In the case recently decided of United States vs. United States Steel Corporation, is found an enunciation of a great truth:[1] "It has become an aphorism that there is danger of deception in generalities, and in a case of this importance we should have something surer for judgment than speculation, something more than a deduction equivocal of itself, even though the facts it rests on or asserts were not contradicted. If the phenomena of production and prices were as easily resolved as the witness implied, much discussion and much literature have been wasted, and some of the problems that are now distracting the world would have been given composing solution. Of course, competition affects prices, but it is only one among other influences, and does not more than they register itself in definite and legible effect."
It is no doubt because of this truth that our law of Freedom, out law that lets all of the people take part in finding natural values and fair and reasonable prices, has, in the end, always asserted its triumphant and necessary superiority. If there be at least found a method by which business men can reduce all these uncertainties to that degree of proof necessary for criminal conviction, may it not be asked why Congress did not announce it, instead of imposing a task impossible of performance upon business men and the Courts?
It is fortunate that in dealing with the sugar cases arising under the Act we have an illustration of the wisdom of settled principles, where the history of the matter and its results have so largely become public property. Raw sugar has, within recent years, sold as low as $.0327½ per pound. Notwithstanding the War, Mr. Herbert Hoover, with the aid of the Refiners,
- ↑ In United States vs. United States Steel Corporation, 251 U. S. 417 (see page 448). 1920.
