place, the proposition is repugnant to the Anti-trust Act."
The greater part of the material necessary to establish these contentions is to be found in the Act itself and Chief Justice White's exhaustive opinion in the Standard Oil Company case,[1] treating of the Sherman Act, which, is in pari materia[2] to the statute now under consideration: "We shall," he says, "make our investigation * * * in the light of the common law and the law of this country at the time of its adoption. * * * It is certain that those terms,[3] at least in their rudimentary meaning, took their origin in the common law, and were also familiar in the law of this country prior to and at the time of the adoption of the Act in question. We shall endeavor, then, first to seek their meaning * * * by making a very brief reference to the elementary and indisputable conceptions of both the English and American law on the subject prior to the passage of the Anti-trust Act." After pointing out that "by the Common Law monopolies were unlawful because of their restriction upon individual freedom of contract and their injury to the public," and that one of the injuries that resulted "is an undue enhancement of price," and that the freedom of contract of the individual was preserved not only in his own interest, but "principally in the interest of the commonwealth"; and that "from the development of more accurate economic conceptions and the changes in conditions of society it
- ↑ Standard Oil Co. vs. United States, 221 U. S. 1. 1911.
- ↑ The terms "restraint of trade," "attempt to monopolize" and "monopolize."
- ↑ The Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, the "Commodities Clause of the Hepburn Act," and the Lever Act, together with other like enactments of Congress, are "in pari materia" in the sense that they relate to the general subject of trade regulation and must be considered with reference to each other.
