 1890 will 
 remember that there was everywhere among the people gen- 
 
542 
 
 orally a deep feeling of unrest. The nation had been rid of 
 human slavery fortunately, as all now feel but the conviction 
 was universal that the country was in real danger from another 
 kind of slavery sought to be fastened on the American pepple, 
 namely, the slavery that would result from aggregations of 
 capital in the hands of a few individuals and corporations con- 
 trolling, for their own profit and advantage exclusively, the 
 entire business of the country, including the production and sale 
 of the necessaries of life. Such a danger was thought to be 
 then imminent, and all felt that it must be met firmly and by 
 such statutory regulations as would adequately protect the people 
 against oppression and wrong. Congress therefore took up the 
 matter and gave the whole subject the fullest consideration. 
 All agreed that the national government could not, by legisla- 
 tion, regulate the domestic trade carried on wholly within the 
 several States; for power to regulate such trade remained with, 
 because never surrendered by, the States. But, under authority 
 expressly granted to it by the Constitution, Congress could 
 regulate commerce among the- several States and with foreign 
 States. Its authority to regulate such commerce was and is 
 paramount, due force being given to other provisions of the 
 fundamental law devised by the fathers for the safety of the 
 government and for the protection and security of the essen- 
 tial rights inhering in life, liberty and property. 
 
 Guided by these considerations, and to the end that the 
 people, so far as interstate commerce was concerned, might not 
 be dominated by vast combinations and monopolies, having power 
 to advance their own selfish ends regardless of the general inter- 
 ests and welfare, Congress passed the anti-trust act of 1890 
 in these words: 
 
 " SECTION" 1. Every contract, combination in the .form of 
 trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or com- 
 merce among the several States or with foreign nations is hereby 
 declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such 
 contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy shall 
 be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, 
 shall be punished by fine not exceeding $5,000 or by imprison- 
 ment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in 
 the discretion of the court. 
 
 " SEC. 2. Every person who shall monopolize or attempt to 
 monopolize or combine or conspire with any other person or 
 persons to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among 
 the several States or with foreign nations shall be deemed guilty 
 of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished 
 by fine not exceeding $5,000 or by imprisonment not exceeding 
 one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the 
 court. 
 
 " SEC. 3. Every contract, combination in form of trust or 
 otherwise or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce in any 
 Territory of the United States or of the District of Columbia, 
 
543 
 
 or in restraint of trade or commerce between any such Terri- 
 tory and another, or between any such Territory or Territories 
 and any State or States or the District of Columbia or with 
 foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia and any 
 State or States or foreign nations is hereby declared illegal. 
 Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in 
 any such combination or conspiracy shall be deemed guilty of 
 a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished 
 by fine not exceeding $5,000 or by imprisonment not exceeding 
 one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the 
 court." (26 Stat., 209, ch. 647.) 
 
 The important inquiry in the present case is as to the mean- 
 ing and scope of that act in its application to interstate com- 
 merce. 
 
 In 1896 this court had occasion to determine the meaning 
 and scope of the act in an important case known as the Trans- 
 Missouri Freight case. (166 U. S., 290.) The question there 
 was as to the validity under the anti-trust act of a certain 
 agreement between numerous railroad companies, whereby they 
 formed an association for the purpose of establishing and main- 
 taining rates, rules and regulations in respect of freight traffic 
 over specified routes. Two questions were involved: First, 
 whether the act applied to railroad carriers; second, whether 
 the agreement which was the basis of the suit which the United 
 States brought to have the agreement annulled was illegal. The 
 court held that railroad carriers were embraced by the act. In 
 determining that question the court, among other things, said: 
 
 " The language of the act includes every contract, combina- 
 tion in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint 
 of trade or commerce among the several States or. with foreign 
 nations. So far as the very terms of the statute go, they apply 
 to any contract of the nature described. A contract, therefore, 
 that is in restraint of trade or commerce is by the strict lan- 
 guage of the act prohibited, even though such contract is en- 
 tered into between competing common carriers by railroad, and 
 only for the purposes of thereby aft'ecting traffic rates for the 
 transportation of persons and property. If such an agreement 
 restrains trade or commerce, it is prohibited by the statute, 
 unless it can be said that an agreement, no matter what its 
 terms, relating only to transportation cannot restrain trade or 
 commerce. We see no escape from the conclusion that if an 
 agreement of such a nature does restrain it the agreement is 
 condemned by this act. * * * Nor is it for the substantia] 
 interests of the country that any one commodity should be within 
 the sole power and subject to the sole will of one powerful com- 
 bination of capital. Congress has, so far as its jurisdiction 
 extends, prohibited all contracts or combinations in the form 
 of trusts entered into for the purpose of restraining trade and 
 commerce. * * * While the statute prohibits all combina- 
 tions in the form of trusts or otherwise, the limitation is not 
 
544 
 
 confined to that form alone. All combinations which are in 
 restraint of trade or commerce are prohibited, whether in the 
 form of trusts or in any other form whatever. (U. S. vs. 
 Freight Association, 166 U. S., 290, 312, 324, 326.) 
 
 The court then proceeded to consider the second of the above 
 questions, saying: 
 
 " The next question to be discussed is as to what is the true 
 construction of the statute, assuming that it applies to common 
 carriers by railroad. What is the meaning of the language as 
 used in the statute, that ' every contract, combination in the 
 form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade 
 or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations 
 is hereby declared to be illegal '? Is it confined to a contract 
 or combination which is only in unreasonable restraint of trade 
 or commerce, or does it include what the language of the act 
 plainly and in terms covers, all contracts of that nature? It 
 is now with much amplification of argument urged that the 
 statute in declaring illegal every combination in the form of 
 trust or otherwise or conspiracy in restraint of trade or com- 
 merce does not mean what the language used therein plainly 
 imports, but that it only means to declare illegal any such con- 
 tract which is in unreasonable restraint of trade, while leaving 
 all others unaffected by the provisions of the act; that the com- 
 mon-law meaning of the term ' contract in restraint of trade ' 
 includes only such contracts as are in unreasonable restraint 
 of trade, and when that term is used in the Federal statute 
 it is not intended to include all contracts in restraint of trade, 
 but only those which are in unreasonable restraint thereof. 
 
 * * by the simple use of the term ( contract in restraint of 
 trade 9 all contracts of that nature, whether valid or otherwise, 
 would be included, and not alone that kind of contract which 
 was invalid and unenforceable as being in unreasonable re- 
 straint of trade. When, therefore, the body of an act pro- 
 nounces as illegal every contract or combination in restraint 
 of trade or commerce among the several States, etc., the plain 
 and ordinary meaning of such language is not limited to that 
 kind of contract alone which is in unreasonable restraint of 
 trade, but all contracts are included in such language, and no 
 exception or limitation can be added without placing in the act 
 that which has been omitted by Congress. * * * If only 
 that kind of contract which is in unreasonable restraint of 
 trade be within the meaning of the statute, and declared therein 
 to be illegal, it is at once apparent that the subject of what is 
 a reasonable rate is attended with great uncertainty. * * * 
 To say, therefore, that the act excludes agreements which are 
 not in unreasonable restraint of trade, and which tend simply 
 to keep up reasonable rates for transportation, is substantially 
 to leave the question of unreasonableness to the companies them- 
 selves. * * * But assuming that agreements of this nature 
 are not void at common law and that the various cases cited 
 
545 
 
 by the learned courts below show it, the answer to the state- 
 ment of their validity now is to be found in the terms of the 
 statute under consideration. * * * The arguments which 
 have been addressed to us against the inclusion of all contracts 
 in restraint of trade, as provided for by the language of the 
 act, have been based upon the alleged presumption that Con- 
 gress, notwithstanding the language of the act, could not have 
 intended to embrace all contracts, but only such contracts as 
 were in unreasonable restraint of trade. Under these circum- 
 stances we are, therefore, asked to hold that the act of Con- 
 gress excepts contracts which are not in unreasonable restraint 
 of trade and which only keep rates up to a reasonable price, 
 notwithstanding the language of the act makes no such excep- 
 tion. In other words, we are asked to read into the act by way 
 of judicial legislation an exception that is not placed there by 
 the law-making branch of the government, and this is to be 
 done upon the theory that the impolicy of such legislation is 
 so clear that it cannot be supposed Congress intended the nat- 
 ural import of the language it used. This we cannot and ought 
 not to do. * * * 
 
 "If the act ought to read as contended for by defendants, 
 Congress is the body to amend it, and not this court by a pro- 
 cess of judicial legislation wholly unjustifiable. Large num- 
 bers do not agree that the view taken by defendants is sound 
 or true in substance, and Congress may and very probably did 
 share in that belief in passing the act. The public policy of 
 the government is to be found in its statutes, and when they 
 have not directly spoken, then in the decisions of the courts 
 and the constant practice of the government officials; but when 
 the law-making power speaks upon a particular subject, over 
 which it has constitutional power to legislate, public policy in 
 such a case is what the statute enacts. If the law prohibit any 
 contract or combination in restraint of trade or commerce, a 
 contract or combination made in violation of such law is void, 
 whatever may have been theretofore decided by the courts to 
 have been the public policy of the country on that subject. The 
 conclusion which we have drawn from the examination above 
 made into the question before us is that the anti-trust act 
 applies to railroads, and that it renders illegal all agreements 
 which are in restraint of trade or commerce as we have above 
 defined that expression, and the question then arises whether 
 the agreement before us is of that nature." 
 
 I have made these extended extracts from the opinion of the 
 court in the Trans-Missouri Freight case, in order to show 
 beyond question that the point was there urged by counsel that 
 the anti-trust act condemned only contracts, combinations, 
 trusts and conspiracies that were in unreasonable restraint of 
 interstate commerce, and that the court in clear and decisive 
 language met that point. It adjudged that Congress had in 
 unequivocal words declared that " every contract, combination 
 
in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint 
 of commerce among the several States " shall be illegal, and 
 that no distinction, so far as interstate commerce was con- 
 cerned, was to be tolerated between restraints of such commerce 
 as were undue or unreasonable and restraints that were due or 
 reasonable. With full knowledge of the then condition of the 
 country and of its business, Congress determined to meet, and 
 did meet, the situation by an absolute, statutory prohibition of 
 " every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, 
 in restraint of trade or commerce." Still more, in response 
 to the suggestion by able counsel that Congress intended only 
 to strike down such contracts, combinations and monopolies 
 as unreasonably restrained interstate commerce, this court, in 
 words too clear to be misunderstood, said that to so hold was 
 "to. read into the act by way of judicial legislation an exception 
 not placed there by the law-making branch of the government." 
 " This," the court said, as we have seen, " we cannot and 
 ought not to do." 
 
 It thus appears that fifteen years ago, when the purpose of 
 Congress in passing the anti-trust act was fresh in the minds 
 of courts, lawyers, statesmen and the general public, this court 
 expressly declined to indulge in judicial legislation, l>y insert- 
 ing in the act the word "unreasonable" or any other word of 
 like import. It may be stated here that the country at large 
 accepted this view of the act, and the Federal courts through- 
 out the entire country enforced its provisions according to the 
 interpretation given in the Freight Association case. What, 
 then, was to be done by those who questioned the soundness 
 of the interpretation placed on the act by this court in that 
 case? As the court had decided that to insert the word "un- 
 reasonable ". in the act would be " judicial legislation " on its 
 part, the only alternative left to those who opposed the decision 
 in that case was to induce Congress to so amend the act as to 
 recognize the right to restrain interstate commerce to a reason- 
 able extent. The public press, magazines and law journals, the 
 debates in Congress, speeches and addresses by public men and 
 jurists, all contain abundant evidence of the general under- 
 standing that the meaning, extent and scope of the anti-trust 
 act had been judicially determined by this court, and that the 
 only question remaining open for discussion was the wisdom 
 of the policy declared by the act a matter that was exclusively 
 within the cognizance of Congress. But at every session of 
 Congress since the decision of 1896, the law-making branch 
 of the government, with full knowledge of that decision, has 
 refused to change the policy it had declared or to so amend the 
 act of 1890 as to except from its operation contracts, combina- 
 tions and trusts that reasonably restrain interstate commerce. 
 
 But those who were in combinations that were illegal did 
 not despair. They at once set up the baseless claim that the 
 decision of 1896 disturbed the "business interests of the coun- 
 
547 
 
 try," and let it be known that they would never be content 
 until the rule was established that would permit interstate 
 commerce to be subjected to reasonable restraints. Finally, an 
 opportunity came again to raise the same question which this 
 court had, upon full consideration, determined in 1896. I now 
 allude to the case of United States vs. Joint Traffic Associa- 
 tion, 171 U. S., 505, decided in 1898. What was that case? 
 
 It was a suit by the United States against more than thirty 
 railroad companies to have the court declare illegal, under the 
 anti-trust act, a certain agreement between these companies. 
 The relief asked was denied in the subordinate Federal courts, 
 and the government brought the case here. 
 
 It is important to state the points urged in that case by the 
 defendant companies charged with violating the anti-trust act, 
 and to show that the court promptly met them. To that end 
 I make a copious extract from the opinion in the Joint Traffic 
 case. Among other things, the court said: 
 
 " Upon comparing that agreement [the one in the Joint 
 Traffic case, then under consideration, 171 U. S., 505] with the 
 one set forth in the case of United States vs. Trans-Missouri 
 Freight Association, 166 U. S., 290, the great similarity be- 
 tween them suggests that a similar result should be reached in 
 the two cases" (p. 558). 
 
 Learned counsel in the Joint Traffic case urged a recon- 
 sideration of the question decided in the Trans-Missouri case, 
 contending that "the decision in that case [the Trans-Missouri 
 Freight case] is quite plainly erroneous, and the consequences 
 of such error are far-reaching and disastrous and clearly at war 
 with justice and sound policy, and the construction placed upon 
 the anti-trust statute has been received by the public with sur- 
 prise and alarm." They suggested that the point made in the 
 Joint Traffic case as to the meaning and scope of the act might 
 have been but was not made in the previous case. The court 
 said (171 U. S., 559) that "the report of the Trans-Missouri 
 case clearly shows not only that the point now taken was there 
 urged upon the attention of the court, but it was then inten- 
 tionally and necessarily decided." 
 
 The question whether the court should again consider the 
 point decided in the Trans-Missouri case was disposed of in 
 the most decisive language, as follows: 
 
 " Finally, we are asked to reconsider the question decided 
 in the Trans-Missouri case, and to retrace the steps taken 
 therein, because of the plain error contained in that decision 
 and the widespread alarm with which it was received and the 
 serious consequences which have resulted or may soon result 
 from the law as interpreted in that case. It is proper to remark 
 that an application for a reconsideration of a question but 
 lately decided by this court is usually based upon a statement 
 that some of the arguments employed on the original hearing 
 of the question have been overlooked or misunderstood, or that 
 
548 
 
 some controlling authority has been either misapplied by the 
 court or passed over without discussion or notice. While this 
 is not strictly an application for a rehearing in the same case, 
 yet in substance it is the same thing. The court is asked to 
 reconsider a question but just decided after a careful investiga- 
 tion of the matter involved. There have heretofore been in 
 effect two arguments of precisely the same questions now before 
 the court, and the same arguments were addressed to us on 
 both those occasions. The report of the. Trans-Missouri case 
 shows a dissenting opinion delivered in that case, and that the 
 opinion was concurred in by three other members of the court. 
 That opinion, it will be seen, gives with great force and ability 
 the arguments against the decision which was finally arrived 
 at by the court. It was after a full discussion of the questions 
 involved and with the knowledge of the views entertained by 
 the minority, as expressed in the dissenting opinion, that the 
 majority of the court came to the conclusion it did. Soon after 
 the decision a petition for a rehearing of the case was made, 
 supported by a printed argument in its favor, and pressed with 
 an earnestness and vigor and at a length which were certainly 
 commensurate with the importance of the case. This court, 
 with care and deliberation and also with a full appreciation 
 of their importance, again considered the questions involved 
 in its former decision. A majority of the court once more 
 arrived at the conclusion it had first announced, and accord- 
 ingly it denied the application. And now for the third time 
 the same arguments are employed, and the court is again asked 
 to recant its former opinion, and to decide the same question 
 in direct opposition to the conclusion arrived at in the Trans- 
 Missouri case. The learned counsel while making the applica- 
 tion frankly confess that the argument in opposition to the 
 decision in the case above named has been so fully, so clearly 
 and so forcibly presented in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Jus- 
 tice White [in the Freight case] that it is hardly possible to 
 add to it, nor is it necessary to repeat it. The fact that there 
 was so close a division of opinion in this court when the matter 
 was first under advisement, together with the different views 
 taken by some of the judges of the lower courts, led us to the 
 most careful and scrutinizing examination of the arguments 
 advanced by both sides, and it was after such an examination 
 that the majority of the court came to the conclusion it did. 
 It is not now alleged that the court on the former occasion over- 
 looked any argument for the respondents or misapplied any 
 controlling authority. It is simply insisted that the court, 
 notwithstanding the arguments for an opposite view, arrived 
 at an erroneous result which, for reasons already stated, ought 
 to be reconsidered and reversed. As we have twice already 
 deliberately and earnestly considered the same arguments which 
 are now for a third time pressed upon our attention, it could 
 hardly be expected that our opinion should now change from 
 that already expressed." 
 
549 
 
 These utterances, taken in connection with what was pre- 
 viously said in the Trans-Missouri Freight case, show so clearly 
 and affirmatively as to admit of no doubt that this court many 
 years ago, upon the fullest consideration, interpreted the anti- 
 trust act as prohibiting and making illegal not only every con- 
 tract or combination, in whatever form, which was in restraint 
 of interstate commerce, without regard to its reasonableness or 
 unreasonableness, but all monopolies or attempt to monopolize 
 " any part " of such trade or commerce. Let me refer to a 
 few other cases in which the scope of the decision in the Freight 
 Association case was referred to : In Bement vs. National Har- 
 row Company (186 U. S., 70, 92) the court said, "It is true 
 that it has been held by this court that the act (anti-trust act) 
 included any restraint of commerce, whether reasonable or un- 
 reasonable/' citing United States vs. Trans-Missouri Freight 
 Association (166 U. S., 290) ; United States vs. Joint Traffic 
 Association (171 U. S., 505) ; Addyston Pipe, etc., Co. vs. 
 United States (175 U. S., 211). In Montague vs. Lowry (193 
 U. S., 38, 46), which involved the validity, under the anti- 
 trust act, of a certain association formed for the sale of tiles, 
 mantels and grates, the court, referring to the contention that 
 the sale of tiles in San Francisco was so small " as to be a 
 negligible quantity/' held that the association was, neverthe- 
 less, a combination in restraint of interstate trade or commerce 
 in violation of the anti-trust act. In Loewe vs. Lawlor (208 
 U. S., 274, 297) all the members of this court concurred in 
 saying that the Trans-Missouri, Joint Traffic and Northern 
 Securities cases "hold in effect that the anti-trust law has a 
 broader application than the prohibition of restraints of trade 
 unlawful at common law." In Shawnee Compress Company 
 vs. Anderson (1907) (209 U. S., 423, 432) all the members 
 of the court again concurred in declaring that " it has been 
 decided that not only unreasonable but all direct restraints of 
 trade are prohibited, the law being thereby distinguished from 
 the common law. In United States vs. Addyston Pipe Co. 
 (85 Fed. Bep., 278) Judge Taft, speaking for the Circuit 
 Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, said that according to 
 the decision of this court in the Freight Association case " con- 
 tracts in restraint of interstate transportation were within the 
 statute, whether the restraints could be regarded as reasonable 
 at common law or not." In Chesapeake & Ohio Fuel Company 
 vs. United States (1902) (115 Fed. Eep., 610, 619) the Circuit 
 Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, after referring to the 
 right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, thus inter- 
 preted the prior decisions of this court in the Trans-Missouri, 
 the Joint Traffic and the Addyston Pipe & Steel Company 
 cases : " In the exercise of this right Congress has seen fit to 
 prohibit all contracts in restraint of trade. It has not left to 
 the courts the consideration of the question whether such re- 
 straint is reasonable or unreasonable, or whether the contract 
 
550 
 
 would have been illegal at the common law or not. The act 
 leaves for consideration by judicial authority no question of 
 this character, but all contracts and combinations are declared 
 illegal if in restraint of trade or commerce among the States." 
 
 As far back as Bobbins vs. Shelby Taxing District (120 
 U. S., 489., 497), it was held that certain local regulations, sub- 
 jecting drummers engaged in both interstate and domestic 
 trade, could not be sustained by reason of the fact that no dis- 
 crimination was made among citizens of the different States. 
 The court observed that this did not meet the difficulty, for 
 the reason that " interstate commerce cannot be taxed at all." 
 Under this view Congress no doubt acted when, by the anti- 
 trust act, it forbade any restraint whatever upon interstate 
 commerce. It manifestly proceeded upon the theory that inter- 
 state commerce could not be restrained at all by combinations, 
 trusts or monopolies, but must be allowed to flow in its accus- 
 tomed channels, wholly unvexed and unobstructed by anything 
 that would restrain its ordinary movement. (See also Minne- 
 sota vs. Barber, 136 U. S., 313, 326; Brimmer vs. Eebman, 
 138 U. S., 78, 82, 83.) 
 
 In tihe opinion delivered on behalf of the minority in the 
 Northern Securities case (193 U. S.) our present Chief Justice 
 referred to the contentions made by the defendants in the 
 Freight Association case, namely, one of which was that the 
 agreement there involved did not unreasonably restrain inter- 
 state commerce, and said: 
 
 "Both these contentions were decided against the associa- 
 tion, the court holding that the anti-trust act did embrace inter- 
 state carriage by railroad corporations, and as that act pro- 
 hibited any contract in restraint of interstate commerce, it 
 hence embraced all contracts of that character, whether they 
 were reasonable or unreasonable." 
 
 One of the justices who dissented in the Northern Securi- 
 ties case, in a separate opinion, concurred in by the minority, 
 thus referred to the freight and joint traffic cases: 
 
 " For it cannot be too carefully remembered that that clause 
 applies to ( every ' contract of the forbidden kind a considera- 
 tion which was the turning point of the Trans-Missouri Freight 
 Association case. * * * Size has nothing to do with the 
 matter. A monopoly of ( any part ' of commerce among the 
 States is unlawful." 
 
 In this connection it may be well to refer to the adverse 
 report made in 1909, by Senator Nelson, on behalf of the Sen- 
 ate Judiciary Committee, in reference to a certain bill offered 
 in the Senate and which proposed to amend the anti-trust act 
 in various particulars. That report contains a full, careful and 
 able analysis of judicial decisions relating to combinations and 
 monopolies in restraint of trade and commerce. Among other 
 things said in it which bear on the questions involved in the 
 present case are these: 
 
551 
 
 " The anti-trust act makes it a criminal offense to violate 
 the law, and provides a punishment both by fine and imprison- 
 ment. To inject into the act the question of whether an agree- 
 ment or combination is reasonable or unreasonable would ren- 
 der the act as a criminal or penal statute indefinite and uncer- 
 tain, and hence, to that extent, utterly nugatory and void, and 
 would practically amount to a repeal of that part of the act. 
 * * * And while the same technical objection does not apply 
 to civil prosecutions, the injection of the rule of reasonable- 
 ness or unreasonableness would lead to the greatest variable- 
 ness and uncertainty in the enforcement of the law. The de- 
 fense of reasonable restraint would be made in every case, and 
 there would be as many different rules of reasonableness as 
 cases, courts and juries. What one court or jury might deem 
 unreasonable another court or jury might deem reasonable. 
 A court or jury in Ohio might find a given agreement or com- 
 bination reasonable, while a court and jury in Wisconsin might 
 find the same agreement and combination unreasonable. In 
 the case of the People vs. Sheldon (139 X. Y., 264) Chief 
 Justice Andrews remarks : f If agreements and combinations 
 to prevent competition in prices are or may be hurtful to trade, 
 the only sure remedy is to prohibit all agreements of that 
 character. If the validity of such an agreement was made to 
 depend upon actual proof of public prejudice or injury, it 
 would be very difficult in any case to establish the invalidity, 
 although the moral evidence might be very convincing/ * * * 
 To amend the anti-trust act, as suggested by this bill, would be 
 io entirely emasculate it, and for all practical purposes render 
 it nugatory as a remedial statute. Criminal prosecutions would 
 not lie, and civil remedies would labor under the greatest doubt 
 and uncertainty. The act as it exists is clear, comprehensive, 
 certain and highly remedial. It practically covers the field of 
 Federal jurisdiction, and is in every respect a model law. To 
 destroy or undermine it at the present juncture, when combina- 
 tions are on the increase and appear to be as oblivious as ever 
 of the rights of the public, would be a calamity." 
 
 The result was the indefinite postponement by the Senate 
 of any further consideration of the proposed amendments of 
 the anti-trust act. 
 
 After what has been adjudged, upon full consideration, as 
 to the meaning and scope of the anti-trust act, and in view 
 of the usages of this court when attorneys for litigants have 
 attempted to reopen questions that have been deliberately de- 
 cided, I confess to no little surprise as to what has occurred 
 in the present case. The court says that the previous cases, 
 above cited, " cannot by any possible conception be treated as 
 authoritative without the certitude that reason was resorted to 
 for the purpose of deciding them." And its opinion is full of 
 intimations that this court proceeded in those cases, so far as 
 the present question is concerned, without being guided by the 
 
552 
 
 " rule of reason " or " the light of reason." It is more than 
 once intimated, if not suggested, that if the anti-trust act is to 
 be construed as prohibiting every contract or combination, of 
 whatever nature, which is in fact in restraint of commerce, 
 regardless of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of such 
 restraint, that fact would show that the court had not proceeded, 
 in its decision, according to " the light of reason," but had dis- 
 regarded the " rule of reason/' If the court, in those cases, 
 was wrong in its construction of the act, it is certain that it 
 fully apprehended the views advanced by learned counsel in 
 previous cases and pronounced them to be untenable. The pub- 
 lished reports place this beyond all question. The opinion of 
 the court was delivered by a justice of wide experience as a 
 judicial officer,. and the court had before it the attorney-general 
 of the United States and lawyers who were recognized on all 
 sides as great leaders in their profession. The same eminent 
 jurist who delivered the opinion in the Trans-Missouri case 
 delivered the opinion in the Joint Traffic case, while the asso- 
 ciation in the latter case was represented by lawyers whose 
 ability was universally recognized. Is it to be supposed that 
 any point escaped notice in those cases when we think of the 
 sagacity of the justice who expressed the views of the court 
 or of the ability of the profound, astute lawyers who sought 
 such an interpretation of the act as would compel the court to 
 insert words in the statute which Congress had not put there, 
 and the insertion of which words would amount to "judicial 
 legislation " ? 
 
 Now, this court is asked to do that which it has distinctly 
 declared it could not and would not do, and has now done 
 what it then said it could not constitutionally do. It has by 
 mere interpretation modified the act of Congress and deprived 
 it of practical value as a defensive measure against the evils 
 to be remedied. On reading the opinion just delivered the 
 first inquiry will be that as the court is unanimous in holding 
 that the particular things done by the Standard Oil Company 
 and its subsidiary companies in this case were illegal under 
 the anti-trust act, whether those things were in reasonable or 
 unreasonable restraint of interstate commerce, why was it neces- 
 sary to make an elaborate argument, as is done in the opinion, 
 to show that, according to the "rule of reason," the act as 
 passed by Congress should be interpreted as if it contained the 
 word " unreasonable " or the word " undue " ? The only answer 
 which in frankness can be given to this question is that the 
 court intends to decide that its deliberate judgment fifteen years 
 ago to the effect that the act permitted no restraint whatever 
 of interstate commerce, whether reasonable or unreasonable, 
 was not in accordance with the "rule of reason." In effect 
 the court says that it will now for the first time bring the dis- 
 cussion under the "light of reason" and apply the "rule of 
 reason" to the questions to be decided. I have the authority 
 
553 
 
 of this court 'for saying that such a course of proceeding on 
 its part would be " judicial legislation." 
 
 Still more, what is now done involves a serious departure 
 from the settled usages of this court. Counsel have not ordi- 
 narily been allowed to discuss questions already settled by pre- 
 vious decisions. More than once at the present term that rule 
 has been applied. In St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ey. Co. vs. Taylor 
 (210 U. S., 281) the court had occasion to determine the 
 meaning and scope of the original safety-appliance act of Con- 
 gress passed for the protection of railroad employees and pas- 
 sengers on interstate trains. (27 Stat., 531.) A particular 
 construction of that act was insisted upon by the interstate 
 carrier which was sued under the safety-appliance act; and the 
 contention was that a different construction than the one 
 insisted upon by the carrier would be a harsh one. After quot- 
 ing the words of the act, Mr. Justice Moody said for the court : 
 
 " There is no escape from the meaning of these words. 
 Explanation cannot clarify them, and ought not to be employed 
 to confuse them or lessen their significance. The obvious pur- 
 pose of the legislature was to supplant the qualified duty of 
 the common law with an absolute duty deemed by it more just. 
 If the railroad does, in point of fact, use cars which do not 
 comply with the standard, it violates the plain prohibitions 
 of the law, and there arises from that violation the liability 
 to make compensation to one who is injured by it. It is urged 
 that this is a harsh construction. To this we reply that, if it 
 be the true construction, its harshness is no concern of the 
 courts. They have no responsibility for the justice or wisdom 
 of legislation and no duty except to enforce the law as it is 
 written, unless it is clearly beyond the constitutional power of 
 the law-making body. * * It is quite conceivable that 
 
 Congress, contemplating the inevitable hardship of such injuries, 
 and hoping to diminish the economic loss to the community 
 resulting from them, should deem it wise to impose their bur- 
 dens upon those who could measurably control their causes, 
 instead of upon those who are in the main helpless in that 
 regard. Such a policy would be intelligible and, to say the least, 
 not so unreasonable as to require us to doubt that it was 
 intended and to seek some unnatural interpretation of common 
 words. We see no error in this part of the case." 
 
 And at the present term of this court we were asked, in a 
 case arising under the safety-appliance act, . to reconsider the 
 question decided in the Taylor case. We declined to do so, 
 saying in an opinion just now handed down : 
 
 " In view of these facts, we are unwilling to regard the 
 question as to the meaning and scope of the safety-appliance 
 act, so far as it relates to automatic couplers on trains moving 
 interstate traffic, as open to further discussion here. If the 
 court was wrong in the Taylor case the way is open for such an 
 amendment of the statute as Congress may, in its discretion, 
 
554 
 
 deem proper. This court ought not now disturb what has been 
 so widely, accepted and acted upon by the courts as having been 
 decided in that case. A contrary course would cause infinite 
 uncertainty, if not mischief, in the administration of the la-w- 
 in the Federal courts. To avoid misapprehension, it is appro- 
 priate to say that we are not to be understood as questioning 
 the soundness of the interpretation heretofore placed by this 
 court upon the safety-appliance act. We only mean to say that 
 until Congress, by an amendment of the statute, changes the 
 rule announced in the Taylor case this court will adhere to and 
 apply that rule." (C. B. & Q. By. Co. vs. United States, 220 
 U. S.) 
 
 When counsel in the present case insisted upon a reversal of 
 the former rulings of this court and asked such an interpreta- 
 tion of the anti-trust act as would allow reasonable restraints 
 of interstate commerce, this court, in deference to established 
 practice, should, I submit have said to them : 
 
 " That question, according to our practice, is not open for 
 further discussion here. This court long ago deliberately held 
 (1) that the act, interpreting its words in their ordinary 
 acceptation, prohibits all restraints of interstate commerce by 
 combinations in whatever form, and whether reasonable or un- 
 reasonable; (2) the question relates to matters of public policy 
 in reference to commerce among the States and with foreign 
 nations, and Congress alone can deal with the subject; (3) 
 this court would encroach upon the authority of Congress if, 
 under the guise of construction, it should assume to determine 
 a matter of public policy; (4) the parties must go to Congress 
 and obtain an amendment of the anti-trust act if they think 
 this court was wrong in its former decisions; and (5) this 
 court cannot and will not judicially legislate, since its func- 
 tion is to declare the law, while it belongs to the legislative 
 department to make the law. Such a course, I am sure, would 
 not have offended the ( rule of reason/ ?; 
 
 But my brethren, in their wisdom, have deemed it best to 
 pursue a different course. They have now said to those who 
 condemn our former decisions and who object to all legislative 
 prohibitions of contracts, combinations and trusts in restraint 
 of interstate commerce, " You may now restrain such com- 
 merce, provided you are reasonable about it; only take care 
 that the restraint is not undue." The disposition of the case 
 under consideration, according to the views of the defendants, 
 will, it is claimed, quiet and give rest to "the business of the 
 country." On the contrary, I have a strong conviction that it 
 will throw the business of the country into confusion and 
 invite widely extended and harassing litigation, the injurious 
 effects of which will be felt for many years to come. When 
 Congress prohibited every contract, combination or monopoly 
 in restraint of commerce, it prescribed a simple, definite rule 
 that all could understand, and which could be easily applied 
 
555 
 
 by everyone wishing to obey the law and not to conduct their 
 business in violation of law. But now, it is to be feared, v we 
 are to have, in cases without number, the constantly recurring 
 inquiry difficult to solve by proof whether the particular con- 
 tract, combination or trust involved in each case is or is v not 
 an " unreasonable " or " undue " restraint of trade. Congress, 
 in effect, said that there should be no restraint of trade, in any 
 form, and this court solemnly adjudged many years ago that 
 Congress meant what it thus said in clear and explicit words, 
 and that it could not add to the words of the act. But those 
 who condemn the action of Congress are now, in effect, informed 
 that the courts will allow such restraints of interstate com- 
 merce as are shown not to be unreasonable or undue. 
 
 It remains for me to refer, more fully than I have hereto- 
 fore done, to another and, in my judgment if we look to the 
 future the most important aspect of this case. That aspect 
 concerns the usurpation by the judicial branch of the govern- 
 ment of the functions of the legislative department. The 
 illustrious men who laid the foundations of our institutions 
 deemed no part of the national Constitution of more conse- 
 quence or more essential to the permanency of our form of 
 government than the provisions under which were distributed 
 the powers of government among three separate, equal and co- 
 ordinate departments legislative, executive and judicial. This 
 was at that time a new feature of governmental regulation 
 among the nations of the earth, and it is deemed by the people 
 of every section of our own country as most vital in the work- 
 ings of a representative republic whose constitution was 
 ordained and established in order to accomplish the objects 
 stated in its preamble by the means, but only by the means, 
 provided either expressly or by necessary implication, by the 
 instrument itself. No department of that government can con- 
 stitutionally exercise the powers committed strictly to another 
 and separate department. 
 
 I said at the outset that the action of the court in this case 
 might well alarm thoughtful men who revered the Constitu- 
 tion. I meant by this that many things are intimated and said 
 in the court's opinion which will not be regarded otherwise than 
 as sanctioning an invasion by the judiciary of the constitutional 
 domain of Congress an attempt by interpretation to soften 
 or modify what some regard as a harsh public policy. This 
 court, let me repeat, solemnly adjudged many years ago that 
 it could not, except by " judicial legislation," read words into 
 the anti-trust act not put there by Congress, and which, being 
 inserted, give it a meaning which the words of the act, as passed, 
 if properly interpreted, would not justify. The court has 
 decided that it could not thus change a public policy formulated 
 and declared by Congress; that Congress has paramount author- 
 ity to regulate interstate commerce, and that it alone can 
 change a policy once inaugurated by legislation. The courts 
 
556 
 
 have nothing to do with the wisdom or policy of an act of 
 Congress. Their duty is to ascertain the will of Congress, and 
 if the statute embodying the expression of that will is consti- 
 tutional, the courts must respect it. They have no function 
 to declare a public policy, nor to amend legislative enactments. 
 "What is termed the policy of the government with reference 
 to any particular legislation," as this court has said, "is gen- 
 erally a very uncertain thing, upon which all sorts of opinions, 
 each variant from the other, may be formed by different per- 
 sons. It is a ground much too unstable upon which to rest the 
 judgment of the court in the interpretation of the statutes/ 7 
 (Hadden vs. Collector, 5 Wall., 107.) Nevertheless, if I do 
 not misapprehend its opinion, the court has now read into the 
 act of Congress words which are not to be found there, and 
 has thereby done that which it adjudged in 1896 and 1898 
 could not be done without violating the Constitution, namely, 
 by interpretation of a statute changed a public policy declared 
 by the legislative department. 
 
 After many years of public service at the national capital, 
 and after a somewhat close observation of the conduct of public 
 affairs, I am impelled to say that there is abroad in our land 
 a most harmful tendency to bring about the amending of con- 
 stitutions and legislative enactments by means alone of judicial 
 construction. As a public policy has been declared by the legis- 
 lative department in respect of interstate commerce, over which 
 Congress has entire control, under the Constitution, all con- 
 cerned must patiently submit to what has been lawfully done, 
 until the people of the United States the source of all national 
 power shall, in their own time, upon reflection and through 
 the legislative department of the government, require a change 
 of that policy. There are some who say that it is a part of one's 
 liberty to conduct commerce among the States without being 
 subject to governmental authority. But that would not be 
 liberty regulated by law, and liberty which cannot be regulated 
 by law is not to be desired. The supreme law of the land 
 which is binding alike upon all upon presidents, congresses, 
 the courts and the people gives to Congress, and to Congress 
 alone, authority to regulate interstate commerce, and when 
 Congress forbids any restraint of such commerce, in any form, 
 all must obey its mandate. To overreach the action of Con- 
 gress merely by judicial construction that is, by indirection 
 is a blow at the integrity of our governmental system, and in 
 the end will prove most dangerous to all. Mr. Justice Bradley 
 wisely said, when on this bench, that illegitimate and uncon- 
 stitutional practices get their first footing by silent approaches 
 and slight deviations from legal modes of legal procedure. (Boyd 
 vs. United States, 116 U. S., 616, 635.) We shall do well to 
 heed the warnings of that great jurist. 
 
 I do not stop to discuss the merits of the policy embodied 
 in the anti-trust act of 1890 ; for, as has been often adjudged, 
 
557 
 
 the courts, under our constitutional system, have no rightful 
 concern with the wisdom or policy of legislation enacted by that 
 branch of the government which alone can make laws. 
 
 For the reasons stated, while concurring in the general 
 affirmance of the decree of the circuit court, I dissent from that 
 part of the judgment of this court which directs the modifica- 
 tion of the decree of the circuit court, as well as from those 
 parts of the opinion which, in effect, assert authority, in this 
 court, to insert words in the anti-trust act which Congress did 
 not put there, and which, being inserted, Congress is made 
 to declare, as part of the public policy of the country, what it 
 has not chosen to declare. 
 
558 
 
 UNITED STATES FS. AMERICAN TOBACCO 
 COMPANY. 
 
 Mr. Chief Justice White delivered the opinion of the court : 
 This suit was commenced on July 19, 1907, by the United 
 States to prevent the continuance of alleged violations of the 
 first and second sections of the anti-trust act of July 2, 1890. 
 The defendants were twenty-nine individuals, named in the 
 margin,* sixty-five American corporations, most of them created 
 in the State of New Jersey, and two English corporations. For 
 convenience of statement we classify the corporate defendants, 
 exclusive of the two foreign ones, which we shall hereafter 
 separately refer to, as follows : The American Tobacco Com- 
 pany, a New Jersey corporation, because of its dominant rela- 
 tion to the subject matter of the controversy as the primary 
 defendant, five other New Jersey corporations (viz., American 
 "Snuff Company, American Cigar Company, American Stogie 
 Company, MacAndrews & Forbes Company and Conley Foil 
 Company), because of their relation to the controversy as the 
 accessory and the fifty-nine other American corporations as the 
 subsidiary defendants. 
 
 The ground of complaint against the American Tobacco 
 Company rested not alone upon the nature and character of that 
 corporation and the power which it exerted directly over the 
 five accessory corporations and some of the subsidiary corpo- 
 rations by stock ownership in such corporations, but also upon 
 the control which it exercised over the subsidiary companies 
 by virtue of stock held in said companies by the accessory com- 
 panies by stock ownership in which the American Tobacco 
 Company exerted its power of control . The accessory companies 
 were impleaded either because of their nature and character 
 or because of the power exerted over them through stock owner- 
 ship by the American Tobacco Company, and also because of 
 the power which they in turn exerted by stock ownership over 
 the subsidiary corporations, and, finally, the subsidiary cor- 
 porations were impleaded either because of their nature or be- 
 cause of the control to which they were subjected in and by 
 virtue of the stock ownership above stated. We append in the 
 margin a statement showing the stock control exercised by the 
 principal defendant, the American Tobacco Company, over the 
 five accessory corporations, and also the authority which it 
 
 * James B. Duke, Caleb C. Dula, Percival S. Hill, George Arents, Paul 
 Brown, Robert B. Dula, George A. Heline, Robert D. Lewis, Thomas -T. 
 Maloney, Oliver H. Payne, Thomas F. Ryan, Robert K. Smith, George W. 
 Watts, George G. Allen. John B. Cobb. William R. Harris, William H. 
 McAllister, Anthony X. Brady, Benjamin X. Duke, TT. M. Hanna, Herbert D. 
 Kingsbury. Pierre Lorillard, Rufus L. Patterson, Frank H. Ray. Grant B. 
 Schley, Charles N. Strotz. Peter A. B. Widener, Welford C. Reed (now 
 deceased), and Williamson W. Fuller. 
 
559 
 
 directly exercised over certain of the subsidiary corporations, 
 and a list showing the control exercised over the subsidiary 
 corporations as a result of the stock ownership in the accessory 
 corporations, they being in turn controlled, as we have said, 
 by the principal defendant, the American Tobacco Company.* 
 The two foreign corporations were impleaded either because 
 of their nature and character and the operation and effect of 
 
 *Extent of control of American Tobacco Co. over the accessory corpora- 
 tions : - 
 
 American Snuff Co. Of 120,000 shares of preferred stock owns 12,517 shares 
 directly and 11,274 shares by reason of stock control of P. Lorillard Co., in 
 all, 23,764 shares; of 110,017 shares of common stock owns 41,214 directly 
 and 34,594 by reason of stock control of P. Lorillard Co., in all, 75,808 shares. 
 
 American Cigar Co. Of 100,000 shares of preferred stock owns 89,730 
 shares directly and 5,000 shares through control of American Snuff Co., in all, 
 94,700 shares; of 100,000 shares of common stock owns directly 77,451 shares. 
 
 American Stogie Co. Of 108,790 shares of common stock controls 73,072% 
 shares through stock interest in American Snuff Co. The American Stogie Co. 
 owns all of the stock 12,500 of the Union American Cigar Co. cigars and 
 stogies. 
 
 MacAndrews & Forbes Co. Of 37,583 shares of preferred stock (no voting 
 power) owns 7,500 shares; of 30,000 shares of common stock owns 21,129 
 shares directly and 983 shares through stock control of the R. J. Reynolds 
 Co., in all, 22,112 shares. 
 
 The Conely Foil Co. Of 8,250 shares of stock directly owns 4,950 shares. 
 
 The American Tobacco Co. By stock ownership is the owner outright of 
 the following defendant companies: S. Anargyros (the S. Anargyros Co. owns 
 all the capital stock, 10 shares, of the London Cigarette Co.); F. F. Adams 
 Tobacco Co.; Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co.; Crescent Cigar & Tobacco Co.; 
 Day & Night Tobacco Co.; Luhrman & Wilbern Tobacco Co.; Nail & Williams 
 Tobacco Co.; Nashville Tobacco Works; R. A. Patterson Tobacco Co.; Monopol 
 Tobacco Works; Spalding & Merrick. 
 
 The American Tobacco Co. also has the stock interest indicated in the 
 following defendant corporations: 
 
 British-American Tobacco Co. Owns 1,200,000 shares of 1,500,000 shares 
 of preferred stock and 2,280,012 shares of 3,720,021 shares of common stock. 
 
 The Imperial Tobacco Co., etc. Owns 721,457 pounds sterling of 18,000,000 
 pounds sterling of stock. 
 
 The John Bollman Co. Of 2,000 shares of stock owns 1,020 shares. 
 
 F. R. Penn Tobacco Co. Of 1,503 shares of stock owns 1,002 shares 
 (through Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co.). 
 
 R. P. Richardson, Jr., & Co. (Inc.), Owns 600 out of 1,000 shares of 
 stock and $120,000 of $203,000 issue of bonds. 
 
 R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Owns 50,000 out of 75,250 shares of stock. 
 
 Pinkerton Tobacco Co. Owns 775 out of 1,000 shares of stock. 
 
 Reynolds Tobacco Co. (of Bristol, Tenn.). Owns 1,449 shares out of 2,500 
 shares. 
 
 J. W. Carroll Tobacco Co. Owns 2,003 out of 3,000 shares. 
 
 P. Lorillard Co. Owns 15,813 out of 20,000 shares of preferred and all 
 the common stock (30,000 shares). 
 
 Kentucky Tobacco Product Co. Owns 14 of 1,900 shares preferred and 
 owns directly 5,264 and, through the American Cigar Co., 355 out of 8,100 
 shares of common stock. (The Kentucky Tobacco Product Co. owns all the 
 capital stock, 100 shares, of the Kentucky Tobacco Extract Co.) 
 
 Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co. Owns directly 6,578 and, through the 
 American Cigar Co., 6,576 of 19,984 shares of stock. (The Porto Rican- 
 American Tobacco Co. owns 190 of the 380 shares of preferred and 300 of the 
 450 shares of common stock of Independent Co. of Porto Rico; also owns 
 2,150 of the 5,000 shares >of capital stock of the Porto Rico Leaf Tobacco 
 Co.) 
 
 The American Tobacco Co. is also interested, as indicated, in the following 
 defendants,, supply or machinery companies : 
 
 Golden Belt Manufacturing Co. (cotton bags). Owns 6,521 of 7,000 shares. 
 
 Mengel Box Co. (wooden boxes). British-American Tobacco Co. owns 
 3,637 of 5,000 shares of stock. (The M'engel Co. owns all of the capital 
 stock of the Columbia Box Co. and of the Tyler Box Co., respectively 1,500 and 
 250 shares.) 
 
 Amsterdam Supply Co. (agency to purchase supplies). Owns majority stock 
 and controls large part of remainder through subsidiary companies. 
 
 Thomas Cusack Co. (bill posting). Owns 1,000 out of 1,500 shares. 
 
 Manhattan Briar Pipe Co. Owns all of stock, 3,500 shares. 
 
 International Cigar Machinery Co. Of 100.300 shares owns 33,637 shares 
 directly and 29,902 shares through American Cigar Co. : in all 63,539 shares 
 
 The American Tobacco Co. is also interested in the following companies, 
 not named as defendants: 
 
 American Machine & Foundry Co. Owns 510 shares directly and remainder 
 (490) through American Cigar Co. 
 
560 
 
 contracts or agreements with the American Tobacco Company 
 or the power which it exerted over their affairs by stock owner- 
 ship. 
 
 As we shall have occasion hereafter in referring to matters 
 beyond dispute to set forth the main facts relied upon by the 
 United States as giving rise to the cause of action alleged 
 against all of the defendants, it suffices at this moment to say 
 that the bill averred the origin and nature of the American 
 
 New Jersey Machine Co. Owns 510 shares directly and remainder (490) 
 through American Cigar Co. 
 
 Standard Tobacco Stemmer Co. Of 17,300 shares owns 16,895 shares. 
 
 Garson Vending Machine Co. Of 500 shares owns 250 shares. 
 
 The American Snuff Co., in addition to stock, etc., interests in the American 
 Tobacco Co., American Cigar Co., and the Amsterdam Supply Co., has stock 
 interests in the following defendants: 
 
 H. Bolander. Owns all of stock, 1,350 shares. 
 
 De Voe Snuff Co. Owns all of stock, 500 shares. (The De Voe Snuff Co. 
 owns all the capital stock, 400 shares of Skinner & Co., snuff.) 
 
 Standard Snuff Co. Owns all of stock, 2,816 shares. 
 
 The American Cigar Co., in addition to stock interests in the Amsterdam 
 Supply Co., American Stogie Co., Porto Rican- American Tobacco' Co., Kentucky 
 Tobacco Product Co., and International Cigar Machinery Co., has the stock 
 interest indicated in the following defendants: 
 
 R. D. Burnett Cigar Co. Owns 77 out of 150 shares. 
 
 M. Blaskower Co. Owns 1,875 out of 2,500 shares preferred and 1,875 out 
 of 2,503 shares of common. 
 
 Cuban Land & Leaf Tobacco Co. Owns all of stock, 1,000 shares. (The 
 Cuban Land, etc., Co. owns 1,320 of the 1,890 shares of stock of the Vuelta 
 Abajo Steamship Co.) 
 
 Cliff Weil Cigar Co. Owns 255 out of 500 shares. 
 
 Dusel, Goodlee & Co. Owns 510 out of 750 shares. 
 
 Federal Cigar Real Estate Co. Owns all stock, 6,000 shares. 
 
 J. J. Goodrum Tobacco Co. Owns 477 out of 600 shares. 
 
 Havana-American Co. Owns all stock, 2,500 shares. 
 
 Havana Tobacco Co. Owns 700 shares out of 47,038 preferred, 166,800 
 out of 297,912 common stock, and $3,500,000 of $7,500,000 bonds. 
 
 Jordan Gibson & Baum Co. (Inc.). Owns all preferred and common stock, 
 250 shares each. 
 
 Louisiana Tobacco Co. (Ltd.). Owns 375 out of 500 shares. 
 
 The J. B. Moos Co. Owns all of stock, 2,000 shares. 
 
 J. & B. Moos. Owns all of common stock, 1,030 shares. 
 
 Porto Rican Leaf Tobacco Co. Owns 2,500 out of 5,000 shares. 
 
 The Smokers' Paradise Corporation. Owns all of common stock, 250 
 shares, and 349 of 500 shares preferred. 
 
 Havana Tobacco Co. has a stock interest in the following corporations: 
 
 H. de Cabanis y Carbajal. All of stock, 15,000 shares. 
 
 Hy. Clay and Bock & Co. (Ltd.). Owns 9,749 out of 16,950 shares pre- 
 ferred and 14,687 out of 15,990 shares common. (The Hy. Clay, etc., is owner 
 of 16,667 shares of the ordinary capital stock of the Havana Cigar & Tobacco 
 Factories (Ltd.), and also owns 64 shares of the 1,890 shares of the capital 
 stock of the Vuelta Abajo Steamship Co.) 
 
 Cuban Tobacco Co. Owns all of stock, 50 shares. 
 
 Havana Commercial Co. Owns 55,562 out of 60, '300 shares preferred and 
 124,718 out of 125,000 shares common. (The Havana Commercial Co. owns 
 all of the capital stock, 100 shares of the M. Valley Co., cigars.) 
 
 Havana Cigar & Tobacco Factories (Ltd.). Owns 6,774 out of 25,000 
 shares of ordinary stock. 
 
 J. S. Murias y Co. Owns all of stock, 7,500 shares. 
 
 Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co. In addition to a stock interest in the 
 Amsterdam Supply Co., has the stock interest indicated in the following defend- 
 ant corporations: 
 
 F. P. Penn Tobacco Co. Owns 1,002 out of 1,503 shares. 
 
 Scotten-Dillon Co. Owns $10,000 out of $500,000 of stock. 
 
 Wells-Whitehead Tobacco Co. Owns all of stock, 1,500 shares. 
 
 Conley Foil Co. Owns all of the capital stock, 3,000 shares, of the Johnston 
 Tin Foil & Metal Co. 
 
 P. Lorillard Co. Has a stock interest in the American Snuff Co. and the 
 Amsterdam Supply Co. 
 
 R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. In addition to a stock interest in the Amster- 
 dam Supply Co. and the MacAndrews & Forbes Co., owns one-third of the 
 5,000 shares of stock of the Lipfert Scales Co. 
 
 The British-American Tobacco Co. In addition to a small interest in the 
 Amsterdam Supply Co., has the following stock interest in certain defendants: 
 
 David Dunlop (plug). Owns 3,000 of 4,500 shares. 
 
 W. S. Matthews & Sons (smoking). Owns 3,637 out of 5,030 shares of 
 stock. 
 
 T. C. Williams Co. (plug). Owns all of stock, 4,000 shares. 
 
561 
 
 Tobacco Company and the origin and nature of all the other 
 defendant corporations, whether accessory or subsidiary, and 
 the connection of the individual defendants with such corpora- 
 tions. In effect the bill charged that the individual defendants 
 and the defendant corporations were engaged in a conspiracy 
 in restraint of interstate and foreign trade in tobacco and the 
 products of tobacco and constituted a combination in restraint 
 of such trade in violation of the first section of the act, and also 
 were attempting to monopolize and were actually a monopoliza- 
 tion of such trade in violation of the second section. In sup- 
 port of these charges general averments were made in the bill 
 as to the wrongful purpose and intent with which acts were 
 committed which, it was alleged, brought about the alleged 
 wrongful result. 
 
 The prayer of the bill was as follows: 
 
 "Wherefore petitioner prays: 
 
 " 1. That the contracts, combinations and conspiracies in 
 restraint of trade and commerce among the States and with 
 foreign nations, together with the attempts to monopolize and 
 the monopolies of the same hereinbefore described, be declared 
 illegal and in violation of the act of Congress passed July 2, 
 1890, and subsequent acts, and that they be prevented and 
 restrained by proper orders of the court. 
 
 " 2. That the agreements, contracts, combinations and con- 
 spiracies entered into by the defendants on or about September 
 27, 1902, and thereafter, and evidenced among other things 
 by the two written agreements of that date. Exhibits 1 and 2 
 hereto, be declared illegal, and that injunctions issue restrain- 
 ing and prohibiting defendants from doing anything in pursu- 
 ance of or in furtherance of the same within the jurisdiction 
 of the United States. 
 
 " 3. That the Imperial Tobacco Company, its officers, agents 
 and servants, be enjoined from engaging in interstate or for- 
 eign trade and commerce within the jurisdiction of the United 
 States until it shall cease to observe or act in pursuance of said 
 agreements, contracts, combinations and conspiracies entered 
 into by it and other defendants on or about September 27, 
 1902, and thereafter, and evidenced among other things by 
 the contracts of that date, Exhibits 1 and 2 hereto. 
 
 "4. That the British- American Tobacco Company be ad- 
 judged an unlawful instrumentality created solely for carrying 
 into effect the objects and purposes of said contract, combina- 
 tion and conspiracy entered into on or about September 27, 
 1902, and thereafter, and that it be enjoined from engaging 
 in interstate or foreign trade and commerce within the jurisdic- 
 tion of the United States. 
 
 " 5. That the court adjudge the American Tobacco Com- 
 pany, the American Snuff Company, the American Cigar Com- 
 pany, the American Stogie Company, the MacAndrews & Eorbes 
 Company and the Conley Foil Company is each a combination 
 in restraint of interstate and foreign trade and commerce; and 
 
562 
 
 that each has attempted and is attempting to monopolize, is 
 in combination and conspiracy with other persons and corpora- 
 tions to monopolize and has monopolized, part of the trade and 
 commerce among the several States and with foreign nations; 
 and order and decree that each one of them be restrained from 
 engaging in interstate or foreign commerce, or, if the court 
 should be of opinion that the public interests will be better 
 subserved thereby, that receivers be appointed to take posses- 
 sion of all the property, assets, business and affairs of said 
 defendants and wind up the same, and otherwise take such 
 course in regard thereto as will bring about conditions in trade 
 and commerce among the States and with foreign nations in 
 harmony with law. 
 
 " 6. That the holding of stock by one of the defendant cor- 
 porations in another under the circumstances shown be declared 
 illegal and that each of them be enjoined from continuing to 
 hold or own such shares in another and from exercising any 
 right in connection therewith. 
 
 " 7. That defendants, each and all, be enjoined from con- 
 tinuing to carry out the purposes of the above-described con- 
 tracts, combinations, conspiracies and attempts to monopolize 
 by the means herein described, or by any other, and be required 
 to desist and withdraw from all connection with the same. 
 
 " 8. That each of the defendants be enjoined from purchasing 
 leaf tobacco or from selling and distributing its manufactured 
 output as a part of interstate and foreign trade and commerce 
 in conjunction or combination with any other defendant and 
 from taking part or being interested in any agreement or com- 
 bination intended to destroy competition among them in refer- 
 ence to such purchases or sales. 
 
 " 9. That petitioner have such other, further and general 
 relief as may be proper." 
 
 As to the answers, it suffices to say that all the individual 
 and corporate defendants other than the foreign corporations 
 denied the charges of wrongdoing and illegal combination, and 
 the corporate defendants in particular in addition averred their 
 right under State charters by virtue of which they existed to 
 own and possess the property which they held, and further 
 averred that they were engaged in manufacturing, and that 
 any combination amongst them related only to that subject, and 
 therefore was not within the anti-trust act. The two foreign 
 corporations asserted the validity of their corporate organiza- 
 tions and of the assailed agreements, and denied any participa- 
 tion in the alleged wrongful combination. 
 
 After the taking of much testimony before a special exam- 
 iner the case was heard before a court consisting of four judges, 
 constituted under the expediting act of February 11, 1903. In 
 deciding the case in favor of the government, each of the four 
 judges delivered an opinion. (164 Fed., 700.) A final decree 
 was entered on December 15, 1908. The petition was dismissed 
 
563 
 
 as to the English corporations, three of the subsidiary corpora- 
 tions, the United Cigar Stores Company and all the individual 
 defendants. It was decreed that the defendants other than 
 those against whom the petition was dismissed had theretofore 
 entered into and were parties to combinations in restraint of 
 trade, etc., in violation of the anti-trust act, and said defend- 
 ants and each of them, their officers, agents, etc., were restrained 
 and enjoined " from directly or indirectly doing any act or thing 
 whatsoever in furtherance of the objects and purposes of said 
 combinations, and from continuing as parties thereto/' It spe- 
 cifically found that each of the defendants, "the American 
 Tobacco Company, American Snuff Company, American Cigar 
 Company, American Stogie Company and MacAndrews & 
 Forbes Company, constitutes and is itself a combination in 
 violation of the said act of Congress." The corporations thus 
 named, their officers, etc., were next restrained and enjoined 
 " from further directly or indirectly engaging in interstate or 
 foreign trade and commerce in leaf tobacco, or the products 
 manufactured therefrom, or articles necessary or useful in con- 
 nection therewith. But if any of said last-named defendants 
 can hereafter affirmatively show the restoration of reasonably 
 competitive conditions, such defendant may apply to this court 
 for a modification, suspension or dissolution of the injunction 
 herein granted against it." The decree then enumerated the 
 various corporations which, it was found, held or claimed to 
 own some or all of the capital stock of other corporations, and 
 particularly specified such other corporations, and then made 
 the following restraining provisions: 
 
 "Wherefore each and all of defendants, the American To- 
 bacco Company, the American Snuff Company, the American 
 Cigar Company, P. Lorillard Company, E. J. Reynolds Tobacco 
 Company, BlackwelFs Durham To'bacco Company and Conley 
 Foil Company, their officers, directors, agents, servants .and 
 employees, are hereby restrained and enjoined from acquiring, 
 by conveyance or otherwise, the plant or business of any such 
 corporation wherein any one of them now holds or owns stock; 
 and each and all of said defendant corporations so holding stock 
 in other corporations, as above specified, their officers, directors, 
 agents, servants and employees, are further enjoined from vot- 
 ing or attempting to vote said stock at any meeting of the 
 stockholders of the corporation issuing the same and from 
 exercising or attempting to exercise any control, direction, 
 supervision or influence whatsoever over the acts and doings 
 of such corporation. And it is further ordered and decreed 
 that each and every of the defendant corporations the stock of 
 which is held by any other defendant corporation as herein- 
 before shown, their officers, directors, servants and agents, be 
 and they are hereby respectively and collectively restrained 
 and enjoined from permitting the stock so held to be voted by 
 any other defendant holding or claiming to own the same or 
 
564 
 
 by its attorneys or agents at any corporate election for directors 
 or officers and from permitting or suffering any other defendant 
 corporation claiming to own or hold stock therein, or its officers 
 or agents, to exercise any control whatsoever over its corporate 
 acts/' 
 
 Judgment for costs was given in favor of the petitioner and 
 against the defendants as to whom the petition had not been 
 dismissed, except the E. P. Richardson, Jr., & Co., a corpora- 
 tion, which had consented to the decree. The decree also con- 
 tained a provision that the defendants or any of them should 
 not be prevented " from the institution, prosecution or defense 
 of any suit, action or proceeding to prevent or restrain the 
 infringement of a trade-mark used in interstate commerce or 
 otherwise assert or defend a claim to any property or rights." 
 In the event of a taking of an appeal to this court, the decree 
 provided that the injunction which it directed " shall be sus- 
 pended during the pendency of such appeal." 
 
 The United States appealed, as did also the various defend- 
 ants against whom the decree was entered. For the government 
 it is contended : 
 
 1. That the petition should not have been dismissed as to 
 the individual defendants. 
 
 2. That it should not have been dismissed as to the two for- 
 eign corporations the Imperial Tobacco Company and the 
 British-American Tobacco Company and the domestic corpora- 
 tions controlled by the latter and that, on the contrary, the 
 decree should have commanded the observance of the anti-trust 
 act by the foreign corporations so far as their dealings in the 
 United States were concerned, and should have restrained those 
 companies from doing any act in the United States in violation 
 of the anti-trust act, whether or not the right to do said acts 
 was asserted to have arisen pursuant to the contracts made out- 
 side of or within the United States. 
 
 3. The petition should not have been dismissed as to the 
 United Cigar Stores Company. 
 
 4. The final decree should have adjudged defendants parties 
 to unlawful contracts and conspiracies. 
 
 5. The final decree should have adjudged that defendants 
 were attempting to monopolize and had monopolized parts of 
 commerce. More particularly, it is urged, it should have 
 adjudged that the American Tobacco Company, American 
 Snuff Company, American Cigar Company, American Stogie 
 Company, Mac Andrews & Forbes Company, the Conley Foil 
 Company and the British-American Tobacco Company were 
 severally attempting to monopolize and had monopolized parts 
 of commerce and that appropriate remedies should have been 
 applied. 
 
 6. The decree was not sufficiently specific, since it should 
 have described with more particularity the methods which the 
 defendants had followed in forming and carrying out their 
 
565 
 
 unlawful purpose, and should have prohibited the resort to sim- 
 ilar methods. 
 
 7. The decree should have specified the shares in corpora- 
 tions disclosed by the evidence to be owned by the parties to the 
 conspiracy, and should have enjoined those parties from exer- 
 cising any control over the corporations in which such stock 
 was held, and the latter, if made defendant, from permitting 
 such control, and should have also enjoined the collecting of 
 any dividends upon the stock. 
 
 8. The decree improperly provided that nothing therein 
 should prevent defendants from prosecuting or defending suits; 
 also improperly suspended the injunction pending appeal. 
 
 The defendants, by their assignments of errors, complain 
 because the petition was not dismissed as to all, and more spe- 
 cifically (a) because they were adjudged parties to a combina- 
 tion in restraint of interstate and foreign commerce and en- 
 joined accordingly; (b) because certain defendant corporations 
 holding shares in others were enjoined from voting them or 
 exercising control over the issuing company, and the latter from 
 permitting this; and (c) because the American Tobacco Com- 
 pany, American Snuff Company, American Cigar Company, 
 American Stogie Company and the MacAndrews & Forbes Com- 
 pany were adjudged unlawful combinations and restrained from 
 engaging in interstate and foreign commerce. 
 
 The elaborate arguments made by both sides at bar present 
 in many forms of statement the conflicting contentions result- 
 ing from the nature and character of the suit and the defense 
 thereto, the decree of the lower court and the propositions as- 
 signed as error to which we have just referred. In so far as 
 all or any of these contentions, as many of them in fact do, 
 involve a conflict as to the application and effect of sections 1 
 and 2 of the anti-trust act, their consideration has been greatly 
 simplified by the analysis and review of that act and the con- 
 struction affixed to the sections in question in the case of Stand- 
 ard Oil Company et al. vs. United States, quite recently de- 
 cided. In so far as the contentions relate to the disputed propo- 
 sitions of fact we think, from the view which we take of the 
 case, they need not be referred to, since in our opinion the case 
 can be disposed of by considering only those facts which are 
 indisputable and by applying to the inferences properly de- 
 ducible from such facts the meaning and effect of the law as 
 expounded in accordance with the previous decisions of this 
 court. 
 
 We shall divide our investigation of the case into three sub- 
 jects: First, the undisputed facts; second, the meaning of the 
 anti-trust law and its application as correctly construed to the 
 ultimate conclusions of fact deducible from the proof; third, 
 the remedies to be applied. 
 
566 
 
 UNDISPUTED FACTS. 
 
 The matters to be considered under this heading, we think, 
 can best be made clear by stating the merest outline of the con- 
 dition of the tobacco industry prior to what is asserted to have 
 been the initial movement in the combination which the suit 
 assails, and in the light so afforded to briefly recite the history 
 of the assailed acts and contracts. We shall divide the subject 
 into two periods, (a) the one from the time of the organiza- 
 tion of the first or old American Tobacco Company, in 1890, 
 to the organization of the Continental Tobacco Company, and 
 (&) from the date of such organization to the filing of the bill 
 in this case. 
 
 Summarizing in the broadest way the conditions which ob- 
 tained prior to 1890, as to the production, manufacture and 
 distribution of tobacco, the following general facts are adequate 
 to portray the situation: 
 
 Tobacco was grown in many sections of the country having 
 diversity of soil and climate, and therefore was subject to 
 various vicissitudes resulting from the places of production, 
 and consequently varied in qtiality. The great diversity of use 
 to which tobacco was applied in manufacturing caused it to 
 be that there was a demand for all the various qualities. The 
 demand for all qualities was not local, but widespread, extend- 
 ing as well to domestic as to foreign trade, and therefore all 
 the products were marketed under competitive conditions of 
 a peculiarly advantageous nature. The manufacture of the 
 product in this country in various forms was successfully car- 
 ried on by many individuals or concerns scattered throughout 
 the country, a large number, perhaps, of the manufacturers 
 being in the vicinage of production and others being advan- 
 tageously situated in or near the pricipal markets of distribu- 
 tion. 
 
 Before January, 1890, five distinct concerns Allen & Grin- 
 ter, with factory at Eichmond, Va. ; W. Duke, Sons & Co., with 
 factories at Durham, N. C., and New York City; Kinney To- 
 bacco Company, with factory at New York City; W. S. Kim- 
 ball & Co., with factory at ^Rochester, N. Y. ; Goodwin & Co., 
 with factory at Brooklyn, N". Y. manufactured, distributed 
 and sold in the United States and abroad 95 per cent, of all 
 the domestic cigarette' and less than 8 per cent, of the smoking 
 tobacco produced in the United States. There is no doubt 
 that these factories were competitors in the purchase of the raw 
 product which they manufactured and in the distribution and 
 sale of the manufactured products. Indeed, it is shown' that 
 prior to 1890 not only had normal and ordinary competition 
 existed between the factories in question, but that the com- 
 petition had been fierce and abnormal. In January, 1890, 
 having agreed upon a capital stock of $25,000,000, all to be 
 divided amongst them, and who should be directors, the con- 
 
567 
 
 cerns referred to organized the American Tobacco Company 
 in New Jersey " for trading and manufacturing," with broad 
 powers, and conveyed to it the assets and businesses, including 
 good will and right to use the names of the old concerns; and 
 thereafter this corporation carried on the business of all. The 
 $25,000,000 of stock of the tobacco company was allotted to the 
 charter members as follows: Allen & Ginter, $3,000,000 pre- 
 ferred, $4,500,000 common; W. Duke Sons & Co., $3,000,000 
 preferred, $4,500,000 common; Kinney Tobacco Company, 
 $2,000,000 preferred, $3,000,000 common; W. S. Kimball & 
 Co., $1,000,000 preferred, $1,500,000 common; and Goodwin 
 & Co., $1,000,000 preferred, $1,500,000 common. 
 
 There is a charge that the valuation at which the respective 
 properties were capitalized in the new corporation was enorm- 
 ously in excess of their actual value. We, however, put that 
 subject aside, since we propose only to deal with the facts which 
 are not in controversy. 
 
 Shortly after the formation of the new corporation the 
 Goodwin & Co. factory was closed, and the directors ordered 
 " that the manufacture of all tobacco cigarettes be concentrated 
 at Richmond/' The new corporation, in 1890, the first year 
 of its operation, manufactured about 2,500,000,000 cigarettes, 
 that is about 96 or 97 per cent, of the total domestic output, 
 and about 5,500,000 pounds of smoking tobacco out of a total 
 domestic product of nearly 70,000,000 pounds. 
 
 In a little over a year after the organization of the company 
 it increased its capital stock by $10,000,000. The purpose of 
 this increase is inferable from the considerations which we now 
 state. 
 
 There was a firm known as Pfingst, Doerhoefer & Co., con- 
 sisting of a number of partners, who had been long and suc- 
 cessfully carrying on the business of manufacturing plug 
 tobacco in Louisville, Ky., and distributing it through the chan- 
 nels of interstate commerce. In January, 1891, this firm was 
 converted into a corporation known as the National Tobacco 
 Works, having a capital stock of $400,000, all of which was 
 issued to the partners. Almost immediately thereafter, in the 
 month of February, the American Tobacco Company became 
 the purchaser of all the capital stock of the new corporation, 
 paying $600,000 cash and $1,200,000 in stock of the American 
 Tobacco Company. The members of the previously existing 
 firm bound themselves by contract with the American Tobacco 
 Company to enter its service and manage the business and prop- 
 erty sold, and each further agreed that for ten years he would 
 not engage in carrying on, directly or indirectly, or permit or 
 suffer the use of his name in connection with the carrying on 
 of the tobacco business in any form. 
 
 In April following the American Tobacco Company bought 
 out the business of Philip Whitlock, of Richmond, Va., who was 
 engaged in the manufacture of cheroots and cigars, and with 
 
568 
 
 the exclusive right to use the name of Whitlock. The considera- 
 tion for this purchase was $300,000, and Whitlock agreed ^to 
 become an employee of the American Tobacco Company for 
 a number of years and not to engage for twenty years in the 
 tobacco business. 
 
 In the month of April the American Tobacco Company also 
 acquired the business of Marburg Bros., a well-known firm 
 located at Baltimore, Md., and engaged in the manufacture 
 and distribution of tobacco, principally smoking and snuff. 
 The consideration was a cash payment of $164,637.65, and 
 stock to the amount of $3,075,000. The members of the firm 
 also conveyed the right to the use of the firm name and agreed 
 not to engage in the tobacco business for a lengthy period. 
 
 Again, in the same month, the American Tobacco Company 
 bought out a tobacco firm of old standing, also located in Balti- 
 more, as G. W. Gail & Ax, engaged principally in manufactur- 
 ing and selling smoking tobacco, buying with the business the 
 exclusive right to use the name of the firm or the partners, 
 and the members of the firm agreed not to engage in the tobacco 
 business for a specified period. The consideration for this pur- 
 chase was $77,582.66 in cash and stock to the amount of 
 $1,760,000. The plant was abandoned soon after. 
 
 The result of these purchases was manifested at once in the 
 product of the company for the year 1891, as will appear from 
 a note in the margin.* It will be seen that" as to cheroots, 
 smoking tobacco, fine-cut tobacco, snuff and plug tobacco, the 
 company had become a factor in all branches of the tobacco 
 industry. 
 
 Referring to the occurrences of the year 1891 as in all 
 respects typical of the occurrences which took place in all the 
 other years of the first period, that is, during the years 189B, 
 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897 and 1898, we content ourselves 
 with saying that it is undisputed that between February, 1891, 
 and October, 1898, including the purchases which we have 
 specifically referred to, the American Tobacco Company acquired 
 fifteen going tobacco concerns doing business in the States of 
 
 *The output of the American Tobacco Co. for 1891 was: 
 
 Number. Pounds. 
 
 Cigarettes 
 
 2,788,778,000 
 
 
 40 OJ9 000 
 
 Smoking 
 
 13,813,355 
 
 Fine cut 
 
 560,633 
 
 Snuff 
 
 383,162 
 
 Plug 
 
 4,442,774 
 
 Total output for the United States. 1891: 
 
 
 Cigarettes 
 
 3137 318 596 
 
 Smoking 
 
 76,708,300 
 
 Fine cut 
 
 16,968,870 
 
 Plug and twist , 
 
 166,177,915 
 
 Snuff 
 
 10,674,241 
 
569 
 
 Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New York, 
 North Carolina and Virginia. For ten of the plants an all- 
 cash consideration of $6,410,235.26 was paid, while the pay- 
 ments for the remaining five aggregated in cash $1,115,100.95 
 and in stock $4,123,000. It is worth noting that the last pur- 
 chase, in October, 1898, was of the Drummond Tobacco Com- 
 pany, a Missouri corporation dealing principally in plug, for 
 which a cash consideration was paid of $3,457,500. 
 
 The corporations which were combined for the purpose of 
 forming the American Tobacco Company produced a very small 
 portion of plug tobacco. That an increase in this direction 
 was contemplated is manifested by the almost immediate 
 increase of the stock and its use for the purpose of acquiring, 
 as we have indicated, in 1891 and 1892, the ownership and 
 control of concerns manufacturing plug tobacco and the conse- 
 quent increase in that branch of production. There is no dispute 
 that as early as 1893 the president of the American Tobacco 
 Company, by authority of the corporation, approached leading 
 manufacturers of plug tobacco and sought to bring about a 
 combination of the plug-tobacco interests, and upon the failure 
 to accomplish this ruinous competition by lowering the price 
 of plug below its cost ensued. As a result of tTiis warfare, 
 which continued until 1898, the American Tobacco Company 
 sustained severe losses aggregating more than $4,000,000. The 
 warfare produced its natural result, not only because the com- 
 pany acquired during the last two years of the campaign, as 
 we have stated, control of important plug-tobacco concerns, 
 but others engaged in that industry came to terms. We say 
 this, because in 1898, in connection with several leading plug 
 manufacturers, the American Tobacco Company organized a 
 New Jersey corporation styled the Continental Tobacco Com- 
 pany, for "trading and manufacturing," with a capital of 
 $75,000,000, afterwards increased to $100,000,000. The new 
 company issued its stock and took transfers to the plants, assets 
 and businesses of five large and successful competing plug 
 manufacturers. * 
 
 The American Tobacco Company also conveyed to this cor- 
 poration, at large valuations, the assets, brands, real estate and 
 good will pertaining to its plug-tobacco business, including the 
 National Tobacco Works, the James G. Butler Tobacco Com- 
 pany, Drummond Tobacco Company and Brown Tobacco Com- 
 pany, receiving as consideration $30,274,200 of stock (one-half 
 common and one-half preferred), $300,000 cash and an addi- 
 
 *P. J. Sorg Co., having factory at Middletown, Ohio, who received pre- 
 ferred stock $4,350,000, common stock $4,525,000, and cash $224,375. 
 
 John Finzer & Bros., having factory at Louisville, Ky., who received pre- 
 ferred stock $2,250,030, common stock $3,050,000, and cash $550,000. 
 
 Daniel Scotten & Co., having factory at Detroit, Mich., who received pre- 
 ferred stock $1,911.100 and common stock $3,012,500. 
 
 P, H. Mayo & Bros., having factory at Richmond, Va., who received pre- 
 ferred stock $1,250,000, common stock $1,925,000, and cash $66,125. 
 
 John Wright Co., having factory at Richmond, Va., who received preferred 
 stock $495,000, common stock $495,DOO, and cash $4,116.67. 
 
570 
 
 tional sum for losses sustained in the plug business during 
 1898, $840,035. Mr. Duke, the president of the American 
 Tobacco Company, also became president of the Continental 
 Company. 
 
 Under the preliminary agreement which was made, looking 
 to the formation of the Continental Tobacco Company, that 
 company acquired from the holders all the $3,000,000 of the 
 common stock of the P. Lorillard Company in exchange for 
 $6,000,000 of its stock, and $1,581,300 of the $2,000,000 pre- 
 ferred in exchange for notes, aggregating a sum considerably 
 larger. The Lorillard Company, however, although it thus 
 passed practically under the control of the American Tobacco 
 Company by virtue of its ownership of stock in the Continental 
 Company, was not liquidated, but its business continued to be 
 conducted as a distinct corporation, its goods being marked and 
 put upon the market just as if they were the manufacture of 
 an independent concern. 
 
 Following the organization of the Continental Tobacco Com- 
 pany, the American Tobacco Company increased its capital stock 
 from $35,000,000 to $70,000,000 and declared a stock dividend 
 of 100 per cent, on its common stock; that is, a stock dividend 
 of $21,000,000. 
 
 As the facts just stated bring us to the end of the first 
 period which at the outset we v stated it was our purpose to 
 review, it is well briefly to point out the increase in the power 
 and control of the American Tobacco Company and the exten- 
 sion of its activities to all forms of tobacco products which had 
 been accomplished just prior to the organization of the Conti- 
 nental Tobacco Company. Nothing could show it more clearly 
 than the following: At the end of the time the company was 
 manufacturing 86 per cent, or thereabouts of all the cigarettes 
 produced in the United States, above 26 per cent, of all the 
 smoking tobacco, more than 22 per cent, of all plug tobacco, 
 51 per cent, of all little cigars, 6 per cent, each of all snuff 
 and fine-cut tobacco, and over 2 per cent, of all cigars and 
 cheroots. 
 
 A brief reference to the occurrences of the second period, 
 that is, from and after the organization of the Continental To- 
 bacco Company up to the time of the bringing of this suit, 
 will serve to make evident that the transactions in their essence 
 had all the characteristics of the occurrences of the first period. 
 
 In the year 1899 and thereafter either the American or 
 Continental Company, for cash or stock, at an aggregate cost 
 of $50,000,000, bought and closed up some thirty competing 
 corporations and partnerships theretofore engaged in interstate 
 and foreign commerce as manufacturers, sellers and distributors 
 of tobacco and related commodities, the interested parties cove- 
 nanting not to engage in the business. Likewise the two cor- 
 porations acquired for cash, by issuing stock and otherwise, 
 control of many competing corporations, now going concerns, 
 
571 
 
 with plants in various States, Cuba and Porto Rico, which 
 manufactured, bought, sold and distributed tobacco products 
 or related articles throughout the United States and foreign 
 countries, and took from the parties in interest covenants not 
 to engage in the tobacco business. 
 
 The plants thus acquired were operated until the merger 
 in 1904, to which we shall hereafter refer, as a part of the gen- 
 eral system of the American and Continental Companies. The 
 power resulting from and the purpose contemplated in making 
 these acquisitions by the companies just referred to, however, 
 may not be measured by considering alone the business of the 
 company directly acquired, since some of those companies were 
 made the vehicles as representing the American or Continental 
 Company for acquiring and holding the stock of other and 
 competing companies, thus amplifying the power resulting from 
 the acquisitions directly made by the American or Continental 
 Company, without ostensibly doing so. It is, besides, undis- 
 puted that in many instances the acquired corporations, with 
 the subsidiary companies over which they had control through 
 stock ownership, were carried on ostensibly as independent con- 
 cerns disconnected from either the American or the Continental 
 Company, although they were controlled and owned by one or 
 the other of these companies. Without going into details on 
 these subjects, for the sake of brevity, we append in the margin 
 a statement of the corporations thus acquired, with the men- 
 ti6n of the competing concerns which such corporations 
 acquired.* 
 
 * Monopol Tobacco Works (New York, N. Y.). Capital, $40,000; cigarettes 
 and smoking tobacco. In 1899 the American Tobacco Co. acquired all the 
 shares for $250,000, and it is now a selling agency. 
 
 Luhrman & Wilbern Tobacco Co. (Middletown, Ohio). Capital, $900,000; 
 scrap tobacco. This business was formerly carried on by a partnership. 
 
 Mengel Box Co., (Louisville, Ky.). Capital, $2,000,000; boxes for packing 
 tobacco. This company has acquired the stock ($150,000) of Columbia Box 
 Co. and of Tyler Box Co. ($25,000), both at St. Louis. 
 
 The Porto Rican-American Tobacco Co. (Porto Rico). Capital, $1,799,600. 
 In 1899 the American Oo. caused the organization of the Porto Rican-American 
 Tobacco Co., which took over the partnership business of Rucaban y Portela, 
 manufacturer of cigars and cigarettes, with covenants not to compete. The 
 American Tobacco Co. and American Cigar Co. each hold $585,300 of the stock; 
 the balance is in the hands of individuals. 
 
 Kentucky Tobacco Product Co. (Louisville, Ky.) Capital, $1,000,000. In 
 1899 the Continental Co. acquired control of the Louisville Spirit-Cured Tobacco 
 Co., engaged in curing and treating tobacco and utilizing the stems for fer- 
 tilizers. By agreement the Kentucky Tobacco Product Co. was organized in 
 New Jersey, with $1,000,000 capital, $450,000 issued to the old stockholders 
 and $550,000 to Continental Co., as consideration for agreement to supply 
 stems. 
 
 Golden Belt Manufacturing Co. (North Carolina). Capital, $700,000; cotten 
 bags and containers. In 1899 the American Tobacco Co. acquired the business 
 of this corporation, which was formed to take over a going business. 
 
 The Conley Foil Co. (New York). Capital, $825,000; tin-foil combination. 
 In December, 1899, the American Tobacco Co., secured control of the business 
 of John Conley & Son (partnership), New York, N. Y., manufacturers of tin 
 foil, an essential for packing tobacco products. By agreement the Conley Foil 
 Co. was incorporated in New Jersey " for trading and manufacturing," etc., 
 with $250,000 capital (afterwards $375,000 and $825,000), which took over 
 the firm's business and assets, etc., and the American Tobacco p Co. became 
 owner of the majority shares. The Conley Foil Co. has acquired all the 
 stock of the Johnson Tinfoil & Metal Co. a defendant^ of St. Louis, a leading 
 competitor, and they supply under contracts the tin foil used by defendants. 
 
 R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (Winston Salem, N. C.). In 1899 the Conti- 
 nental Tobacco Co. acquired control of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., one 
 
572 
 
 It is of the utmost importance to observe that me acquisi- 
 tions made by the subsidiary corporations in some cases like- 
 wise show the remarkable fact stated above; that is, the dis- 
 bursement of enormous amounts of money to acquire plants 
 which, on being purchased, were not utilized but were imme- 
 diately closed. It is also to be remarked that the facts stated 
 in the memorandum in the margin show on their face a sin- 
 gular identity between the conceptions which governed the 
 transactions of this latter period with those which evidently 
 existed at the very birth of the original organization of the 
 American Tobacco Company, as exemplified by the transactions 
 in the first period. A statement of particular transactions out- 
 side of those previously referred to as having occurred during 
 the period in question will serve additionally to make the situa- 
 tion clear. And to accomplish this purpose we shall, as briefly 
 as may be consistent with clarity, separately refer to the facts 
 concerning the organization during the second period of the 
 five corporations which were named as defendants in the bill, 
 as heretofore stated, and which for the purpose of designation 
 we have hitherto classified as accessory defendants, such cor- 
 porations being the American Snuff Company, American Cigar 
 Company, Mac Andrew & Forbes Company (licorice) and Conley 
 Foil Company. 
 
 of the largest manufacturers of plug output in 1898, 6,000,000 pounds. By 
 agreement a new corporation (with same name) was organized in New Jersey 
 and capitalized at $5,000,000 (afterwards $7,525,000), which took over the 
 business and assets of the old one. The Continental Co. immediately acquired 
 the majority shares and the American Co. now holds $5,000,000 of stock. The 
 separate organization has been preserved. 
 
 There was acquired in the name of the new Reynolds Co., with covenants 
 against competition, the following plants: 
 
 In 1900, T. L. Vaughn & Co., partnership, of Winston, N. C. ; consideration, 
 $90,506; Brown Bros. Co., a North Carolina corporation, Winston, N. C. ; con- 
 sideration, $67,615; and P. H. Hanes & Co. and B. F. Hanes & Co,, Winston, 
 N. C., partnership; consideration, $671,950. 
 
 In 1905, Rucker & Witten Tobacco Co., Martinsville, Va. ; consideration, 
 $512,898. 
 
 In 1906, D. H. Spencer Co., Martinsville, Va. ; consideration, $314,255. 
 
 (All of the foregoing plants were closed as soon as purchased.) 
 
 A majority of the $400,000 capital stock of plug tobacco and interstate and 
 foreign commerce in leaf tobacco and its products was acquired by the 
 Reynolds Co. The separate organization of the Lipfert-Scales Co. is preserved 
 and the business carried on under its corporate name. 
 
 The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. also holds $98,300 stock of the Mac- 
 Andrews & Forbes Co. and $9,600 of the Amsterdam Supply Co. 
 
 Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co. (Durham, N. C.). Capital. $1,000,000. 
 In 1899 the American Tobacco Co. procured for $4,000,000 all the stock of 
 Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co. at Durham, N. C., manufacturer and dis- 
 tributor of tobacco products. Thereupon the Blackwell's Durham Tobacco Co. 
 of New Jersey, capital, 1,000,'000, all owned by the American, was organized 
 and took over the assets of the old company, then under receivership. Its 
 separate organization has been preserved. 
 
 The Durham Co. has acquired control of the following compeitors: Rey- 
 nold's Tobacco Co., F. R. Penn Tobacco Co., and Wells-Whitehead Tobacco Co. 
 
 The following companies came also under the control of the American 
 Tobacco Co. through acquired stock ownership: 
 
 S. Anargyros. Capital, $650,000; Turkish cigarettes. In 1890 the Amer- 
 ican Tobacco Co. procured the organization of corporation of S. Anargyros, 
 which took over that individual's going business and has since controlled it. 
 Through this company the business in Turkish cigarettes is largely con- 
 ducted 
 
 The John Bollman Co. (San Francisco). Capital, $200,000; cigarettes. 
 In 1900 the American Tobacco Co. procured organization of the John Bollman 
 Co., which took over the business of the former concern in exchange for stock. 
 Its separate organization has been preserved. 
 
573 
 
 (1) The American Snuff Company. As we have seen, the 
 American Tobacco Company at the commencement of the first 
 period produced a very small quantity of snuff. Its capacity, 
 however, in that regard was augmented owing particularly to 
 the formation of the Continental Tobacco Company and the 
 acquisition of the Lorillard Company, by which it came to be 
 a serious factor as a snuff producer. There shortly ensued an 
 aggressive competition in the snuff business between the Amer- 
 iqan Tobacco Company, with the force acquired from the van- 
 tage ground resulting from the dominancy of its expanded 
 organization, and others in the trade operating independently 
 of that organization. The result was identical with that which 
 had previously arisen from like conditions in the past. 
 
 In March, 1900, there was organized in New Jersey a 
 corporation known as the American Snuff Company, . with a 
 capital of $25,000,000, one-half preferred and one-half com- 
 mon, which took over the snuff business of the P. Lorillard 
 Company, Continental Tobacco Company and the American 
 Tobacco Company, with that of a large competitor, viz., the 
 Atlantic Snuff Company. The stock of the new company was 
 thus apportioned: Atlantic Snuff Company, $7,500,000 pre- 
 ferred, $25,000,000 common ; P. Lorillard Company, $1,124,700 
 preferred, $3,459,000 common; the American Tobacco Com- 
 pany $1,177,800 preferred, $3,227,500 common; Continental 
 Tobacco Company $197,500 preferred, $813,100 common. The 
 stock issued to Continental Tobacco Company and the defend- 
 ants, P. Lorillard Company and the American Tobacco Com- 
 pany, is still held by the latter, and they have at all times had 
 a controlling interest in the snuff company. All the companies, 
 together with their officers and directors, covenanted that they 
 would not thereafter engage as competitors in the tobacco busi- 
 ness or the manufacture, sale or distribution of snuff. 
 
 Among the assets transferred by the Atlantic Snuff Com- 
 pany to American Snuff Company were all the shares ($600,000) 
 of W. E. Garrett & Sons (Inc.), then and now one of the oldest 
 and very largest producers of snuff, for a long time and still 
 engaged at Yorkland, Del., in interstate and foreign commerce 
 in tobacco and its products, and which controlled through stock 
 ownership the Southern Snuff Company, Memphis, Tenn. : 
 Dental Snuff Company, Lynchburg, Va., and Stewart-Ealph 
 Snuff Company, Clarksville, Tenn. The separate existence of 
 W. E. Garrett & Sons (Inc.) has been preserved and its busi- 
 ness conducted under the corporate name. In March, 1900, 
 the American Snuff Company acquired all the shares of George 
 W. Helme Company, one of the oldest and largest producers 
 of snuff and actively engaged at Helmetta, 1ST. J., in interstate 
 and foreign commerce in competition with defendants, by issu- 
 ing in exchange therefor $2,000,000 preferred stock and 
 $1,000,000 common; and it thereafter took a conveyance of all 
 
574 
 
 assets of the acquired company and now operates the plant 
 under its own name. 
 
 As a result of the transactions just stated, it came to pass 
 that the American Tobacco Company, which had at the end of 
 the first period only a very small percentage of the snuff manu- 
 facturing business, came virtually to have the dominant control 
 as a manufacturer of that product. 
 
 (2) Conley Foil Company, manufacturers of tinfoil, an 
 essential for packing tobacco products. In December, 1899, the 
 American Tobacco Company secured control of the business of 
 John Conley & Sons, a partnership, of New York City. By 
 agreement the Conley Foil Company was incorporated in New 
 York "for trading and manufacturing," etc., with $250,000 
 capital, ultimately increased to $825,000. The corporation took 
 over the business and assets of the firm, and the American To- 
 bacco Company became owner of a majority of the shares of 
 stock. The Conley Foil Company has acquired all the shares 
 of stock of the Johnson Tinfoil & Metal Company, of St. Louis, 
 a leading competitor, and they supply, under fixed contracts at 
 remunerative prices, the tinfoil used by the defendants, which 
 constitutes the major part of the total production in the United 
 States. 
 
 (3) American Cigar Company. Prior to 1901 the Ameri- 
 can and Continental Tobacco Companies manufactured, sold 
 and distributed cigars, stogies and cheroots. In the year stated 
 the companies determined to engage in the business upon a 
 larger scale. Under agreement with Powell, Smith & Co., large 
 manufacturers and dealers in cigars, they caused the incorpora- 
 tion in New Jersey of the American Cigar Company " for trad- 
 ing and manufacturing," etc., to which all three conveyed their 
 said business, and it has since carried on the same. The 
 American and Continental Companies each acquired 46J per 
 cent, of the shares, and Powell, Smith & Co. 7 per cent; 
 the original capitalization was $10,000,000 (afterwards 
 $20,000,000), and more than three-fourths is owned by the 
 former. The cigar company acquired many competitors (part- 
 nerships and corporations) engaged in* interstate and foreign 
 commerce, taking from the parties covenants against engaging 
 in the tobacco business; and it has also procured the organiza- 
 tion of controlled corporations which have acquired competing 
 manufacturers, jobbers and distributors in the United States, 
 Cuba and Porto Eico. It manufactures, sells and distributes 
 a considerable percentage of domestic cigars; is the dominating 
 factor in the tobacco business, foreign and domestic, in Cuba 
 and Porto Eico, and is there engaged in tobacco planting. It 
 also controls corporate jobbers in California, Alabama, Vir- 
 ginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and Ten- 
 nessee. 
 
 (4) The MacAndrews d Forbes Company, manufacturers 
 of licorice. There is no question that licorice paste is an essen- 
 
575 
 
 tial ingredient in the manufacture of plug tobacco, and that one 
 who is debarred from obtaining such paste would therefore be 
 unable to engage in or carry on the manufacture of such prod- 
 uct. The control over this article was thus secured: In May, 
 1902, the Continental Company secured control of Mac Andrews 
 & Forbes Company, of Newark, N. J., and organized " for trad- 
 ing and manufacturing" a corporation known as the MacAn- 
 drews & Forbes Company, with a capital of $7,000,000, $4,000,000 
 preferred and $3,000,000 common, which took over the business 
 of MacAndrews & Forbes and another large competitor. The 
 Continental Company acquired two-thirds of the common stock 
 by agreeing to purchase its supply of paste from the new com- 
 pany. The American Tobacco Company at the time of the 
 filing of the bill, was the owner of $2,112,900 of the common 
 stock and $750,000 preferred. By various purchases and agree- 
 ments the MacAndrews & Forbes Company acquired, substan- 
 tially, the business of all competitors. Thus, in June, 1902, 
 it purchased the business of the Stamford Manufacturing Com- 
 pany, of Stamford, Conn., and incorporated the National 
 Licorice Company, which acquired the business of Young & 
 Smylie and F. B. & V. P. Scudder, and the National Company 
 agreed with MacAndrews & Forbes not to produce licorice for 
 tobacco manufacturers. In 1906 all the stock in the J. S. Young 
 Company $1,800,000 which had been organized to take over 
 the business of the J. S. Young Company, of Baltimore, Md., 
 was acquired by the MacAndrews & Forbes Company. The 
 MacAndrews & Forbes Company use in excess of 95 per cent, 
 of the licorice root consumed in the United States. 
 
 (5) American Stogie Company. In May, 1903, the Amer- 
 ican Cigar Company and the American and Continental Tobacco 
 Companies caused the American Stogie Company to be incor- 
 porated in New Jersey with $11,979,000 capital, which imme- 
 diately took over the stogie and tobie business of the companies 
 named in exchange for $8,206,275 stock, and then in the usual 
 ways acquired the business of others in the manufacture, sale 
 and distribution of such products, with covenants not to com- 
 pete. It acquired, in exchange for $3,647,725 stock, all shares 
 of United States Cigar Company (which had previously 
 acquired and owned the business of important competitors) and 
 subsequently took the conveyance of the plant and assets. The 
 majority shares always have been held by defendant, the 
 American Cigar Company. 
 
 As we think the legitimate inferences deducible from the 
 undisputed facts which we have thus stated will be sufficient 
 to dispose of the controversy, we do not deem it necessary to 
 expand this statement so as to cause it to embrace a recital of 
 the undisputed facts concerning the entry of the American 
 Tobacco Company into the retail tobacco trade through the 
 acquisition of a controlling interest in the stock of what is 
 known as the United Cigar Stores Company, as well as to some 
 
576 
 
 other subjects which, for the sake of brevity, we likewise pass 
 over in order to come at once to a statement concerning the 
 foreign companies. 
 
 The English companies. In September, 1901, the American 
 Tobacco Company purchased for $5,347,000 a Liverpool (Eng- 
 land) corporation, known as Ogden's Limited, there engaged 
 in manufacturing and distributing tobacco products. A trade 
 conflict, which at once ensued, caused many of the English 
 manufacturers to combine into an incorporation known as the 
 Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland, capital 
 15,000,000, afterwards increased to 18,000,000, sterling. The 
 trade war was continued between this corporation and the 
 American Tobacco Company with a result substantially iden- 
 tical with that which had hitherto, as we have seen, arisen from 
 such a situation. 
 
 In September, 1902, the Imperial and the American com- 
 panies entered into contracts (executed in England), stipulat- 
 ing that the former should limit its business to the United 
 Kingdom, except purchasing leaf in the United States (it buys 
 54,000,000 pounds annually) ; that the American companies 
 should limit their business to the United States, its dependen- 
 cies and Cuba; and that the British- American Tobacco Com- 
 pany, with a capital of 6,000,000 apportioned between them, 
 should be organized, take over the export business of both, and 
 operate in other countries, etc. This arrangement was imme- 
 diately put into effect and has been observed. 
 
 The Imperial Company holds one-third and the American 
 Company two-thirds of the capital stock of the British- American 
 Tobacco Company (Ltd.). The latter company maintains a 
 branch office in New York City, and the vice-president of the 
 American Tobacco Company is a principal officer. This com- 
 pany uses large quantities of domestic leaf, partly exported to 
 various plants abroad and about half manufactured here and 
 then exported. By agreement all this is purchased through 
 the American Tobacco Company. In addition to many plants 
 abroad, it has warehouses in various States and plants at Peters- 
 burg, Va., and Durham, N. C., where tobacco is manufactured 
 and then exported. 
 
 The purchase of necessary leaf tobacco in the United States 
 by the Imperial Company is now made through a resident gen- 
 eral agent and is exported as a part of foreign 'commerce. 
 
 Not to break the continuity of the narrative of facts, we 
 have omitted in the proper chronological order to state the facts 
 relative to what was known as the Consolidated Tobacco Com- 
 pany. We now particularly refer to that subject. 
 
 The Consolidated Tobacco Company. In June, 1901, parties 
 largely interested in the American and Continental Companies 
 caused the incorporation in New Jersey of the Consolidated 
 Tobacco Company, capital $30,00,000 (afterwards $40,000,000), 
 with broad powers and perpetual existence; to do business 
 
577 
 
 throughout the world, and to guarantee securities of other com- 
 panies, etc. A majority of shares was taken by a few individuals 
 connected with the old concerns: A. N. Brady, J. B. Duke, A. 
 H. Payne, Thomas Eyan, W. C. Whitney and P. A. B. Widener. 
 ,r. B. Duke, president of both the old companies, became presi- 
 dent of the Consolidated. Largely in exchange for bonds the 
 new company acquired substantially all the shares of common 
 stock of the old ones. Its business of holding and financing 
 was continued until 1904, when, with the American and Conti- 
 nental Companies, it was merged in to the present American 
 Tobacco Company. 
 
 By proceedings in New Jersey, October, 1904, the (old) 
 American Tobacco Company, Continental Tobacco Company and 
 Consolidated Tobacco Company were merged into one corpora- 
 tion, under the name of the American Tobacco Company, the 
 principal defendant here. The merged company, with perpetual 
 existence, was capitalized at $180,000,000 ($80,000,000 pre- 
 ferred ordinarily without power to vote). 
 
 The powers conferred by the charter are stated in the 
 margin.* 
 
 Prior to the merger the Consolidated Tobacco Company, a 
 majority of whose $40,000,000 share capital was held hy J. B. 
 Duke, Thomas F. Eyan, William C. Whitney, Anthony K 
 Brady, Peter A. B. Widener and Oliver H. Payne, had acquired, 
 as already stated, nearly all common shares of both old Amer- 
 ican and Continental Companies, and thereby control. The 
 preferred shares, however, were held by many individuals. 
 Through the method of distribution of the stock of the new 
 company, in exchange for shares in the old American and in 
 the Continental Companies, it resulted that the same six men 
 in control of the combination through the Consolidated Tobacco 
 Company continued that control by ownership of stock in the 
 merged or new American Tobacco Company. The assets, prop- 
 erty, etc., of the old companies passed to the American To- 
 bacco Company (merged), which has since carried on the 
 business. 
 
 The record indisputably discloses that after this merger 
 the same methods which were used from the beginning con- 
 tinued to be employed. Thus it is beyond dispute: First, that 
 since the organization of the new American Tobacco Company 
 that company has acquired four large tobacco concerns; that 
 
 *To buy, manufacture, sell and otherwise deal in tobacco and the products 
 of tobacco in any and all forms; to guarantee dividends on any 
 
 shares of the capital stock of any corporation in which said merged corpora- 
 tion has an interest as stockholders: to carry on any business 
 operations deemed by such merged corporation to be necessary or advisable 
 in connection with any of the objects of its incorporation or in furtherance of 
 any thereof, or tending to increase the value of its property or stock; * * * 
 to conduct business in all other States, Territories, possessions, and depend- 
 encies of the United States of America, and in all foreign countries; 
 to purchase or otherwise acauire and hold, sell, assign, transfer, mortgage, 
 pledge, or otherwise dispose of the shares of the capital stock or of any bonds, 
 securities, or other evidences of indebtedness created by any other corpora- 
 tion or corporations of this or any other State or Government, and to issue 
 its own obligations in payment or exchange therefor * * *. 
 
578 
 
 restrictive covenants against engaging in the tobacco business 
 were taken from the sellers, and that the plants were not con- 
 tinued in operation, but were at once abandoned. Second, that 
 the new company has, besides, acquired control of eight addi- 
 tional concerns, the business of such concerns being now car- 
 ried on by four separate corporations, all absolutely controlled 
 by the American Tobacco Company, although the connection 
 as to two of these companies with that corporation was long 
 and persistently denied. 
 
 Thus, reaching the end of the second period and coming 
 to the time of the bringing of the suit, brevity prevents us from 
 stopping to portray the difference between the condition in 
 1890 when the (old) American Tobacco Company was organ- 
 ized by the consolidation of five competing cigarette concerns 
 and that which existed at the commencement of the suit. That 
 situation and the vast power which the principal and accessory 
 corporate defendants and the small number of individuals who 
 own a majority of the common stock of the new American To- 
 bacco Company exert over the marketing of tobacco as a raw 
 product, its manufacture, its marketing when manufactured, 
 and its consequent movement in the channels of interstate com- 
 merce, indeed relatively over foreign commerce, and the com- 
 merce of the whole world in the raw and manufactured prod- 
 ucts, stand out in such bold relief from the undisputed facts 
 which have been stated as to lead us to pass at once to the 
 second fundamental proposition which we are required to con- 
 sider that is, the construction of the anti-trust act and the 
 application of the act as rightly construed to the situation as 
 proven in consequence of having determined the ultimate and 
 final inferences properly deducible from the undisputed facts 
 which we have stated. 
 
 THE CONSTRUCTION AND APPLICATION OF THE ANTI-TRUST 
 
 ACT. 
 
 If the anti-trust law is applicable to the entire situation 
 here presented and is adequate to afford complete relief for 
 the evils which the United States insists that situation presents, 
 it can only be because that law will be given a more compre- 
 hensive application than has been affixed to it in any previous 
 decision. This will be the case, because the undisputed facts 
 as we have stated them involve questions as to the operation 
 of the anti-trust law not hitherto presented in any case. Thus, 
 even if the ownership of stock by the American Tobacco Com- 
 pany in the accessory and subsidiary companies and the owner- 
 ship of stock in any of these companies among themselves were 
 held, as was decided in the Standard Oil Company case, to be 
 a violation of the act and all relations resulting from such stock 
 ownership were therefore set aside, the question would yet 
 remain whether the principal defendant, the American Tobacco 
 
579 
 
 Company, and the five accessory defendants, even when divested 
 of their stock ownership in other corporations, by virtue of the 
 power which they would continue to possess, even although thus 
 stripped, would amount to a violation of both the first and 
 second sections of the act. Again, if it were held that the cor- 
 porations, the existence whereof was due to a combination be- 
 tween such companies and other companies was a violation of 
 the act, the question would remain whether such of the com- 
 panies as did not owe their existence and power to combina- 
 tions, but whose power alone arose from the exercise of the right 
 to acquire and own property, would be amenable to the prohibi- 
 tions of the act. Yet, further, even if this proposition was held 
 in the affirmative, the question would remain whether the prin- 
 cipal defendant, the American Tobacco Company, when stripped 
 of its stock ownership, would be in and of itself within the 
 prohibitions of the act, although that company was organized 
 and took being before the anti-trust act was passed. Still 
 further, the question would yet remain whether particular cor- 
 porations which, when bereft of the power which they possessed 
 as resulting from stock ownership, although they were not 
 inherently possessed of a sufficient residuum of power to cause 
 them to be in and of themselves either a restraint of trade or 
 a monopolization or an attempt to monopolize, should never- 
 theless be restrained because of their intimate connection and 
 association with other corporations found to be within the pro- 
 hibitions of the act. The necessity of relief as to all these 
 aspects, we think, seemed to the government so essential, and 
 the difficulty of giving to the act such a comprehensive and 
 coherent construction as would be adequate to enable it to meet 
 the entire situation, led to what appears to us to be in their 
 essence a resort to methods of construction not compatible one 
 with the other. And the same apparent conflict is presented 
 by the views of the act taken by the defendants when their con- 
 tentions are accurately tested. 
 
 Thus the government, for the purpose of fixing the illegal 
 character of the original combination which organized the old 
 American Tobacco Company, asserts that the illegal character 
 of the combination is plainly shown because the combination 
 was brought about to stay the progress of a flagrant and ruin- 
 ous trade war. In other words, the .contention is that as the 
 act forbids every contract and combination it hence prohibits 
 a reasonable and just agreement made for the purpose of end- 
 ing a trade war. But as thus construing the act by the rule 
 of the letter which kills would necessarily operate to take out of 
 the reach of the act some of the accessory and many subsidiary 
 corporations, the existence of which depend not at all upon 
 combination or agreement or contract, but upon mere purchases 
 of property, it is insisted in many forms of argument that the 
 rule of construction to be applied must be the spirit and intent 
 of the act, and therefore its prohibitions must be held to extend 
 
580 
 
 to acts even if not within the literal terms of the statute if 
 they are within its spirit, because done with an intent to bring 
 about the harmful results which it was the purpose of the 
 statute to prohibit. So as to the defendants. While it is argued, 
 on the one hand, that the forms by which various properties 
 were acquired in view of the letter of the act exclude many of 
 the assailed transactions from condemnation, it is yet urged 
 that giving to. the act the broad construction which it should 
 rightfully receive, whatever may be the form, no condemnation 
 should follow, because, looking at the case as a whole, every act 
 assailed is shown to have been but a legitimate and lawful 
 result of the exertion of honest business methods brought into 
 play for the purpose of advancing trade instead of with the 
 object of obstructing and restraining the same. But the diffi- 
 culties which arise, from the complexity of the particular deal- 
 ings which are here involved and the situation which they pro- 
 duce, we think grows out of a plain misconception of both the 
 letter and spirit of the anti-trust act. We say of the letter, 
 because while seeking by a narrow rule of the letter to include 
 things which it is deemed would otherwise be excluded the con- 
 tention really destroys the great purpose of the act, since it 
 renders it impossible to apply the law to a multitude of wrong- 
 ful acts which would come within the scope of its remedial pur- 
 poses by resort to a reasonable construction, although they 
 would not be within its reach by a too narrow and unreasonable 
 adherence to the strict letter. This must be the case unless it 
 be possible in reason to say that for the purpose of including 
 one class of acts which would not otherwise be embraced a 
 literal construction, although in conflict with reason, must be 
 applied, and for the purpose of including other acts which would 
 not otherwise be embraced a reasonable construction must be 
 resorted to. That is to say, two conflicting rules of construc- 
 tion must at one and the same time be applied and adhered to. 
 The obscurity and resulting uncertainty, however, is now 
 but an abstraction, because it has been removed by the considera- 
 tion which we have given quite recently to the construction 
 of the anti-trust act in the Standard Oil case. In that case it 
 was held, without departing from any previous decision of the 
 court, that as the statute had not defined the words "restraint 
 of trade," it became necessary to construe these words, a duty 
 which could only be discharged by a resort to reason. We say 
 the doctrine thus stated was in accord with all the previous 
 decisions of this court, despite the fact that the contrary view 
 was sometimes erroneously attributed to some of the expres- 
 sions used in two prior decisions. (Trans-Missouri Freight 
 Association and Joint Traffic cases, 166 IT. S., 290, and 171 
 U. S., 505.) That such view was a mistaken one was fully 
 pointed out in the Standard Oil case and is additionally shown 
 by a passage in the opinion in the Joint Traffic case, as" follows 
 (171 IT. S., 568) : " The act of Congress must have a reason- 
 
581 
 
 able construction, or else there would scarcely be an agreement 
 or contract among business men that could not be said to have, 
 indirectly or remotely, some bearing on interstate commerce, 
 and possibly to restrain it. 7 ' Applying the rule of reason to the 
 construction of the statute, it was held in the Standard Oil 
 case that as the words " restraint of trade " at common law and 
 in the law of this country at the time of the adoption of the 
 anti-trust act only embraced acts or contracts or agreements 
 or combinations which operated to the prejudice of the public 
 interests by unduly restricting competition or unduly obstruct- 
 ing the due course of trade, or which, either because of their 
 inherent nature or effect or because of the evident purpose 
 of the acts, etc., injuriously restrained trade, that the words 
 as used in the statute were designed to have and did have but 
 a like significance. It was therefore pointed out that the statute 
 did not forbid or restrain the power to make normal and usual 
 contracts to further trade by resorting to all normal methods, 
 whether by agreement or otherwise, to accomplish such pur- 
 pose. 
 
 In other words, it was held not that acts which the statute 
 prohibited could be removed from the control of its prohibi- 
 tions by a finding that they were reasonable, but that the duty 
 to interpret which inevitably arose from the general character 
 of the term " restraint of trade " required that the words 
 " restraint of trade " should be given a meaning which would 
 not destroy the individual right to contract and render difficult, 
 if not impossible, any movement of trade in the channels of 
 interstate commerce the free movement of which it was the 
 purpose of the statute to protect. The soundness of the rule 
 that the statute should receive a reasonable construction, after 
 further mature deliberation, we see no reason to doubt. Indeed, 
 the necessity for not departing in this case from the standard 
 of the rule of reason, which is universal in its application, is 
 so plainly required in order to give effect to the remedial pur- 
 poses which the act under consideration contemplates, and to 
 prevent that act from destroying all liberty of contract and all 
 substantial right to trade, and thus causing the act to be at 
 war with itself by annihilating the fundamental right of free- 
 dom to trade which, on the very face of the act, it was enacted 
 to preserve, is illustrated by the record before us. In truth, 
 the plain demonstration which this record gives of the injury 
 which would arise from and the promotion of the wrongs which 
 the statute was intended to guard against which would result 
 from giving to the statute a narrow, unreasoning and unheard-of 
 construction, as illustrated by the record before us, if possible 
 serves to strengthen our conviction as to the correctness of the 
 rule of construction, the rule of reason, which was applied in 
 the Standard Oil case, the application of which rule to the 
 statute we now, in the most unequivocal terms, re-express and 
 reaffirm. 
 
582 
 
 Coming, then, to apply to the case before us the act as 
 interpreted in the Standard Oil and previous cases, all the diffi- 
 culties suggested by the mere form in which the assailed trans- 
 actions are clothed become of no moment. This follows because, 
 although it was held in the Standard Oil case that, giving to 
 the statute a reasonable construction, the words " restraint of 
 trade" did not embrace all those normal and usual contracts 
 essential to individual freedom and the right to make which 
 were necessary in order that the course of trade might be free, 
 yet, as a result of the reasonable construction which was affixed 
 to the statute, it was pointed out that the generic designation 
 of the first and second sections of the law, when taken together, 
 embraced every conceivable act which could possibly come within 
 the spirit or purpose of the prohibitions of the law, without 
 regard to the garb in which such acts were clothed. That is 
 to say, it was held that in view of the general language of the 
 statute and the public policy which it manifested, there was 
 no possibility of frustrating that policy by resorting to any 
 disguise or subterfuge of form, since resort to reason rendered 
 it impossible to escape by any indirection the prohibitions of 
 the statute. 
 
 Considering, then, the undisputed facts which we have pre- 
 viously stated, it remains only to determine whether they estab- 
 lish that the acts, contracts, agreements, combinations, etc., 
 which were assailed were of such an unusual and wrongful 
 character as to bring them within the prohibitions of the law. 
 That they were, in our opinion, so overwhelmingly, results from 
 the undisputed facts that it seems only necessary to refer to 
 the facts as we have stated them to demonstrate the correctness 
 of this conclusion. Indeed, the history of the combination is 
 so replete with the doing of acts which it was the obvious pur- 
 pose of the statute to forbid, so demonstrative of the existence 
 from the beginning of a purpose to acquire dominion and con- 
 trol of the tobacco trade, not by the mere exertion of the ordi- 
 nary right to contract and to trade, but by methods devised in 
 order to monopolize the trade by driving competitors out of 
 business, which were ruthlessly carried out upon the assumption 
 that to work upon the fears or play upon the cupidity of com- 
 petitors would make success possible. We say these conclusions 
 are inevitable, not because of the vast amount of property aggre- 
 gated by the combination; not because alone of the many cor- 
 porations which the proof shows were united by resort to one 
 device or another. Again, not alone because of the dominion 
 and control over the tobacco trade which actually exists, but 
 because we think the conclusion of wrongful purpose and illegal 
 combination is overwhelmingly established by the following 
 considerations : 
 
 (a) By the fact that the very first organization or combi- 
 nation was impelled by a previously existing fierce trade war, 
 
583 
 
 evidently inspired by one or more of the minds which brought 
 about and became parties to that combination. 
 
 (&) Because, immediately after that combination and the 
 increase of capital which followed,, the acts which ensued justify 
 the inference that the intention existed to use the power of 
 the combination as a vantage ground to further monopolize the 
 trade in tobacco by means of trade conflicts designed to injure 
 others, either by driving competitors out of the business or com-, 
 pelling them to become parties to a combination a purpose 
 whose execution was illustrated by the plug war which ensued 
 and its results, by the snuff war which followed and its results, 
 and by the conflict which immediately followed the entry of 
 the combination in England and the division of the world's 
 business by the two foreign contracts which ensued. 
 
 (c) By the ever-present manifestation which is exhibited of 
 a conscious wrongdoing by the form in which the various 
 transactions were embodied from the beginning, ever changing 
 but ever in substance the same. Now the organization of a 
 new company, now the control exerted by the taking of stock 
 in one or another or in several, so as to obscure the result 
 actually attained, nevertheless uniform, in their manifestations 
 of the purpose to restrain others and to monopolize and retain 
 power in the hands of the few who, it would seem, from the 
 beginning contemplated the mastery of the trade which prac- 
 tically followed. 
 
 (d) By the gradual absorption of control over all the ele- 
 ments essential to the successful manufacture of tobacco prod- 
 ucts, and placing such control in the hands of seemingly inde- 
 pendent corporations serving as perpetual barriers to the entry 
 of others into the tobacco trade. 
 
 (e) By persistent expenditure of millions upon millions of 
 dollars in buying out plants, not for the purpose of utilizing 
 them, but in order to close them up and render them useless 
 for the purposes of trade. 
 
 (/) By the constantly recurring stipulations, whose legal- 
 ity, isolatedly viewed, we are not considering, by which num- 
 bers of persons, whether manufacturers, stockholders or em- 
 ployees, were required to bind themselves, generally for long 
 periods, not to compete in the future. Indeed, when the results 
 of the undisputed proof which we have stated are fully appre- 
 hended and the wrongful acts which they exhibit are consid- 
 ered there comes inevitably to the mind the conviction that it 
 was the danger which it was deemed would arise to individual 
 liberty and the public well-being from acts like those which 
 this record exhibits which led the legislative mind to conceive 
 and to enact the anti-trust act, considerations which also serve 
 to clearly demonstrate that the combination here assailed is 
 within the law as to leave no doubt that it is our plain duty to 
 apply its prohibitions. 
 
584 
 
 In stating summarily, as we have done, the conclusions 
 which, in our opinion, are plainly deducible from the undis- 
 puted facts, we have not paused to give the reasons why we 
 consider, after great consideration, that the elaborate arguments 
 advanced to affix a different complexion to the case are wholly 
 devoid of merit. We do not, for the sake of brevity, moreover, 
 stop to examine and discuss the various propositions urged in 
 the argument at bar for the purpose of demonstrating that the 
 subject matter of the combination which we find to exist and 
 the combination itself are not within the scope of the anti-trust 
 law, because, when rightly considered, they are merely matters 
 of intrastate commerce and therefore subject alone to State 
 control. We have done this because the want of merit in all 
 the arguments advanced on such subjects is so completely estab- 
 lished by the prior decisions of 'this court, as pointed out in the 
 Standard Oil case, as not to require restatement. 
 
 Leading as this does to the conclusion that the assailed com- 
 bination in all its aspects that is to say, whether it be looked 
 at from the point of view of stock ownership or from the stand- 
 point of the principal corporation and the accessory or subsi- 
 diary corporations viewed independently, including the foreign 
 corporations in so far as by the contracts made by them 
 they became co-operators in the combinations comes within 
 the prohibitions of the first and second sections of the anti- 
 trust act, it remains only finally to consider the remedy which 
 it is our duty to apply to the situation thus found to exist. 
 
 THE EEMEDY. 
 
 Our conclusion being that the combination as a whole, involv- 
 ing all its co-operating or associated parts in whatever form 
 clothed, constitutes a restraint of trade within the first section, 
 and an attempt to monopolize or a monopolization within the 
 second section of the anti-trust act, it follows that the relief 
 which we are to afford must be wider than that awarded by the 
 lower court, since that court merely decided that certain of the 
 corporate defendants constituted combinations in violation of 
 the first section of the act because of the fact that they were 
 formed by the union of previously competing concerns and that 
 the other defendants not dismissed from the action were parties 
 to such combinations or promoted their purposes. We hence, 
 in determining the relief proper to be given, may not mode] 
 our action upon that granted by the court below, but in order to 
 enable us to award relief coterminous with the ultimate redress 
 of the wrongs which we find to exist, we must approach the 
 subject of relief from an original point of view. Such subject 
 necessarily takes a twofold aspect the character of the perma- 
 nent relief required and the nature of the temporary relief 
 essential to be applied pending the working out of permanent 
 relief in the event that it be found that it is impossible under 
 
585 
 
 the situation as it now exists to at once rectify such existing 
 wrongful condition. In considering the subject from both of 
 these aspects three dominant influences must guide our action: 
 (1) The duty of giving complete and efficacious effect to the 
 prohibitions of the statute; (2) the accomplishing of this result 
 with as little injury as possible to the interest of the general 
 public; and (3) a proper regard for the vast interests of private 
 property which may have become vested in many persons as a 
 result of the acquisition either by way of stock ownership or 
 otherwise of interests in the stock or securities of the combina- 
 tion without any guilty knowledge or intent in any way to 
 become actors or participants in the wrongs which we find to 
 have inspired and dominated the combination from the begin- 
 ning. Mindful of these considerations and to clear the way 
 for their application we say at the outset, without stopping to 
 amplify the reasons which lead us to that conclusion, we think 
 that the court below clearly erred in dismissing the individual 
 defendants, the United Cigar Stores Company and the foreign 
 corporations and their subsidiary corporations. 
 
 Looking at the situation as we have hitherto pointed it out, 
 it involves difficulties in the application of remedies greater 
 than have been presented by any case involving the anti-trust 
 law which has been hitherto considered by this court: First, 
 because in this case it is obvious that a mere decree forbidding 
 stock ownership by one part of the combination in another part 
 or entity thereof would afford no adequate measure of relief, 
 since different ingredients of the combination would remain 
 unaffected, and by the very nature and character of their organi- 
 zation would be able to continue the wrongful situation which 
 it is our duty to destroy; second, because the methods of ap- 
 parent ownership by which the wrongful intent was in part 
 carried out and the subtle devices which, as we have seen, were 
 resorted to for the purpose of accomplishing the wrong contem- 
 plated, by way of ownership or otherwise, are of such a char- 
 acter that it is difficult, if not impossible, to formulate a rem- 
 edy which could restore in their entirety the prior lawful con- 
 ditions ; third, because the methods devised by which the various 
 essential elements to the successful operation of the tobacco 
 business from any particular aspect have been so separated under 
 various subordinate combinations, yet so unified by way of the 
 control worked out by the scheme here condemned, are so 
 involved that any specific form of relief which we might now 
 order in substance and effect might operate really to injure the 
 public and, it may be, to perpetuate the wrong. Doubtless it 
 was the presence of these difficulties which caused the United 
 States, in its prayer for relief, to tentatively suggest rather 
 than to specifically demand definite and precise remedies. "We 
 might at once resort to one or the other of two general remedies 
 (a) the allowance of a permanent injunction restraining the 
 combination as a universality and all the individuals and cor- 
 
586 
 
 porations which form a part of or co-operate in it in any manner 
 or form from continuing to engage in interstate commerce until 
 the illegal situation be cured, a measure of relief which would 
 accord in substantial effect with that awarded below to the extent 
 that the court found illegal combinations to exist; or (b) to 
 direct the appointment of a receiver to take charge of the assets 
 and property in this country of the combination in all its rami- 
 fications for the purpose of preventing a continued violation 
 of the law, and thus working out by a sale of the property of 
 the combination or otherwise a condition of things which would 
 not be repugnant to the prohibitions of the act. 
 
 But, having regard to the principles which we have said 
 must control our action, we do not think we can now direct the 
 immediate application of either of these remedies. We so con- 
 sider as to the first because in view of the extent of the com- 
 bination, the vast field which it covers, the all-embracing char- 
 acter of its activities concerning tobacco and its products, to at 
 once stay the movement in interstate commerce of the products 
 which the combination or its co-operating forces produce or 
 control might inflict infinite injury upon the public by leading 
 to a stoppage of supply and a great enhancement of prices. The 
 second because the extensive power which would result from at 
 once resorting to a receivership might not only do grievous 
 injury to the public, but also cause widespread and perhaps 
 irreparable loss to many innocent people. Under these circum- 
 stances, taking into mind the complexity of the situation in 
 all of its aspects and giving weight to the many-sided considera- 
 tions which must control our judgment, we think, so far as the 
 permanent relief to be awarded is concerned, we should decree 
 as follows: 
 
 First That the combination in and of itself, as well as 
 each and all of the elements composing it, whether corporate 
 or individual, whether considered collectively or separately, be 
 decreed to be in restraint of trade and an attempt to monopo- 
 lize and a monopolization within the first and second sections 
 of the anti-trust act. 
 
 Second That the court below, in order to give effective 
 force to our decree in this regard, be directed to hear the par- 
 ties, by evidence or otherwise, as it may be deemed proper, for 
 the purpose of ascertaining and determining upon some plan 
 or method of dissolving the combination and of re-creating, 
 out of the elements now composing it, a new condition which 
 shall be honestly in harmony with and not repugnant to the 
 law. 
 
 Third That for the accomplishment of these purposes, tak- 
 ing into view the difficulty of the situation, a period of six 
 months is allowed from the receipt of our mandate, with leave, 
 however, in the event, in the judgment of the court below, the 
 necessities of the situation require, to extend such period to a 
 further time, not to exceed sixty days. 
 
587 
 
 Fourth That in the event, before the expiration of the 
 period thus fixed, a condition of disintegration in harmony with 
 the law is not brought about, either as the consequence of the 
 action of the court in determining an issue on the subject or 
 in accepting a plan agreed upon, it shall be the duty of the 
 court, either by way of an injunction restraining the movement 
 of the products of the combination in the channels of inter- 
 state or foreign commerce or by the appointment of a receiver, 
 to give effect to the requirements of the statute. 
 
 Pending the bringing about of the result just stated, each 
 and all of the defendants, individuals as well as corporations, 
 should be restrained from doing any act which might further 
 extend or enlarge the power of the combination, by any means 
 or device whatsoever. In view of the considerations we have 
 stated, we leave the matter to the court below to work out a 
 compliance with the law without unnecessary injury to the pub- 
 lic or the rights of private property. 
 
 While in many substantial respects our conclusion is in 
 accord with that reached by the court below, and while also 
 the relief which we think should be awarded in some respects 
 is coincident with that which the court granted, in order to 
 prevent any complication and to clearly define the situation, 
 we think instead of affirming and modifying, our decree, in 
 view of the broad nature of our conclusions, should be one of 
 reversal and remanding with directions to the court below to 
 enter a decree in conformity with this opinion and to take such 
 further steps as may be necessary to fully carry out the direc- 
 tions which we have given. 
 
 And it is so ordered. 
 
 DISSENTING OPINION OF ME. JUSTICE HARLAN. 
 
 Mr. Justice Harlan concurred in part and dissented in 
 part: 
 
 I concur with many things said in the opinion just deliv- 
 ered for the court, but it contains some observations from 
 which I am compelled to withhold my assent. 
 
 I agree mosj; thoroughly with the court in holding that the 
 principal defendant, the American Tobacco Company and its 
 accessory and subsidiary corporations and companies, including 
 the defendant English corporations, constitute a combination 
 which, " in and of itself, as well as each and all of the elements 
 composing it, whether corporate or individual, whether consid- 
 ered collectively or separately," is illegal under the anti-trust 
 act of 1890, and should be decreed to be in restraint of inter- 
 state trade and an attempt to monopolize and a monopolization 
 of part of such trade. 
 
 The evidence in the record is, I think, abundant to enable 
 the court to render a decree containing all necessary details 
 for the suppression of the evils of the combination in question. 
 
588 
 
 But the case is sent back, with directions further to hear the 
 parties, by evidence or otherwise, " for the purpose of ascer- 
 taining and determining upon some plan or method of dissolv- 
 ing the combination, and of re-creating out of the elements now 
 composing it a new condition " which shall not be repugnant 
 to law. The court in its opinion says of the present combina- 
 tion that its illegal purposes are overwhelmingly established 
 by many facts, among others, "by the ever-present manifesta- 
 tion which is exhibited of a conscious wrongdoing by the form 
 in which the various transactions were embodied from the be- 
 ginning, ever changing, but ever in substance the same. Now 
 the organization of a new company, now the control exerted 
 by the taking of stock in one or another, or. in several, so as to 
 obscure the result actually attained, nevertheless uniform in 
 their manifestations of the purpose to restrain others, and to 
 monopolize and retain power in the hands of the few, who, it 
 would seem, from the beginning contemplated the mastery of 
 the trade which practically followed. By the gradual absorp- 
 tion of control over all the elements essential to the successful 
 manufacture of tobacco products and placing such control in 
 the hands of seemingly independent corporations serving as 
 perpetual barrier to the entry of others into the tobacco trade." 
 The court further says of this combination and monopoly: 
 " The history of the combination is so replete with the 
 doing of acts which it was the obvious purpose of the statute 
 to forbid, so demonstrative of the existence, from the begin- 
 ning, of a purpose to acquire dominion and control of the 
 tobacco trade, not by the mere exertion of the ordinary right 
 to contract and to trade, but by methods devised to monopolize 
 the trade by driving competitors out of business, which were 
 ruthlessly carried out, upon the assumption that to work upon 
 the fears or play upon the cupidity of competitors would make 
 success possible." 
 
 But it seems that the course I have suggested is not to be 
 pursued. The case is to go back to the circuit court in order 
 that out of the elements of the old combination a new con- 
 dition may be " re-created " that will not be in violation of 
 the law. I confess my inability to find, in the history of this 
 combination, anything to justify the wish that a new condition 
 should be "re-created" out of the mischievous elements that 
 compose the present combination, which, together with its com- 
 ponent parts, have, without ceasing, pursued the vicious meth- 
 ods pointed out by the court. If the proof before us as it 
 undoubtedly does warrants the characterization which the court 
 has made of this monster combination, why cannot all neces- 
 sary directions be now given as to the terms of the decree? In 
 my judgment there is enough in the record to enable this court 
 to formulate specific directions as to what the decree should 
 contain. Such directions would not only end this litigation, 
 but would serve to protect the public against any more conscious 
 
589 
 
 wrongdoing by those who have persistently and "ruthlessly," 
 to use this court's language, pursued illegal methods to defeat 
 the act of Congress. 
 
 I will not say what, in my opinion, should be the form of 
 the decree nor speculate as to what the details ought to be. It 
 will be time enough to speak on that subject when we have the 
 decree before us. I will, however, say now that, in my opinion, 
 the decree below should be affirmed as to the tobacco company 
 and its accessory and subsidiary companies and reversed on the 
 cross appeal of the government. 
 
 But my objections have also reference to those parts of the 
 court's opinion reaffirming what it said recently in the Standard 
 Oil case about the former decisions of this court touching the 
 anti-trust act. We are again reminded, as we were in the 
 Standard Oil case, of the necessity of applying the " rule of 
 reason" in the construction of this act of Congress an act 
 expressed, as I think, in language so clear and simple that there 
 is no room whatever for construction. 
 
 Congress, with full and exclusive power over the whole sub- 
 ject, has signified its purpose to forbid every restraint of inter- 
 state trade, in whatever form or to whatever extent, but the 
 court has assumed to insert in the act, by construction merely, 
 words which make Congress say that it means only to prohibit 
 the " undue " restraint of trade. 
 
 If I do not misapprehend the opinion just delivered, the 
 court insists that what was said in the opinion in the Standard 
 Oil case was in accordance with our previous decisions in the 
 Trans-Missouri and Joint Traffic cases (166 17. S., 290; 171 
 U. S., 505), if we resort to reason. This statement surprises 
 me quite as much as would a statement that black was white 
 or white was black. It is scarcely just to the majority in those 
 two cases for the court at this late day to say or to intimate 
 that they interpreted the act of Congress without regard to the 
 " rule of reason," or to assume, as the court now does, that the 
 act was, for the first time in the Standard Oil case, interpreted 
 in the " light of reason." One thing is certain, " rule of 
 reason," to which the court refers, does not justify the perver- 
 sion of the plain words of an act in order to defeat the will of 
 Congress. 
 
 By every conceivable form of expression the majority, in 
 the Trans-Missouri and Joint Traffic cases, adjudged that the 
 act of Congress did not allow restraint of interstate trade to 
 any extent or in any form, and three times it expressly rejected 
 the theory, which had been persistently advanced, that the act 
 should be construed as if it had in it the word " unreasonable " 
 or " undue." But now the court, in accordance with what it 
 denominates the "rule of reason," in effect inserts in the act 
 the .word " undue," which means the same as " unreasonable," 
 and thereby makes Congress say what it did not say, what, as 
 I think, it plainly did not intend to say, and what, since the 
 
590 
 
 passage of the act, it has explicitly refused to say. It has 
 steadily refused to amend the act so as to tolerate a restraint 
 of interstate commerce even where such restraint could be said 
 to be " reasonable " or " d tie." In short, the court now, by 
 judicial legislation, in effect amends an act of Congress relat- 
 ing to a subject over which that department of' the government 
 has exclusive cognizance. I beg to say that, in my judgment, 
 the majority, in the former cases, were guided by the " rule of 
 reason"; for it may be assumed that they knew quite as well 
 as others what the rules of reason require when a court seeks 
 to ascertain the will of Congress as expressed in a statute. It 
 is obvious, from the opinions in the former cases, that the ma- 
 jority did not grope about in darkness, but in discharging the 
 solemn duty put on them they stood out in the full glare of the 
 " light of reason " and felt and said time and again that the 
 court could not, consistently with the Constitution, and would 
 not, usurp the functions of Congress by indulging in judicial 
 legislation. They said in express words, in the former cases, 
 in response to the earnest contentions of counsel, that to insert 
 by construction the word " unreasonable " or " undue " in the 
 act of Congress would be judicial legislation. Let me say, also, 
 that as we all agree that the combination in question was illegal 
 under any construction of the anti-trust act, there was not the 
 slightest necessity to enter upon an extended argument fo show 
 that the act of Congress was to be read as if it contained the 
 word " unreasonable " or "undue." All that is said in the 
 court's opinion in support of that view is, I say with respect, 
 obiter dicta, pure and simple. 
 
 These views are fully discussed in the dissenting opinion 
 delivered by me in the Standard Oil case. I' will not repeat 
 what is therein stated, but it may be well to cite an additional 
 authority. In the Trade-Mark cases (100 IT. S., 82) the court 
 was asked to sustain the constitutionality of the statute there 
 involved. But the statute could not have been sustained, ex- 
 cept by inserting in it words not put there by Congress. Mr. 
 Justice Miller, delivering the unanimous judgment of the court, 
 said: 
 
 " If we should, in the case before us, undertake to make 
 by judicial construction a law which Congress did not make, 
 it is quite probable we should do what, if the matter were now 
 before that body, it would be unwilling to do." 
 
 This language was cited with approval in Employer's Liabil- 
 ity cases (207 IT. S., 463, 502). I refer to my dissenting 
 opinion in the Standard Oil case as containing a full statement 
 of my views of this particular question. 
 
 For the reasons stated, I concur in part with the court's 
 opinion and dissent in part. 
 
591 
 
 RECEIVED TOO LATE FOR CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 Timothy Healy, President International Brotherhood of 
 Stationary Firemen, New York City. 
 
 1. Do you believe that the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is 
 made clear and workable ? 
 
 I do not. It would be superfluous to point out that con- 
 cerning the meaning of this law there exists the widest possible 
 diversity of opinion not only among business men, but among 
 those citizens whose training gives them special qualifications 
 as definers of statutes. 
 
 %. Do you consider it feasible to attempt to return to what are 
 commonly known as old competitive methods in busi- 
 ness? 
 
 No more than we should return to transportation by canal 
 boat and mule. 
 ?. Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law? 
 
 As an abstract proposition, I should answer no. But repeal, 
 [ believe, is greatly to be preferred to the present uncertainty, 
 which to my mind appears to have been too little relieved by the 
 Supreme Court decisions in the recent tobacco and oil cases. 
 
 4. Do you favor amending the Sherman Law in any way? If 
 
 so, in what particulars ? 
 
 I favor amending it only to such extent as would make its 
 meaning clear. This answer is qualified by that given to Ques- 
 tion No. 6. 
 
 5. Should railroads be allowed to enter into agreements affect- 
 
 ing rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 
 Interstate Commerce Commission? 
 
 Decidedly yes. Without such agreements must ensue a kind 
 of competition not only disastrous to the competing interests, 
 but also to such interests as these interests serve. That is to 
 say, that through competition unrestrained one or two railroads, 
 or two or more of a group, covering practically the same terri- 
 tory, are forced into practical bankruptcy ; and then the shipping 
 interests (and ultimately consumers' interests) are made to 
 suffer. 
 C. Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of the 
 
 Sherman Act? 
 
 Decidedly. With trade unions brought more and more 
 under the jurisdiction of this act the entire trade union move- 
 ment must disintegrate, with the result that the masses of our 
 working people will be without protection, which alone has 
 enabled them to withstand the economic pressure such as other 
 
592 
 
 classes know of only as an academic proposition. If with the 
 trades unions practically dissolved no other protection is to be 
 thrown around hours and wages, and the competition for bed 
 and a loaf is to feel no restraining hand, then what shall become 
 of the bone and sinew of the land ? 
 
 7. Should combinations of farmers, either to restrict production 
 
 or to hold a crop for higher prices, be rendered lawful 
 
 under the Sherman Act? 
 
 This is a question not answered readily. If we may suppose 
 that the farmers of the country could at any time, and would, 
 restrict materially the production of the necessaries of life, or 
 withhold from the market the same for a higher price, then I 
 might agree to having the Sherman Act apply to them. As 
 regards the farmers and the trades unions let me here add that, 
 so far as I have been able to discover, it was not the intention 
 at the time of the Sherman Act to have the same apply to either, 
 and Fm convinced that to a large extent the bringing in of 
 farmers and trades unions is simply an attempt to befog the 
 issue. 
 
 8. Do you favor a national incorporation law ? 
 
 To answer this question intelligently would require that I 
 should first know what plan of regulation should follow. 
 
 t\ Do you favor a Federal license law ? 
 
 To this I make the same answer made to Question jSTo. 8. 
 
 10. Do you favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers 
 not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers? 
 My opinion is that in the creation of a commission with 
 
 powers analogous to those exercised by the Interstate Commerce 
 
 Commission the solution is to be found. 
 
 31. IM your judgment what caused or causes the present dis- 
 turbed business conditions? 
 
 It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to ansAver this 
 question. 
 
 E. Kuebler, President Sacramento (Cal.) Federated 
 Trades Council. (Official Communication.) 
 
 Replying to the questions propounded in a communication re- 
 ceived from your organization concerning the Sherman Anti- 
 Trust Act, will say the same have been under consideration by our 
 Law and Legislative Committee for some time. Their recom- 
 mendations in the matter were discussed at length at a recent 
 meeting of the Sacramento Federated Trades Council, and the 
 following answers were determined upon to the various questions : 
 1. Do you believe that the Sherman Law, as now interpreted, is 
 made clear and workable ? 
 
 Answer: No. 
 
2. Do you consider it feasible to attempt to return to what are 
 
 commonly known as old competitive methods in busi- 
 ness? 
 Answer: Yes. 
 
 3. Do you favor a repeal of the Sherman Law ? 
 Answer : No. 
 
 4. Do you favor amending the Sherman Law in any way ? If 
 
 so, in what particulars ? 
 
 Answer: Yes, provided such amendment will result in the 
 betterment of the condition of the masses. 
 
 5. Should railroads be allowed to enter into agreements affecting 
 
 rates, subject to the approval and regulation of the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission ? 
 Answer : Yes. 
 
 6. Should trade unions be excepted from the operation of the 
 
 Sherman Act? 
 Answer: Yes. 
 
 7. Should combinations of farmers, either to restrict production 
 
 or to hold a crop for higher prices, be rendered lawful 
 under the Sherman Act ? 
 Answer: No. 
 
 8. Do you favor a national incorporation law ? 
 Answer : Yes. 
 
 9. Do you favor a Federal license law? 
 Answer : Yes. 
 
 10. Do you favor an Interstate Trade Commission with powers 
 
 not unlike those now enjoyed by the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission in relation to common carriers ? 
 Answer: Yes. 
 
 11. In your judgment wiiat caused or causes the present dis- 
 
 turbed business conditions ? 
 
 Answer : Large combinations of capital in restraint of trade ; 
 high cost of living ; large increase in the number of unemployed ; 
 the maintenance of a large standing army by the United States 
 Government. Doubtless other reasons may be found, but the fore- 
 going were considered pre-eminent among the causes which have 
 led to existing disturbed business conditions. 
 
 Franklin L. Sheppard (Isaac A. Sheppard & Company, 
 Manufacturers), Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The national government is perpetually " playing politics " 
 and acting the demagogue to please the rabble and win votes, 
 oblivious of the substantial interests of every citizen who is a 
 producer or who has any savings to invest. It is high time 
 that even the smallest holder of real or personal property under- 
 stood the situation and made his influence felt. There is no 
 investment to-day in the United States that does not stand in 
 jeopardy, in a greater or less degree, because of ill-advised gov- 
 ernmental policy. 
 
594 
 
 William G. Mather, President, Cleveland- Cliffs Iron Com- 
 pany, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 I see no reason why one company should not hold stock in 
 another company, providing certain regulations were made pro- 
 tecting the minority interest. Multiplication of the power of 
 control is, I presume, dangerous on account of such control being 
 exercised oppressively or illegally, and such exercise should be 
 controlled by proper laws. If you prevent a corporation from 
 buying a control or interest in some other corporation, then you 
 are legislating against corporations in favor of partnerships and 
 individual owners. Overcapitalization may be undesirable when 
 it takes the form of fooling the public, with the idea that a more 
 exorbitant price than is necessary should be charged in order 
 that fair return on adequate capital should be secured. How- 
 ever, it seems to me difficult to adequately control so that no 
 concern should ever be overcapitalized, but if there is to be any 
 regulation as to prices or profits in companies which are very 
 large, such regulation would be just as adequate to protect the 
 public as to go into the question of overcapitalization. I do think 
 that the issue of bonds and stock by large public service corpora- 
 tions should be supervised because they are dealt with on the 
 stock market, and in the past such issues .may have been made 
 for the purpose of securing to insiders large profits, who sold to 
 outsiders stocks and securities with the value of which they were 
 not adequately familiar. Such restrictions, however, seem un- 
 necessary for corporations of moderate size, producing a mod- 
 erate percentage of a certain product. 
 
 I would say that agreements to regulate the production, 
 prices and the like under suitable control should be permitted. 
 This would give a comparatively smaller aggregation of capital 
 many of the benefits derived from the large aggregation which 
 controls a very large amount of the production of any particular 
 article. There are some dangers to the public from the existence 
 of very large aggregations of capital controlling very large per- 
 centages of the production of any articles, but the tendency to 
 these aggregations is aggravated, for the fact that smaller cor- 
 porations are unable to make any reasonable agreements to pro- 
 tect their business from destructive competition. I do not think 
 that industrial organizations should be subjected to such severe 
 and arbitrary regulation as is now conducted by the Interstate 
 Commerce Commission over railroads. It may be quite proper 
 in the case of railroads because they are naturally monopolies 
 and are dealing with the public in a way which the public can- 
 not prevent; that is, the public has no choice but to ship its 
 goods over the railroads and to travel over them. In the case 
 of manufacturers and certain industries of a private nature and 
 which are not naturally monopolies, the public is not necessarily 
 dependent upon them to the extent that they are upon the rail- 
 roads. 
 
Taplin, Rice-Clerkin Company, Manufacturers, William 
 Clerkin, Akron, Ohio. 
 
 We believe that the Sherman Law as written, not as inter- 
 preted, is large enough, broad enough and good enough to com- 
 plete and cure all of the ills attendant, in the combinations, now 
 existing in the restraint of trade. 
 
 We consider it perfectly feasible to return to the competi- 
 tive method, for it is only in this way that the great masses of 
 people can get the benefits of competitive prices. The great 
 majority of wage earners sell their services in a competitive 
 market, and buying goods in a monopoly market would be de- 
 structive, if not, you may say, fatal, to successful accumula- 
 tions of competency for old age, infirmity and sickness. By the 
 competitive or old method you will have a large number of busi- 
 ness men, each striving to see how rapidly he can advance his 
 business by the various methods of either salesmanship, cutting 
 the price or offering inducements to the purchaser. On the 
 monopolistic plan, it's " Take it at this price as fixed by us, 
 reasonable or otherwise, or leave it alone." The monopoly plan 
 produces your multi-millionaires, well illustrated in the names of 
 Carnegie, Eockefeller, Morgan, Frick and many others, not 
 millions, but a hundred, hundred times over. Is it not too much 
 power and authority and privilege where one man can give 
 $25,000,000 no doubt for beneficial causes? But the real facts 
 are that the wage earner who helps to accumulate this is given 
 little or nothing. Eaw material before being touched by the 
 hands of labor is but of little value. 
 
 Edwin C. Goddard, Professor of Law, University of Michi- 
 gan, Ann Arbor. 
 
 I do not believe in creating a conflict between economic law 
 and statute law. In a free country such a conflict has always 
 resulted in defeat to the statute. Attempts to enforce the Sher- 
 man Act have merely resulted in compelling capital to find still 
 more effective ways of combination. The Northern Securities 
 case was heralded as a victory for the Sherman Law, but who 
 will claim the result justifies the expectation? Or who believes 
 that the American Tobacco Company will compete in its con- 
 stituent parts any more than it did under the single control. 
 It is still a monopoly controlled by the same minds in all its 
 parts, only now it has the sanction of the courts. The history 
 of the Standard Oil Company is still more luminous on this 
 point. I sympathize with the public rather than with the big 
 corporation, but believe the public and the corporation should 
 co-operate and share the advantages. I believe this not alone 
 because I think it is best, but also because I think it is inevitable 
 that this will happen, or else that we shall have the big capitali- 
 zation for the sole benefit of the capitalized and to the detriment 
 and at the expense of the public. 
 
596 
 
 Thomas Wall Shelton, Lawyer, Norfolk, Va. 
 
 The presence of watered stock in the combines is evidence of 
 an intention to create unnatural and undeserved profits. Pre- 
 vention of overcapitalization takes away the tool; prevention of 
 unfair competition and restraint of trade takes away the oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Combinations should be required to sell at a standard price, 
 not to be fixed by a commission, but by themselves. The lowest 
 price at which they sell in any one place should be adopted. The 
 Interstate Commerce Commission applies this rule to railroads ; 
 why not let the courts apply it to " trusts " and large combines ? 
 It is quite apparent that it would be self-enforceable. 
 
 Coupons and premiums and all other devices actually giving 
 a rebate should be counted as a discount and as really fixing the 
 selling price. 
 
 A corporation that controls one-third of any commercial com- 
 modity or article of commerce is a menace. When an industry 
 becomes so big that it has to be regulated, it ought to be dealt 
 with as any other danger to mankind. The necessity for " regu- 
 lation" is an abnormal condition. Let us rather correct the 
 condition. 
 
 Rome was not built in a day ! Its true meaning will be de- 
 veloped by the Supreme Court along the same lines as has been 
 interstate commerce law. A congress of Solomons could not 
 enact statutes sufficiently elastic to meet the changing conditions 
 liable to be created by the geniuses of this century. As the law 
 of commerce between the States has been developed a much 
 more difficult problem so will the law of competitive relations 
 be defined and established if the courts be left alone. Indi- 
 vidual relations are now actively the problem, instead of inter- 
 state relations, because the law of the survival of the fittest has 
 enabled combinations to kill competition. This is depredation, 
 not competition. Deprive combinations of the power to depre- 
 date and they will become as useless as harmless. 
 
 W. H. MacKellar, Secretary and Treasurer, R. MacKellar's 
 Sons Company, Peekskill, N. Y. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions come from general 
 discontent. Too many people wanting to get on without work- 
 ing. Too many looking to get something for nothing. Too 
 many middlemen trying to get an easy living out of the pro- 
 ducers. Overcrowded towns and deserted farms. The persecu- 
 tion of incorporated business for combining to raise prices, while 
 unincorporated labor is allowed to combine to raise wages. Com- 
 mon sense teaches that wages cannot continually be raised unless 
 prices are also raised. You cannot raise one end of a stick with- 
 out raising the other and have the stick level; so you cannot 
 keep prosperity level unless you raise the capital end as well as 
 the labor end in prices. 
 
597 
 
 H. H. Porter, Jr., President Chicago Union Transfer Rail- 
 way Company, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Modern industrial development beyond question has made 
 large aggregations of capita] a necessity, and any attempt to 
 break down this system and return to the old system of small 
 units will be a step backwards. Before our modem methods of 
 communication and transportation, smaller combinations of cap- 
 ital had just as much control over, competition as large combina- 
 tions have now, their control, however, being limited to smaller 
 localities. Granting that large combinations are in the line of 
 proper development, it would seem that some kind of govern- 
 mental control or regulation is a necessity, as it is always found 
 that the power to do the right thing necessarily involves the 
 power to do the wrong, and some governmental agency for the 
 selection of what is right or wrong must be established. The 
 problem is too new and has received too little study for anyone 
 to outline an answer now, but I believe it is becoming better 
 understood, and that we are coining to the point where a solu- 
 tion is at hand. Careful, temperate study of this question by 
 a great number of people is the only thing that will lead to this 
 solution. I believe the so-called Anti-Trust Law at present is 
 impossible of producing results. 
 
 G. L. Jarnagin, Farmer, Shipman, Miss. 
 
 The " present " disturbed business conditions probably dis- 
 turb one-third of the population at the present. The other two- 
 thirds are disturbed all the time. What this country needs is 
 a more equal distribution of wealth. Not by giving it away, 
 but by giving the opportunity to willing honest hands to earn 
 their rightful heritage. It is probable that a class of shirkers 
 will always be in want or depend on charity, but it is a lament- 
 able fact that honest effort and willing and capable hands are 
 continually restricted in obtaining the comforts of life through 
 the operation of complicated laws, the greed of corporate power 
 upheld by our courts and the fact that no law-making body or 
 anyone interested or controlling our commercial and financial 
 system, who, under a warm coat and plenty to eat and wear 
 regardless of which w r ay the wind blows, can or does have that 
 inborn sympathy and brotherly love for the less fortunate that 
 will make for a better system to better mankind all the way 
 down the line to the " least of these/' 
 
 D. J. Womack, Lawyer, Alva, Okla. 
 
 The country is generally severely burdened with overlegisla- 
 tion and want of rigid and energetic enforcement of law by 
 executive and judicial departments of both State and Federal 
 governments. Give the people less legislation and more effective 
 enforcement of all laws, and a greater respect for law and order 
 and good government will, it is thought, follow and more stable 
 conditions prevail. 
 
598 
 
 Edward Dudley Kenna, Lawyer, retired, New York. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions arise from specula- 
 tion in lands, overbuilding in advance of the demands of our 
 population, an increase in manufacturing facilities out of pro- 
 portion to the normal growth of our commerce, the high cost 
 of living, largely due to a protective tariff and the maintenance 
 of prices necessary in order to pay dividends on the watered 
 stocks issued by "the trusts," public dissatisfaction with the 
 failure of politicians to redeem their promises in respect to a 
 reduction of the tariff, and a general feeling that the men who 
 have organized the important industrial corporations have been 
 more concerned by a desire to create securities costing nothing, 
 to be sold to the public, than by trade necessities, and that they 
 should be punished for their defiance of plain laws, which has 
 arrested our normal growth. 
 
 To be brief: We have capitalized our developed resources 
 on the basis of their probable future value; and we are retard- 
 ing the development of our undeveloped resources by political 
 agitations which cause capital to remain in suspense. 
 
 H. L. Scare, Manager, Hope Lumber Company, Hope, 
 Idaho. 
 
 From common talk it is understood by 95 per cent, of the 
 people that everything they buy is sold them through a trust, 
 and that the trust is charging a great deal more than the goods 
 are worth and making an enormous profit therefrom. This is 
 also helped along by magazine articles and newspaper sensa- 
 tionalists. The principal scheme to show the unfair price is 
 to take the cost at point of manufacture and compare with the 
 retail price at points most distant from point of manufacture, 
 thus losing sight of the freight which on bulky goods is often 
 half the final cost. 
 
 In addition to this these people are led to believe that this 
 apparent wrong is to be righted and that everything, except labor 
 and farm produce, will be much cheaper, this belief causing them 
 to buy as little as possible. 
 
 William S. Jenks, Real Estate, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Business seems disturbed, but not seriously. High rates of 
 interest have had some effect. The innocent always suffer with 
 the guilty when dishonest concerns are prosecuted, especially 
 when they are powerful. Honesty fears no law. 
 
 There are hundreds of thousands of men surviving in busi- 
 ness who are not using trust methods, and the trusts can scarcely 
 justify their existence by necessity, as the profits on actual invest- 
 ment have been too great and most of the constituent members 
 made money before being merged. There are doubtless benefits 
 to be derived by economical production and distribution in 
 merging, but enormous profits should not be wholly absorbed 
 by the few owners of the stocks. 
 
Lew C. Hill, President, John L. Whiting-J. J. Adams Com- 
 pany, Manufacturers, Boston, Mass. 
 
 It would be a great mistake, in our opinion, for labor as well 
 as capital, manufacturers and produers generally, as well as 
 consumers, to go back to the old expensive methods of producing 
 goods, either growing them or manufacturing them. Produc- 
 tion to be on the basis of lowest cost must be in large quanti- 
 ties, and at this time, as labor is combined in a large aggrega- 
 tion and not always reasonable in its demands, such aggrega- 
 tion would practically obliterate manufacturing business if con- 
 ducted under the old small individual system. Some method 
 should be evolved by which unreasonable destructive trusts could 
 be curbed and unreasonable destructive labor organizations could 
 be curbed and allow products to be produced at the cheapest 
 prices. It is also of the greatest importance that the various 
 dealers and handlers of articles intermediate between production 
 and consumption should be reduced to the minimum, or some 
 way this part of handling goods should be on a basis which 
 would not add so much to the prices as they are at present. The 
 difference between the prices a manufacturer and farmer or pro- 
 ducer generally receives for his goods and the prices which the 
 consumer pays in an ordinary way are wide apart and should 
 be brought nearer together. The party who is not getting much 
 out of it now in the way of profit is the producer. The pro- 
 ducer of any kind of ware has always been in receipt of a small 
 percentage of profits for his endeavors. 
 
 George F. S. Singleton, Treasurer, Singleton Worsted 
 Company, Franklin, Mass. 
 
 In reading the decision of the Supreme Court in the Tobacco 
 and Standard Oil cases, the writer must state that it seems very 
 lame indeed if the Sherman Law has got to have some addition 
 written into it by the Supreme Court, but, not being a lawyer, 
 I cannot find fault with those members of the Supreme Court 
 who have spent a lifetime in the study of law. Possibly they 
 are right, and the law was wrong. The Sherman Law and many 
 others that we have on our statute books seem to have been 
 created at a time when temper had run away with good common- 
 sense. 
 
 C. G. Barkwill, Banker and Manufacturer, Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Disturbed business conditions are due to unsettled tariff 
 laws ; a disposition on the part of politicians catering to the 
 popular vote and cry of soak the corporations, and business peo- 
 ple to enact legislation in the way of taxation and raising tax 
 valuations; unjust liability to employees for injuries; and, not 
 the least, unjust and menacing position of trade unions which 
 are practically under no responsibility or control financially or 
 their actions with respect to property rights or even human 
 lives when their ways cross. 
 
600 
 
 L. S. Herron, Editor "The Nebraska Farmer," Lincoln, 
 Neb. 
 
 Every great combination which I can think of has sprung 
 up under the stimulus o some form of special privilege. Some- 
 times it has been the tariff; sometimes an internal revenue tax 
 that shuts out competition ; sometimes it has been railroad rebates 
 or favoritism; sometimes it has been monopolization of natural 
 resources that essentially belong to all the people. My remedy 
 for the evils of combination that we are trying to prevent by 
 legislation would be to remove all special privileges. If neces- 
 sary to do this I would favor government ownership of all NAT- 
 URAL monopolies rather than the commission method of regula- 
 tion that we are now trying out with such poor results. To 
 remove the special privilege of ownership and monopolization of 
 natural resources I would adopt the " single-tax " system, mak- 
 ing all land holders pay to society practically the full rental 
 value of the land occupied or held. That would prevent land 
 monopoly and would completely unhorse such combines as the 
 steel trust and the Standard Oil Company. Aside from natural 
 monopolies I believe in competition, unrestrained and un- 
 jughandled. It is the only natural system. 
 
 William Waterall, President, Pittsburgh & Philadelphia Oil 
 & Refining Company, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 The genius of the American people is instinctively opposed 
 to such powers as were exercised by the feudal barons, or those 
 that are being exercised by the modern type of baron in viola- 
 tion of law. It appears to me that the greatest need of the 
 nation to-day is consecrated legal talent that will protect the 
 nation against any power that will attempt to use the sacred 
 Constitution of the United States to infringe upon the rights 
 of the people to govern this nation, by the people and for the 
 people, by enacting and enforcing just laws. The cupidity of 
 man has inflamed the passions of the people. It will require 
 wisdom to calm and pacify it. May we not hope that the worst 
 is over, and that it is possible for the executive of the nation, 
 Congress, the owners of the trusts and their great corporation 
 lawyers and the manufacturers to get closer together and be 
 more neighborly and reasonable with each other, so that our 
 children and future generations will rise up and call us blessed. 
 
 Muncie Gas Engine & Supply Company, John W. Smith, 
 Treasurer, Muncie, Ind, 
 
 The average American citizen has the conviction that legisla- 
 tion for the last 25 years has been dictated and controlled by 
 what is generally known as big business. Now that they are 
 not allowed to proceed as of old, they call a halt. Hence the 
 present slump in business. Go on in the good work. If it 
 causes a panic, well and good, then begin over. 
 
601 
 
 Charles L. Bernheimer, Cotton Goods Merchant, New 
 York. 
 
 To compel a competitor to sell out by creating conditions 
 unbearable to him is wrong belongs to the age when might was 
 right. 
 
 However, to buy the business of a competitor by correct 
 methods is not wrong. 
 
 There is a sphere of " Daemmerlicht " between the two which 
 should be clarifiable by a bureau of the national government 
 which, by its charter, would give a clean bill of health and 
 whose license would carry with it the confidence that in ninety- 
 nine cases out of one hundred its ruling is sound. 
 
 No sane man can be expected to invest money when long- 
 drawn-out litigation, expensive to him and to the State, is the 
 only method of finding out whether he is right or wrong. 
 
 William J. Gilthorpe, Secretary-Treasurer, International 
 Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders and 
 Helpers of America, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 In my humble way, I would say that from the long-continued 
 monopoly of great, big business, capital has been intrenched 
 until now the masters of finance in this country, which are very 
 few, manipulate all forms of business, the government included. 
 Restrictions must be placed on one, two or five men controlling 
 the destinies of this great and glorious country, as I believe a 
 few men can make a panic in five minutes that it would take 
 years to obliterate under the general mode of doing business 
 to-day. A revolution is sure to come if restrictions are not 
 placed on the captains of finance, from agitating the country 
 whenever they please. 
 
 Cheney Bros., Silk Manufacturers, South Manchester, 
 Conn. 
 
 Tariff disturbance especially and in general the uncertainty 
 in regard to legislation affecting business and the apparent drift 
 towards a Democratic administration are the causes of business 
 disturbance. 
 
 Probably new legislation is necessary. This should be in the 
 form of new acts, as we cannot afford to lose what ground we 
 have gained in interpreting the Sherman Act. 
 
 O. P. Smith, Cigarmaker, Logansport, Ind. 
 
 I am in favor of permitting the. farmer to hold his crops 
 for higher prices and do other public injustice, but this is -only 
 because the trusts and other illegal and unnatural combina- 
 tions in restraint of trade are allowed to do about as tliey will. 
 It is for this very reason that I object to the Sherman Act being 
 applied to trades unions. The Sherman Anti-Trust Law is a 
 " joke." I doubt very much the sincerity of the present national 
 administration in their supposed opposition to trusts. 
 
602 
 
 R. O. Green, Secretary, Green-Wheeler Shoe Company, 
 Ft. Dodge, la. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions arise from poli- 
 tics and the movement against trusts. If legitimate business is 
 not disturbed by indiscriminate .action by the government against 
 good and bad combinations and the government does not per- 
 mit itself to be used by designing persons against proper and 
 beneficial combinations of capital whose business is advantageous 
 to the whole nation, then the movement will result in good and 
 lasting benefit. There is where I fear the government will mak,e 
 a mistake. For instance, their action against the United States 
 Machinery Company is wholly wrong, detrimental to the whole 
 people and greatly discouraging to the small shoe manufacturer. 
 The ultimate result of the government action, if successful, will 
 be the elimination of the smaller shoe factories, the blighting 
 of the development of the shoe industry by precluding the pos- 
 sibility of the small capitalist entering the business as they are 
 now encouraged to do. 
 
 Enos M. Barton, Fanner, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Under the stimulus of excessive tariff protection and normal 
 growth of population, manufacturing facilities have attained an 
 abnormal development; prices to the ultimate consumer have 
 become abnormally high, resulting in the necessity of higher 
 wages, until production of manufactured articles and distribu- 
 tion have reached abnormal volumes, and a readjustment has 
 become necessary. Manufacturers of protected articles and 
 middlemen generally will have to be contented with smaller 
 returns. 
 
 Warner Van Norden, Retired Banker, New York. 
 
 I think the government has been harsh and unwise in its 
 prosecution of corporations. On a question of veracity a gentle- 
 man says, "Are you not mistaken ? " A boor says, " You are a 
 liar ! " So the government might push some things in a less 
 spectacular and harsh way. I think the attorney general has 
 made a grave mistake and has seriously injured the President's 
 prospects for re-election. All nations have found that undue 
 interference with business is a mistake. When a fair competition 
 is allowed, it will always take care of eve^thing else. 
 
 Crocker Grocery Company, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 
 
 The present disturbed business conditions arise from (1) 
 high prices of labor forced up by the unions; (2) shortening of 
 hours by the government and unions and others. For the good 
 of the greatest number there should be a legal day of, say, ten 
 hours for labor where no agreement is made between the con- 
 tracting parties, but all should be free to agree on the hours for 
 a day. The law of supply and demand should govern all com- 
 modities in regard to prices, including prices of labor and hours 
 ol labor, where the contracting parties desire to fix hours. 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Abbot, Abiel J., Graniteville, 
 Mass 62 
 
 Abbott, H. ,S., iStamford, Tex. 90 
 
 Aberdeen Mill Co., Aberdeen, 
 So. Dak 137 
 
 Ackerman & Brummel, Bos- 
 ton 129 
 
 Adams, A. E., Youngstown, 
 Ohio 178 
 
 Adams, Byron S., Washing- 
 ton, D. C 419 
 
 Adams Co., C. F., Erie, Pa. .313 
 
 Adams, T. A., 'New York 
 and Jersey City, N. J... 152 
 
 Adams, T. &., Madison, Wis. 491 
 
 Adt, John B. Baltimore 91 
 
 Agger, Eugene E., Columbia 
 University, N. Y 364 
 
 Agnew & Co., Port Henry, 
 N. Y., .and Boston 311 
 
 Aiken, E. Clarence, Auburn, 
 N. Y 452 
 
 Ainsworth, Harry, Moline, 
 111 136 
 
 Aisthorpe, J. .S., Cairo, 111.. 246 
 
 Alabastine Company, Grand 
 Rapids, Mich 89 
 
 Albers. Henry, Portland, Ore. 156 
 
 Albright, H. A., Columbus, 
 Miss 351 
 
 Alderson, Victor C., Golden, 
 Col 424 
 
 Alexander, A., New York... 20 
 
 Alexander, O. G., Corona, N. 
 Y 220 
 
 Allegheny .Steel Co., Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa 58 
 
 Allen, A. D., Louisville, Ky. 238 
 
 Allen, iStephen H., Topeka, 
 Kan 450 
 
 Allen & Co., .S. L., Philadel- 
 phia 331 
 
 Allen, Willis C., Kansas 
 City, Mo 271 
 
 Alward, H. V., Kalispell, 
 Mont 213 
 
 Ament, O. N., Aurora, 111.. 354 
 
 American Pad & Textile Co., 
 Greenfield, Ohio 48 
 
 American Trust & Savings 
 Co., The, 'Springfield, O.. 265 
 
 American Untisel, Editor, 
 Calumet, Mich 415 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Amory, John J., Morris 
 
 Heights, New York 82 
 
 Anderson, H. B., Memphis, 
 
 Tenn 450 
 
 Anderson, O. F., Moline, 111. 211 
 Anderson, W. B., Calumet, 
 
 Mich 193 
 
 Anti-Kalsomine Co., Grand 
 
 Rapids, Mich 89 
 
 Archer, W. T., (Sheffield, Ala. 85 
 .Archibald, E. H., Lawrence, 
 
 'Mass 36 
 
 Armleder, Otto, Cincinnati. 128 
 Armour, M. Cochrane, Chi- 
 cago 32 
 
 Arms, M. I., Youngstown, O. 110 
 Armstrong & Graham, De- 
 troit, Mich 42 
 
 Aronson, A. S v New York. 315 
 Arthurs, W. C., Mt Vernon, 
 
 111 160 
 
 Ashley & Bailey Co., The, 
 
 New York 83 
 
 Atkinson, Fred. W., Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y 423 
 
 Attleboro Chain Co., Attle- 
 
 boro, Mass 167 
 
 Atwood, F. J., Concordia, 
 
 Kian 200 
 
 Atwood, John C., St. Louis. 114 
 Atwood, L. R., Louisville, 
 
 Ky 317 
 
 Aubrey, H. M., San Antonio, 
 
 Tex 445 
 
 Augusta Lumber Co., Au- 
 gusta, Me 170 
 
 Ault, L. A., Cincinnati 137 
 
 Austin, D. E., New York ... 295 
 Auston, J. R. T., Philadelphia 355 
 Aycock, Thos. J., Aycock, 
 
 Fla 99 
 
 Ayres, F. C., Boston 134 
 
 Ayers, W. B., Portland, Ore. 58 
 
 Bagley & iSewall Co., The, 
 
 Watertown, N. Y 119 
 
 Bailey, E. L., Hoopeston, 
 
 111 411 
 
 Bailey, Frank, Brooklyn, N.Y. 265 
 Bailey, Hollis R., Boston... 459 
 Baker, Chas. Whiting, New 
 
 York 391 
 
 Bake, O. M., Hamilton, O.. 204 
 
 603 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Baker, Wakefield, 'Sail Fran- 
 cisco 102 
 
 Baker, Win. L., 'Sioux Falls, 
 
 So. Dak 264 
 
 Baldwin, 'Summer field, Bal- 
 timore 144 
 
 Balfe, Thomas F., Newburgh, 
 
 N. Y 270 
 
 Ball, Dan H., .Marquette, 
 
 Mich 444 
 
 Bancroft, Edward S., Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y 201 
 
 Bannard, Henry C., Chicago. 142 
 Barber, James T., Eau Claire, 
 
 Wis 102 
 
 Barbey, John, Reading, Pa.. 2& 
 Barkwill, C. G., Cleveland, O. 599 
 Barlow, DeWitt D., New 
 
 York 253 
 
 Barnard, Geo. D., St. Louis. 27 
 Barnard, 'Simons, Boston.... 00 
 
 Barnes, Cecil, Chicago 455 
 
 Barnes, Clifford W., Chicago 417 
 Barrett, J. O., Joliet, 111... 326 
 Barrett, Thomas W., Pough- 
 
 keepsie, N. Y 271 
 
 Barron, A. N., Cleveland, O. 52 
 
 Bartlett, A. C., Chicago 277 
 
 Bartol, G., Cleveland, O 34 
 
 Barton, Enos M., Chicago... 602 
 Bascoin, Joseph D., St. Louis 139 
 Bashinsky, L. M., Troy, Ala. 193 
 Baumeister, E., Asotin, 
 
 Wash 272 
 
 Baumgart, I., Chicago 153 
 
 Bay State Belting Co., Bos- 
 ton 128 
 
 Beach, S. H., Rome. N. Y... 247 
 Beall, Chas. L., East Alton. 
 
 Ill Ill 
 
 Becker, G. L., Ogden, Utah. 33 
 Beebe. L. A., iHutchinson, 
 
 Kan 471 
 
 Beer, Paul, Des Moines, la. 107 
 Beidler, Francis, Chicago... 439 
 Bell, 'Samuel R., Larchmont, 
 
 IN. Y lor, 
 
 Bell. Ovid, Fulton. Mo 414 
 
 Bellamy, E. C., Mammoth 
 
 Spring, Ark. .1 144 
 
 Beller, Win. F., New York.. 422 
 Belleville Trades and Labor 
 
 Assembly. Belleville. Ill 300 
 
 Benedict, James, New York. 287 
 Bennett, A. W.. Chickasha. 
 
 Okla 356 
 
 Bennett. Z. P., Wilkes-barre. 
 
 Pa 302 
 
 Benson, W. .S.. New York... 21 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bent, C. L., Gardner, Mass. 101 
 Bentley, Robt., Youngstowii, 
 
 23 
 
 Beretta, J. K., Laredo, Tex. 231 
 Bergen, Frank, Newark, 
 
 N. J 432 
 
 Bernheimer, Charles L.. New 
 
 York 601 
 
 Bessemer Gas Engine Co., 
 
 The, Grove City, Pa 130 
 
 Betts, George T., Ashburn, 
 
 Ga 1(55 
 
 Bigelow, John, New York. . :>s:; 
 Bigelow, W. J., St. Johns- 
 bury, Vt 427 
 
 Bigger, L. A., Hutchinson, 
 
 Kan 259 
 
 Bilgram, Hugo, Philadelphia 27 
 Binghani, Stillman H., Du.- 
 
 luth, Minn 424 
 
 Bissell's, Grand Rapids, 
 
 Mich 85 
 
 Black, C. P., Lansing, Mich. 456 
 Black, ig. J., Beaumont, Tex. 10 
 Blackburn, M. L., Bellaire, O. 44 
 Blackmar, Frank W., Law- 
 rence, Kan 421 
 
 Blackstock, I. B., Springfield, 
 
 111 467 
 
 Blair, C. Arthur, Apache, 
 
 Okla 136 
 
 Blair, W. A., Atchison, Kan. 44 
 Blake, E. Nelson. Arlington, 
 
 Mass 175 
 
 Blake, Eugene, -Sweetwater. 
 
 Tenu 417 
 
 Blake Bros. & 'Co.. Boston . . . 260 
 Blanc-hard, ('has. A.. Whea- 
 
 ton. 111 373 
 
 Blesse, F. Y.. Eagle Pass. 
 
 Tex 247 
 
 Bliiin. A. <\. Evansville. Ind. 47 
 Rlish. Jas. K., Kewanee. 111. 2m 
 Blish, Mixe & iSilliman Hard- 
 ware o., Atchison. Kan.. 316 
 Blodgett, John W.. Grand 
 
 Rapids. Mich 326 
 
 Bloom Bros. & Co.. Cincin- 
 nati 45 
 
 Bloomfield. C. C.. Jackson. 
 
 Mich 257 
 
 Bloss. .Tnmes O.. iNew York. 3410 
 Bode. Joseph P... Chelsea. 
 
 Mass 359 
 
 Hoggs. Thomas G.. Baltimore 4<54 
 Roelinken. E. PL. St. Louis.. 10S 
 Boggs& Buhl, Pittsburgh. Pa. 326 
 Bonn. Gebhard. (St. Paul, 
 Minn. . 158 
 
 604 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Boker, Carl F., New York.. 314 
 Bolinan, R. O., Coffeyville, 
 
 Kan 332 
 
 Bolt, Frank C., Pasadena, 
 
 Cal 246 
 
 Booch. L. H., St. Louis 159 
 
 Borden, Seth A., Fall River, 
 
 (Mass. 160 
 
 Boston, Chas. A., New York. 429 
 Bostwick-Braun Co., The., 
 
 Toledo, Ohio 307 
 
 Bo wen, E. S., Pawtucket, 
 
 R. 1 312 
 
 Bowen & Co., .E. W., -Delphi, 
 
 Ind 261 
 
 Bowen, Jos. T., Jr., Chicago. 181 
 Bowen, L., Birmingham, Ala. 356 
 
 Boynton, F. P., 'Chicago 149 
 
 Brace, J. 18., Seattle, Wash . . 123 
 Bradley, G. J., 'Sacramento, 
 
 Cal 406 
 
 Bradt, S. E., DeKalb, 111 198 
 
 Bragg, C. F., Bangor, Me. . . 73 
 Brainerd, F. A., New York. . 35 
 Brandenstein & Co., M. J., 
 
 San Francisco 325 
 
 Brandt, (Ralph V., Cleve- 
 land, Ohio 342 
 
 Bray, Sims, Atlanta, Ga 316 
 
 Brecht Company, The, /St. 
 
 Louis 152 
 
 Breckinridge, C. R., Fort 
 
 Smith, Ark. 177 
 
 Brentano, August, iEvansville, 
 
 Ind 166 
 
 Breslin, T. J., Freehold, N. J. 74 
 
 Brett, J. A., Oncinnati 171 
 
 BrWgman, H. L.. Brooklyn, 
 
 N. Y 411 
 
 Bridgman, John C., Wilkes- 
 
 Barre, Pa 23 
 
 Briggs, Frank N., Denver 
 
 Colo. 205 
 
 Brittain, John /S., St. Joseph, 
 
 Mo 317 
 
 Brix, P. J., Oneida, Wash.. 145 
 Brockhausen, Fred., Milwau- 
 kee, Wis 340 
 
 Brodhead, Jas. E., Fleming- 
 ton, N. J 280 
 
 Bronson & Nichols, Thomas, 
 
 Okla 425 
 
 Brooker, Chas. F., Ansonia, 
 
 Conn 22 
 
 Brooks, A. W., Natick, Mass. 145 
 Brooks, T. J.. Atwood, Tenn. 425 
 Brosius, J. H., Avondale, Pa. 233 
 Brower, Chas. E., Memphis, 
 
 Tenn. 19 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Brown, C. A., Marfa, Tex... 220 
 Brown, Dickson Q., New 
 
 York 140 
 
 Brown, George R., Little 
 
 Rock, Ark 472 
 
 Brown, J. Eugene, Farming- 
 ton, Maine 425 
 
 Brown, Lewis V., Athens, 
 
 Ohio 108 
 
 Brown, P. A., Lynn, Mass.. 80 
 ! Brown. Walston H., New 
 
 York 270 
 
 ' Bro'wn, Win. Garrott, Ashe- 
 
 i ville, N. C 400 
 
 Brown, Win. L., Chicago 163 
 
 I Brown. W. T., Marseilles, 111. 358 
 I Brown. Alexander, & Sons, 
 
 Baltimore 192 
 
 I Brown Bros.. Rhineiander. 
 
 Wis 145 
 
 I Brown & Adams, Boston.... 313 
 I Browne, Aldis B., Washing- 
 ton, D. C 448 
 
 Browne, E. W., Shreveport, 
 
 La 451 
 
 Browne. F. P.. Bay City, 
 
 Mich 244 
 
 Brownell, C. II.. Peru. Ind.. 258 
 Brumbaugh. I. Harvey, Hun- 
 tingdon, Pa 419 
 
 Bryant, W. C.. Bridgeport, 
 
 Conn 168 
 
 Bryden. A. A.. Pittston, Pa. 241 
 Bucher, P. M.. Syracuse. 
 
 N. Y 164 
 
 Bucholz, W. H., Omaha, Neb. 221 
 Buchwalter, Edw. L., iSpring- 
 
 field, Ohio 46 
 
 Buckingham, Clarence, Chi- 
 cago 211 
 
 Buckner, A. D., Paris, Mo ... 235 
 Builders' Iron Foundry. Prov- 
 idence, R. 1 109 
 
 Bulkley, Dunton & Co., New 
 
 | York 279 
 
 ] Bullock. H. E., Chicago 61 
 
 Burgess, F. (E., Burlington, 
 
 Vt 269 
 
 i Burke, James, Erie, Pa 164 
 
 Burley, Clarence A., Chicago 461 
 Burlington Drug Co., Bur- 
 lington, V,t. 300 
 
 Burns, Edward, -New York.. 262 
 Burns, Walter J., Portland, 
 
 Ore 270 
 
 : Burroughs, C. F., Norfolk, Va. 122 
 
 1 Burt, M. C., Chester, Pa 387 
 
 ' Burton. Geo. W., La Crosse. 
 
 i Wis 266 
 
 605 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Burton, P. E., Joplin, Mo... 417 
 Bushnell, M. W., Thompson- 
 ville, Conn ............... 127 
 
 Busiel & 'Co., J. W., Laconia, 
 
 N. 
 
 17 
 
 Butler, M. a, Fairfax, iWash. 126 
 Butler, Wm. H., New York. 487 
 Butman, 'L. M., Jamestown, 
 
 N. Y .................... 144 
 
 Butte Inter-Mountain, The, 
 
 Butte, Mont ............. 382 
 
 Butterfield, C. S., Norfield, 
 
 Miss. 
 
 147 
 
 Cadogan, C., Horne^, N. Y . . 242 
 
 Cain, D. M., Atehison, Kan. . 98 
 
 Cain, Jas. W., Chestertown, 
 Md. 390 
 
 Caldwell, R. G., Wooster, 
 Onio 426 
 
 Caldwell, R. J., New York. . 304 
 
 Caldwell, T. B., Mt. Pleas- 
 ant, Tex 203 
 
 Calhoun, John E., Cornwall, 
 Conn 473 
 
 Galloway, Eugene C., Atlan- 
 ta, Ga 184 
 
 Calvin, John, Kansas City, 
 Mo 90 
 
 Cameron, John M., Erie, 
 Kan 151 
 
 Campbell, G. W., Marlington, 
 W. Va 142 
 
 Campbell, James, 'Seattle, 
 Wash 330 
 
 Campbell, J. A., Youngstown, 
 Ohio 158 
 
 Campbell, J. W., Fort Dodge, 
 Iowa 212 
 
 Campbell, W. B., Cincinnati. 12 
 
 Camper, M. W., Florence, 
 Ala 408 
 
 Canada, J. W., Houston, Tex. 414 
 
 Canz, Albert, Washington, 
 D. C 146 
 
 Cardwill, George B., New Al- 
 bany, Ind. 465 
 
 Carmichael, Norman, Clifton, 
 Ariz 33 
 
 Carner, Wm. W., Brooklyn, 
 N. Y 389 
 
 Carpenter, C. W., North At- 
 tleboro, Mass 183 
 
 Carpenter Dunbar F., Colo- 
 rado Springs, Colo 436 
 
 Carpenter, Geo. O., iSt. Louis. 138 
 
 Carpenter, Percy. Lancaster, 
 Pa. . 360 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Carr, Clyde Mitchell, Chi- 
 cago 320 
 
 Carson, Wm., Burlington, la. 225 
 
 Carter, Fred. L., Boston 331 
 
 Carter, Horace A., Needham 
 Heights, Mass 130 
 
 Carter, John J., Titus ville, 
 Pa 22 
 
 Carter & Co., J. Q., DeLand, 
 111 329 
 
 Carter, Richard B., East 
 Cambridge, Mass 154 
 
 Carter, W. 'S., Peoria, 111... 335 
 
 Carty, J. W. L., Frederick, 
 Mid 250 
 
 Carver, T. N. , Cambridge, 
 Mass 380 
 
 Case, Clarence M., Oskaloo- 
 sa, Iowa 378 
 
 Case Threshing Machine Co., 
 J. I., Racine, Wis 101 
 
 Case, W. W., Detroit, Mich. 28 
 
 Caswell, G. W., Fort Atkin- 
 son, Wis 71 
 
 Central Labor Council, The, 
 (Los Angeles, Cal 339 
 
 Chaffee, A. W., Moodus, 
 Conn 131 
 
 Chaffee Bros. Co., Oxford, 
 Mass 32 
 
 Chalmers, F. H., iSalem, Va. 252 
 
 Chamberlain, D. S., Des 
 Moines, Iowa 61 
 
 Chamberlain, Robert L., New 
 York 320 
 
 Ohamberlin, 'E., .New York.. 333 
 
 Chamberlin, Emerson, New 
 York 267 
 
 Chambers, Albert N.. New 
 York 81 
 
 Chambers, Frank R., NCAV 
 York 295 
 
 Chandler, H. A. E . Tucson, 
 Ariz 389 
 
 Chapman, Frank, Ogdens- 
 burg, IN. Y 213 
 
 Chapman, Robert, McColl, 
 S. C 72 
 
 Chapman, T. S., Jerseyville, 
 111 207 
 
 Chappell, Delos A., Los An- 
 geles, Cal 65 
 
 Charles, David J., Butte. 
 Mont 178 
 
 Charleston Consolidated Rail- 
 way and Lighting Co., 
 The, Charleston, S. C 158 
 
 Chase, George C., Lewiston, 
 Maine ... . 414 
 
 606 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chase & Barstow, Boston ... 188 
 Chattanooga Coffin & iCasket 
 
 Co., Chattanooga, Tenn. . . 161 
 Chatten, /S. H., Kansas City, 
 
 iMo 286 
 
 Cheney Bros., .South Man- 
 chester, Conn 601 
 
 Cheboygan Paper Co., Che- 
 
 boygan, (Mich 113 
 
 Chester, W. R., Boston 294 
 
 Chicago Stove and Range 'Co., 
 
 Chicago 318 
 
 Childs, C. Frederick, Chicago 244 
 Ohilds, W. H,, New York... 132 
 Choate, Herbert E., Atlanta, 
 
 Ga 54 
 
 Christian, George H., Minne- 
 apolis, JMinn 157 
 
 Clark, Carl B., Gallipolis, O. 414 
 
 Clark, C. M., New York 254 
 
 Clark, D. C., Ellensburg, 
 
 Wash 214 
 
 Clark, John iS., Philadelphia. 56 
 Clark iBros. Bolt Co., Mill- 
 dale, Conn 129 
 
 Clarke, E. A. S., New York. 9 
 Clarke, R. F., Independence, 
 
 Iowa 251 
 
 Clough & Co., A. F., Canova, 
 
 iS. D 330 
 
 Clow, F. R., Oshkosh, Wis. . . 419 
 
 Clow, James C., Chicago 153 
 
 Coffin, George G., Boston. 33 
 
 I. S. Coffin, New York 316 
 
 Coffin, W. E., Des Moines, la. 192 
 Colby, Carl, iAbbotsford, 
 
 Wis 306 
 
 Collett, Geo. R., iSt Clair Co., 
 
 Ill 153 
 
 Collins, C. E., Methuen, 
 
 Mass 94 
 
 Collins, Justus, Cincinnati.. 104 
 Collins, T. D., Nebraska, Pa. 209 
 Collins, Darrah & Co., Ne- 
 braska, Forest Co., Pa 321 
 
 Collord, Geo. W., New York. 309 
 Coman, 'Seymour, Chicago . . 271 
 Comstock, J. M., Spokane, 
 
 Wash 310 
 
 Conant, Levi L., Worcester, 
 
 Mass. 426 
 
 Conkling, F. T., Greenville, 
 
 Ohio 250 
 
 Conlin, F., Elizabeth, iN. J.. 493 
 Connellsville Central Coke 
 
 Co., Pittsburgh, Pa 38 
 
 Conner, John B., Indianapo- 
 lis, Ind 422 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cook, Edgar ,S., Pottstown, 
 
 Pa 99 
 
 Coolidge, T. Jefferson, Jr., 
 
 Boston 273 
 
 Coombe & Co., T. G., New 
 
 York 249 
 
 Coombs, E. H., Morgantown, 
 
 W. Va 260 
 
 Corlett, J. E., Seattle, Wash. 95 
 Corning, H. W., Cleveland, 
 
 Ohio 97 
 
 Corning & Co., Peoria, 111 . . 151 
 Couzens, Jas., Detroit, Mich. 113 
 Covil, W. J., Webster City, 
 
 Iowa 256 
 
 Covington, R. Y., Jackson- 
 ville, Fla 308 
 
 Cowdery, W. iH., Cleveland, 
 
 Ohio ,.. 156 
 
 Cox, Charles F., New York. 180 
 Orabbs, G. D., Cincinnati ... 69 
 Crabtree, Ike W., 'Memphis, 
 
 Tenn 454 
 
 Crafts, G. E., Bangor, Me. . 103 
 
 Cragin, J. A., Joplin, Mo 254 
 
 Cramer, Ambrose, Lake For- 
 est, 111 266 
 
 Cramer, F. Ernest, 'St. Louis 266 
 Cramer, L. PL, 'Saratoga 
 
 (Springs, N. Y 154 
 
 Crane, Clinton, Cincinnati . . 73 
 Cranford, Fred. L., Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y 124 
 
 Cranford, W. V., Brooklyn, 
 
 N. Y 152 
 
 Crary, J. D., New York 394 
 
 Crawford, R. iS., St. Louis. . 13 
 Crawford, W. A., Erie, Pa.. 97 
 Crews, W. D., (Murphysboro, 
 
 111 404 
 
 Crist, Arthur H., Coopers- 
 town, N. Y 400 
 
 Crocker Grocery Company, 
 
 Wilkes-Barre, Pa 602 
 
 Crockett, Wm. M., Lafayette, 
 
 Ind 446 
 
 Cromwell, James W., New 
 
 York 298 
 
 Crosby Frederick W., Chi- 
 cago 248 
 
 Grouse, George N., Syracuse, 
 
 IN. Y 290 
 
 Cudahy, Patrick, Milwaukee, 
 
 Wis 28 
 
 Culver, J. F., Louisiana, Mo. 473 
 Curtis, Chalmers, Petoskey, 
 
 Mich 255 
 
 Curtis, L. B., Bridgeport, 
 Conn 169 
 
 607 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cushman, B. B., Detroit 
 Mich 283 
 
 Cushman, 'Seth L., Taunton, 
 Mass 207 
 
 Custis, Vanderveer, Seattle, 
 Wash. 371 
 
 Daley, A. F., Temrille, Ga. . . 239 
 
 Dalzell. S. M., Chicago 167 
 
 Dalzell, W. A. B., Mounds- 
 
 ville, W. Va 70 
 
 Darling Fertilizer Co., L. B., 
 
 Pawtueket, R. I 35 
 
 Darlington, E. R., 'St. Louis. 84 
 Davenport, H. J.. Columbia, 
 
 Mo . 378 
 
 David, C. K., Baton Rouge, 
 
 La 306 
 
 Davidson, C. O., Boise, Idaho 294 
 Davidson, O. C.. Iron Moun- 
 tain, Mich 238 
 
 Davis, Austen, Salt Lake 
 
 City, Utah 349 
 
 Davis. George W., St. 'Paul. 
 
 Minn 365 
 
 Davis, Horace. San Fran- 
 cisco 305 
 
 Davis. Warren J., Racine. 
 
 Wis 02 
 
 Davis, Willis. Wichita, Kan! 324 
 Davis (Sewing Machine Co., 
 
 The, Dayton. Ohio 109 
 
 Da vol. Chas. J., Providence, 
 
 R. 1 157 
 
 Dawson, A. F., Davenport, 
 
 Iowa 262 
 
 Day. Albert M., Lake Forest, 
 
 111 285* 
 
 Day, R. N., New Orleans, La. 44 
 Dayton, George D., Minne- 
 apolis, .Minn 302 
 
 Dean, Marvin A., Chicago. 482 
 DeBra, H. R., Cameron, Mo. 387 
 Decker, Jean P., Big Tim- 
 ber. Mont 403 
 
 DeForest, Geo, Utica, N. Y. 164 
 Defrees, Joseph H., Chicago. 460 
 Delano, Frederic A., Chicago 178 
 Deming, Win. B., New York. 331 
 Demorest, Wan. C., New York 228 
 Denison, L. 'E., Cairo, 111 ... 291 
 Denman, Frank H., Peta- 
 
 luma, Cal 274 
 
 Dennis, W. B., Carlton, Ore. 31 
 DeRosier, W. H., Hudson 
 
 Falls. N. Y 404 
 
 Despard, W. D., New York . . 239 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Devlin, Thos., Philadelphia . . 106 
 Dewey, V. F., Grand Rapids, 
 
 Mich Ill 
 
 Dewey Brothers Co., The, 
 
 Blanchester, 321 
 
 Dexter, Fred A., Orange, 
 
 Mass 254 
 
 Dexter, Henry C., Pawtucket, 
 
 R. I Ill 
 
 Dibert, Stark & Brown Cyp- 
 ress Co., Ltd., Donner, 
 
 La 171 
 
 Diokerman, W. B., Mainar- 
 
 oneck, N. Y 470 
 
 Diegel, Henry, Atchison, Kan 108 
 Diehl, Geo Paxton, Cincin- 
 nati 135 
 
 Dillon, C. W., Fayetteville, 
 
 W. Va 461 
 
 Dillon, William, Chicago 461 
 
 Dimock, Ira, Florence, Mass. 66 
 Dinkins, Lynn H., New Or- 
 leans, La 204 
 
 Dinwiddie, William, Clarks- 
 
 ville, Term 363 
 
 Dodge, James M., Philadel- 
 phia 127 
 
 Dodge, Philip T., New York. 132 
 Dohme, A. R. L., Baltimore. 56 
 Dold, Jacob, Packing Co., 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y 159 
 
 Donovan, J. J., Bellingham, 
 
 Wash. 106 
 
 Doster, J. T.. Birmingham. 
 
 Ala 333 
 
 Doten. Carroll W., Boston. . 368 
 Doty. Ethan Allen, New York 119 
 Douglass. William Harris, 
 
 New York 290 
 
 Douglas. W. & B., Middle- 
 town, Conn 161 
 
 Dovenmuenle, H. F. C., $ 
 
 Son. Chicago 329 
 
 Dowling, H. P., Harlan, la.. 263 
 Downey. A., Ogdensburg, N. 
 
 Y 346 
 
 Downs, Frank B., Philadel- 
 phia 325 
 
 Draper, C. H., Hopedale, 
 
 Worcester Co., Mass 87 
 
 Drury, E. 'S.. Encampment, 
 
 Wyo 405 
 
 Dnmont, C. W., New York . . 78 
 Dueber Watch Case Mfg. 
 
 Co., The, Canton, 160 
 
 Dunbar. John G., LL.B., 
 
 New York 21 
 
 Duncan, Jas., Quincy, Mass . . 337 
 Duncker. C. H., iSt. Louis.. 110 
 
 608 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dunham, Sylvester C., Hart- 
 ford, Conn 179 
 
 Duniway, C. A., Missoula, 
 
 Mont 418 
 
 Dunlavy, C. Arthur, N. York. 33 
 Dunning, D. R., Elmira, N.Y. 358 
 Dunton, G. W., Sycamore, 
 
 DeKalb Co., Ill 274 
 
 duPont, T. Coleman, Wil- 
 mington, Del 165 
 
 Durkee & Co., E. L., Glovers- 
 
 ville, N. Y 291 
 
 Durst, Godfrey, Danbury, la. 471 
 Dwyer, Jeremiah, Detroit, 
 Mich 12 
 
 Eagle, Chas. K., .New York. . 79 
 Eastern Clay Goods Co., 
 
 Boston 165 
 
 Eastwick, A. T., Bridgeport, 
 
 Montgomery Co., Pa 141 
 
 Eaton, Amasa M., Provi- 
 dence, R. 1 434 
 
 Eaton Co., Charles A., Brock- 
 ton, Mass 140 
 
 Eaton, Marquis, Chicago 459 
 
 Ebeling, J. F., Wheeling, W. 
 
 Va 256 
 
 Echols, W. J., Fort ,Smith, 
 
 Ark 222 
 
 Eckhart, Frank E., Auburn, 
 
 Ind 133 
 
 Eckman, W. J., Cincinnati . . 154 
 Edenborn, Wm., Shreveport, 
 
 La 458 
 
 Edes, 'Samuel H., Newport, 
 
 N. H 407 
 
 Edwards, A. K., Kalamazoo, 
 
 Mich 291 
 
 Edwards, 'Eugene P., Chicago 158 
 Edwards, George Cliften, 
 
 Dallas, Tex 360 
 
 Eighmey, C. H., Dubuque, la. 252 
 Eldredge, B., Belvidere, 111.. 151 
 Eldridge, R. B., Lead, :S. Dak. 472 
 Elias, A. J., Buffalo, N. Y.. 330 
 Ellis, Herman, New York.. 32 
 Ellis, Horace, Vincennes, 
 
 Ind 370 
 
 Elmore, (Samuel E., Hart- 
 ford, Conn 189 
 
 Elsas, Jacob, Atlanta, Ga... 105 
 El son, Henry W., Athens, O. 380 
 Elsworth, R. H., Traverse 
 
 City, Mich 354 
 
 Elton. T. J., Manistee, Mich. 127 
 Empkie Shugart Hill Co., 
 Council Bluffs, la 329 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Engelbach, Herman, Arezn- 
 
 ville, 111 261 
 
 Enger, Frank J., Cincinnati. 67 
 Ensign, R. H., iSimsbury, 
 
 Hartford Co., Conn 271 
 
 Ericson, Otto C., Chicago . . . 292 
 
 Ernst, Leo, Chicago 119 
 
 Eshelby, E. O., Cincinnati.. 392 
 Estabrook, >S. F., Boston... 268 
 Euwer, Harry G., New Cas- 
 tle, Pa 305 
 
 Evans, Chas. A., Saginaw, 
 
 Mich 340 
 
 Evans, David G., New York. 234 
 Evans, D. L., Malad City, 
 
 Idaho 229 
 
 Evans, H. Clay, Chattanooga 
 
 Tenn 33 
 
 Evans, Nelson W., Ports- 
 mouth. 457 
 
 Evans, 'Silas, Ripon, Wis, . . 366 
 Everhard, N. S. } Wadsworth, 
 
 Ohio 92 
 
 Ewing, Onnan W , Salt Lake 
 City, Utah 348 
 
 Failing-McCalman Co., Port- 
 land, Ore 285 
 
 Fairfield, E. J., Minneapolis. 
 
 \Minn 321 
 
 Faithorn, J. N., Chicago.... 344 
 Fall, Charles, Hoboken, N. J. 226 
 Fargo, James C., New York. 224 
 Fargo, Livingston, New York 38 
 Farist 'Steel Co., The, Bridge- 
 port, Conn 34 
 
 Farquhar, A. B., York, Pa.. 10 
 Farrar, Edgar H., New Or- 
 leans, La 428 
 
 Farrell, Wm. J., .New York. 325 
 Fassett, J. Sloat, Elmira, 
 
 N. Y 216 
 
 Faulkner, L. B., Olympia, 
 
 Wash 158 
 
 Faville, Frederick F., iStorm 
 
 Lake, Iowa 454 
 
 Fay & Sons, Edwin R., Au- 
 burn, N. Y 272 
 
 Fechner, Robt , (Savannah, 
 
 Ga 351 
 
 Federal Chemical Company, 
 
 Louisville, Ivy 167 
 
 Felber, C. J., La Crosse, 
 
 Wis 72 
 
 Fellowes, GEL, iSpringfield, Mo. 33 
 Felter. Wm. L., Brooklyn, 
 
 X. Y 379 
 
 Fentress, Calvin, Chicago... 117 
 Finley, J. B., Pittsburgh, Pa. 197 
 
 609 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 First National Bank, Hood 
 River, Ore. . . . 173 
 
 Fish, ,B. R., St. Louis 110 
 
 Fiske, Amos K., New York. . 489 
 
 Fiske, George B., Boston 410 
 
 Fitzgerald, B. J., Fort Worth, 
 Tex. 350 
 
 FitzHugh, Carter H., Lake 
 Forest, 111 385 
 
 Flambeau Lumber Co., Lac 
 du Flambeau, Wis 43 
 
 Fletcher, H. D., Beaumont. 
 Tex. ... 53 
 
 Fleming, H. J., Easton, Pa.. 137 
 
 Fletcher, F. C., Boston 155 
 
 Flint, John H., Andover, 
 Mass 146 
 
 Floete, C. E., Armour, S. D. 274 
 
 Fogg, L. W., Uniontown, Pa. 166 
 
 Follansbee, B. G., Pittsburgh, 
 Pa 99 
 
 Follrner, Clogg & Co., Lan- 
 caster, Pa 117 
 
 Folsom, F. B. W., Boston... 90 
 
 Folwell, Wjrn. Watts, Wash- 
 ington, D. C 369 
 
 Foote, E. H., Grand 'Rapids, 
 Mich 115 
 
 Fordyce, Geo. L., Youngs- 
 town, Ohio 332 
 
 Forrest, J. I)., Indianapolis, 
 Ind 63 
 
 Foster, Frank H., Claremont, 
 N. H. 187 
 
 Foster, Geo. iE., iMellen, Ash- 
 land Co., Wis 134 
 
 Foster Co., John, Beloit, 
 Wis 80 
 
 Fowle, Otto, 'Sault iSte. 
 Marie, Mich 194 
 
 Fox, D. Q., 'Springfield, Ohio 301 
 
 Frame, Andrew J., Wauke- 
 sha, Wis 170 
 
 Frank Isaac W., Pittsburgh, 
 Pa 109 
 
 Franklin, F. G., Albany, Ore. 375 
 
 Franklin Manufacturing Co., 
 H. H., (Syracuse. N. Y 143 
 
 Fraser, C. W., Menomonee 
 Falls, Wis 416 
 
 Freck, C. G., Sheffield, Pa . . 71 
 
 Freiberg, J. Walter, Cincin- 
 nati 147 
 
 French, Harry B,, Philadel- 
 phia 303 
 
 French, Leslie, Escanaba, 
 Mich. 185 
 
 French, William IS.. <Evans- 
 ville, Ind 324 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Frentz, T. R., Oshkosh, Wis. 174 
 Freudenthal, V. J., El Paso, 
 
 Tex 309 
 
 Freund, John C., New York. 498 
 
 Frey, R. E., Carthage, Mo. . 214 
 Friend, J. E., Milwaukee, 
 
 Wis 104 
 
 Fry, Henry C., Rochester, 
 
 Pa 259 
 
 Fuller, G. W., New York. . . 148 
 
 Fuller, J. E., Boston 112 
 
 Fullerton, iRoht, Des Moiues, 
 
 Iowa 289 
 
 Fullerton, ,8. H., 'St. Louis.. 135 
 Fiinkheuser, E. CM., Roanoke, 
 
 Va 131 
 
 Gaffney, A. H., Kane, Pa... 68 
 
 Gaines & Co., W. A., Frank- 
 fort, Ky 140 
 
 Gallaher, W. P., Minneapo- 
 lis, Minn 112 
 
 Gammell, Roibert Ives, Provi- 
 dence, R. I. 215 
 
 Gammell, William, Provi- 
 dence, R. I 81 
 
 Gannett, William H., Augus- 
 ta, Maine 424 
 
 Garaghty, Jos. H., Chicago.. 57 
 
 Gardner, James P., Chicago. 105 
 
 Gardner, Rathbone, Provi- 
 dence, R. 1 240 
 
 Garland Co., The M., Bay 
 City, Mich 43 
 
 Garlick, Henry CM., Youngs- 
 town, Ohio 181 
 
 Garretson, A. B., Cedar Rap- 
 ids, Iowa 350 
 
 Garrigues, W. A., New York. 18 
 
 Geele Hardware Co., Frank, 
 Sheboygan, Wis 327 
 
 Genesee Lumber Co., Gene- 
 see, La. 141 
 
 Gensman, George J., Enid, 
 Okla 302 
 
 Gibson, G W., Chicago 343 
 
 Giering, Eugene T., Wilkes- 
 Barre, Pa 416 
 
 Gilbert Alexander, New York 173 
 
 Gilbert, S. L., St. Louis 132 
 
 Gilbert, W. M., Neenah. Wis. 206 
 
 Gillespie, Robert .E., East St. 
 Louis, 111 275 
 
 Gilthorpe, William J., Kan- 
 sas City, Mo 601 
 
 Glass. Powell, Lynchburg, 
 Va. 416 
 
 Glass, iSheldon J., Milwau- 
 kee, Wis. '... 39 
 
 610 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Glattly, Win., Aftoii, Iowa.. 62 
 Glessner, John J., Chicago.. 13 
 G.obe - Wemicke Co., The, 
 
 Cincinnati 124 
 
 Glover, Horace P., Mifrlin- 
 
 fom-g, Pa 442 
 
 Goddard, Edwin C., Ann 
 
 Arbor, Mich 595 
 
 Goehring Mfg. Co., The. 
 
 Akron, O. 143 
 
 Goepel, A.. Brooklyn, iN. Y.. 266 
 Goff, F. H., Cleveland, O... 249 
 
 Goff, H. P., Crafton, Pa 200 
 
 Golding, Edwin, Wilmington, 
 
 Del 169 
 
 Goldwater, Henry, New 
 
 York 89 
 
 Goodell, A., & Sons Co., 
 
 Loda, 111 196 
 
 Gookin, Charles B., Boston. 319 
 Gore, D. L., Wilmington, N. 
 
 C 282 
 
 Grantz, C. F., Moline, 111. ... 466 
 Grafton & Knight Mfg. Co., 
 
 The, Worcester, Mass 170 
 
 Graves, W. F., Hosford, Fla. 314 
 Gray, George A., Duluth, 
 
 Minn 333 
 
 Gray, William, Amesbury, 
 
 Mass 160 
 
 Green, Benoni Sherman, 
 
 Bloomington, 111 324 
 
 Green, John W. Knoxville, 
 
 Tenn 458 
 
 Green, R. O., Fort Dodge, la. 602 
 Gregg, D. A., Nashua, N. H. 87 
 Gregory, Charles Noble, 
 
 Washington, D. C 381 
 
 Gregory, C. V., Chicago 402 
 
 Griffin & Co., John J., Phila- 
 delphia 165 
 
 Griswold, Chas. J., Hamil- 
 ton, N. Y 211 
 
 Gross, Louis N., Cleveland, 
 
 51 
 
 Gross, Robert H., Boston... 169 
 Gund, Henry, La Crosse, Wis. 110 
 
 Haas Bros., Cincinnati 115 
 
 Hage, Geo. .S., Madelia, Minn. 125 
 
 Hageman, F., Salina, Kan.. 237 
 
 Hahn, Henry, Portland, Ore. 285 
 
 Hake, E. W., Cincinnati 29 
 
 Hale, A. H., Manchester, N. 
 
 H 252 
 
 Hale, H. P., Boston 331 
 
 Hales, J. C., Wilson, N. C. . . 203 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hall, Win. M., Pittsburgh, 
 Pa 449 
 
 Hamill, Alfred E., Chicago. . 261 
 
 Ilanrill, Charles H., Chicago. 460 
 
 Hamill Co., S., Keokuk, la.. 323 
 I Hamilton, J. T., Cedar Rap- 
 ids, la 225 
 
 | Hamilton Mfg. Co., The, 
 Two Rivers, Wis 29 
 
 Hamilton, Win. E., Milwau- 
 kee, Wis 201 
 
 Harnlin, Edward, Boston. . . . 327 
 
 Ilamrnett, James D., Ander- 
 son, S. C 92 
 
 Hammond, John Hays, Wash- 
 ington, D. C 474 
 
 Hammond, R. R., Chicago.. 26, 95 
 
 Hammond, W. R., Atlanta, 
 Ga 402 
 
 Handlan, E. W., 'St. Louis. 35 
 
 Haney, Lewis H., Austin, 
 Tex 380 
 
 Ilansen, T. J., Grand Island, 
 Neb 256 
 
 Ilaushue, J. J., Lansing, 
 Mich 283 
 
 Harding, Frank, Middle- 
 town, N. Y 182 
 
 Hardinge, Harold, Ellicott 
 City, Md . 272 
 
 Hardy, Richard, Chatta- 
 nooga, Tenn 93 
 
 Hare, J. Montgomery, New 
 York 230 
 
 Haring, Charles 0., Quaker- 
 town, Bucks Co., Pa 259 
 
 Harker, W. W., East Liver- 
 pool, 233 
 
 Harkiiis, L. D., Faribault. 
 Minn 41 
 
 Harper, J. C., Cincinnati 449 
 
 Harrell, J. A., Frankfort, 
 Ind 357 
 
 Harris, Nelson E, Orange, 
 Mass 19 
 
 Harris, N. W., Chicago 265 
 
 Harrison, -S. T., Memphis, 
 Tex 281 
 
 Ilarter, Geo. A., Newark, Del. 422 
 
 Harter Milling Co., The, To- 
 ledo, 32 
 
 Hartman, Alexander W., 
 Duluth, Minn 112 
 
 Harwi, F. E., Atchison, Kan. 219 
 
 Harwood, G. F., Appleton, 
 Wis 168 
 
 Haserot, Samuel F., Cleve- 
 land, O. . 99 
 
1 M ) 1-: X TO COXTli I B UTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 llaskett, Jolm F., Bottincau, 
 N. Dak 40S 
 
 Hatch, Edward B., Hartford, 
 Conn 128 
 
 Hatzel, John ., New York. 4'2(j 
 
 Havens, Paul E., Leaven- 
 worth, Kan 204 
 
 Haw & iSimmons Co., Ottum- 
 wa, la 320 
 
 Hawes, Frederick B., New 
 Bedford, Mass 71) 
 
 Hawkins, J. D., Colorado 
 'Springs, Colo 42 
 
 Hawley, A. D., Bristol, 
 Conn 147 
 
 Ilayden, J. Alex. New York. 141) 
 
 Ilayden, P., Saddlery Hard- 
 ware Co., The, Columbus, 
 O S3 
 
 Hayhurst, Walter F., Lam- 
 bertville, N. J 460 
 
 Hazelton, W. .S., Elkart, Ind. 248 
 
 llazen. E B., Bridal Veil, 
 Ore 133 
 
 llazen & Lotspeich Co., 
 Knoxville, Tenn 317 
 
 Head, Franklin H., Chicago. 386 
 
 Head, James M., Boston 480 
 
 Headley & Fanner Co.. New- 
 ark, N. J 35 
 
 Healy. A. Augustus. New- 
 York 185 
 
 Healy, Timothy, New York. 591 
 
 Heileinan, G., Brewing Co., 
 La Crosse, Wis 93 
 
 Hermann, Julius, Monson, 
 Mass 133 
 
 Ileizman. William A., Read- 
 ing, Pa 319 
 
 Hendershot, W. H., Charle- 
 roi, Pa 353 
 
 Henderson, Frank C., Brook- 
 line, Mass 59 
 
 Henley. A., Lawrence. Kan. . 2." 
 
 Henry, Hugh, Chester. Vt... 275 
 
 Heppenheiiner. Win. C.. Jer- 
 sey City. N. J 269 
 
 Herman, S.. Oshkosh. Wis... 312 
 
 Hermann, Ferdinand. New 
 York 223 
 
 Herreshoff, John P>.. Bristol. 
 R. I 118 
 
 Herron, L. 'S., Lincoln. Neb.. 600 
 
 Herron. W. A., Pittsburgh, 
 Pa. 166 
 
 Hersey. H. P., Hingli:un. 
 Mass 181 
 
 Hewes & Potter, Boston.., . 135 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hildrup. \Y. T.. Jr.. Harris- 
 burg, 1'a 4o 
 
 Hill, Lew C.. Boston 5!>l> 
 
 Hill, W. B., Kansas City, Mo. 50 
 
 Uaydenville Company, The, 
 Haydenville, Mass 02 
 
 llillyer, Win. Himl, Atlanta. 
 Ga 245 
 
 Iliiidiiian, F. T., Boise, Idaho 328 
 
 lline, Thomas W.. Eureka. 
 Cal 472 
 
 Hininan, Edward C., Battle 
 Creek, Mich 134 
 
 llirsch, I. C., Cincinnati 1S2 
 
 Hirsch Bros. Dry Goods Co;, 
 St. Joseph, Mo 303 
 
 Hitchcock, Charles C., Ware, 
 Mass 310 
 
 Iloblit, A. L., Carlinville, 111. 2:u; 
 
 Hodge. F. M., Kalamazoo, 
 Mich 110 
 
 Hodgman, T. Morey, St. 
 Paul, Minn 305 
 
 Hoffman, Frederick L., East 
 Orange, N. J 418 
 
 Holden- Leonard Co., Ben- 
 nington, Vt 132 
 
 Holder, H. A., Peabody, 
 Mass 76 
 
 Hoi ley, J. M , La Crosse, 
 Wis 253 
 
 Holliday & Co.. W. J., In- 
 dianapolis. Ind 201) 
 
 Hollingsworth, Zachary T., 
 Boston 108 
 
 Hollis, Allen, Concord, N. H. 459 
 
 Hollister, George II., Fargo, 
 N. D 204 
 
 Hollocker, F. J., Clayton, 
 Mo. 183 
 
 Holmes, Henry L., Orange, 
 N. J 245 
 
 Holt, C. Parker, San Fran- 
 cisco 117 
 
 Holt, Geo. H., Chicago 39 
 
 Holt. Henry, New York 401 
 
 Hood Rubber Co., The, Bos- 
 tori 170 
 
 Hook-Hastings Co., Kendal 
 Green, Mass 110 
 
 Hooper, W. W., Chattanooga, 
 Tenn 374 
 
 Hoopeston Canning Co., 
 Hoopeston. Ill 170 
 
 Hooven & Allison Co., The. 
 Xenia, Ohio 33.". 
 
 Hopewell. Frank, Boston... 158 
 
 Hopkins, L. J.. Duluth. Minn. 120 
 
 612 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 Hop wood, Jusephus, Lyncli- 
 burg, Va 
 
 Ilormel & Co., Geo. A., Aus- 
 tin, Minn 
 
 Home Co., Joseph, Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa 
 
 Hoskins, Thomas J., Knox- 
 ville, Tenn 
 
 Hosmer, R. W., Chicago 
 
 Houk, William, Joplin, Mo. . 
 
 Houston, A. F., oatesville, 
 Pa 
 
 Howard, Charles A., Aber- 
 deen, iS. D 
 
 Howard, Josiah, Emporium, 
 Pa 
 
 Howard, J. T., Dallas, Tex. . 
 
 Howe, Samuel T., Topeka, 
 Kan 
 
 Hoyt Company, W. II., Chi- 
 cago 
 
 Hubbard, Charles W., Boston 
 
 lludnut, Alexander M., New 
 York 
 
 Huff, Robert E., Wichita 
 Falls, Tex 
 
 Hughes, Edward E., Frank- 
 lin, Pa 
 
 Hughes, J. T., Duluth, Minn. 
 
 Hughes & Wolcott, Dover, 
 Del 
 
 Huhlein, Charles F., Louis- 
 ville, Ky 
 
 Hull, D. C., Jackson, Miss.. 
 
 Humphrey, W. J., Warsaw, 
 N. Y 
 
 Hums-tone, Walter C., Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y 
 
 Hunt, J. H., Massillon, Ohio 
 
 Hunt Engineering Company, 
 Kansas City, iMo 
 
 Hunter, C. Burtis, Brooklyn, 
 N. Y 
 
 Hunter, C. L., Canton. Ohio. 
 
 Hunter, Joseph P.. Niagara 
 Falls, N. Y 
 
 Hunter, J. W., 'St. Louis 
 
 Hunter, Pen-in P., Cincin- 
 nati 
 
 Hunter, Thos., Fulton, N. Y. 
 
 Hunter, iStevens & Co., La 
 Salle, 111 
 
 Huntington, D. L., Spokane, 
 Wash 
 
 Hutchins, J. C., Chicago 
 
 Hyatt, Abram M., New York 
 
 Hyde. Wm. DeW., Bruns- 
 wick, Maine 
 
 PAGE 
 418 
 107 
 308 
 
 349 
 219 
 250 
 
 145 
 
 86 
 
 388 
 
 311 
 100 
 
 262 
 454 
 
 75 
 355 
 
 400 
 
 104 
 377 
 
 2:10 
 
 31!) 
 240 
 
 388 
 
 230 
 32 
 
 35G 
 357 
 
 112 
 
 290 
 
 55 
 460 
 262 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Illinois Brick Co., Chicago.. 34 
 Indianapolis Mortar & Fuel 
 
 Co., Indianapolis, Ind.... 140 
 Ingle, William, Baltimore.. ISO 
 Inglis, John L., Dunnellon, 
 
 Fla i]5 
 
 Inman-Poulseu Lumber Co., 
 
 Portland, Ore 104 
 
 Irish Bros., Philadelphia... 135 
 Ironside, Alexander, Barre, 
 
 Vt 349 
 
 Irving, <S. C., San Francisco. 157 
 Irwin, Dudley M., Buffalo, 
 
 N. Y 310 
 
 Irwin, O., New Castle, Pa.. 352 
 Isaacs & Co., ,S.. New York. 101 
 Ivinsou, Edward, Laramie, 
 
 Wyo . 202 
 
 Jackiuan, II. L.. Eureka. 
 Cal 102 
 
 Jackson, C. F., Norwalk. O.. 303 
 
 Jackson, P. T., Jr., Boston. 141 
 
 Jackson, R. A., St. Paul. 
 Minn 435 
 
 Jackson, Willis K., Buffalo. 
 iN. Y 138 
 
 Jameson, David, New Castle. 
 iPa ios 
 
 Jaueway & Carpender, New 
 Brunswick. N. J 155 
 
 Jarnagin, G. L., iShipmau, 
 Miss 597 
 
 Jay, John C.. Jr., New York. 122 
 
 Jeffrey, It. H., Columbus. O. is 
 1 Jenks, William .S., Chicago.. 598 
 ! Jenkins,' T. Clifton, Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa 316 
 
 j Jerome, F. S., Norwich, 
 Conn 257 
 
 Jester, L. A., Des Moines, la. 465 
 
 Jewell, Charles L., New Al- 
 bany, Ind 459 
 
 Johnson, A. G., Minneapolis, 
 Minn 404 
 
 Johnson, C. D., Alta Loina, 
 Tex 353 
 
 Johnson, C. R., San Fran- 
 cteco . .. 318 
 
 Johnson, C. .S., Plattsburgh. 
 N. Y 210 
 
 Johnson, F. Coit, New York. 312 
 
 Johnson. Homer W., Sioux 
 City, Iowa 232 
 
 Johnson, J. W.. New Bruns- 
 wick, N. J 136 
 
 Johnston, Allen W., Schenec- 
 tady. N. Y 244 
 
 613 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Johnston, E. D., Comiers- 
 
 ville, Ind 17 
 
 Johnston, Leslie M., Pitts- 
 burgh, Pa 15(5 
 
 Joiinston, Morris L., Chicago. 448 
 Jones, B. P., Valdosta, Ga . . 201 
 Jones, Charles II., Boston . . 12 
 Jones, Clarence A., St. Paul, 
 
 Minn 398 
 
 Jones, G. Dal, Chicago 347 
 
 Jones, Harry R., Canton, 0. . 163 
 Jones, R. T., North Tonawan- 
 
 da, N. Y 93 
 
 Jones, (Samuel D., Atlanta, 
 
 Ga 68 
 
 Joslin & Co., F. N.. Maiden, 
 
 Mass 332 
 
 Joun, Arthur W., Philadel- 
 phia 288 
 
 Judson, William, Grand Rap- 
 ids, Mich 293 
 
 Kalamazoo Corset Co., Kala- 
 
 mazoo, Mich 125 
 
 Karpen, S., & Bros., Chicago. 168 
 Keator, E., Cortlandt, N. Y. 261 
 Keen, J. S., Detroit, Mich. . . 169 
 Reiser, James R., New York. 59 
 Keister, Lawrence, Annville, 
 
 Pa 420 
 
 Keith. Geo. E., Brockton, 
 
 Mass 131 
 
 Kellogg, E. B., Keytesville, 
 
 Mo. 401 
 
 Kellogg, L. D., Chicago 35 
 
 Kelsey, Clarence IT.. New 
 
 York 218 
 
 Kelsey, Francis W., Ann Ar- 
 bor, Mich 362 
 
 Kemmerer, E. W., Ithaca, 
 
 N. Y 306 
 
 Kendall, A. G., San Bernardi- 
 no, Cal 267 
 
 Kenna, Edward Dudley, New 
 
 York 598 
 
 Kennedy, James B., .S-chenec- 
 
 tady, N. Y 421 
 
 Kennedy, R. L , Springfield, 
 
 Mo 415 
 
 Kennett, A. C., Comvny, 
 
 N. H 331 
 
 Kern, W. M.. New York 196 
 
 Kerr, John B., New York... 435 
 
 Key, E., Marshall, Tex 257 
 
 Kilpatrick, Worth, Connells- 
 
 ville, Pa. 184 
 
 Kilpatrick Bros., Beatrice, 
 Neb. . 470 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Kimball, Daniel A., .Stock- 
 bridge, Mass 2:;i 
 
 King, Edward, New Castle, 
 Pa ur>:; 
 
 King, II. II., Minneapolis, 
 Minn 103 
 
 Kinginan, H. R., North Yaki- 
 rna, W T ash 64 
 
 Kirby, John H., Houston, 
 Tex 92 
 
 Kirkhani, Thos. A., Bridge- 
 port, Conn 32 
 
 Kistler, Sedgwick, Lock Ha- 
 ven, Pa 108 
 
 Kistler, Wilson, Lock Haven, 
 Pa 110 
 
 Kittridge, Benjamin R., San 
 Francisco 294 
 
 Klee's (Sons, Joseph, Mounds- 
 ville, W. Va 148 
 
 Kneedler, H. S., Eldora, la.. 396 
 
 Knox, Clyde II., .Seaan, Kan. 419 
 
 Koch, Henry. Kansas City, 
 
 Mo 328 
 
 1 Koch, J. W., East Alton, 111. . 153 
 
 Koehler, Henry, Kansas City, 
 Mo 238 
 
 Kohler Co., F E., The, Can- 
 ton, Ohio 67 
 
 Koppikus, D. W., -Eas+ Oak- 
 land, Cal 358 
 
 Kraukauer. .A., El Paso, Tex. 281 
 
 Krake. II. G., St. Joseph, Mo. 465 
 
 Kramer, II. L., Kramer, Ind. 16 
 
 Krell, Albert, Cincinnati 102 
 
 Kriege, Otto E., Warrenton, 
 Mo. 376 
 
 Krohn, Fechheimer Co., The, 
 
 Cincinnati 160 
 
 i Kuhlke, Geo. W., New York. 292 
 i Kunhardt, W. B., Reading, 
 Pa 160 
 
 Kurtz, Julius F., Beaver 
 Falls, Beaver Co., Pa 100 
 
 Lamperty. A. G., Boston 329 
 
 Lamphere, Geo. N., 'Sr., Pa- 
 louse, Wash 408 
 
 Lamson, N. G., Lowell, Mass. 191 
 La my Mfg. Co., J. A.. Seda- 
 
 lia, Mo 34 
 
 Lander, F. D., Hattiesburg, 
 
 Miss 417 
 
 Lane, Benj. C.. Boston 162 
 
 Lane, Frederick H.. New 
 
 York 193 
 
 Lane Cotton Mills Co., New 
 
 Orleans, La 11 
 
 Lang. A. E.. Toledo, Ohio.. 22:1 
 
 614 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Langeloth, J., New York 145 
 
 Larson, L. P., Biuford, N. D. 278 
 La-Rue, B. V. M., Dallas, Tex. 125 
 Lasthrop, Bryan, Chicago. . . . 210 
 Latimer, Orion, Abingdon, 
 
 111 239 
 
 Laughliu, Geo. A., Canton, O. 04 
 Lawrence Dwight, Chicago . . 460 
 Lawrence, John 'S., Boston. . 315 
 Law son, Fenton, Cincinnati. 65 
 Layman, C. E., Troutville, 
 
 Va 269 
 
 Leavitt, Charles W., Jr., New 
 
 York 410 
 
 Lee, Blewett, Chicago 444 
 
 Lee, Wm. G., Cleveland, O.. 330 
 Lehman, Samuel, Cincinnati. 243 
 Leich & Co., Charles, Evans- 
 
 ville, Ind 311 
 
 Leland, Lorenzo, Ottawa, 111. 241 
 
 Lemmon, T. A., Chicago 134 
 
 Letson, T. H., 'New York. . . 127 
 Levering, Eugene, Baltimore. 269 
 Levermore, Chas. H., Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y 411 
 
 Levy, Jas. I., Ashland, Wis. 105 
 Lewis, John Q., Clinton, 111. 272 
 Lewis, W. T., Racine, \vis.. SO 
 Libbey & Dingley Co., Lewis- 
 ton, Me 139 
 
 Lindaner, Joseph, Nashville, 
 
 Tenn 303 
 
 Lindeke, A. H., St. Paul, 
 
 Minn 323 
 
 Lindenburg, Charles II., Co- 
 lumbus, Ohio 150 
 
 I Aim, A. R., Brooklyn, N. Y.. 347 
 Linn, Walter R., Harrisburg, 
 
 Pa r 427 
 
 Linsley, E B., Three Rivers, 
 
 Mich. 14 
 
 Lippincott Glass 'Co., The, 
 
 Cincinnati 147 
 
 Lisman, F. J., New York 246 
 
 Littauer, L. N., New lork. . . 92 
 Livingston, J. B., New Haven, 
 
 Conn 94 
 
 Llewellyn, Silas J., Chicago.. 157 
 Lockhart, Oliver C., Colum- 
 bus, Ohio 381 
 
 Locomobile Co. of America, 
 
 The, Bridgeport, Conn. ... 54 
 Loeb, Ferdinand L., Philadel- 
 phia Ill 
 
 Logan, George B., Pittsburgh, 
 
 Pa 327 
 
 Logan, James, Worcester. 
 Mass. 46 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lombard, J. W. P., Milwau- 
 kee, Wis I8i 
 
 Lombard!, C., Dallas, Tex. . . 402 
 Long, R. A., Kansas City, 
 
 Mo. 
 
 Longhead, Charles W., Akron, 
 
 Ohio 358 
 
 Looinis, E. P., & Co., New 
 
 York 305 
 
 Looruis, N. E., Zauesville, O. 148 
 Lord, J. Walter, Baltimore, 
 
 Md 431,458 
 
 Loring, Augustus P., Boston. 
 
 161, 433 
 
 Lothman, William, St. Louis. 167 
 Lounsbury, Ralph R., Chi- 
 cago 450 
 
 Lovell & Buffiugton To- 
 bacco Co., Covington, Ky . . 85 
 Lovejoy, Wm. J., Fulton, N. 
 
 Y 271 
 
 Lowe, A. B., St. Louis 352 
 
 Lowe, Houston, Dayton, O . . 138 
 Lowe, Millard, Mystic, la... 359 
 Lowe, R. B., Fitchburg, 
 
 Mass 32 
 
 Lowe, W. E., New York 228 
 
 Lovvenstein, A., Chillicothe, 
 
 Mo 287 
 
 Lucas, H. C., North Yakima, 
 
 Wash 20?5 
 
 Luden, W. H., Reading, Pa.. 34 
 
 Luetge, H. F., Boston 91 
 
 Lund, C. N., .Salina, Utah... 410 
 Luther, F. 'S., Hartf9rd. 
 
 Conn 415 
 
 Lynll. William L., Passaic, 
 
 N. J 77 
 
 Lyford, F. E.. Waver ly, N. Y. 219 
 Lyman, Arthur T., Boston. . . 49 
 Lynch. J. M., Indianapolis, 
 
 Ind 334 
 
 Lynd, S. B., Louisville, Ky. . 215 
 Lynn. Charles J., Indianapo- 
 lis, Ind 20 
 
 Lyon, Geo. H.. Detroit. Mich. .Trt 
 
 MarCracken, John II., New 
 York 365 
 
 MacKellar, W. H., Peekskill, 
 N. Y 596 
 
 MacMillan, J. H., Minneapo- 
 lis, Minn 25 
 
 MacRne. William A., Port- 
 land. Ore 179 
 
 McAlpin, Wm. M., Paul 
 Smiths, Franklin Co., N. 
 Y 84 
 
 Mcfnbe, Geo. W., Chicago. . . 21. S 
 
 615 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 McCaleb, Walter F., San Au- 
 toiiio, Tex ISo 
 
 McCalluin, A., Northampton, 
 Mass 129 
 
 McClurg, Ogden T., Chicago. 3SS 
 
 McConnell, Francis J., Green- 
 castle, Ind 42*o 
 
 McCrea, Roswell C., Philadel- 
 phia 303 
 
 McCrum-Howell Co., The, 
 New York 70 
 
 MeCulloch, Charles, Fort 
 Wayne, Ind 224 
 
 MeCurdy, Charles M., Belle- 
 tonte, Pa 235 
 
 McCurdy, W. II.. Evjinsville, 
 Ind. G7 
 
 McDonald, Donald, Louis- 
 ville, Ky 130 
 
 McElderry, Hugh L.. Talla- 
 dega, Ala. 23T 
 
 McEwen, W. E., Dulutli, 
 Minn 360 
 
 McGill, Fred C., Oil City, 
 Pa. 202 
 
 McGrath, Tom J., St. Paul. 
 Minn -159 
 
 Mclntosh, Chas. E.. Council 
 Bluffs, la 341 
 
 Mclntosh, G. C.. Fayettoville. 
 W. Va 403 
 
 McKibben. H. L., Arlington, 
 Neb. 332 
 
 McKim, L. L., Ottawa, Kan. 472 
 
 McKinley, J. A., Roseberry, 
 Ida. * 399 
 
 McKinney, J. F., -Englewood. 
 N. J 250 
 
 McKinstry, Louis, Fredonia, 
 N. Y 413 
 
 McLaughlin, W. F., & Co., 
 Chicago 297 
 
 McLean, Francis H., New 
 York 375 
 
 McMaster, Geo., Moline, 111. . 113 
 
 McMillin, Emerson, New 
 York 199 
 
 McNair, F. W., Hough ton. 
 Mich 370 
 
 McVitty, iS. H.. Salem. Va. . . 82 
 
 McWhirter, Felix T., Indian- 
 apolis, Ind 188 
 
 Macrum. George :S., Pitts- 
 burg, Pa 200 
 
 Magoffin, James R., New 
 York 258 
 
 Mahon, 'Samuel, Ottumwa, 
 la 301 
 
 Mallinckrodt Chemical 
 Words. St. Louis 114 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mallory, E. A., & <Sons, Dan- 
 bury, Conn '. 107 
 
 Mandlebauni, James, Little 
 Rock, Ark 322 
 
 Manley, W. P.. Sioux City, ' 
 la 217 
 
 Manson, D. E., Boston 114 
 
 Manson, John T.. New Karon. 
 Conn 207 
 
 Mapel, A. Ray, Waynesburg, 
 Pa 398 
 
 Marble, W. A.. New York... 109 
 
 Mai-burg. Theodore, Balti- 
 more 422 
 
 Marbury Lumber Co., The, 
 Marbury, Ala 152 
 
 Marks, Martin A., Cleveland, 
 Ohio 57 
 
 Marr, J. II.. Davenport, Neb.. 322 
 
 Marse. T. W.. Taylor, Tex. . . 319 
 
 Marshall, A. M., Dnluth. 
 Minn 90 
 
 Marshall Oil Co., Marshall- 
 town, la 34 
 
 Martin, John. Stapleton, S. 
 1 418 
 
 Martin. Win.. Chelsea, Mass. 155 
 
 Mason. A. E.. Glens Falls, 
 N. Y 251 
 
 Mason, Edward IT.. Bruns- 
 wick, Ga 22n 
 
 Mather, William G., Cleve- 
 land, O 594 
 
 Mathews, Byron C., East 
 Orange, N. J 370 
 
 Mathews, John A., .Syracuse, 
 N. Y 159 
 
 Mattecheck, M. W., Iron- 
 wood, Mich -. 231 
 
 Matteson, Chas., Providence, 
 R. 1 447 
 
 Mauldin, J. L., Cleveland, O. 37 
 
 Mautner, Julius, New York. 313 
 
 May, Charles H., Fremont, 
 Neb. 287 
 
 May, John ' W., Alexandria. 
 Va 307 
 
 Mayer Boot & 'Shoe Co., F., 
 Milwaukee. Wis 331 
 
 Maynard, Frank Hamilton, 
 Providence, R. 1 109 
 
 Maynard, Wesley A., West 
 Somerville, Mass 402 
 
 Mayo, Hamilton, Leominster, 
 Mass 213 
 
 Meacham, D. B., Cincinnati. 154 
 
 Mead-Morrison Mfg. Co., Bos- 
 ton . 117 
 
 010 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Af ears- Slay ton Lumber Co., 
 
 Chicago 323 
 
 MeeKer, Arthur, Chicago. . . . 142 
 Meeker, Royal, Princeton, 
 
 N. J 372 
 
 Meier, A. J., St. Louis 15 
 
 Melish, William P... Cincin- 
 nati 120 
 
 Mell, George II., Kane. Pa.. 2ND 
 Menton, John A. C., Flint, 
 
 Mich. 350 
 
 Meriden Cutlery Co., Meri- 
 
 deu, Conn 71 
 
 Meridian Fertilizer Factory, 
 
 Meridian. Miss 124 
 
 Merrick, Duff, Asheville, 
 
 N. C 401 
 
 Merrill, Jos. Hansel], Thom- 
 
 asville. Ga 453 
 
 Merrill, William Willis, New 
 
 York 320 
 
 Merritt, Albert N., Chicago. 441 
 .Meurer, C., Little Rock, Ark. 31)7 
 Meyer, E. L., Hutchiuson, 
 
 Kan . 201) 
 
 Michaels. II.. San Francisco. :;i l 
 Midvale Steel Co.. The, Phil- 
 adelphia Ill 
 
 Milburn Wagon Co., The, To- 
 ledo, Ohio 37 
 
 Miles. P>en.i. F.. Cleveland, O. 151 
 
 Miles, C. J., -Chicago 115 
 
 Miller. C. A., Bolivar, Tenn. . 457 i 
 Miller, David II.. New York. 24S i 
 Miller. F. A., South Bend, 
 
 Ind 39s 
 
 Miller. John S.. Uniontown. 
 
 Pa 32G 
 
 Miller. Osc-ar P., Rock Rap- 
 ids. Iowa 230 
 
 Miller. W. A.. Columbus, O. 202 
 Miller Co., J., The. Racine, 
 
 \Vis 119 
 
 Milne & Co., A., New York. . 310 
 Milner, W. L., Toledo, Ohio. 302 
 Miner, Asher, WilkessBarre, 
 
 Pa 123 
 
 Mitchell, C. D.,- Chattanooga. 
 
 Tenu OS 
 
 Mitchell, John, Mt Vernon, 
 
 N. Y 334 
 
 Mitchell, John J., Chicago.. 272 
 Mitchell, Sidney Z., New 
 
 York 220 
 
 Mixter, Charles W., Burling- 
 ton, Vt 363 
 
 Molleson, Geo. E., New York. 165 
 Molynn. J. S.. Broken Bow. 
 Xeb. . 170 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Montgomery, J. R., Windsor 
 Locks, Conn j,-l 
 
 Montgomery, Robert II.. New 
 York L'IM 
 
 Moore, E. S., Parkersburg, " 
 W. Va 299 
 
 Moore, Stephen, Boston 102 
 
 Moores, Charles W., Indian- 
 apolis. Ind 451 
 
 Morehouse, Max, Columbus, 
 Ohio 3:M 
 
 Morgan, J. A., Middlebury, 
 Vt 424 
 
 Morgan, W. D., Georgetown, 
 S. C 208 
 
 Morrisey, Hugo, Jefferson 
 City, Mo 137 
 
 Morison, W. K., Minneapolis, 
 Minn 318 
 
 Morris, Lawrence J., Phila- 
 delphia 296 
 
 Morrison, Edward A., New 
 York 325 
 
 Morrison, W. W., Toledo, O. 273 
 
 Morrissey. James P., 'Santa 
 Clara, Cal 421 
 
 Morrissey, P. II., Chicago... 351 
 
 Morrow. H. C., White Hall, 
 111 24 
 
 Morrow, II. R., Amarillo. 
 Tex (55 
 
 Morse. Aimer. Canton, Mass. 13!) 
 
 Morse, C. I\, Kansas City. 
 Mo 00 
 
 Motley. G., New York 3:;:; 
 
 Mott, Abrain C., Philadelphia 149 
 
 Mott, John T.. Oswego, N. Y. 255 
 
 Muhse, Albert. Chas., Wash- 
 ington, D. C 367 
 
 Mullen. James W., San Fran- 
 cisco 426 
 
 Mnller, Edward J., New 
 York 109 
 
 Mullins. A. W., Linneus, Mo. 274 
 
 Muncie Gas Engine & 'Supply 
 Co., Muncie. Ind 600 
 
 Murphy, Franklin, Newark, 
 N. J 161 
 
 Murphy Co., Thomas D., The, 
 Red Oak. Iowa 410 
 
 Murray, A. J.. Cortland, 
 N. Y 86 
 
 Xary. John W., Trenton. 
 
 N? J 150 
 
 National -Lime & iStoue Co., 
 
 The, Carey, Ohio 34 
 
 Neilson Co.. A. V., Ltd., 
 
 Alexandria. La 2S5 
 
 617 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Nelson, Murry, Jr., Chicago . 451 
 
 Nelson, N. O., iSt. Louis 41 
 
 Newbranch, H. E., Oinalm, 
 
 'Neb 392 
 
 Newcomb, C. iS., Frankfort, 
 
 Me 357 
 
 Newcomer, Waldo, Baltimore 2<j,S 
 New Jersey Terra Cotta Co., 
 
 The, New York 123 
 
 Newman, J. A., Chicago 359 
 
 Newman, L. M., Chippewa 
 
 Falls, Wis '2'22 
 
 Newport Rolling Mill Co., 
 
 Newport, Ky 81 
 
 New River Lumber Co., The 
 
 'Cincinnati 125 
 
 News Publishing Co., The, 
 
 Water town, S. D 425 
 
 Newton Wagon Co., Batavia, 
 
 111 165 
 
 New York Trust Co., A 269 
 
 Nichols, Edward P., Boston. 153 
 Nicholson, James R., Boston. 132 
 Noah, Andrew H., Akron, O. 1.0S 
 Nordyke & Marmon Co., In- 
 dianapolis, Ind 30 
 
 Norelius, M. iS., Lindstrom, 
 
 Minn 409 
 
 North Star Lumber Co., Min- 
 neapolis, .Minn 115 
 
 Nor th- Western Lumber Co., 
 
 Hoquiam, Wash 152 
 
 Norton, Ex., New York 187 
 
 Norton, G. A., Portland, Me. 358 
 Norton, J. Pease, New Ha- 
 ven, Conn 344 
 
 Nourse, E. G., Vermillion, 
 
 iS. D 372 
 
 Noyes Bros. & Cutler, iSt. 
 
 Paul, .Minn 295 
 
 Nulsen, F. E., East 'St. Louis, 
 
 111 138 
 
 Nye, G. H., Auburn, N. Y 212 
 
 Oak ma u, Walter G., New 
 
 York 228 
 
 Oberstadt, O. B., Chicago... 94 
 O'Brien, John, Bradford, Pa. 354 
 Oestinaun, J. L., 'Chicago... 315 
 Ogden, Robert C., New York. 276 
 Oil and Natural Gas Pro- 
 ducer. An 495 
 
 Olcott, Dudley, Albany, N. Y. 273 
 Olcott, W. J., Duluth. Minn. 11 
 Oler. Wesley M., iNew York. 14 
 Olive & Meyers iMfg. Co., 
 
 Dallas, Tex 107 
 
 Olmsted, G. W., Ludlow, Pa. 157 
 O'Mara. W. M., Tyrone. Pa. 359 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ornes, Frederick, Mt. Ver- 
 
 non, Wash 409 
 
 Orr, Jackson & Co., Nash- 
 ville, Tenu 2,S6 
 
 Osborn, II. C., Cleveland, O. . :H0 
 Osborii, Lynian P., Peabody, 
 
 Mass 24x 
 
 Otis, Oliver, Rockland, Me. . 423 
 Ott, Charles W., Milwaukee. 
 
 Wis 319 
 
 Outerbridge, E. II., New 
 
 York _!7S 
 
 trwen, O., Port Arthur, Tex. 4(>S 
 
 Owen, R. M., New York.... 47 
 
 Pacific Coast Borax Co., Oak- 
 land, Cal 114 
 
 Pacific Hardware & Steel 
 
 Co., Portland, Ore 293 
 
 Packard. M. A. O., Plymouth, 
 
 Ind 271 
 
 Page, Edward D., New 
 
 York 292, 367 
 
 Page, H. R., Jackson, Mich, isr, 
 Page, Paul E., Buckley, 
 
 Wash 156 
 
 Page, William Nelson, An- 
 
 sted, Fayette Co., W. Va . . 107 
 Paine, George M., Oshkosh, 
 
 Wis 63 
 
 Paine. William A., Boston.. 221 
 Pankow Bros.. Sioux Falls, 
 
 'S. D 34 
 
 Pardee, I. P.. Hazleton, Pa.. 257 
 Parker, C. W., Leaven worth, 
 
 Kan 35 
 
 Parsons, Byron, Evansviile, 
 
 Ind 332 
 
 Patrick, Charles H., New 
 
 York 261 
 
 Patterson, J. B., Detroit, 
 
 Mich 223 
 
 Patterson, J. E., Wilkes- 
 
 Barre, Pa 151 
 
 Patterson, J. J., Chatham, 
 
 Va 293 
 
 Pattison, Everett W., .St. 
 
 Louis 455 
 
 Patton, J. E., Jr., Pittsburgh, 
 
 Pa 163 
 
 Pauuack, A. O., ^Madison, 
 
 Wis 274 
 
 Pavenstedt, Adolf, New York 214 
 Paxton, W. F., Paducah, Ky. 227 
 Payne, Frank H., Erie, Pa.. 150 
 Payson, George S., Chicago. 462 
 Peabody, F. F., Troy, N. Y.. 155 
 Peabody, R. C., New York.. 150 
 
 618 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Peck- Williamson Heating & 
 
 Ventilating Co., The, Cin- 
 cinnati 88 
 
 Peck, William E., New York. 320 
 Peerless Motor 'Car Uo., The. 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio 91 
 
 Pierce, William F.. Jambier, 
 
 Ohio 378 
 
 Pendleton, George B., Now 
 
 Bern, N. (' 245 
 
 Penfield, Walter S., Washing- 
 ton, D. C 462 
 
 Peninsular Portland Cement 
 
 Co., Jackson, Mich 22 
 
 Perham, Henry B., St. Louis. 346 
 Perkins. George W., New 
 
 York 476 
 
 Pero, J. W., Fremont, Ohio. . 268 
 Perrine, H. C., South Ainboy, 
 
 N. J 267 
 
 IVrrv, Alfred T., Marietta, 
 
 Ohio 379 
 
 Perry, Chas., Seattle, Wash. 315 
 Perry. Stuart H:, Adrian, 
 
 Mich 397 
 
 Petas. William A., Rochester, 
 
 N. Y 288 
 
 Peterson, Frank B., San 
 
 Francisco 310 
 
 Peterson, V. A., -Shickiey. 
 
 Neb 328 
 
 Pettersen, E. A., Pomeroy, 
 
 Wash 66 
 
 Pfaff, Charles, Boston 33 
 
 Phelps, A. C., Draper, N. C. 45 
 Phillips, J. A., Greenville, 
 
 Tex 404 
 
 Pliilipsbom, M., Chicago 322 
 
 Phillips Insulated Wire Co., 
 
 Pawtucket, R. 1 167 
 
 Phinney, J. W., Boston 155 
 
 Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y 13 
 
 Pierce, Otis N., New Bedford, 
 
 Mass 126 
 
 Pierce. Paul J., Iowa City, 
 
 Iowa 385 
 
 Pierce, S. W., Junction City, 
 
 Kan 211 
 
 Pierce, Wallace L., Boston.. 320 
 Pike Mfg. Co., Pike, N. H. . . 06 
 
 Pilsbry, F. W., Chicago 64 
 
 Pitts, R. B., Camdeu, S. C.. 140 
 Plainville 'Stock Co., Plain- 
 
 ville, Mass 121 
 
 Plan/, G. J., Bakersfield, Cal. 205 
 Platt. Willard H., .New York 298 
 Ploydell, A. C.. New York. . . 409 | 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Plumb & Nelson, Manitowor, 
 
 Wis 297, 321 
 
 Plumley, H. C., Fargo, N. D. 412 
 Poling, W. 'S., Anderson, Ind. 59 
 Porter, H. H., Jr., Chicago.. 597 
 Post, C. W., Battle Creek, 
 
 Mich 485 
 
 Potter, Edwin A., Chicago. . . 273 
 Potter, John A., Patchogue, 
 
 N. Y 249 
 
 Powell, Edwin C., Spring- 
 field, Mass 397 
 
 Powers, H. IH., Boston 390 
 
 Powers, W. H., Bradford, Pa. 207 
 
 Pratt, George W., Boston 406 
 
 Pratt, H. M., Fort Dodge, la. 471 
 Pratt, Win. M., Greenfield, 
 
 Mass 144 
 
 Prentice, F. W. Adrian, 
 
 Mich 157 
 
 Prentiss Tool & Supply Co., 
 
 New York 170 
 
 Preston, Charles H., Dan- 
 
 vers. Mass 255 
 
 Price & Co., Ed. V., Chicago. 280 
 
 Price, V. L., 'St. Ixwis 143 
 
 Pr indie, Fred. W., Wolfe- 
 
 boro, N. <H 407 
 
 Pritzlaff Hardware Co., John, 
 
 Milwaukee, Wis. 322 
 
 Pullen, E. G., Waterloo, la.. 355 
 Purcell, John B., Richmond, 
 
 Va 258 
 
 Purnell, W. H., Kenosha, 
 
 Wis 268 
 
 Purrington, Wilbur M., Hay- 
 
 denville, Mass 247 
 
 Queen City Printing Ink Co., 
 The, Cincinnati 105 
 
 Ragon Brothers, Evansville, 
 
 Ind 328 
 
 Raine, G. D., Memphis, Tenn. 395 
 Raines, R. B., Independence, 
 
 Iowa 203 
 
 Ralston, J. 'S., Columbus, O . . 149 
 Rammelkamp, C. H., Jack- 
 sonville, 111 384 
 
 Ramsdell, Morton, Seattle, 
 
 Wash 106 
 
 Rankin. E. W., Topeka, Kan. 393 
 
 Ratcliffe, W. L., Boston 30 
 
 Raymond, 'George H., New 
 
 York 322 
 
 Rea, iSamuel, Philadelphia.. 172 
 Reaugh, W. T., Jacksonville, 
 111. 304 
 
 C19 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Record, J. L., Minneapolis, 
 
 Minn 131 
 
 Heed, Walter S., Corning, 
 
 N. Y 205 
 
 Reid, Edwy C., Allegan, 
 
 Mich 423 
 
 Reid, John, New York 51 
 
 Reisinger, Hugo, New York. 317 
 Remington, Franklin, New 
 
 York i:;<; 
 
 Rexford, L. P., St. Louis IS 
 
 R'heinstrom Bros., Cincinnati HR> 
 Rlioades. Herbert A., Boston. 271 
 Rhodes & Sou, A. G., Atlan- 
 ta, Ga 314 
 
 Rhodes, James Ford, Boston. 3SG 
 Richards & Co.. E. Ira, New 
 
 York .130 
 
 Richardson, . T., New York iMJO 
 Richardson & Boynton Co., 
 
 New York 131 
 
 Richter, R. M.. Carthage, Mo. 123 
 Ridgely. William Barret, 
 
 Washington, i>. C 217 
 
 Rinehart, A. R.. Akron. Ohio. 150 
 Ring. Welding, New York... 22<i 
 Itissler, Robt. C., Charles- 
 
 towu. Jefferson Co., W.-Va. 3fX) 
 Riter, B. F., Logan, Utah... 270 
 Ititter, James II., Philadel- 
 phia 200 
 
 Robert, Samuel, New York.. 315 
 Roberts, Abraham, Calumet, 
 
 Mich 284 
 
 Roberts, E. C., Davenport, 
 
 Iowa OS 
 
 Robertson, O. W., Milwaukee. 
 
 Wis. TV- 
 Robinson, J. D., Toledo, O.. 1G(S 
 Robinson, Lucius W., Punx- 
 
 sutawney. Pa. 100 
 
 Robison, . S. L, Texarkana, 
 
 Tex 236 
 
 Rochelle, Charles, Wichita, 
 
 Kan 381 
 
 Rockwell, A. F., Bristol, 
 
 Conn 118 
 
 Rockwell, C. B., Bristol, 
 
 R. 1 135 
 
 Roehm & Davison. Detroit, 
 
 Mich 317 
 
 Rogers, Allen Merrill, New 
 
 York 70 
 
 Rogers, Arthur, Barnesville, 
 
 Ohio 153 
 
 Rogers, Bernard, Chicago... 224 
 Rogers, E. L., New York. . . . 274 
 Rogers, Jas., Ausable Forks. 
 
 Essex Co., N. Y 150 
 
 Rogers, Robert, New York.. 12tJ 
 j Rogers, William A., Buffalo, 
 
 N. Y 30 
 
 Roper, Charles Lee. Chapel 
 
 Hill, N. (' 410 
 
 I Rose, P. S.. .Madison, Wis. . 400 
 I Rosebush, Judson G., Apple- 
 ton, Wis 5s 
 
 Itosencran/. A. C., Evans- 
 ville. I nd 150 
 
 It oss, Edward A.. Madison. 
 Wis -124 
 
 Ross, J. T., Astoria, Ore 305 
 
 (toss, William II.. Oil Cit.v, 
 Pa 350 
 
 Uounseville, C C., Fall 
 River. Mass 34 
 
 Itowe, L. S.. Philadelphia... 300 
 
 Ilueckheim Bros. & Eckstein, 
 Chicago 170 
 
 Itnnyon, W. C.. Cleveland, O. 134 
 
 Rush, R. II.. Charleroi, Pa.. ISO 
 
 Ilushmore, Remsen, Brook- 
 lyn, 'N. Y. . . 2<$0 
 
 Russell, Charles A.. Provi- 
 dence, R. I ot; 
 
 Russell, F. K., Dallas, Tex.. 130 
 
 Rusisell, Burdsall "Ward, 
 Port Chester, N. Y 120 
 
 Ryan, John A.. Rev.. Grove- 
 land Park. St. Paul, Minn. 377 
 
 ; Sack, A. Albert. Providence. 
 
 R. 1 1245 
 
 i Salisbury, C. II.. DeKalb. 111. 154 
 
 Salisbury, Warren M., Chi- 
 cago 322 
 
 Salmon. W. W., Rochester, 
 N. Y 15 
 
 Salt Lake City Brewing Co.. 
 The, Salt Lake City, Utah. 103 
 
 Sanders. Frank K., Topeka. 
 . Kan. 3r,-.i 
 
 Snnders, Orr & Co.. Char- 
 lotte, N. C 308 
 
 Sandford, William H., Pat- 
 ton, Pa 255 
 
 Saiisom, R. H., Knoxville. 
 Tenn 458 
 
 Sard, Grange, Albany. N. Y. 42 
 
 Satterlee, Herbert L., New 
 York 457 
 
 Saville, R. L., Dawson, Ga . . 241 
 
 iSaxe, Frank Jay. New York. 121 
 
 .Scarboro. Harold. Towson. 
 Md. 415 
 
 iSchaper, Wm. A.. Ph. D.. 
 Minneapolis. Mich 377 
 
 G20 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Scherer, James ,A. B., Pasa- 
 dena, Cal 371 
 
 Schmeer, R. W., Portland, 
 Ore. 258 
 
 Schnull & Co., Indianapolis, 
 
 Ind. 
 
 326 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sliepard, Charles E., Seattle, 
 Wash 452 
 
 .Sheppard, Franklin L., Phil- 
 adelphia 31)3 
 
 Sheppard, Jr., John S., New 
 
 York 
 
 456 
 
 Schoening, E. P., Columbia, ! Sheriff, Andrew R., Chicago. 446 
 
 111 168 j Sherman, Charles A., New 
 
 Schou, Chas. E., Chicago 143 ! York 298 
 
 Schuette, Fred, Manitowoc, j Sherwin, John, North Chi- 
 
 Wis 311 i cago 87 
 
 Schulze, E. A., Duluth, Minn. 207 | Shinn, I. C., Niles, Cal 467 
 
 Scott, Charles P., lola. Kan.. 413 ! Shnavely, H. M., Ephrata, 
 Scott, E. M., Cedar Rapids, Pa 233 
 
 la 208 j Shober, Gast, Fort Wayne, 
 
 Scott, Rumsey W.. Boston ... 95 ! Ind ...... 425 
 
 Scott, Win. T., Bridgeport, j Shoemaker, C. F., Philadel- 
 
 Belmont Co.. Ohio 328 phia 318 
 
 Scovill Mfg. Co., Waterbury, Shoemaker, C. W., Bridgeton, 
 
 Conn 128 
 
 Seager, Henry R., New York 362 
 Soager, S. P., Lansing, Mich. 141 
 Sears, Edmund H., Boston.. 69 
 Sechler, D. M., Implement & 
 
 Carriage Co., Moline, 111.. 346 
 Seeds, Charles J., Manches- 
 ter, la 190 
 
 Softon Mfg. Co., The, Chi- 
 cago 121 
 
 SHion. Stevenson & Co., Hunt- 
 
 ington, W. Va 289 
 
 Seiberling, F. A.. Akron, O.. 168 
 Seibert. David H.. Pottsville, 
 
 Pa ISO 
 
 Selden. R. L.. Deep River, 
 
 Conn 245 
 
 Seligman. Joseph L.. New 
 
 York 191 
 
 Sewell, John Stephen. Gantts 
 
 Quarry. Ala 45 
 
 Shade, Charles, Rock Rapids, 
 
 Iowa 172 
 
 Shainwald, Ralph L., New 
 
 York 130 
 
 Sharon. J. M.. Cadiz. Ohio.. 242 
 Shattuck, A. R., New York . . 222 
 
 N. J 11 
 
 Shook, A. M., Nashville, 
 
 Tenn 242 
 
 Shultz, Chas. iS., Hoboken, 
 
 N. J 211 
 
 Sibley, Irving A., 'South Bend, 
 
 Ind 290 
 
 Sieg Iron Company, Daven- 
 port, la 74 
 
 Silberstein & Bondy Co., Du- 
 luth, Minn 31S 
 
 Silsby, George A., Mitchell, S. 
 
 Dak 468 
 
 Simmons, Z. G., Kenosha, 
 
 Wis 54 
 
 Singer, Mortimer M., New 
 
 York 246 
 
 Singleton. George F. S., 
 
 Franklin, Mass 599 
 
 Sisson, George W., Potsdam, 
 
 N. Y 40 
 
 Slade. 'S. E., ;San Francisco. . 304 
 Slagle & Co., P. M., Alton, 
 
 Iowa 169 
 
 Sloan. W. E., Albert Lea, 
 
 Minn 359 
 
 Small. Milton T., Kalispell, 
 
 M'ont. 
 
 Shane, T. J., Ashland, Ivy... 129 i Sinall% w! N.VEl'paso,' Tex.' . 141 
 
 Shaw. Leslie M., Philadel- 
 phia 263 
 
 SI taw, M. ,S., fcoyne City, 
 Charlevoix Co.. Midi 60 
 
 Sheaf e, Mark W.. Water- 
 town. S. Dak 443 ; 
 
 Sheldon, A. M., Minneapolis. 
 Minn 328 ' 
 
 Sheldon, C. E.. Akron. O 96 
 
 Shelton. Thomas Wall. Nor- 
 
 Smith, Alex. W., Atlanta, Ga. 462 
 Smith, Arthur C., Omaha. 
 
 Neb ..................... 329 
 
 Smith, C. C.. Pittsburg, Pa . . 88 
 Smith, Chas. Robinson, New 
 
 York .............. . ..... 437 
 
 Smith, Charles W., 'Stockton, 
 
 Kan ..................... 447 
 
 Smith. Everett L.. Auburn, 
 
 Me 
 
 273 
 
 folk. Va 590 , Smith. E. O.. Storrs, Conn ... 74 
 
 621 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Smith. George J.. Plaza. N. 
 
 Dak 409 
 
 Smith. George P., Dubuque, 
 
 Iowa 307 
 
 Smith. Geo. T., Jersey City, 
 
 N. J 250 
 
 Smith, Henry B., Bay City, 
 
 Mich 117 
 
 Smith, Howard Oaswell, New- 
 York 194 
 
 Smith, Jas. A., Osage, la 170 
 
 Smith, Jay, Portland, Ore... 330 
 
 Smith, Levi, Warren, Pa 100 
 
 Smith, O. P., Logansport, Ind. 601 
 
 Smith, R. D., Center, Neb 137 
 
 Smith, iS. M., Wendell, Ida. . 235 
 Smith, Samuel M., Janesville, 
 
 Wis 2G4 I 
 
 Smith, W., Grubber Co., La 
 
 Crescent, Minn SG j 
 
 Smith, W. Wilberforce, Deca- 
 
 tur, 111 387 
 
 Smith, William W., Lynch- 
 
 burg, Va 420 
 
 Suioot, Jr., W. A., Alexan- 
 dria, Va 300 
 
 Smyth, J. G., Uvalde, Tex. .. 209 
 Snow, Charles W., Syracuse, 
 
 N. Y 177 
 
 Snow, Elbridge G., New York 270 
 Snyder, W. J., Brazil, Ind. .. 98 
 Snyder, W. V., Co., Newark, 
 
 N. J 327 
 
 -Scare, II. L., Hope, Idaho... r.'.ix 
 Sohn & Ileutschler, Hamil- 
 ton, 1 (>."> 
 
 South Bend Chilled Plow Co., 
 
 South Bend, Ind 55 I 
 
 .South Branch Valley Na- 
 tional Bank, Moorefield, W. 
 
 Va 237 
 
 Southwick. Francis H., Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y 330 
 
 South worth. A. G., New York 11 S i 
 Spalding, J. J., Atlanta, Ga. 105 , 
 Spaulding, C. K., Portland, 
 
 Ore 103 ; 
 
 Spencer, B. W., Passaic, N. J. 253 ! 
 Sperry. M. L., 'Savannah, Ga. 158 
 Spies Lumber & Cedar Co., 
 
 A., Menominee, Mich 83 
 
 'Spigelmyer. iShem, Antes 
 
 Fort, Pa 321 
 
 Spokane 'Sectional Central 
 Labor Council, Spokane, 
 
 Wash 355 
 
 Spooner. C. H., Northfield, 
 Vt. . . 3f;<; 1 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sprague, Albert A., Chicago. 270 
 Sprague, Frank J., New 
 
 York :>S6 
 
 Stafford, It. E.. Oklahoma. 
 
 City, OkHa 425 
 
 Stahl, John W., Chicago 403 
 
 Stambaugh, John. Youngs- 
 town, Ohio 133 
 
 Standard Lumber Co., Alton, 
 
 Fla 35 
 
 Standard Plate wlass Co., 
 
 Butler, Pa 169 
 
 Stanley, Alfred, Plymouth, 
 
 N. II 138 
 
 Stanton. Lucius M., New 
 
 York 330 
 
 Stark. O. G., St. Louis 48 
 
 Starr, A. E., Zanesville. O.. 277 
 State Banking & Trust Co., 
 
 Sioux Falls, >S. D 274 
 
 Stebbins, A. C., Lansing. 
 
 Mich 170 
 
 Stebbins, James H., New 
 
 York 327 
 
 Steele. G. F., Port Edwards, 
 
 Wood Co.. Wis 130 
 
 Steele, G. H., Clinton, Iowa. 338 
 Sterl & Co., G. C., Abilene, 
 
 Kan 330 
 
 Stern, Morris, Galveston, 
 
 Tex 314 
 
 Sternbach, Morris. New York 229 
 Stevens. Horace J.. Hough- 
 ton, Mich '. 392 
 
 Stevens, Harold W., Hart- 
 ford, Conn 270 
 
 Stevens. T. Frank, Nashua. 
 
 N. II 149 
 
 Stevens, W. Tyrie, New York 286 
 Stewart Co., Daniel, Indian- 
 apolis, Ind 306 
 
 Stewart, E. J., Boston 116 
 
 Stewart, H. J. D., 'St. Louis. 395 
 Still. F. R., Detroit, Mich... 55 
 Stiuipson, H. F., New York. 385 
 Stites, John, Louisville. Ky. 192 
 Stockton, Frank T., Roches- 
 ter. N. Y 421 
 
 Stockton, R. H., iSt. Louis. . 110 
 Storrs,' R. W., DeFuniak 
 
 'Springs. Fla 396 
 
 Stowell, Geo. H., Clareniont, 
 
 N. H 163 
 
 Strassburger, W. J., Glass- 
 mere, Pa 49 
 
 Strauss. Albert, -New York.. 218 
 Strother, D. J. F., Welch, 
 
 W. Va 231 
 
 Stnrtevant. Thos. L., Boston 77 
 
 622 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE PAGE 
 
 Sullivan, Andrew T., Brook- Titus, Edward Kirk, Green- 
 
 lyn, N. Y 190 j field, Mass 405 
 
 Sunny Brook Distillery Co., Tobias, Ernest E., Adrian, 
 
 Chicago 161 Mich 122 
 
 Sutcliff, B. W., Aberdeen, Tobin, John F., Boston 336 
 
 Wash 125 ; Todd, Edwin S., Oxford, O. . 379 
 
 Sutton, H. W. McKees . Tomlin, F. S., Brooklyn, 
 
 Rocks, Pa 205 N. Y 343 
 
 Swain, Geo. F., Cambridge, Toiupkins, D. A., Charlotte, 
 
 Mass 411 N. C 374 
 
 Sweet & Son, A. H,, Norton, Tourtellotte, Jerome, Put- 
 Mass 120 ; nam, Conn 266 
 
 Sweet, E. D., Cedar Vale, Townsend, G. T., Middletowu, 
 
 Kan 142 N. Y 247 
 
 Swift, A. D., Ridgway, Elk Townsend, W. B., Townsend, 
 
 Co., Pa 232 Bloimt Co., Tenn 95 
 
 Swindell, Fred'k, Rockville, Traer, Glenn W., Chicago... '41 
 
 Conn 154 Tracy & Co., O. Y., Syracuse, 
 
 N. Y 324 
 
 Taft, Harry Lee, Chicago . . . 256 Transue & Williams Co., 
 
 Taf t-Pierce Mfg. Co., Woon- The, Alliance, Ohio 112 
 
 socket, R. 1 33 Tredway, H. E., Dubuque, la. 115 
 
 Taplin, Rice-Clerkin Co., Ak- Trowbridge, E. Q., New York 252 
 
 ron, 595 Tnbbs, M. Wes., Madison, 
 
 Taussig, F. W., Cambridge, Wis 382 
 
 Mass 361 Tuesburg, L. W., Pontiac, 
 
 Taylor, J. M., Rochester, 111 443 
 
 N. Y 97 Tuft, Leonard, Pinehurst, 
 
 Taylor, Jonathan, Ak~on, . 455 N. C 152 
 
 Taylor, M. H., Erie, Pa 150 j Philip S. Tuley, Louisville, 
 
 Taylor, W. G. Langworthy, Ky 31 
 
 Lincoln, Neb 384 ! Tullis, Clayton T., Montgom- 
 
 Taylor, Wm., Kansas City, e ry, Ala 282 
 
 'Mo 306 Turmenne, Edmond, Lewis- 
 Taylor, William H., New ton, Me 357 
 
 York 106 Turner, C. H., Malone, .N. Y. 129 
 
 Telfer, R. L., iSan Jose, Cal.. 420 Turner. W. T., Keating Sum- 
 Terry, E. L., Yazoo City, m it, pa 100 
 
 Miss 470 Turney, Henry D., Columbus, 
 
 Thane, H., Arkansas City, Ohio 93 
 
 Ark 194 Tuthill, John W., Sioux Falls, 
 
 Thieme, Theodore F., Fort Falls, 'S. D 146 
 
 Wayne. Ind 78 Twitchell, H. K , New York. 227 
 
 Thorn, W. J., Buffalo, Wyo. . 243 
 Thomas C. 'S., Denver, Colo. 453 
 
 Thomas & Co.. F. B., Roa- rilman & Co., J., Appleton, 
 
 noke, Va 309 Wis 329 
 
 Thompson, John, Sioux City, Ulrich, Chas. E., Peoria, 111. 243 
 
 Iowa 401 Illrick. J. C., Columbus, O . . 327 
 
 Thompson, W. R, Hancock, Underbill, E. F., Chicago 124 
 
 Mich '. 182 Union Trust Co., The., In- 
 
 Thorson, Thomas, Canton, dianapolis, Ind. 274 
 
 S. D 263 TJ. S. Horse iShoe Co., Erie, 
 
 Threlkeld, W. L., Lexington, Pa 166 
 
 Ky 258 United States (Safe Co., Eliz- 
 
 Thurston. George W., Provi- abeth. Pa 69 
 
 dence, R. 1 118 Union Starch &' Refining Co., 
 
 Tiedemann, Geo. W. O'Fal- Edinburg. Ind 101 
 
 Ion, 111 75 Utley, S. W.. Detroit, Mich . 82 
 
 623 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE : 
 
 Vau Brunt Mfg. Co., The, 
 
 Horicon, Wis 3x 
 
 Vance, A. F., Jr., Urbaiia, O. -To 
 Yanden, J. W., Jackson, 
 
 Tenn 240 
 
 Van Deiisen, Don iC., Blair, 
 
 Neb 427 
 
 YanDeuseii, W. M., Newark, 
 
 X. J 251 
 
 Van Norden, Warner, New 
 
 York 002 
 
 Van Nopt, John J.. Scranton, 
 
 Pa 300 
 
 Van Zandt, C. E., Troy, N. Y. 70 
 NYu'lite, Augustus, Troy. 
 
 N. Y 122 
 
 Victor, Frederick, & Aehelis, 
 
 New York 008 \ 
 
 Vincent, W. D., Spokane, 
 
 Wash 21; 
 
 Vinson. E. A., Cordele, Ga... 250 
 
 Wade, II. J., Batavia, Kane 
 Co., Ill 
 
 Wagner, C. C., Mansfield, O. . 
 
 Wagner, H. G., Temple, Tex. 
 
 Wagner, O. O., Millerstown, 
 Pa 
 
 Wagner, Richard G., Milwau- 
 kee, Wis 
 
 Walbridge, Newman, Buf- 
 falo, N. Y 
 
 Waldauer, L., Atchison, Kan. 
 
 Waies, Wm. Q., Boston 
 
 Walker, J. O., Pensacola, 
 Fla 
 
 Walker, Win. B., New York. 
 
 Wall J., New Haven. Conn. 
 
 WalHn, V. A., Grand liapids, 
 Mich 
 
 Wangenheim, Julius, San 
 Diego, Cal 
 
 Ward, Henrv L , Burlington, 
 Vt 
 
 Warlow, T. P., Orlando, Fla. 
 
 Warner, Lucien C., New 
 York 
 
 Warner, Moore & Co., Rich- 
 mond, Va 
 
 Warren, Charles H., New 
 York 
 
 Warren, John E., Cumber- 
 land Mills, Me 
 
 Waterall, William, Philadel- 
 phia 
 
 Watkins, Edgar, (Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 Watkins Medical Co., J. R., 
 Winona, Minn. 
 
 31 
 108 
 46.1 
 
 347 
 322 
 
 331 
 348 
 1524 
 
 134 
 
 70 
 
 354 
 
 124 
 210 
 
 232 
 
 460 
 
 29(5 
 148 
 217 
 127 
 
 600 
 456 
 
 88 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Watson, G. L., Parkersburg, 
 
 W. Va 254 
 
 Watson, Will J., Chatta- 
 nooga, Tenu 453 
 
 Watson, Won. R., San Fran- 
 cisco 422 
 
 Watt, Geo. C., Braddock, Pa. 195 
 Webb, A. G., Cleveland, O . . 323 
 Webber, A. A., Batesville, 
 
 Ark 471 
 
 Weeks, Edwin William, Kan- 
 sas City, Mo 345 
 
 Weigel, Philip, Jr., New 
 
 Brunswick, N. J 284 
 
 Weinstock, II., iSan Fran- 
 cisco 301 
 
 Weir, E. T., Weirton, Han- 
 cock Co., W. Va 60 
 
 Weir, H. II., Meridian, Miss. 345 
 Wellborn, M. B., Anniston, 
 
 Ala 264 
 
 Wellington, Henry W., Bos- 
 ton 142 
 
 W T ells, Daniel. Detroit, M'ch. 144 
 Wells, G. H., Madison, Wis. . 323 
 Wertheimer, M. A., Kaukau- 
 
 na, Wis 78 
 
 Wessinger, Paul, Portland. 
 
 Ore ls 
 
 West, J. W., Decatur, Ga . . . 290 
 West, William L., St. Paul, 
 
 Minn :: ( .H 
 
 Western Stoneware Co.. Mon- 
 
 inouth, 111. 169 
 
 Weston, Dodson & Co., Beth- 
 lehem, Pa 123 
 
 Wettack, J. T.. Cotteyville, 
 
 Kan 257 
 
 Wever, John M., Plattsburg, 
 
 N. Y 220 
 
 Whaley, W. M., 'Norfolk, Va.. 91 
 Wharton. James B., Rich- 
 mond, Ind. 122 
 
 Wheeler, C. R., Peoria, 111. . . 195 
 Wheeler, George G., North 
 
 Attleboro, Mass 121 
 
 Wheeler, J. F., Carbondale, 
 
 Pa 240 
 
 Wheeler, Robert C., Chicago. 438 
 Wheeler, S. S., Ampere, N. J. 157 
 Wheeler & Dusenbury, En- 
 deavor, Forest Co.,' Pa 471 
 
 Wheeler & Motter Mercantile 
 
 Co., iSt. Joseph, Mo 307 
 
 White, A. Stamford, Chicago. 304 
 White, B. F., Dillon, Mont. . 251 
 White, Henry M., Lee, Mass. 412 
 White, J. B., Kansas City, 
 Mo. . 9 
 
 624 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 White, J. G., New York 389 
 
 Wliiteside, E. D., Columbus, 
 Kan. 328 
 
 Whitney, Frank J., Leomin- 
 ster, Mass 148 
 
 Whitney, Howard N., Des 
 Moines, Iowa 399 
 
 Wickersham, Charles A., At- 
 lanta, Ga 197 
 
 Wigginton, J. F., Bowie, La. 113 
 
 Wild, Edward AY., Spring- 
 field, Vt 412 
 
 Wildi Evaporated Milk Co., 
 John, The, Highland, 111 . . 146 
 
 Wile, D., Lexington, Ky 320 
 
 Wilgus, William J., New 
 York 383 ! 
 
 Wilkinson, George L., Bur- 
 lington, Colo 410 ' 
 
 Willard, H. S., ,Wc"stoii, O. 210 
 
 Willcox, William G., New 
 York 268 ! 
 
 Williams, Charles H., Derby, 
 Conn 89 | 
 
 Williams, F. W., San Fran- 
 cisco 110 i 
 
 Williams & Sons, I. B., Do- 
 ver, N. H 35 i 
 
 Williams Co., j. B., The, 
 Glastonbury, 'Conn 121 
 
 Williams. Perry P., New 
 York 273 \ 
 
 Williams, Roger, Providence, 
 R. 1 325 ! 
 
 Williamson, L. A., Bliiffton. 
 Ind 256 
 
 Wilson. Charles M., Grand 
 Rapids, Mich 457 
 
 Wilson. Geo. G., Cambridge, 
 Mass 413 
 
 AVilson. James Harrison, 
 Wilmington, Del 84 
 
 Wilson, Stuart, Texarkana, 
 Ark 225 
 
 Windmuller, Louis, New 
 York 275 
 
 Winona Wagon Co., Winona, 
 Minn 348 
 
 Winsor, F. F., Hausen, Neb. 353 
 
 Winter, W. C., Chicago 133 
 
 Wirt, Elmer L., Cookeville, 
 Tenn 407 
 
 Wisconsin Tissue Paper Co.. 
 Appleton. Wis 159 
 
 Witmer. C, E., Greenville, 
 Pa 2G3 
 
 Witt, J. J., Marshall, Mo 412 
 
 Woelfel. Edgar, Morris, 
 Grundy Co., Til . ... 96 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Wolff, John F., Chicago 128 
 
 Womack, D. J., Alva, Okia.. 597 
 Wood, E. K., Lumber Co., 
 
 San Francisco 119 
 
 Wood, G. W., Lewlston, Me.. 413 
 
 Wood, I. O., Goshen, Ind 272 
 
 Wood, Win. M., Boston 15 
 
 Woodmaiise Mfg. Co., Free- 
 port, 111 167 
 
 Woodruff, George, Joliet, 111. 215 
 Woodruff, J. G., Winsted, 
 
 Conn 30 
 
 Woodsome, James C., Tampa, 
 
 Fla 113 
 
 Woodward, D., Atlanta, Ga. . 32 
 Woodward, F. E., Langdou, 
 
 Minn 325 
 
 Woodward, P. Henry, Hart- 
 ford, Conn 265 
 
 Woodward, Robert B., New 
 
 York 43G 
 
 Woodward, Roland B., Roches- 
 ter, N. Y 463 
 
 Woolner, Jr., Samuel, Peoria, 
 
 111. 23 . 
 
 Woolston, George F., New 
 
 York 139 
 
 Worcester, C. II., Chassell, 
 
 Mich 88 
 
 Worden, C. H., Fort AVayne, 
 
 Ind 209 
 
 Worden, L. G.. Merced. Cal.. 272 
 Worthington, F. A., Agawam. 
 
 Mass 156 
 
 Worthy Paper Company, Mit- 
 
 tineague, Mass 159 
 
 Wright, Charles H., Chicago. 210 
 Wright, F. J., 'St. Joseph, Mo. 409 
 Wright, Omar H., Belvidere, 
 
 111 227 
 
 Wright, Wirt, National iStock 
 
 Yards, 111 2(54 
 
 Wulsin, Lucien, Cincinnati.. 94 
 W T urster, E. A.. Milwaukee, 
 
 Wis 126 
 
 Wynkoop, C. T.. Bismarck, 
 N. D 143 
 
 Yager, Arthur. Georgetown, 
 Ky. 427 
 
 Yahr & Lange Drug Co., Mil- 
 waukee. Wis 313 
 
 Yale, F. L., Joplin, Mo 469 
 
 Yale & Towne Manufactur- 
 ing Co., The. New York ... 70 
 
 Yates. Charles A., .Syracuse, 
 N. Y 352 
 
 Yatep. Henry W.. Omaha. 
 Neb. . 175 
 
 625 
 
INDEX TO CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Yellow Poplar Lumber Co., 
 Coal Grove, Ohio 150 
 
 Young, Allyn Abbott, St. 
 Louis, Mo 375 
 
 Young, James M., Pittsburgh, 
 Pa 320 
 
 Yule, W. L., Kenosha, Wis.. . 107 
 
 PAGE 
 Zelinder, Charles H., New 
 
 York 25 
 
 Zeigler, William H., New 
 
 York 420 
 
 Zob'el, Harry H., Alameda, 
 
 Cal. . . 2G7 
 
 G26 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO *> 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. 
 
 Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 f f: 
 
 
 
 > Si * 
 
 ** r. 
 
 
 
 ";in S 
 
 Q 5 
 
 
 
 CVJ 3H 
 
 
 
 Z^ 5: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FORM NO. DD6 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
234593 
 
 M