Missouri Pacific and 24 other railway com panies: petition to enjoin proposed advance in freight rates in Western Trunk line ter ritory sustained by Interstate Commerce Com mission.
- - Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company: petition to enjoin the combination from re straining competition and enhancing prices of enamel ware, under cover of a patent licensing arrangement; government sustained, 13 Oct 1911.
General Electric Company: bill in equity, charging combination in incandescent electric lamps and asking decree for dissolution, filed 3 March 1911; form of dissolution accepted by Circuit Court, 12 Oct. 1911.
United States Steel Corporation: petition for an injunction and dissolution filed 27 Oct 1911. In June preceding, Herbert Smith Knox, United States Commissioner of Corporations, reported that when the steel corporation was organized in 1901 its tangible assets were worth $682,000,000; that by 31 Dec. 1910. these assets had increased to $1,187,000,000; and that by the latter date the corporation had an aggregate of $1,468,000,000 in outstanding securities. The corporation claimed that its iron ore properties were worth $700,000,600, but the Commissioner believed that $100,000,000 would be a liberal estimate. During the summer of 1911 the affairs of the corporation were put under in vestigation by a committee of the National House of Representatives, and in May 1912, the taking of testimony in the government's suit for an injunction and dissolution was begun in New York. But the steel trust, after an im mense amount of testimony had been taken, secured a decision adverse to the government, from which the government appealed.
Application of the Rule of The United States Supreme-Court decided in favor of the government in the case of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and its subsidiaries on 15 May 1911, and in that of the American Tobacco Company on 29 May following, In each instance the decision was an elaborated review of the case, prepared by Chief Justice Edward D. White. It was held that the cor poration was a monopoly in restraint of trade; that it must be dissolved within six months; that corporations whose contracts are not un reasonably restrictive of competition are not affected by the Sherman law. In the American Tobacco decision it was held that the company was a combination in restraint of trade and a monopoly in violation of law; that it had been guilty of intimidation and had shown a dear purpose to stifle competition; that the company must disintegrate and recreate a condition of transacting business not repugnant to the law, under the scrutiny of the Circuit Court; and that, if at the end of six to eight months the component corporations failed to bring them selves into harmony with the law, a receivership and dissolution would follow. This decision
affected 65 American corporations, two English corporations, and 29 individual defendants; but none of them appear to have suffered seriously.
After a dozen or more years of litiga tion it became apparent that the govern ment was not gaining anything for the people by its suits against the trusts. Up to 1918 more than a hundred civil suits and more than a hundred criminal suits had been brought against trusts and trust mag nates, and four of these had been aimed at labor unions, doubtless with the quiet backing of some magnates who wanted to find if unions were not also trusts. The government appeared to win a number of these suits. The great Standard Oil Company was ordered to dissolve, and di vided itself into 60 odd companies, and went on as before. The National Cash Register Company was told to change its ways, and some of its officers received jail sentences, but the writer can find no record that any of them were served or that the Standard Oil ever paid that $29,000,000 fine which a certain judge once levied on them. A criminal suit was brought against William Rockefeller, Alexander Coch rane, George F. Baker, Theodore N. Vail and nine other directors of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company, to find out whether the looting of some $200,000,000 could be charged to any individuals; but the jury acquitted six and disagreed as to the others. The Corn Products Company was told to give a $50,000 bond for good behavior and so was the National Starch Company. The criminal suit against the Cudahy Packing Company was not pressed; the heads of the concerns con stituting the Wire Rope Association and the Rubber Covered Wire Association were fined from $5,000 down to $100 each; the great DuPont concern paid the costs and reorganized; the sugar trust asked that its case be held open until decisions were reached in the Harvester and Steel trust cases; in very many other cases small fines were imposed or the government lost, or the cases were appealed and held up under technicalities.