liberation or investigation, as is inevitably the case in the sale of commodities. Everyone knows now that because of the impossibility of performing the burden of supplying adequate facts, millions of dollars of property, as a fact, have failed to receive the protection of the guarantees of the Constitution, and have suffered confiscation by the Government. Not only this, but the calculations have been so far astray that the Government itself, these industries being essential, has already had to tax the people millions of dollars, and will probably ultimately have to increase the taxpayers' burdens even by billions to relieve the situation. And, further, that nothing has done more, not even the inflation of the currency, than the confusion and failure of service which has followed, to increase the cost of living and inflict a general demoralization of production, with an enormous enhancement of cost, resulting from all this new uncertainty—as well as from the general uncertainties which have always surrounded the subject. Well has the Supreme Court declared it "A difficult and dangerous task"! If anybody could know price fixing it would be the Supreme Court. Its decisions have been, in effect, always wise and right, and as correct as human genius permits, because it has always protested against and thoroughly realized the impossibility of performing this task satisfactorily even to itself. That no one else could have done better is easily demonstrated.
As sugar has been chiefly discussed in the cases, arising under the act, it may be herein used as the illustration. It is the most discussed subject, and, indeed, the only commodity as to which President Wilson has himself been willing to assume the risk and undertake the task of price fixing which the Act he signed, no doubt with the utmost patriotism and good intent, has
