PIRATICAL PERSECUTION OF BIG BUSINESS HALTED
The decision of the Federal Court in the suit brought for the dissolution of the United States Steel Corporation holds out some hope to business men that the persecution of big business in this country merely because it is big, is to cease. The case has to go to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the decision of this tribunal in the Cash Register Company case leads to the reasonable inference that it will uphold the decision of the lower court in the Steel Corporation case. The essence of the Cash Register decision is that the mere ability to commit the crime of combination in restraint of trade is not equivalent to the commission of the crime. The Cash Register Company, by reason of its bigness, could, had it been so inclined, put smaller concerns out of business by unfair competition; but the evidence adduced failed to prove that it had done so. The lower court gave it a clean bill of health, and the Supreme Court tacitly approved the verdict of the lower court. The government lawyers denounced the Cash Register Company in unmeasured terms virtually on the ground that its size made it a menace to competition, but the courts refused to hold it guilty because it possessed power which it did not exercise.
Nothing could show up in a clearer light the folly of the Government’s persecution of big business. To dissolve a corporation, or to penalize it, simply because it possesses the power to commit an offense which it does not commit, would be equivalent to ordering the arms of a stalwart citizen cut off lest he use his fists to pound some weaker citizen to a jelly. The attitude of this administration towards business, if we judge it by some of the prosecutions for which it stands responsible, is that success in business is an evidence of an evil disposition and a menace to all other business. If the Federal Courts have successfully called a halt upon this piratical attitude towards the country’s industry and commerce, the people of the country have reason to thank God for the Federal Courts.