between the selling price and the cost price. Judge Rudkin then continues:[1] "That such prices or profits are extortionate no one will deny. Of course, if confined to the three stores in question, or to only a few stores, the people have a remedy in their own hands by withholding their patronage, and, if they fail to make use of that remedy, to the fullest extent, they, alone, are to blame. On the other hand, if these conditions are general, and to continue indefinitely, the people are without remedy, except through governmental action." This finding, of course, is error, as the people not only always have a remedy, but in fact the sole, effective and beneficial remedy.
Indeed, it is an astounding fact that whilst there is marked disagreement, a most clearly expressed doubt, a reference to mere "War power" as the most relied upon support of the Act, there is a universal failure in these decisions to regard Mr. Justice Holmes' admonition as to the necessity of examining these questions from the viewpoint of political economists as well as of lawyers. There is not a line to be found in these cases under the Act to show the slightest recognition of the definitely established truth, that high prices always have been, and always will be, the forerunner of low prices; that freemen in a free market, with its inducements to gain the higher rewards, strive, invent and compete, so that every temporary rise in price insures not merely a return to the old price, but to a lower one, and finally to the fair and equitable exchange of all commodities, measured by the labor relatively involved. No Court even notices the different burden of proof in quasi-monopolistic enterprises, and where the free exchange of commodities
- ↑ United States vs. Spokane Co., 264 Fed. Rep. 209 (see page 217). 1920.
