Our Changing Constitution Part 9

The Sherman Act[1] declares unlawful every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of interstate trade, and every attempt to monopolize interstate trade. The legal uncertainties that have arisen in its enforcement have not been with respect to the meaning of the terms "restraint of trade" and "monopoly," although the popular impression is to the contrary. In 1890, when the statute was pa.s.sed, contracts in restraint of trade and monopolies were already unlawful at common law, and these terms, by a long series of decisions both here and in England, had been defined as definitely as the nature of the subject matter permitted. While incapable (like the term "fraud") of precise definition covering all forms which the ingenuity of man might devise, nevertheless their meaning and scope were well within the understanding of any man of reasonable intelligence. Whatever legal uncertainties have arisen have been chiefly owing to two questions: first, What is interstate trade within the meaning of the act? and second, Did the act enlarge the common-law rule as to what restraints were unlawful?

[Footnote 1: "An Act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies," approved July 2, 1890.]

The act was nearly shipwrecked at the outset on the first of these questions. In the famous Knight case,[1] the first case under the Sherman Act to reach the Supreme Court, it was held that the transactions by which the American Sugar Refining Company obtained control of the Philadelphia refineries and secured a virtual monopoly could not be reached under the act because they bore no direct relation to interstate commerce. The effect of this decision naturally was to cast doubt upon the efficacy of the statute and encourage the trust builders. Perhaps the case was rightly decided in view of the peculiar form in which the issues were presented by the pleadings. In the light of later decisions, however, it is safe to a.s.sert that the Court would now find little difficulty in applying the remedies provided by the Sherman Act to a similar state of facts, properly presented. While no prudent lawyer would care to attempt a comprehensive definition of what const.i.tutes interstate commerce, it may at least be said that the tendency of the courts has been and is toward a constant broadening of the term to meet the facts of present-day business.

[Footnote 1: United States v. E.C. Knight Company, 156 U.S., 1.]

The other question-Did the Sherman Act change the common-law rule as to what restraints and monopolies are forbidden?-has been even more troublesome. The lawyers in Congress who framed the law believed that it did not. This is the testimony of Senator h.o.a.r in his Autobiography, and as he was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which reported the act in its present form, and claims to have drawn it himself, his testimony is ent.i.tled to belief. The Supreme Court, however, in this particular went further than was expected. In the Trans-Missouri Freight a.s.sociation case,[1] which reached the Supreme Court two years after the Knight case, that tribunal decided by a five-to-four majority that the words "every contract ... in restraint of trade" extended the operation of the law beyond the technical common-law meaning of the terms employed so as in fact to include all contracts in restraint of interstate trade without exception or limitation. This theory was strongly combated by the minority of the court, speaking through Justice (afterwards Chief Justice) White, and was denounced by many eminent lawyers, notably the late James C. Carter, then leader of the New York Bar, who predicted that sooner or later it must be abandoned as untenable. Their protests were well founded. The theory, carried to its logical conclusion, would have prohibited a great variety of transactions theretofore deemed reasonable and proper, and would have brought large business to a standstill. As a matter of fact, it was never carried to its logical conclusion, and six years later it was expressly repudiated by Justice Brewer; one of the five, in the course of his concurring opinion in the Northern Securities case.[2] Justice Brewer said that while he believed the Trans-Missouri case had been rightly decided he also believed that in some respects the reasons given for the judgment could not be sustained.

Instead of holding that the Anti-Trust Act included all contracts, reasonable or unreasonable, in restraint of interstate trade, the ruling should have been that the contracts there presented were unreasonable restraints of interstate trade, and as such within the scope of the Act.... Whenever a departure from common-law rules and definitions is claimed, the purpose to make the departure should be clearly shown. Such a purpose does not appear and such a departure was not intended.

[Footnote 1: United States v. Trans-Missouri a.s.sociation, 166 U.S., 290.]

[Footnote 2: Northern Securities Company v. United States, 193 U.S., 197.]

Nevertheless, the troublesome question remained, to plague lawyers and the community generally, until it was finally put at rest and the statute once more planted on the firm ground of common-law rule and definition by the decisions in the Standard Oil and Tobacco cases.

What, then, is this common-law rule which President Taft found so clear? No one has discussed it more lucidly than did the youthful Circuit Judge Taft himself in delivering the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals in the Addyston Pipe & Steel Co. case,[1] an opinion in which his two a.s.sociates on the bench, the late Justices Harlan and Lurton, concurred. The rule may be briefly stated as follows:

Every contract or combination whose primary purpose and effect is to fix prices, limit production, or otherwise restrain trade is unlawful, provided the restraint be direct, material, and substantial.

Where, however, the restraint of trade is not direct, but merely ancillary or collateral to some lawful contract or transaction, it is not unlawful, provided it is reasonable, that is to say, not broader than is required for the protection of the party in whose favor the restraint is imposed.

[Footnote 1: United States v. Addyston Pipe & Steel Co., 85 Fed. Rep., 271.]

A familiar ill.u.s.tration is the sale of a business and its goodwill, accompanied by a covenant on the part of the vendor not to compete. Such a covenant is collateral to the sale, and if not broader than is reasonably required for the protection of the vendee it will be upheld, although a similar agreement, standing alone and not collateral to a sale or other lawful transaction, would be in direct restraint of trade and unlawful.

So much for the alleged uncertainty of the law. Candid men must agree with President Taft that in the light of the Supreme Court decisions it is reasonably clear what the Sherman Law means. But the fact that "the business community now knows or ought to know where it stands" with respect to the law does not greatly help the business situation. The real difficulty lies, not in the uncertainty of the law, but in the fact that the law does not fit actual present-day conditions. This is partly because many of the trusts were organized with full knowledge that they involved a violation of law but in the belief that the law could not or would not be effectively enforced. The realization that this belief was mistaken has thrown a good many people into a state of very genuine bewilderment, but it is an uncertainty, not as to what is firm ground, but as to how to get out of a bog, once having gotten in. For the most part, however, the general feeling of insecurity is due not so much to having knowingly overstepped the law, as to a change in economic conditions. The spirit of the time is one of cooperation and combination. It is manifested in the churches and colleges as well as in the marketplace. In the industrial arena, the tendency has been intensified by the invention of new machines and the resulting aggregations of fixed capital in forms designed for particular uses and incapable of diversion into other channels. Such rules of the common or customary law as were the outgrowth of an era of mobile capital and free compet.i.tion no longer fit the conditions under which we are living.

In a conflict between economic forces and legal enactment there can finally be but one outcome. The law must sooner or later adapt itself to life conditions. The real problem to-day is-how shall this adaptation be accomplished; how can statutes be framed which shall check abuses without falling under the wheels of social progress? Right here a swarm of half-informed theorizers are rushing in where trained economists fear to tread. It is difficult and dangerous ground, but there is at least one measure of legal reform-take away the right of one corporation to hold stock in another-which might be urged with confidence were it not for the existence of sundry oppressive and conflicting state laws.

The abolition by law of the holding-company device is no new suggestion. It was strongly urged years ago by the late Edward B. Whitney. It was the keystone of the famous "Seven Sisters" statutes,[1] enacted with loud acclaim in New Jersey at the behest of Governor Woodrow Wilson (but subsequently repealed and thrown into the discard). Such a measure would be more effective and far-reaching than the public supposes. Nearly all the so-called trusts have been organized and are being held together in whole or in part, by the holding-company device. In many cases this has been done merely as an innocent measure of convenience. The device, however, is a perversion of the corporate machine to uses not contemplated by its inventors and fraught with danger. It is too powerful a weapon in the hands of those alive to its possibilities, enabling a small group of men with a relatively insignificant investment of capital to control a country-wide industry. Take the simplest possible ill.u.s.tration: The industry of manufacturing a particular commodity is carried on by a number of corporations scattered throughout the country with an aggregate capitalization of, say, $10,000,000. A, B, and C form a holding company to acquire a bare majority of the stock of each corporation, say $5,100,000 in the aggregate. They dispose of 49 per cent. of the holding company's stock to the public, retaining a working majority. At one step they have secured absolute control of a $10,000,000 industry with an investment of little more than one-quarter of that amount, and by pursuing the same process further they can reduce the investment necessary for controlling the industry almost to the vanishing point.

[Footnote 1: Laws of New Jersey of 1913, chaps. 13-19.]

It is needless to enlarge on the possible abuses of the holding-company device. They are coming to light more and more. The remedy, however, is not so simple as it seems at first blush. A summary abolition of the holding-company device would result in great injury and hardship to industry. In the present condition of the corporation laws of certain of the states, the right of large corporations to operate through local subsidiary corporations is a practical necessity. Otherwise they would be subjected to well-nigh intolerable exactions and interference. It has been the policy in some states in dealing with foreign corporations to attempt to impose, under the guise of fees for the privilege of doing business in the state, a tax on all their property and business wherever situated. Some of the attempts have been nullified by the Supreme Court as violative of the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment against taking property without due process of law, but these decisions have not wholly remedied the evil or checked the ingenuity of state legislators. In some jurisdictions great corporations seem to be regarded as fair game for which there is no closed season.

Right here the scheme of federal incorporation brought forward during President Taft's administration has many attractions to offer. It would do away with the princ.i.p.al excuse for the holding-company device, and pave the way for its abolition. It should satisfy the general public because it would clothe the Government with enormously increased powers of regulation and control; it should be attractive to the corporations because it would afford relief from many of the intolerable restrictions, not always fair or intelligent, imposed by state legislatures. Under present conditions the right of a corporation of one state to do business in another (other than business of an interstate character) rests merely upon comity and may be granted or refused upon such terms as interest or prejudice may dictate. The right of a federal corporation to do business in the several states, on the other hand, rests upon the powers conferred on Congress by the Const.i.tution and is not subject to the whims of state lawmakers. Such a corporation is not "foreign" in the states into which its activity extends and state laws aimed at foreign corporations will not hit it. Moreover a corporation with a federal charter can always take its controversies into the federal courts (except when Congress expressly forbids)[1]-a right of extreme practical value where anti-corporation feeling or local prejudice is strong.

[Footnote 1: The Act of Jan. 28, 1915, took away this right in the case of railroad companies incorporated under federal charter (38 Stat. 804).]

The scheme of federal incorporation presents some const.i.tutional questions. As pointed out in a previous chapter, the Const.i.tution nowhere expressly confers on Congress the right to grant corporate charters. Under Chief Justice Marshall's doctrine of "Implied Powers," however, it has become well settled that Congress has implied power to charter a corporation whenever that is an appropriate means of exercising one of the powers expressly conferred, for example, the power to regulate interstate commerce. The most serious const.i.tutional question appears to be whether Congress can authorize such a corporation to manufacture, the process of manufacturing not being an activity of an interstate character. In any event, the difficulty could be surmounted by a const.i.tutional amendment. In these days of facile amendment such a thing seems quite within the range of possibility.

The scheme of federal incorporation is by no means new. In the Convention of 1787 which framed the Const.i.tution, Mr. Madison advocated giving Congress the power to grant charters of incorporation. The proposition, however, did not find favor, Mr. King suggesting that it might foster the creation of mercantile monopolies.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Farrand, "Records of the Federal Convention," Vol. II, pp. 615-616, 620.]

This objection would scarcely be urged to-day, when the country-wide operations of the so-called "trusts" have given them a national character and made their control by federal power a practical necessity.

XIII

WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

In the preceding pages we have observed from various viewpoints the impressive phenomenon of federal encroachment upon state power. It must have become obvious to the most casual reader that the tide is running swiftly and has already carried far. Hamilton was mistaken when he predicted in the Federalist[1] that the National Government would never encroach upon the state authorities.

[Footnote 1: Federalist, Numbers XVII, x.x.xI.]

What then of the future? Is the Const.i.tution hopelessly out of date? Are the states to be submerged and virtually obliterated in the drift toward centralization? No thoughtful patriot can view such a possibility without the gravest misgivings. The integrity of the states was a cardinal principle of our governmental scheme. Abandon that and we are adrift from the moorings which to the minds of statesmen of past generations const.i.tuted the safety of the republic.

No mere appeal to precedents and governmental theory will check the current. The Americans are a practical people, moving forward with conscious power toward the attainment of their aims, along the lines which seem to them most direct. They are more interested in results than in methods or theories. Experience has demonstrated that federal control often spells uniformity and efficiency where state control had meant divisions and weakness. They favor federal control because it gets results.

There is another aspect of the matter, however. The burden of federal bureaucracy is beginning to be felt by the average man. He is being regulated more and more, in his meats and drinks, his morals and the activities of his daily life, from Washington. If he will only stop and think he must realize that no one central authority can supervise the daily lives of a hundred million people, scattered over half a continent, without becoming top-heavy. He must realize, too, that, even if such a centralization of power and responsibility were humanly possible, our National Government is unsuited for the task. The electorate is too numerous and heterogeneous; its interests and needs are too diverse. Shall the conduct of citizens of Mississippi be prescribed by vote of congressmen from New York, or supervised at the expense of New York taxpayers? Will an educational system suitable for Ma.s.sachusetts necessarily fit the young of Georgia? Such suggestions carry their own answer. In the very nature of things there is bound to be a reaction against centralization sooner or later. The real question is whether it will come in time to save the present const.i.tutional scheme.

The makers of the Const.i.tution never intended that the people of one state should regulate, or pay for supervising, the conduct of citizens of another state. They made a division of governmental powers between nation and states along broad and obvious lines. To the Federal Government were entrusted matters of a strictly national character-foreign relations, interstate commerce, fiscal and monetary system, post office, patents and copyrights. Everything else was reserved, to the states or the people. Here was a scheme at once explicit and elastic. Explicit as to the nature of the functions to be performed by the National Government; elastic enough to permit the exercise of all other powers reasonably incidental to the powers expressly granted. The Const.i.tution is not, and never was intended to be, a strait-jacket.

Proofs abound of the adequacy of the const.i.tutional scheme to deal with changing conditions. For example, when the Const.i.tution was adopted, railroads, the most powerful economic force in our present civilization, were unknown. Nevertheless, the Const.i.tution contains adequate provision for dealing with the railroads. They are instruments of interstate commerce and may be controlled by the Federal Government under the express grant of power to regulate such commerce. Similar considerations apply in the case of those nationwide industrial combinations popularly known as "trusts." Their activities are largely in the field of interstate commerce and are subject to control as such by the Federal Government. Theoretically, only such activities of the railroads and trusts as are of an interstate character fall within the federal jurisdiction. Everything else lies within the jurisdiction of the states. However, a practical people will not long permit matters which are essentially single and entire in their nature (for example, railroad cla.s.sifications and rates) to be split up merely for purposes of legal jurisdiction and control. In such matters, therefore, some measure of federal encroachment is inevitable in order that industry and progress shall not be hampered. The encroachment, however, is more apparent than real. The industries are national in scope, and all the activities of each are more or less interwoven and interdependent. Hence state regulation of the intrastate activities may sometimes be overruled as an interference with federal regulation of the interstate commerce. There is nothing in this which involves any real violation of the Const.i.tution. It is merely an application of Marshall's doctrine of implied powers.

Social welfare legislation presents a very different problem. Some of the most dangerous a.s.saults upon the Const.i.tution to-day are being made in that field. The leaven of socialistic ideas is working. Representative government is becoming more paternalistic. Legislation dealing with conduct and social and economic conditions is being demanded by public sentiment in constantly increasing measure. Such legislation for the most part affects state police power and lies clearly outside the scope of the powers conferred by the Const.i.tution on the National Government. Moreover, "the insulated chambers afforded by the several states" (to borrow a phrase of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes) are ideal fields for social experiment. If an experiment succeed, other states will follow suit. If it prove disastrous, the damage is localized. The nation as a whole remains unharmed. The sponsors for such legislation, however, are seldom content to deal with the states. Reform was ever impatient. The state method seems too slow, and the difficulty of securing uniformity too formidable. Moreover, it often happens that some states are indifferent to the reform proposed or even actively hostile. Accordingly, recourse is had to Congress, and Congress looks for a way to meet the popular demand. There being no direct way, and public sentiment being insistent, Congressmen find themselves under the painful necessity of circ.u.mventing the Const.i.tution they have sworn to uphold. The desired legislation is enacted under the guise of an act to regulate commerce or raise revenue, and the task of upholding the Const.i.tution is pa.s.sed to the Supreme Court.

Such subterfuges, far from arousing public condemnation, are praised by the unthinking as far-sighted statesmanship. It is popular nowadays to apply the term "forward-looking" to people who would make the National Government an agency for social-welfare work, and to characterize as "lacking in vision" anyone who interposes a const.i.tutional principle in the path of a social reform. Friends of progress sometimes forget that the real forward-looking man is he who can see the pitfall ahead as well as the rainbow; the man of true vision is one whose view of the stars is steadied by keeping his feet firmly on the ground.

It cannot be reiterated too often that, under our political system, legislation in the nature of police regulation (except in so far as it affects commerce or foreign relations) is the province of the states, not of the National Government. This is not merely sound const.i.tutional law; it is good sense as well. Regulations salutary for Scandinavian immigrants of the northwest may not fit the Creoles of Louisiana. In the long run the police power will be exercised most advantageously for all concerned by local authority.

The present tendency toward centralization cannot go on indefinitely. A point must be reached sooner or later when an over-centralized government becomes intolerable and breaks down of its own weight. As an eminent authority has put it: "If we did not have states we should speedily have to create them."[1] The states thus created, however, would not be the same. They would be mere governmental subdivisions, without the independence, the historic background, the traditions, or the sentiment of the present states. These influences, hitherto so potent in our national life, would have been lost.

[Footnote 1: Address of Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Hughes before New York State Bar a.s.sociation, January 14, 1916.]

In a memorable address delivered in the year 1906 before the Pennsylvania Society in New York, Elihu Root, then Secretary of State in President Roosevelt's Cabinet, discussed the encroachments of federal power and expressed the view that the only way in which the states could maintain their power and authority was by awakening to a realization of their own duties to the country at large. He said:

The Governmental control which they (the people) deem just and necessary they will have. It may be that such control would better be exercised in particular instances by the governments of the states, but the people will have the control they need either from the states or from the National Government; and if the states fail to furnish it in due measure, sooner or later constructions of the Const.i.tution will be found to vest the power where it will be exercised-in the National Government. The true and only way to preserve state authority is to be found in the awakened conscience of the states, their broadened views and higher standard of responsibility to the general public; in effective legislation by the states, in conformity to the general moral sense of the country; and in the vigorous exercise for the general public good of that state authority which is to be preserved.

Those words, spoken fifteen years ago, were prophetic. Moreover, they are as true to-day as when they were uttered.

Will the people see these things in time? Americans with pride in their country's past and confidence in her future dare not say No. The awakening may be slow. Currents of popular will are not readily turned. It is hard to make the people think. But if leaders and teachers do their part American intelligence and prudence will a.s.sert themselves, and the slogan of an awakened public sentiment may yet be: "Back to the Const.i.tution!"

APPENDIX

CONSt.i.tUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSt.i.tUTION for the United States of America.

ARTICLE I.

SECTION 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

SECTION 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be ent.i.tled to chuse three, Ma.s.sachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.