engaged in business as to what they are or are not to charge for their commodities. Indeed it, in fact, constitutes the dealers the governmental agents to determine the proper price for commodities both for themselves, and for the public, with its adverse interest, despite the fact that such dealers have not only a continuing interest, but, very often, a trust duty to others, to make the business that they are transacting as successful as possible. The Act intensifies the violation of these maxims by providing that, in turn, such dealers are to be judged in a criminal proceeding by a jury drawn from those having the conflicting interest! In a word, the Act insists upon a satisfactory result from biased minds, to be determined by other minds equally biased to the contrary, and provides, upon the question of prices, no method of test or appeal to a proper judicial tribunal from that which constitutes a legislative determination, except where actual cases for punishment for possible error in price fixing are before the court.
The contention, therefore, must be that men can be convicted of crime by juries in larger part of adverse interest, solely for being compelled to reach conclusions, under the duress of otherwise abandoning their means of livelihood, in cases where, both under divine and civil law, they have heretofore universally been precluded from decision at all because from natural human infirmity they are incapable of satisfactory performance.
For the law positively to declare that "no man can serve two masters," and then not only to force him to do so, but put him in prison because he has not done so satisfactorily, and to pass judgment upon him by the verdict of a body of men also, subject to the disabilities of personal interest,—cannot be a portion of
