TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES
Legislation against combinations of properties to bring about monopoly, or contracts in restraint of trade, is the last field of legislation we have to consider in connection with property, and possibly in the public mind the most important. Although the law against combinations of laborers rests upon much the same principles, it is perhaps best to give a special chapter to combinations of property, leaving labor combinations to be treated in that special connection. The matter has been written up so voluminously that it might be difficult to say anything new upon the subject, yet for that very reason it may be as well to analyze it into its simplest elements at the common law, and then trace its recent development in our somewhat unintelligent statute-making. At common law, then, these obnoxious acts may be analyzed into five definite heads: forestalling, regrating, and engrossing—which have been thoroughly defined in an earlier chapter and the modern form of which in modern language might be called restraining production or fixing prices, the buying and selling of futures or gambling contracts, and cornering the market—restraint of trade, and monopoly. The broad principles, however, upon which the gravamen of even these first three rests, is restraint of trade, which was always obnoxious at the common law. Contracts in restraint of trade, except such reasonable contracts as partnership, or the sale of a business with condition not to engage in the same trade in a certain limited locality or for a certain, limited time, have always been void at the common law. They are not, however, criminal except by statute, though a combination in restraint of trade, etc., was always so. We found many such statutes as we also found laws which gave a penalty in double or treble damages to the person injured by such combination or contract. The great case of monopolies, reported in full in the seventh volume of the State Trials, is a perfect mine of information on this subject, having been argued many months at great length by the greatest lawyers, three of whom later were chief-justices of England. This is not the case of the playing cards, Darcy's case, commonly called the "Monopoly Case," which is briefly reported in Coke and covers a far narrower subject, the royal grant for a monopoly in the importation (not manufacture or sale) of playing cards, presumably because Coke's reports are far more accessible than the somewhat rare editions of the State Trials; but the great case brought by the British East India Company against one Sandys, the loss of which would have forfeited its charter and its business, and possibly put an end to British dominion in the East. Its charter dated from the early years of Charles II and the 43d Elizabeth. It brought suit against the defendant, who freighted a vessel to East Indian ports. Mention in it is made of a charter to the Muscovy Company as early as Philip and Mary, a much earlier date than is elsewhere assigned to trading corporations. Hundreds of cases of unlawful monopolies are cited, among them the case of the tailors of Norwich, where a combination to work only for certain wages and to advise others not to work for less and to prevent such others from getting employment with their own employer, was held a conspiracy and an attempt to gain a monopoly at the common law. Another case, of one Peachy, who had by royal grant an exclusive right to sell sweet wine in London, was held to disclose an odious monopoly at common law and the king's franchise void.
In the opinion of the writer, had this common law been thoroughly remembered and understood by our bench and bar, to say nothing of our legislatures, very little anti-trust legislation by the States would have been necessary except, again, of course, to affix modern penalties to such offences. There has, however, been a vast amount of such legislation. In so far as such legislation has embodied the common law, it has stood the test of the courts and been of some value in repressing objectionable trusts or contracts. In so far as it has gone beyond the common law, it has often proved futile and still more often been declared unconstitutional by the courts.
To the five principles of the common law set forth above we have, perhaps, added two new ones. Besides fixing prices, limiting outputs, cornering the market, contracting in restraint of trade, and acting or contracting with the purpose of gaining a monopoly—all of which were objectionable at common law—we have legislated in some States against the securing of discriminatory railway rates for the purpose of establishing a monopoly, and against what we have termed "unfair competition"—that being generally defined to be the making of an artificially low price in a certain locality for the purpose of destroying a competitor, or the making of exclusive contracts; that is to say, refusing to deal with a person unless he binds himself not to deal with anybody else. This last thing can hardly, however, be said to add to common-law principles. Nevertheless, some of the newer State anti-trust statutes prescribe it so definitely that it may be treated as a modern invention.
All this legislation is extremely recent. In the writer's digest of "American Statute Law," published in 1886, I find no mention of trusts in this modern sense, though a special chapter is given to them in volume II, published in 1892. The first legal writing in which the word was used and the rise of the thing itself adverted to is, so far as I know, a contribution to the Harvard Law Review, entitled Trusts, vol. I, page 132; but the trust then had in mind was the simple early form of the railway equipment trust said to have been invented in Pennsylvania, which was indeed copied in the first agreement, so long kept secret, of the Standard Oil Trust; and also the corporate stock trust, that is to say, the practice then beginning of persuading stockholders to intrust a majority of the capital stock of the corporation into the hands of trustees, receiving in return therefor trust certificates, with a claim to the net earnings of the corporation, but without real voting power; and there are cases in which such trusts were sought to be held invalid and enjoined in equity, sometimes with and sometimes without success.
Before going into the details of anti-trust legislation, it would be well to sketch its history on the broadest possible lines. Legislation began first in the States some years before the Federal Anti-trust Law, or Sherman Act, first enacted in 1890. These earlier statutes, including the Sherman Act itself, made illegal all contracts or combinations between persons or corporations in restraint of trade; and their direct result was to compel the formation of the gigantic modern trust as we now understand it. Had the Sherman Act, instead of being called "An Act to Protect Trade and Commerce Against Unlawful Restraints and Monopolies," been entitled "An Act to Compel the Formation of Large Trusts by all Persons Engaged in Similar Lines of Business," it would have been far more correctly described in its title. For whereas, before this act persons or corporations could make contracts or arrangements among themselves which were good and valid working agreements unless so clearly monopolistic as to be held unreasonable restraint of trade at the common law (which, indeed, so far as I know, was never done in any American court), after the Sherman Act was passed all such contracts, combinations, or arrangements, even when reasonable and proper, were made illegal and criminal. The only escape, therefore, was to bring all such persons and corporations in the same trade together in one corporation, and this is precisely what we now term a trust. Before 1890, in other words, a trust was really an agreement, a combination of individuals or corporations usually resting upon an actual deed of trust under which the constituent parties surrendered their property or the control of their property to a central board of trustees; since 1890 this kind of trust has practically disappeared and been replaced by the single large corporation, either a holding company which holds the stock of all constituent companies, or under still more modern practice, because more likely to stand the scrutiny of the courts, a huge corporation, with a charter given by the liberal laws of New Jersey, West Virginia, or other State, which actually holds, directly, all the properties and business of the constituent corporations or persons. The modern question, therefore, has become really the question of the large corporation, its regulation and its control; further complicated, of course, by the fact that hitherto there has been no power to control such large corporations except the very State which creates them, which is usually quite indifferent to their acts so long as they pay the corporation tax. It is therefore a question not only of the large corporation, but of the powers of the States over each other's corporations and of the Federal government over all. Until the Northern Securities case, it was probably supposed that a corporation, being an individual, could not be guilty of a criminal conspiracy, and consequently could not in itself offend against the anti-trust acts. That case, and more recent decisions still, show a disposition of the courts to look behind the screen of the fictitious entity of the corporation to the merits and demerits of the persons making it up, and the objects with which they came together and the methods they continued to use.
The Federal statute was indeed necessary to this extent, that, although the common law was unquestioned, as there is no Federal common law in the absence of statute, and as interstate commerce cannot be controlled by State law, either common or statute, it was necessary for Congress to declare that the principles of the common law should apply to interstate commerce. It was also doubtless wise to remind the public of the existence of this body of law and to affix definite prohibitions and penalties. To this extent the anti-trust legislation, both State and Federal, is fully justified. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the older States, where both the legislatures and the bar had presumably a higher degree of legal education, rarely found it necessary to enact statutes against trusts. There has never been, for instance, any anti-trust law in Massachusetts or in Pennsylvania, or for a long time in New York, for the first statute of that State against trusts was made intentionally futile by being applied only to a trust which secured a complete—i.e., one hundred per cent.—monopoly of its trade.
The economic consideration of all such legislation we do not propose to consider; whether it was wise to forbid all forestalling, for instance—which at the common law meant buying at a definite distance as well as at a distant time; that is to say, a person who bought all the leather in Cordova was guilty of forestalling as well as the person who bought all the sherry that was to be made in Spain in the ensuing year—what we call the buying of futures. This is certainly very unpopular, and we find most of our States legislating against it; yet, of course, many economists argue that it is only by allowing such contracts that the price of any article can be made stable and a supply stored in years of plenty against years of famine. The first historical example of forestalling and engrossing is to be found in the book of Genesis. Joseph was not, I believe, a regrator, but he was one of the most successful forestallers and engrossers that ever existed, and made a most successful corner in corn in Egypt; and his case is cited as a precedent in the Great Case of Monopolies above mentioned. James C. Carter tells us[1] that all these laws are contrary to modern principles and were repealed a century ago. I cannot find that such is the case. On the contrary, they were made perpetual in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth, and we find perfectly modern trust legislation as early as Edward I, in 1285. In 1892 I find legislation already in nineteen States and Territories; North Dakota, indeed, having already a constitutional provision. Three States at least, Kansas, Michigan, and Nebraska, seem to have been before the Federal Act, their laws dating from 1889; while several States have statutes in 1890, the year in which the Sherman Act was enacted. There has hardly a year passed since without a good many statutes aimed against trusts, though they have shown a tendency to decrease of late years, and it is especially noticeable that anti-trust legislation is apt to cease entirely in the years following a panic, as if legislatures had learned the lesson that too much interference is destructive of business prosperity; I find that by 1908 just about half the States had embodied a prohibition of trusts in their organic law.[2]
[Footnote 1: "Law, Its Origin, History, and Function," N.Y., 1907.]
[Footnote 2: These provisions will be found digested in the writer's
"Federal and State Constitutions," pp. 339-341.]