NIAGARA AGAIN IN DANGER
What Taft Said in 1910 The President, in a Special Message to Congress, said it Would be Disastrous to Invest Courts with the Power to say What is and What is not "Reasonable" Restraint of...
...It has been proposed, however, that the word' 'reasonable" should be made a part of the statute, and then that it should be left to the court to say what i" a reasonable restraint of trade, what is a reasonable suppression of competition, what is a reasonable monopoly...
...What Taft Said in 1910 The President, in a Special Message to Congress, said it Would be Disastrous to Invest Courts with the Power to say What is and What is not "Reasonable" Restraint of Trade MANY PEOPLE conducting great businesses have eherished a hope and a belief that in some way or other a line may be drawn between "good trusts" and "bad trusts," and that it is possible by amendment to the anti-trust law to make a distinction under which good combinations may be permitted to organize, suppress competition, control prices, and do it all legally if only they do not abuse the power by taking teo great profit out of the business...
...CERTAINLY UNDER THE PRESENT ANTI-TRUST LAW NO SUCH DISTINCTION EXISTS...
...They point with force to certain notorious trusts as having grown into power through criminal methods by the use of illegal rebates and plain cheating, and by various acts utterly violative of busi?ess honesty or morality, and urge the establishment of some legal line of separation by which "criminal trusts" of this kind can be punished, and they, on the other hand, be permitted under the law to carry on their business...
...I venture to think that this is to put into the hands of the court a power impossible to exercise on any consistent principle which will insure the uniformity of decision essential to good judgment...
...It is to thrust upon the courts a burden that they have no precedents to enable them to carry, and to give them A POWER APPROACHING THE ARBITRARY, the abuse of which MIGHT INVOLVE OUR WHOLE JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN DISASTER...
...Now the public, and especially the business public, ought to rid themselves of the idea that such a distinction is practicable or can be introduced into the statute...
Vol. 3 • May 1911 • No. 21
