erty belonging to the trust estate. The reasonable price under the common counts in pleading at Common Law was always the market price.
If it is not to be so, how are the Judges ever to instruct a jury? Shall they now say that there no longer is any measure of damages except that which may, some time in the future, be determined by the Supreme Court of the United States after a criminal prosecution has been brought? The state of trade will become appalling and impossible.
But we may dismiss all this, for, if all the sections of the Act be examined, it shows that it was adopted in full recognition and agreement with the law as laid down in the Standard Oil case. In the first place, the words in Section 4 as amended are used in connection with acts so unlawful at Common Law and under the Sherman Act as to make the profit resulting "unreasonable," "unjust" and "excessive," as constantly determined. In the second place, one of the sections of the Act actually protects, by double penalty, "the market price" from unfair manipulation which would have no effect if it contemplated other than the meaning universally given to the term. Thirdly, it properly denominates the funds given to the President to be used in business as "revolving funds," showing a keen and exact perception of the necessary nature of business transactions, as well as the difficulty of following them to an ultimate conclusion, before that conclusion has even been reached. In the fourth place, even where the President does fix the price, it is still to be fixed, if unsatisfactory, on the usual basis. His decree is to be nowise final. And, finally, and most conclusively, in the case of certain of the essential commodities, it actually provides for the establishment of a governmental guarantee for the maintenance of a price, perhaps, over
