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The antitrust law should not prohibit combinations that do no injustice to the public, still less those the existence of which is on the whole of benefit to the public. But even if this feature of the law were abolished, there would remain as an equally objectionable feature the difficulty and delay now incident to its enforcement.
The producers of these materials assert that certain unfortunate results of wasteful and destructive use of these natural resources together with a destructive competition which impoverishes both operator and worker can not be remedied because of the prohibitive interpretation of the antitrust laws. The well-known condition of the bituminous coal industry is an illustration.
The business of the country awaits also, has long awaited and has suffered because it could not obtain, further and more explicit legislative definition of the policy and meaning of the existing antitrust law. Nothing hampers business like uncertainty.
The Supreme Court had decided that the "pooling" arrangements which had so long prevailed among great competing roads violated the Sherman AntiTrust Act; and the American public, which now was cultivating a new interest in railroad problems, believed that the "community of interest" plan was merely a scheme to defeat the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Act and to maintain secretly all the old railroad abuses.
But as the result of a suit under the Sherman AntiTrust Act, this combination was declared illegal, and in 1904 the company was dissolved. The final outcome of the situation was that the Northern Pacific, sharing with the Great Northern the joint control of the Burlington lines, was left indisputably in the hands of the Hill-Morgan group, where it has ever since remained.
They include tax avoidance through corporate and other methods, which I have previously mentioned; excessive capitalization, investment write-ups and security manipulations; price rigging and collusive bidding in defiance of the spirit of the antitrust laws by methods which baffle prosecution under the present statutes.
University of Chicago economists studying Industrial Organization the branch of economics that deals with competition have long advocated a shift of emphasis from market share to usually temporary market power. Influential antitrust thinkers, such as Robert Bork, recommended to revise the law to focus solely on consumer welfare.
I think it will be easily agreed that we should let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation; and should also supplement that great act by legislation which will not only clarify it but also facilitate its administration and make it fairer to all concerned.
They include tax avoidance through corporate and other methods, which I have previously mentioned; excessive capitalization, investment write-ups and security manipulations; price rigging and collusive bidding in defiance of the spirit of the antitrust laws by methods which baffle prosecution under the present statutes.
Antitrust legislation has been enacted to meet the demand for the curbing of monopolies; and the Federal land bank system which has recently gone into operation is practically the proposal of the Northwestern Alliance for government loans to farmers, with the greenback feature eliminated.
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