by its means and necessities! Then why was not the meaning of the word just what it naturally meant? Why should it not be construed as prohibiting the power of "sole sale" or "sole purchase" in national commerce? Is it not an evil that a single person or combination can regulate every interstate transaction in a necessity of life, thus usurping the power of Congress in that respect totally and completely? The question is but asked. Mr. Justice Peckham so thinks: "Nor is it for the substantial interests of the country that any one commodity should be within the sole power and subject to the sole will of one powerful combination of capital."[1]
The industry and ability of Professor Stimson ("Federal and State Constitutions") excludes at least one reason for negative answer, and the statute of James another.
"Sole buying, selling, making, working or using of anything" was certainly denounced by that statute. It is asserted that the common law only prohibited these, as explained by Lord Coke, when resulting from exclusive grants, etc. But that is not so.
As demonstrated by Professor Stimson, the trade of the middle ages being controlled by corporations, or guilds, restraints, then, were generally by so-called "ordinances" or "by-laws;" and these were prohibited by a declaratory statute in 1436, the statute being against by-laws in restraint of trade, "by persons in confederacy for their singular profit and the common damage of the people." This statute was again reënacted in 1503. That
- ↑ 166 U. S. 324 (1897).
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